Dangerous Books!

Dangerous book tips made by writer Marcel Moring for NRC.Next (dutch newspaper).
Nice books to read during your vacation or on holiday!


1. Giacomo Joyce (by James Joyce)

Of all Joyce's extant works, Giacomo Joyce is the one that has least received its due. This book presents a collection of essays devoted to Joyce's last published work. It attempts to place critical reception of this text within the framework of Joyce studies.


2. Invisible Cities (by Italo Calvino)

In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote 'of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities , perfectly irrelevant'


3. Lighthousekeeping (by Jeanette Winterson)

From one of Britain's best-loved literary novelists comes a magical, lyrical tale of the young orphan Silver, taken in by the ancient lighthousekeeper Mr. Pew, who reveals to her a world of myth and mystery through the art of storytelling. Motherless and anchorless, Silver is taken in by the timeless Mr. Pew, keeper of the Cape Wrath lighthouse..


4. Ulverton (by Adam Thorpe)

At the heart of this extraordinary novel lies the fictional village of Ulverton on the Wessex Downs of England: the fixed point in the book's 300-year cycle of history, both its backdrop and its central character. A dozen accounts, narrated by a dozen different voices, tell the story of Ulverton through the generations: a soldier in Cromwell's army returns to find his wife remarried, and promptly vanishes; an eighteenth-century farmer introduces scientific planting methods and carries on an affair with a maid under his wife's nose; during a 1980s TV documentary, real estate developers discover a soldier's skeleton, dated to the time of Cromwell...


5. In the country of last things (by Paul Aster)

In the country of last things the masses are homeless, theft is so rampant it is no longer a crime, and death - by arranging either a suicide or assassination - is the only way out.