Unrelated literary notes

None of these notes has anything to do with Indonesia other than the fact that I read all while in Indonesia.

(1) Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for literature! It was about time. If you have not read anything by him, now is a good time to start. I liked Death in the Andes (Lituma en los Andes) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (La Tia Julia y el Escribidor), but pretty much anything by him is good.

(2) I read The Corrections and Freedom (both by Jonathan Franzen) in the past few weeks. If you have not read anything by him yet, you're missing out. I think its fair to say that both are attempts at writing the Great American Novel. Whether or not he succeeds, I leave up to you, but I thought he did a pretty good job. I think I may read Freedom again, since there was so much I missed (I'm sure I actually missed more in The Corrections, but I did not like that book as much).

(3) Andrea Hirata's Laskar Pelangi (Rainbow Troops) is all the rage in Indonesia today. It is actually the first book in a quartet, but it is the only one of the four I have read so far. The movie version came out in 2008. While not as great or as ambitious as Vargas Llosa or Franzen's books, it's still damn good. As the title suggests, the book deals with education, mineral exploitation, government resource distribution, the will to succeed and love. Ok, so maybe the title makes very little sense (even after reading it, I don't like the title that much, though I do understand it). Anyway, it's worth a read if you can find it.

Also, I think I am done with posting about Bandung. I had a good time, but it should not remain the focus of the blog for long. I will start speaking about Toraja (my region) in the next post.