Review 646: 89 Words

89 Words followed by Prague, A Disappearing Poem by Milan Kundera
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

This is an audiobook that should be listened to twice through. It is somewhat dense for audio listening, and may do better reading the words. However, that was the copy that I had and did not have the opportunity to listen through twice. The work is short enough that it can be read entirely in one day.

The introduction gives a very brief biography of Milan Kundera. The second section is the essay 89 Words. These are the words Kundera found important or significant, and often appear in his novels.
The last section is the essay/poem called: Prague, A Disappearing Poem. It does start out like poetry but ends up more similar to an essay. It discusses Prague and some of its history.

It was said this is a good introduction to Kundera’s works. I have read three of his books, although it was quite some time ago, they are not fresh in my memory. However, I believe one would do better having familiarity with Kundera’s novels. Often he refers to characters and situations located in his books and it would help to be acquainted with those.

Kundera speaks often about the words in his translations. Sometimes the translator gives a different word or phrase than what Kundera was trying to get across in his writings. Also, how some translations were done from another translation, and meaning there got distorted at times. Certainly this can be a problem with all translations.



Thanks to HarperAudio Adult, William Morrow and NetGalley for an advanced audio copy of this book.

Review 609: What Trees Remember

What Trees Remember by Marie Hrušková
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Too bad there isn't a book cover image, as it really is a nice drawing. The cover is pulled from one of the drawings in the book. This seems to be a bit of an obscure book.

This is a short book (easily read in a day, about an hour or so) about 30 important trees across the Czech Republic. Each entry has an illustration drawn by Jaroslav Turek. The associated essay about the particular tree tells the history of why this particular tree is important for the Czech country. Some are fables, but many more are associated with an important person. The trees are mainly oak, linden or pine.

One amazing fact was there were several times when a story mentions how the tree was planted upside down, crown first, and if it continue to grow then it proved something, such as a person’s innocence or where to build a church.

All of the trees discussed are old, ancient trees. Many of them have been helped by the local villagers across the years to continue the tree’s survival, such as banding the trunk, shoring up the branches, and in several cases placing a roof type structure over exposed hollows from broken off branches. And only one mentioned was no longer living by the time of publication, after a very long life.

The last portion of the book has a very short biography of each of the person’s mentioned and of the area where each tree is located. Makes this book feel a bit more of a history book than just a tree survey.

The book came from my continuing a deep dive into my shelves, as I bought in Prague on my second visit there over twenty years ago now. I bought this book as a type of a souvenir for the area. The paper is also very nice and the book is lovely. Not sure why it took me so long to finally read this. Maybe it just mostly got overlooked.

Review 553: Possessed by Shadows

Possessed by Shadows: A Novel by Donigan Merritt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not entirely sure how I came across this book. Goodreads has only one other review and that’s from the author, so technical no reviews, although there are some ratings. In any case, I did read this slightly short book.

This novel is told in two narratives, two halves of a married couple – Tom and Molly. Molly was just diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She is still young, mid-thirties and doesn’t want to spend her last days with treatments and hospital visits when it won’t extend her life much anyway. She wants to spend her final days doing what she’s always done, which is climbing. Her narrative is what she wrote about her life, starting not really from the beginning, but sometime as a teenager.

The other side, Tom’s narrative begins with the diagnosis in 1989 and continues forward, so we do have a split with the timeline. They decide to return to Czechoslovakia, to the Tatra Mountains. There they meet up with Tom’s good friend Štefan Borák. Molly’s good friend Saŝa was from a village near Prague, although died a while back in a climbing accident.

Climbing was in the center of the book. In fact there was a glossary in the back to define the various climbing terms, although it seemed to me that the terms were self-explanatory. In Molly’s portion went into explaining how different rocks or routes were named.

This book cannot be called a light read with so much death in the book, with a youngish person facing their own eventual death, plus her good friend, along with her father she was very close to growing up. Yet, it was marginally interesting. Maybe if I was into climbing the book would have worked for me better.

Review 523: The Prague Sonata

The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My favorite of the year! At least for fiction.

Update: July 2025:

This book was one of my favorites of 2024. At the time, and often, I seem to have a hard time writing some notes about my favorite reads. So here goes another attempt. 

The book has a bit of a mystery about an old sonata. Meta was given just a part of a sonata. Since she can no longer perform as a profession, she went on a search for the other two pieces. Well, she did get a little obsessed by this piece of music, knowing there was more and wanting to hear it, understand it.

 A large part of the book takes place in Prague, and Morrow did an excellent job of writing the feeling of that old city. I could see the place.  No other fiction book I’ve read (so far) has done such a good job of placing the setting. 

The writing was clear. There is a bit of relationships with Meta, one that had a falling out and another that began. Then there was also the music. One of those books I wished I could hear what was being talked about. 

I don’t know much about classical music, but apparently it was a long piece of music with three sections, or parts. They were split apart in Prague during WWII, the owner of the piece, Odylie, had married a Jewish man, Jakub.  When the war broke out he immediately became part of the resistance. Odylie wanted the music to survive, to save it from plundering, so she split it apart, kept the  first part.  She gave the second part to her best friend, and the last went to her husband. However, since he was in the resistance she could not see him directly, it was given to an intermediary and she hoped it found it’s way. Then Odylie left Prague for England.

In the modern time, it was a mystery for Meta trying to find the three pieces of music: where were they, what happened? The book gave us the past, so we knew more than Meta on what had happened, but the past was also revealed slowly so there was still some unknown aspects. Another mystery was who actually wrote this masterpiece of music?  Was it Beethoven, was is someone unknown genius in music, or was it more modern than it appeared?

I put off reading this one for a while (about six years) because of its length, while it took some time to get through it, I did not mind as I savored the book. One of the better fictional books I’ve read in a while.

Review 365: I Served the King of England

I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
My rating: 2.75 of 5 stars


Likely closer to 2 stars, the book was absurd, and meant to be, but it was difficult reading. I barely continued reading, but went ahead since it was highly rated. The last portion of the book did redeem it. The author is a Czech, written during that time when occupied by the Russians, so there's a lot going on under the surface.

I read a few glowing reviews and I understand their affection, but I found the novel too absurd, gross, pitiful and outrageous. It is a wonder I did continue and finish the book, but this is one of those cases where the last portion makes it all worthwhile. The main character redeems himself slowly but surely.

It is ridiculous and meant to be that way, often where the unbelievable came true.

Review 251: A Summer Affair

A Summer Affair by Ivan Klíma
My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The book is about an affair and one man's seemingly inability to do anything than purse this one woman. Their conversations are overwrought. There is some play with the form of a novel, but honestly I could have done without reading this book.

Wasn’t too keen on this book. I may have enjoyed it more when I was in my 20s, when enamored with Czech writing. But it seemed like just an overwrought tale of an affair.

The main character, David Krempa is a biologist and completely focused on his work, attempting to find immortality. He is married with two small girls, but hardly pays them any attention he is so focused on work. Finally he was accepted to a prestigious position in England for a year to do lectures, now he has even more work in preparing teaching. 

David seems to barely tolerate his wife, and nearly fights her to do anything outside of his work. When the landlady ends up dead one of them must go to the funeral, and very reluctantly David does this as Camilla just can’t. He is late, it’s raining and he notices a very beautiful young woman opposite him who reminds him a bit of his mother, with her neck and hair. David offers her a ride, who accepts with her husband, although they live at different places. David is so taken by this young woman, Iva that he ends up unable to think of her. He does foolish things, and yes, ends up having an affair with her.