saw something in the Medea blog about the books of the year a pure mode of plagiarism, I will do the same. Despite how busy they keep me, ay me constantly complaining of the short time I have to write or do anything, I can not stop reading. From childhood he took the habit to my dad, and I can not let go, and any number of letters, whether of a novel that caught me a week, or anything written on a card in college.
And this year, as all I have read a lot. I continue my obsession with Latin American literature, but as I've gotten a little more English books I'm reading the Americans and the British, and I save the sloth that I get to read them translated. But let
what we came for: I present 10 books of fiction and nonfiction that I read this year and I can not recommend. They have no definite order of ranking, because I can not say one is better than another, well, that depends on the reader's eye.
1. Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
Salinger is one of those writers with whom I have always had problems. Although there is a huge cult of his work, and may be listed as one of the best American writers of the last century, there was always a kind of barrier between him and me. I knew there was a message in his work, but I was not able to descifrar.x Trying to do so, bought everything I could be Salinger, with a collector's desire to get it in Colombia and is a kind of ordeal. But although I never quite understood Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey was a total literary experience. Questions, concerns, and searches of this pair of brothers, so human, so postadolescents and so tormented, makes this book an incredible journey.
2. Kamchatka - Marcelo Figueras Figueras
is one of my favorite film and literary critics. I followed a lot in his blog at Elboomeran, until it closed, but I found out I had several novels, but never saw one of his books anywhere. Kamchatka found myself at a fair in the Javeriana University in Bogota, where I found it lowered prices by an unknown author. I bought it without thinking and I had settled a beautiful story, about a boy during the dictatorship in Argentina, and what he has to live in the persecution of their parents. He is at the point where there is no child or adolescent, then your eye has a very particular shade of innocence and understanding but at the same time, while relating his life and circumstances with what is the culture of the time, television cartoons and a game similar to Risk. Is primarily a teaching of how much that sometimes we need a place like Kamchatka
3. Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
When I saw this book in English I found out that Orwell was a volunteer in the English Civil War, where he was to fight against the fascists. Quickly came to Barcelona and became a member of a leftist party and enrolled for the front and fight. It chronicles their experiences and their perceptions of the war, the future of Spain, his platoon mates and the absurd things that can happen in a conflict of this size, an army of volunteers and political situation and very particular historical and something unknown.
4. Strange Fruit - Leila Guerrero
Speaking of reviews, I can not fail to mention Leila. She is a writer who contributes regularly to Argentina my favorite magazines, understood Soho Leopard, The Malpensante and Black Label. Strange fruit is a collection of chronicles, with subjects ranging from Chinese supermarket where Leila manages the purchase, through the Argentine clone of Freddy Mercury, commenting on stories from Patagonia to the reconstruction of Teatro Colon and another bunch of profiles and rare story, but for some reason are connected to our understanding of reality.
5. Wild wood - Santiago Gomez
local talent. Santiago Gomez is a writer, filmmaker and critic of Colombia, Medellin. I met him in a film appreciation workshops, and the time I saw her book I bought. Do not know what to expect, since I know James only critic, but I really liked the book. It is the story of himself, tinged with a touch of fiction, and his youth and what he does for his dreams, his group of friends in those uncertain years of college. Women, drugs, travel and lessons learned the hard way. All framed in a city hard, hard, aggressive, but at the same time warm and friendly, as is the Medellín that both makes us feel
6. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
could not miss a classic in the list. Ishmael labor, we get fully into the world of whaling and the sea, which is an excuse to tell a story about the human obsession, and beluga whales that we get into our heads and lead to destruction. Do not stop reading. As Medea says, this can be done online for free then no excuse for not reading
7. The kid who ruined the photos - Hernan Casciari
uqe I talk about things online for free, we must talk about this book. I'm not very fond of reading on the computer, and although my house is a Kindle, yet not catch the shooting ebook. What if I read a lot are blogs, and a recommendation, I reached the blog of Casciari, and has been one of the best blogs that I found in a long time. Casciari, is a master of the genre and has explored the blogs for literature, which has already proved with a book called "A Little Respect I am your mother. For editorial commitment, Casciari was to deliver a book. And one night, 3 years rereading what he wrote in his blog, found a real and personal history so powerful that at the point of editing and minor changes, the became a book. The book is reading pa free internet in pdf. Despite the long lazy to read on computer, I finished in 2 nights. The Free down Orsai
8. Missing - Alberto Fuguet
Another of those books that I looked and looked and not found until I went to Argentina, where he was the first thing you see upon arrival at the Ateneo. I heard about this book by a recommendation of Figueras, and confirmed that I like so much as a critic. Missing is an intensely personal novel, which looks for his uncle Fuguet, lost in the continent called America, and which has no news for years. Claim is a history of family and obsessions with the past and shows us that things are never as we believe, or as we count them. As someone said, a road movie made book.
9. Heart of Darkness and Other -Joseph Conrad stories
never read Conrad. And do not understand how I could go so long without it. The stories he presents in remote areas and face what we call civilization with the wild, are stories that touch deep fibers and also make us question deeply, are the intense attraction of the unknown and the wild. As an anecdote, Conrad was Polish, but there are few authors who can write so brilliantly in English like him.
10. Drops Ink - Luis Tejada
A Colombian literary gem. Lost one of those books that a group of insiders (or rather geeks) looking to exhaustion, and that when found, they die of happiness to the astonishment and questioning of ordinary mortals. Luis Tejada is the largest Colombian writer of all time, he lived since he lived only 26 years and died in 1924. A child of his time, dazzled with modernity, but sometimes writes things that sound so current, it is hard to believe that in 100 years this country has changed so little. This book I got on with my confidence antiquarian bookseller at Book Festival, the same bookseller who years earlier had recommended me. When I got it, John David that of Pinocchio Agency, almost died of jealousy and every time he sees me, asks me how I'm going to read.
There are the pick of which I read in the year. If you can read one, do not stop. You who read good this year?