978-1-934978-90-0
The title Random Walk by my Library is a reflection of what I regularly do; walk by my library and pull different books that I read in the past and want to browse or in many cases understand again. The series of reviews that are included in this book is the result of these walks. Apparently, there is no particular reason for the choice, but now that are together I can see some patterns and some underlying themes that attracted my attention and desire to share my views on these texts.
Some of these reviews have apparent connections. Several have in everyday human tragedies mostly examples of deceit, seduction, adultery and its consequences. Here I place Anna Karenina by Leon Tolstoy, Adolphe by Benjamin Constant, The Left Handed Human by Peter Handke. In these first two titles, the main characters use, and sentimentality mistreats women, in Peter Handke’s book, men for ego or just for fun try to take advantage of a lonely recently divorced woman. Without a clear connection with seduction, I think Sándor Márai’s Portraits of a Marriage, give a excellent panorama of the conflicting relationships between women and men.
Terrorism is another topic in its early form and with fanatics as the main characters or manipulated by governments that use terror to promote their interest. Here I reviewed two Joseph Conrad masterpieces; Under the Western Eyes and The Secret Agent, both written more than a hundred years ago. Unfortunately, this issue brilliantly described in the plots of these two novels are present in our time with more bodied results, religious fanaticism and better organized terrorist organizations.
Another set of books have a selection of letters written famous people like those between Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse, two great literature Nobel Prize Winners. Also refer to letters by Vincent van Gogh, Frans Kafka, and Sigmund Freud. I can add the classic book of Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet addressed to one of his admirers Franz Xaver Kappus, a 19-year-old cadet who preserve the letters that have attracted so many young poets and writers.
The remainder reviews are difficult to categorize together, except to be classics and ideal companions to understand the complexity of our human nature. I choose for these reasons Albert Camus’ The Fall; Mario Vargas Llosa. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto; Irvin D. Yalom. When Nietzsche Wept; Walker Percy’s Lancelot and On Reading by Marcel Proust.
Finally, I added a review of the only non-fiction book, The War that ended Peace by Margaret McMillan, commemorates the 100th anniversary of the First World War that killed millions and devastated Europe and the prelude of a Second and more deadly war a few years later. As a fictional context to describe the horrors of war in families, friends and Individuals, I included a brief review of The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth who dies tragically waiting to receive the Nobel Price.