Subscription: Boxwalla Book Box
Cost: $49.99 billed bi-monthly
What to Expect: “We have four interests to choose from. And two ways to explore them. You can either subscribe to multiple interests. OR you can subscribe to one interest and hop between interests.”
“Housed in a beautiful, cream colored handmade box made from tree-free* handmade paper.”
*But is it gluten-free?
October Box: Albania, Hungary and Portugal, with a specific focus on translated books
The first series of book boxes this year, will focus on great, living writers from all over the world. All of them are must-read but not as widely read as they deserve to be. All of them are also prospective Nobel Laureates. But we don’t want to wait till they win. We want to (and want you to) read them now!
Satantango by László Krasznahorkai, George Szirtes (Translator)
Already famous as the inspiration for the filmmaker Béla Tarr’s six-hour masterpiece, Satantango is proof, as the spellbinding, bleak, and hauntingly beautiful book has it, that “the devil has all the good times.”
The story of Satantango, spread over a couple of days of endless rain, focuses on the dozen remaining inhabitants of an unnamed isolated hamlet: failures stuck in the middle of nowhere. Schemes, crimes, infidelities, hopes of escape, and above all trust and its constant betrayal are Krasznahorkai’s meat. “At the center of Satantango,” George Szirtes has said, “is the eponymous drunken dance, referred to here sometimes as a tango and sometimes as a csardas. It takes place at the local inn where everyone is drunk. . . . Their world is rough and ready, lost somewhere between the comic and tragic, in one small insignificant corner of the cosmos. Theirs is the dance of death.”
“You know,” Mrs. Schmidt, a pivotal character, tipsily confides, “dance is my one weakness.”
You’ve likely heard the csardas before. Here’s a beautiful version played with a mandolin and guitar, though I believe it is usually with a violin or fiddle. Press play and listen while you read/skim.
The first, and only, time I can recall someone referring to this song and dance was in Dracula Dead and Loving It [click to see the scene!]. Now I look forward to reading the book AND rewatching some Mel Brooks films.
The Natural Order of Things by António Lobo Antunes, Richard Zenith (Translator)
The Natural Order of Things is a tale of two families and the secrets that bind them. The voices of Antunes’ characters — an army officer being tortured in prison on charges of conspiracy; an elderly man, once a miner in Mozambique, now reduced to dreams of “flying underground”; a diabetic teenage girl and the middle-aged husband she despises; the officer’s illegitimate sister, locked away to haunt the house like Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre — create a portrait of a disintegrating Portugal, a personal political history that attains the brilliance and surreality of Elias Canetti and Nikolai Gogol.
Antunes is a Portuguese novelist, and I’m going to share the quote from the card, “If Satantango breathes with all the melancholy of a rainy day, The Natural Order of Things sparkles with something of that surreal light that follows the rain.” How beautiful is that? I wish the Drunken Boxwallas would write a novella. I’d read it!
Side story: I was listening to Bossa Nova the other night, and my new roomie came out and asked me why I was listening to Brazilian music. I said I liked listening to something classy when I cooked dinner, and she informed me that Bossa Nova is Brazilian. She was really excited about hearing the Portuguese because she just moved here from Brazil =)
Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare, Arshi Pipa (translator)
Masterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city. Through the boy’s eyes, we see the terrors of World War II as he witnesses fascist invasions, allied bombings, partisan infighting, and the many faces of human cruelty as well as the simple pleasures of life.
Evacuating to the countryside, he expects to find an ideal world full of extraordinary things but discovers instead an archaic backwater where a severed arm becomes a talisman and deflowered girls mysteriously vanish. Woven between the chapters of the boy’s story are tantalizing fragments of the city’s history. As the devastation mounts, the fragments lose coherence, and we perceive firsthand how the violence of war destroys more than just buildings and bridges.
The day after I opened this box I received an email at work that announced the newest Man Booker Prize recipient. This year an American author named Paul Beatty with his book The Sellout, which seems an apropos selection. The award is given to English language books published in the UK, I believe.
Moby Dick Book Pin from janemount: $11
Cute, tiny pin!! I had a button collection as a kid, and now as an adult I’ve been accumulating antique pins as well as pins from boxes.
My boss also let me have the Great Gatsby pin that came in the box to work, and that one is my favorite!
Boxwalla mini book review: Last month I finished Because She Never Asked in a day! It was a short book, sshhhh, from the August box, and I was on a plane and pulled it out. I didn’t so much “get” it, but liked the first third of it. Perhaps I’ll review it some day… but this will probably serve as my review =D It was a story about a story about a story within a story.
Verdict: These books all sound great! I am looking most forward to reading Satantango, but all three will be read at some point [I need more tiiiime!]. The pins are super cute, and I am ashamed to say that as a school librarian with an education degree, an English minor, and 7/8ths of an Information Science Master’s, I’ve never read Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby…
We ordered this box for my school’s library, and my boss was really excited for the books! I hope she reads them and gets some of the English and History teachers to encourage their students to read them. Also, one of our worldly English teachers was subbing in the library and covering books for me, and the three books he just happened to write down on his TBR book were these three! How funny is that?
I mean, the other books he covered were likely some middle school graphic novels, a chess book, some non-fiction books about historical stuff, and YA novels brimming with teen angst and heartthrobbing. BUT that’s beside the point…
Which book would you read on a rainy/snowy day?
Click here to see other Boxwalla reviews!
Disclosure: This box was sent to me for review purposes. Opinions are all my own, and the persimmons were consumed immediately after their prop duty was fulfilled.