What a wonderful yet very powerful read. David is betrothed to Hella, he is an American living in Paris waiting for his lover to join him. A chance meeting at a Paris bar with a young attractive Italian, Giovanni, results in David questioning values that he has always believed to be true. He takes a decision that will profoundly alter the course of his life, with devastating consequences.

 

Giovanni's room poses the question, do we as humans follow convention and lead a life and follow a set of codes that is expected of us, or should we throw caution to the wind and by so doing be true to our self. A story that it is impossible not to be affected by and issues as important today as when the novel was first published. Highly Recomended

You'd have to be living under a rock buried somewhere halfway down to the center of the earth in order not to be aware that in recent years our beautiful world has been shaken up by a number of crises the likes of which I, at least, have not experienced in my entire lifetime -- I can't remember any other time when I have so consistently felt the urge to put on blinders and wrap myself in a giant comfort blanket approximately 10 seconds after opening a newspaper (or its online edition), or 10 seconds into listening to the news.  Obviously playing ostrich has never done anybody any good, but God knows, it's getting hard not to succumb to the temptation. 

 

So what does a book lover do in order to keep her sanity, equip herself to separate fact from fiction (in news reporting, politics, and plenty of other places) and deal with rat catchers and fire mongers?  She turns to books, of course.

 

I've decided to build a "Freedom and Future" personal library, which will contain books which (1) have either deeply impacted my personal thinking or that I expect will come to do so in the future, or which (2) provide valuable food for thought in today's social and political debate, both nationally and internationally; be it based on a profound analysis of the issues at stake (as a matter of principle or long term), or because even though they may not be of lasting significance, they contain a thought-provoking contribution to the current debate (even if they were not written with that express purpose in mind -- e.g., books about historic persons or events or books by long-dead authors).  I'm not expecting to binge-read the books added to this library, but I'm looking to add them to the mix with a bit more focus than I've been doing of late.

 

In the past couple of days, I've trawled my own bookshelves for books to add to the library, but this is one area where, even more than anywhere else, I'm looking for suggestions -- I can already see that I'm at risk of falling back on my old standbys, and that's the last thing I want to do here.

 

So, tell me: What books have recently made you sit up -- or which are the books that you've come to turn to and trust for guidance and inspiration?

 

These can be fiction or nonfiction, and books from any or all types of genres (I only draw the line at splatter punk).  As the first part of my new library's title indicates, liberty and freedom rights are a focus, but I'm really looking for food for thought on all the issues that I think are going to determine the path human society will be taking (hence the "future" part); including, in no particular order:

 

* Liberty and freedom(s) (of opinion and press, movement, association, worship, the arts, etc.),

* Equal access to justice and judicial independence and impartiality,

* Equality and empowerment (gender / sexuality, race, etc.), and the plurality of society;

* Poverty / the increasing gap in the distribution of wealth,

* Education (general, political, etc.);

* Funding and freedom of research and science,

* Protection of the environment,

* Democratic institutions and processes and how to safeguard them,

* Xenophobia, war(mongering) and the preservation / restoration of peace,

* Persecution, migration, and internal displacement,

* Free trade and globalization,

* Technological advances,

* Ethics -- in all of the above areas.

 

I'm adding a few books to this post to give you a rough idea of what sort of things I've so far added to this library -- please take them as very approximate guidance only, though.  It can be something totally different ... really anything that's jogged your brain or made you reevaluate your perspective on any of the above issues.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin’s controversial second novel, is a clenched fist, a bucket of sour grapes, a weeping work of art. A compact little tale of societal alienation and forbidden love (and lust), time has not dimmed its lights or smoothed its edges. Not one iota.

 

Baldwin’s most well-known work is sensual and thrilling and tragic; I closed my paperback edition with tears in my eyes. The tale of Giovanni and Butch is universal, yet special, shimmering; it is the Romeo and Juliet for gays. What should be humdrum — pining for one’s love, an affair, adventures in a new city — is rendered fresh in this author’s hands.

 

Oft considered one of the finest LGBTQ novels, this is a groundbreaking, rambunctious work that was far ahead of its time. Its lessons should be considered and remembered in the current year, as a matter of fact. I have left that room, but I am grateful for the short visit.

 

This novel was everything I thought it was not going to be. And this time, I don’t blame my expectations for disliking a book. It did make an impression on me, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

I feel that Baldwin did no research before writing this book. He just used bits and pieces that he had heard of here and there and scrambled together a story that to me felt disjointed and predictable. I felt like he wanted to write about a sensible issue yet chose the wrong tools. I thought themes of homosexuality, lust, longing, love, fear, stigma will be central to the plot. If they were I never noticed because they were suffocated by all the prejudice and preconception the characters were built upon. They all fell flat, one-dimensional and hateful.
Why write about a sensitive topic that was considered unorthodox back in the day (and, sadly, still is to some extent) and make all your characters so conventional and judgmental? Was it supposed to create some kind of a contradiction in order to enhance the message?

I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t understand this or maybe the below was just not my type of crowd:

The woman: ’Hell, I want to be knocked up. I want to start having babies. In a way, it’s really all I’m good for.

The confused man: ’I don’t see what’s so hard being a woman. At least, not as long as she’s got a man.’

The woman and the confused man: I stepped away from her. She swayed where I had left her, like a puppet dangling from a string.
‘David, please let me be a woman. I don’t care what you do to me. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll wear my hair long, I’ll give up cigarettes, I’ll throw away the books.’ She tried to smile; my heart turned over. ‘Just let me be a woman, take me. It’s what I want. It’s all I want. I don’t care about anything else.’

The homosexual man: ‘Oh, well’, said Giovanni, ‘these absurd women running around today, full of ideas and nonsense, and thinking themselves equal to men – quelle rigolade! – they need to be beaten half to death so that they can find out who rules the world.

The Italian man: ’Yes, I wanted to stay there and eat much spaghetti and drink much wine and make many babies and grow fat.’

The Italian man to the American man: ’I can see you, many years from now, coming through our village in the ugly, fat, American motor car you will surely have by then and looking at me and looking at all of us and tasting our wine and shitting on us with those empty smiles Americans wear everywhere and which you wear all the time and driving off with a great roar of the motors and a great sound of tires and telling all the other Americans you meet that they must come and see our village because it is so picturesque.’

To me this novel was an attempt to fight fire with fire, all the way not knowing how to light a fire.

La Chambre de Giovanni offre un magnifique triangle amoureux, écrit de façon extrêmement poétique et prenante, qui vous happe au sein de cette tempête de sentiments. Le livre joue avec la bisexualité (ou homosexualité) de son personnage principal, source de honte, d'interrogations, pêché impossible à assumer réellement, possibilité qu'il se refuse, le tout de façon magistrale. On souffre de ses interrogations, de même que pour les personnages croisés, tout en découvrant un Paris désormais disparu. A lire vraiment, un texte magnifique.