Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lolita in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

A perverse love story within one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It is hard to imagine another writer creating such a masterful book centered around an incestuous relationship. An amazing piece of writing that should be read by anyone enjoys literature. Nabokov is able to play with words in dazzling ways and challenge one's thinking at the same time. An artistic exploration with humor and sensuousness, love and perversity.

Love - Peter Nadas

This book didn't work for me. I debated finishing it and only did so because it was short. The author was highly praised, but I found him tedious.

Once Upon The River Love - Andrei Makine

Why Belmondo?

He arrived at the moment when the discontinuity between the promised future and our own present was on the brink of making us irremediably schizophrenic. When in the name of our messianic project the fishermen were preparing to leave not one single fish in the seas, and the loggers to transform the taiga into a desert of ice. While back in the Kremlin one old man was decorating another and anointing him "three times Hero of Socialist Labor" and "four times Hero of the Soviet Union," and there was no space left on the shrunken chest of the decorated person for all those gold stars...

When Belmondo took Siberia by storm, all that was part of it. The Kremlin; the hundred and fifty weaving looms; vodka as the sole means to combat the schizophrenic rupture between the future and the present. Not to mention the disk of the setting sun trapped in the barbed wire...

Chronicle In Stone - Ismail Kadare

It was a strange city, and seemed to have been cast up in the valley one winter's night like some prehistoric creature that was now clawing its way up the mountainside. Everything in the city was old and made of stone, from the streets and fountains to the roofs of the sprawling age-old houses covered with grey slates like gigantic scales. It was hard to believe that under this powerful carapace the tender flesh of life survived and reproduced.

The traveller seeing it for the first time was tempted to compare it to something, but soon found that impossible, for the city rejected all comparisons. In fact, it looked like nothing else. It could no more support comparison than it could bear the rain, hail, rainbows, or multi-colored foreign flags that vanished from its roof-tops as quickly as they had come, ephemeral and unreal as the city was eternal and concrete.

Napoleon's Buttons - Le Couteur & Burreson

We decided to write this book to tell the stories of the fascinating connections between chemical structures and historical episodes, to uncover how seemingly unrelated events have depended on similar chemical structures, and to understand the extent to which the development of society had depended on the chemistry of certain compounds. The idea that momentous events may depend on something as small as a molecule- a group of two or more atoms held together in a definite arrangement- offers a novel approach to understanding the growth of human civilization.

An interesting take on history, especially if you enjoy science. From the tin of Napoleon's army uniform buttons which may have disintegrated in cold weather to the spice wars, history is detailed as it relates to specific compounds. I thought the authors did a nice balancing job in keeping the book both entertaining and educational. Enjoyable to read.

Human Chain - Seamus Heaney

A Herbal

Everywhere plants

Flourish among graves,

Sinking their roots

In all the dynasties Of the dead.

...

Seamus Heaney is one of the world's great poets. This book certainly displays his great talent. However, it didn't move me as much as some of his other poetry. He still shows his ability to express so much in a few words.