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‘Reading is action’ – My 2008 Christmas Reading List
Dec 21, 2008 Features / Columnists, Guyanese Literature
by Petamber Persaud
I would like to publicly thank my literary colleagues for burdening their suitcases with reading material for my projects (which I in turn share with you); material that would be impossible to acquire locally.
I cringe when I think that we have only two bookstores still standing. We must offer up a prayer to keep the doors of those businesses open and hope for a better climate encouraging the opening of other bookstores.
Apart from the books I acquired during Carifesta proper, books came from other sources, expanding my Christmas reading list at an unmanageable pace; some books I merely managed to browse the blurbs, filing them away accordingly.
From David Dabydeen in the UK, I got ‘The Ten Reincarnations of Adam Avatar’ by Kevin Baldeosingh.
From Berkley Semple in USA, I got ‘Salt’ by Earl Lovelace, ‘At the Bottom of the River’ by Jamaica Kincaid, ‘Tiepolo’s Hound’ by Derek Walcott.
From Victor Ramraj at University of Calgary in Canada, I got the Instructor’s Desk Copy of ‘The Norton Anthology – World Masterpieces’, ‘The Norton Introduction to Literature’ among other huge tomes.
From Julian May at BBC 4 in the UK, I got ‘The Ghost of Memory’ by Wilson Harris. From Ian McDonald back home on holiday, I got the ‘Sargasso’ journal 2007-8.
Starting with McDonald’s gift, I found a review of ‘The Ghost of Memory’ just I was getting into the book, constantly turning the pages backwards for elucidation.
Then to the instructor’s manuals from Canada discussing literary theories, forms and styles; the pioneers and innovators of literature like Gustav Flaubert, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus…..Wilson Harris was not featured in those handbooks on literature but I can perceive from whence cometh Harris’s intent, purpose and development thereby addition to my elucidation of ‘The Ghost of Memory’.
This list is heavy reading, a reading that will be neither tedious nor boring but entertaining and enlightening; a reading shutting out the madden crowd because at this season more than any other I find the time to read copiously.
Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com
What’s happening:
• Book your copy of The Guyana Annual from Guyenterprise Ltd, or from the Editor; sample the writing of a the new brigade of writers, sample features on Carifesta X, Edutainment, 100 years of rice in Guyana, and fillers on home economics, household tips, Guyanese proverbs and much, much more and a tribute on Edgar Mittelholzer as we commemorate the writer’s 100th birth anniversary with exciting new photographs, and handwritten tributes from the 1960s.
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