"South of the Border, West of the Sun" by Haruki Murakami

It was for me a first book of Murakami which I read in my life. And it was a good beginning of the adventure with his writings.

It’s a story of a life of Japanese boy, later man. It’s the story of his relations with other people, but mostly women. Starting with an incredible friendship with Shimamoto when they were kids, through first relationship, college times, first work, the years full of loneliness up to meeting his wife and creating a family. Great wife and 2 daughters, owner of 2 popular jazz clubs, healthy man. But something is missing… How it’ll finish? It’s a very well written story about love, about the biggest love, about loneliness, about longing, about pain. About human being. But also about reality – especially the end is giving us a lot of surprises. The characters are well build, the story is interesting and go on very well during reading. It’s worth to give a try and read it :) I'll look for other books of this author as well.

And I love the cover ;)

"Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)" Jerome K. Jerome

This book is such a pleasant reading. It’s well written, with an interesting story telling, a lot of small funny threads told by the characters, lovely dog :)

There are three friends sitting and having discussion about their life and health. As a result of it they decide to take a boat trip, rowing trip from London to Oxford. They also don’t forget about the dog – Montmorency, full of energy and zest for fighting.

There is a lot of adventures on the way, they need to deal with different accidents, deal with the boat, river, food, cloths, people, dog and so on. And they survive all of them, but…

On the way home they need to row 2 days under the rain and this fact is bringing them close to the emotional and physical limits. Will they manage to finish the trip, how the rain will influence their decisions, how it will finish?

The story is interesting enough to spend some time reading it. All the characters (including the dog) are funny, with human (or animal) vices, but also interesting one. It’s a good reading, especially if you read it in original, then there is an added value of the literary English language.

"Bollywood Nights" by Shobhaa De

I bought it some time ago as a promotional offer – 3 „chick lits” for a very symbolic price. “Bollywood Nights” is the first book which I read from the pile I bought.


At the beginning I thought it will be just very typical easy book, nothing really special. Mather together with a beautiful daughter are coming from Madras to Bombay to fight for the career for the daughter – she should be an actress, a very popular actress. Mother used any opportunity to move forward, without thinking about her daughter at all. And she succeed – through different steps – to make a star out from her daughter “Sweetheart of Millions”.


But the daughter is doing a lot of mistakes – starting relations with wrong guys, finding wrong friends and so on. Finally, she decide to stop with this life and change it to more “usual” one. There are many decisions in between, but finally somehow she is coming back to India and the industry. There are plenty of threads in the book – the relations with parents, sister, husband, small daughter, lovers, work as the actress, role of woman, emotions, India, feeling of being an outsider and more. There are quite some difficult questions asked in the book, on which we need to find answers by ourselves.


There is also an interesting description of the movie industry in India – how it’s working, how the people behave, how are the relations between different people involved in it and so on.


Additional value of this book are the descriptions related to India – to its’ cities, villages, people, culture, food, religion. It was very interesting for me to find all those informations.


One thing which bother me during the reading was usage of plenty of non-English words in the text. I assume it’s Hindi, but as I don’t know it I can’t be sure. And that decreased my understanding of this book.


But besides this one detail I quite liked the book as a whole. For sure it was better than I expected from this kind of books. It’s not bad book ;)

Books to be read by Aga

Ok, now I'm trying to create a list, which is not so easy as you know ;) After some time of thinking I hope to reach 8 books in all of those 8 categories above. I already wrote some books in a few categories as I'm sure I would like to read them in this year. Some categories are empty and I'll be very flexible during next months to fill them :) So...

I. Already owned:

1. "Elephants can remember" by Agatha Christie
2. "The clocks" by Agatha Christie
3. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" by Victor Hugo
4. "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Truman Capote
5. "Uśmiech Dalidy" by Dominika Cosic
6. "Panther in the Basement" by Amos Oz

II. Around the World:

1. "Snow Flower and the secret fan" by Lisa See (02.08.08) - review here
2. "Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin (13.08.08) - review here
3. "Forbidden City" by William Bell
4. "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini (19.08.08) - review here
5. "Porte De LA Paix Celeste" by Shan Sa (14.08.08) - review here
6. "Dreams Of Trespass: Tales Of A Harem Girlhood" by Fatima Mernissi
7. "The Bookseller of Kabul" by Asne Seierstad

III. Books in Polish:

1. "Tata, one i ja" by Manula Laicka ("Dad, them and me")
2. "Zniewolony umysł" by Czesław Miłosz ("Subdued mind")
3. "Trzepot skrzydeł" by Katarzyna Grochola (22.08.08) - review here
4. "Jadąc do Babadag" by Andrzej Stasiuk

IV. Books in English:

1. "Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)" by Jerome K. Jerome (11.08.08) - review here
2. "Bollywood Nights" by Shobhaa De (09.08.08) - review here
3. "Bergdorf Blondes" by Plum Sykes
4. "Notting Hell" by Rachel Johnson
5. "South of the Border, West of the Sun" by Haruki Murakami (22.08.08) - review here
6. "The fifth woman" by Henning Mankel

V. Exchanged books (via http://www.podaj.net/ or http://www.bookmooch.com/):

1. "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" by Christopher Moore
2. "Dangerous Liaisons" by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
3. "Winter's Tales" by Karen Blixen
4. "The last promise" by Richard Paul Evans
5. "L'Anneau du pêcheur" by Jean Raspail
6. "Promise Me" by Harlan Coben

VI. 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (my proposals for today only!):

1. "Jacques the Fatalist" by Denis Diderot
2. "The Monk" by M.G. Lewis
3. "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton
4. "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf

VII. Classics:

1. "Crime and punishment" by Fiodor Dostoyevski (31.07.08) - review here
2. "Plague" by Albert Camus

VIII. Popular Reads:

1. "The Nanny Diaries" by Nicola Kraus & Emma McLaughlin (22.08.08) - review here
2. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling
3. "Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets" by J.K. Rowling

So, now just need to read 64 books and write reviews, easy :D