Friday Five

It's time for part one of my weekly series, Friday Five!

That's where I will describe five books that I think are interesting. I'm not saying that you need to read them, but you should consider them.

And if you've read any of them already, you get points. Points can be redeemed for imaginary prizes of no worth.

In no particular order, here they are.

- Alfred Kazin's A Walker in the City. This is an autobiography. Kazin writes about growing up in a Jewish community in Brooklyn before the depression. As a New Yorker, and a lover of New York history, this stood out to me, but I think it really has universal appeal. Kazin is a fascinating man, and his struggles with issues like community and self-identity are easily identifiable.

- Sappho's If Not, Winter, translated by Anne Carson. Sappho is one of the greatest poets out of ancient Greece. Her poems are beautiful, personal, and well structured. They also come down to us largely in fragments. Anne Carson, a phenomenal poet in her own right, has used the fragmentary nature of Sappho's surviving oeuvre to create a translation that is a work of art in itself. Rather than covering the gaps, or marking them in the same tedious way that is often done with other translations of fragmented works, Carson makes the gaps an important part of each piece. This book is not just a good translation of Sappho's poems, it's also a monument to all of the works that we have lost. The organization of her translations provides the reader with a visceral sense of that loss. The title is one of the fragments, all we can do is wonder what the rest of the poem would have been like.

- Alaa Al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building. Curious about the Middle East? Why not read one of the best selling Arabic language books in recent years. This is a novel that forms itself around the lives of the inhabitants of a single old apartment building in Cairo. It deals with the struggles of religion and secularism, east and west, and generations.

- Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds. One of the most brilliant and intricate novels out there. You've heard of James Joyce, but he's not the only great writer from Ireland. Flann O'Brien heads the list of under-appreciated Irish writers. A book about a man writing a book about a man who is writing a book, where the characters of that book begin to take their revenge by writing the life of their own author. If you think that sounds tangled, wait until you read it. It all makes sense in the end, but you'll have to focus. O'Brien had a small resurgence when the creator of Lost said in an interview that another O'Brien novel, The Third Policeman, is one of the biggest influences on the show.

- Connie Willis' Bellwether. Connie Willis is one of the finest living writers of SF. This book, about a social scientist researching trends, is a fascinating examination of how ideas travel through our society. As the title suggests, it also involves a look at the behavior of sheep.