July 23, 2006
Magical Realism
It's come to my attention that the style of literature I enjoy the most is known as "magical realism." Here's a description excerpted from an Emory student's site:
...magical realism aims to seize the paradox of the union of opposites. For instance, it challenges polar opposites like life and death and the pre-colonial past versus the post-industrial present. Magical realism is characterized by two conflicting perspectives, one based on a rational view of reality and the other on the acceptance of the supernatural as prosaic reality. Magical realism differs from pure fantasy primarily because it is set in a normal, modern world with authentic descriptions of humans and society. According to Angel Flores, magical realism involves the fusion of the real and the fantastic, or as he claims, "an amalgamation of realism and fantasy".
There is debate in the literary community as to whether magical realism is reserved for Latin American literature or other cultures which have a strong background of magical/tribal legend and magic. However, over the course of my research into the "genre" or qualities of magical realism, I've found a solid amount of scholars who maintain that magical realism isn't limited to any specific culture - and that writers from other cultures (like Salman Rushdie or Angela Carter or Milan Kundera) are equally serious and valid authors of magical realism. Another description of magical realism states,
Magic Realist novelists embroider fantastic elements of fable, folklore, and myth -- symbolic indictments of the crazy-quilt insanity of contemporary politics and normalizing ideologies -- then stitch them seamlessly into a conventional narrative. This conscious, playful interweaving of the surreal and the magical within the traditional adult novel confronts the repression of thought-policed cultures and the oppression of modern aesthetics, both of which deny the power of the imaginative world.
Thus, here are some I've read and enjoyed. As I read more, I'll add to the list... and perhaps pop up some reviews as well.
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Wise Children by Angela Carter
• Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter
• Blindness by Jose Saramago
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
• We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Immortality by Milan Kundera
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
• Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
• The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Posted by researchgirl at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2006
Reading About Depression
If you or anyone you know is suffering from depression, here are some books I've found to be helpful and have passed along to friends and family in an effort to help them TRY to understand how this illness works...
• The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
• Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression by Nell Casey
• Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness by David A. Karp
• An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
• Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron
Posted by researchgirl at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2006
Period Pieces
This is a list of novels that are, for lack of better term, period pieces - Victoriana and such. Boys - don't discount them for that reason. But they are, by and large, stories of propriety and nuance.
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen ♥
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ♥♥
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- Nana by Emile Zola ♥
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte ♥♥
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert ♥
- Fingersmith by Sarah Waters ♥
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte ♥♥
- Ahab's Wife, or, The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund ♥♥
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrellby Susanna Clarke
- Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier ♥
- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins ♥♥
♥ = indicates a slight sentimentality warning.
♥♥ = indicates a strong sentimentality warning. Yeah. I know.
Posted by researchgirl at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)
Childrens' Books Worth Your Time (non-picture books)
- the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
- The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
- any childrens' books by Roald Dahl (he also wrote for adults - with titles like Switch Bitch)
- the Merlin stories by T.A. Barron
- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- all of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- The Borrowers series and Bed Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton
- the Mary Poppins books by P.L. Travers
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
- The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
- anything by Cornelia Funke (Inkheart, The Thief Lord, Inkspell, Dragon Rider)
- the Wrinkle in Time/Time Quartet series by Madeleine L'Engle
- The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George
- A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler
- the Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren
- Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald
That's the first list. More to come as I am inspired!
Posted by researchgirl at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)