This time last year, I met Daniel Nayeri when he spoke about this book with #MiddleGrade readers in a program I administer. He is... just freaking amazing. He's hilarious & smart & connected with the audience. Then over winter break, I had a chance to purchase art from the book by Daniel Miyares to display at work. This Daniel was also great. The book itself is such an adventure! Strong recommend.
I have been reading this month, although not commenting/reviewing much.
I even got a Bingo!
pickA boy tells the story of how he came to betray his master to the Roman Legion who captured him in this fun historical middle grade novel. Samir is a storyteller, a "seller of dreams" who trades his highly exaggerated wares as part of a caravan along the Silk Road. The boy he rescues from being stoned by monks is not impressed with his lack of honesty and piety. But, as with all people and stories, the truth is a bit more complicated than that.
pickThis tale features parts of the philosophy of “The Alchemist” utilizing the humor and sense of fun of “Aladdin”.
pickThis absolutely unreliable narrator is a blend of that from Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart", Dostoevsky's Underground Man and Raskolnikov from "Crime and Punishment", and Meyrink's Pernath from "The Golem". He utterly objectifies his whole perceptual world: things have significance only in how they relate to him, and those relationships are a repetitive cycling of elements in varying but finite combinations.
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"Apparently, each person has several faces. Some constantly wear only one of these masks, which naturally becomes stained and furrowed. This group is frugal. Some reserve their masks only for their own affairs. Others constantly change their faces but as soon as they get old, they realise they are wearing their last mask, which soon becomes frayed and broken, then their true faces emerge from underneath the final mask.”
“There are people whose agony of death starts in their twenties, whereas many others, at the moment of death, gently, slowly, snuff out, like a tallow-burning lamp that has run out of oil.”
Apologies for a somewhat grim Saturday-morning quote, though, I guess, depending on your engagement with mortality, it's possibly comforting.
"In life there are wounds that like termites, slowly bore into and eat away at the isolated soul."
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
This was an impulse buy - it's got "Owl" in the title and I'm a bit of a strigiphile, so...???
Also, it's surrealist, psychological and was banned by the Shah of Persia, unbanned by the succeeding Iranian government, who then banned it again, presumably after reading it themselves and thinking, "Oh, shit! No!" It's short, so worth a bit of time. ?
