About the author:
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Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.

Burton's best-known achievements include travelling in disguise to Mecca, an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights (also commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after Andrew Lang's abridgement), bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English, and journeying with John Hanning Speke as the first Europeans led by Africa's greatest explorer guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, utilizing route information by Indian and Omani merchants who traded in the region, to visit the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. Burton extensively criticized colonial policies (to the detriment of his career) in his works and letters. He was a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including human behaviour, travel, falconry, fencing, sexual practices, and ethnography. A unique feature of his books is the copious footnotes and appendices containing remarkable observations and unexpurgated information.

He was a captain in the army of the East India Company serving in India (and later, briefly, in the Crimean War). Following this he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa and led an expedition guided by the locals and was the first European to see Lake Tanganyika. In later life he served as British consul in Fernando Po, Santos, Damascus and, finally, Trieste. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) in 1886.

book synopsis:
During ancient times, a king discovers that his wife is unfaithful. He executes her and her lover, and to ensure that he is never again betrayed, he takes a new wife each night and kills her in the morning. Eventually, he takes as his bride for the night a young woman who tells him a story that lasts all night long. When morning comes and she is to be killed, the story is not finished, and the king allows her to live through the following night so that he can hear how the story comes out. Of course, the story doesn't end the next night either, or the next night, or the next, until 1001 nights have passed, and the king decides to let her live and make her his queen.

These are the stories of Ali Baba and the forty thieves, Aladdin and his magic lamp, and Sinbad the sailor - stories of flying carpets, gigantic birds, and mischievous genies - stories that have captured the Western imagination for hundreds of years.

Compiled in the Middle Ages, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night is the chief glory of Arabic literature.

My rating: 4.5 stars
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Reading Group Challenge 2016 > Elizabeth's 2016 Reading Corner Challenge 12 plus 4 alternatives

A Round The Year in 52 Books:
A book about books

What did I think of the story:
I'm so glad that I finally finished it, it's been on my DNF TBR since 07 when I got it. There was some stories I liked and some I loved.

***This review has also been posted on The Social Potato

I cannot tell you how much I wanted to love this book and how disappointed I am that it didn’t sweep me away. There are SO many things I love about this book but the slowness of it became a big issue for me.

Slow books can be a hit or miss for me. A Thousand Nightswas neither a hit nor a miss. I loved the beautiful lyrical writing, I loved the characters and I loved the world building. What I didn’t love was the lack of action. By now, you might know that one of my favorite things ever is action. This is partially because I am an impatient human (wait am I a human? WHAT?) but also because I become more invested in a story if there is something happening.

There isn’t a lot happening in A Thousand Nights. In fact, the most exciting stuff happens in the last 15% of the book. Do you think you can wait that long for the good stuff? Do you think that absolutely stunning writing, fantastic characters and breathtaking world building is enough to get you through almost 85% of nothing? I still don’t know the answer to this question and I already finished the book. I think what got me through those lulls was just the way Johnston built tension. There would be a slow simmer of tension and then suddenly everything would be boiling and then it would go back to a simmer.

Johnston does a fantastic job with setting up the world of this story. I felt myself transported across the centuries to this middle-eastern land. I could imagine the heat of the desert and the beauty of the palace. I could see Lo-Melkhien amongst this world suffering. The way Johnston weaves the story and brings the world to life makes it feel like you’re reading a folk tale. It makes everything seem so magical and compelling.

Overall, my main issue was that I just wanted the book to move a little more faster so that I could have been a little more invested in the story and what was happening to these characters. Also I totally wouldn’t have minded if there had been a little bit more romance.

Note that I received an eARC of the book in exchange for an honest review

In July I read some very mediocre books and a few good ones. But there were 4 definite highlights:

 

THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Margaret Atwood: This was my second Atwood (the first was The Handmaid's Tale). I enjoyed it immensely. It has everything a good story should have and more: what I found amazing was the mixture of genres. There is the classic family saga, telling a family's story more than a century, starting with the rise of the family's enterprise and ending with the death of (almost) the last family member, Iris, who's also the narrator of this story. This family saga is combined with a Science Fiction story. SF is usually not my favourite story but Margarat Atwood constructed this book so perfectly that I liked even these parts. and then of course the whole book is also a psychological novel and has a bit of a detective story: I could guess what was actually going on and new the truth about the novel in the novel before it was revealed. But I never new what Iris and especially Laura were really up to. The Blind Assassin is one of the best novels I've read in a while and makes me wnat to read so much more by Margaret Atwood.

 

HOMO FABER by Max Frisch: Homo Faber was really a suprise for me. It was quite different from what I had imagined it to be. Also, I have to admit that my expectations for it weren't very high. I previously had read Gantenbein by the same author which I didn't like too much. But sometimes it's good to have low expectations for a book: I've often had better reading experiences with novels I wasn't looking forward too much than with ones that everyone was raving about. Homo faber is very well written and I literally couldn't put it down. I also liked that it was set in Mexico and Guatemala because some of the places mentioned were exactly the ones I visited last year and brought back pleasant memories.

 

EMMA by Jane Austen: I finally read this novel after having watched the movie a dozen times (I did that again after having finished the book). It still is my favourite Austen, I like it even better than Pride and Prejudice.

 

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS: I listened to this on audio and it took me 8-9 months to complete it. I was surprised of quite a few things: 1. Here you have the first cliffhanger in history (well, I knew that before, but it was still surprising how early in history this method had been invented). At the same time the method of a story within a story (and often within another stroy) is used, also probably for the first time ever.  2. We think we know many of the tales mentioned but in fact we hardly do: The stories we best know (or think we know) from the Arabian Nights are Aladin, Ali Baba And Sindbad. The first two were invented by European writers and never existed in the original book. Sindbad is an Arabian tale but was never part of the Arabian Nights. 3. This book is absolutely not for children. It is not a fairy tale book like the ones by Grimm or Andersen. There are so many rape and sex scenes children wouldn't understand or which just aren't suitable for their age. 4. Allah plays a big role in the stories. He's praised in every second sentence. Religion also is important in people's life. But at the same time people drink lots of alcohol (actually forbidden in Islam) and celebrate orgies quite often. This gives very interesting insights into the Arabian Culture. All in all a very interesting book. Even if you don't read it all you should at least read some of the stories which all have very varying topics.

Ah, if only I could write like the late Sir Richard Burton! Normally I dislike translations, but to refuse to read The Arabian Nights on those grounds would be like refusing to read the Bible. I love parodying people's styles, and I have tried my utmost to parody Burton convincingly, but I can't do it. He's too clever. He has taken this unique book, a miraculous survival from the most ancient antiquity, and he has created a unique language to make it accessible to us: the backbone is a kind of Spenserian English, but he has modified it in subtle ways, adding some French roots here, some Nordic ones there, pinches of more obscure ingredients when he feels he needs them, creating alliterations and internal rhymes and odd sentence structures to echo the rhythms of the original, inserting endless footnotes to tell us poor people what we're missing through not knowing Arabic.

Burton is always present in the text, leading us by the hand through his favorite passages, flooring us with a jaw-droppingly inappropriate comment one moment (it isn't sexist or racist: it transcends sexism and racism) and then turning round a second later to hit us with a marvellous piece of poetry or romance or heroism, crowing over his rivals' mistakes, inserting irrelevant anecdotes or obscure pieces of etymology that he just couldn't resist, showing off his knowledge of the seventeen languages he speaks fluently and the others that he just has a passing acquaintance with. And all the time, often without us even realizing what he's doing, telling us about Islam, the religion so many of us Westerners fear without understanding it, showing us what it's like from the inside, from the perspective of an eighth century cobbler or Caliph or slave-girl, how, whatever else it may be, it is a great religion, one that hundreds of millions of people have gladly lived and died in, without ever questioning the will of Allah or his prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.

I have never read anything like it.

No sé porque tenía la idea de que esta era una de esas lecturas viejas y aburridas que solo se ponían interesantes en versiones animadas. En realidad son historias muy entretenidas, aunque extrañas en ciertos puntos y alocadas en otros. Me agradó mucho Sheherezade. Es un personaje popular que es referenciado en todos lados, pero me sorprendió gratamente al quedar a la altura de su fama.Últimamente he descubierto un gusto por el folklore árabe y el uso de sus elementos en otros géneros. Por eso me agradó mucho descubrir que leyendo este clásico entendía mejor algunas de mis libros favoritos. Historias como Alif the Unseen, Castle in the Air o The Merchant and the Alchemist Gate cobran mas sentido después de Arabian Nights. Por supuesto, sé que Arabian Nights no es la versión completa, así que tengo pendiente revisar lo que falta.