Finished: The Essential Neruda Selected Poems (Neruda, edited by Mark Eisner) "Yo no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero. Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido" A book full of lovely, introspective poems about love and loss, written by Pablo Neruda in his native Spanish, and then translated on each facing page by Mark Eisner and his team. Of course, I guess interpretation is open for discussion, because in all the years I had of Spanish growing up, quiero meant want and not love, but the above sentence is translated as "I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, and forgetting is so long." So, I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. All I know is that I really love that line "Love is so short, and forgetting is so long." How true is that when dealing with the loss of love or the loss of a loved one?  I read Neruda's poem The Morning Is Full online and really liked it, and it made me want to read much more, so this book seemed like a nice collection of his works to explore. :-) As the editor explains, the poems look and roll of the tongue so much more fluently in their native Spanish, but I just read all the English versions, occasionally glancing at some of the words of the Spanish poems. A few of my favorites were...The Great Ocean, The United Fruit Co., Poet's Obligation, Ode to the Book (II) and the one below from his book of Twenty Love Poems:

From Twenty Love Poems
#20 I can write the saddest verses

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

Write, for example, "The night is full of stars,
  twinkling blue, in the distance."

The night wind spins in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held her in my arms,
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.

She loved me, at times I loved her too.
How not to have loved her great still eyes.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don't have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.

What difference that my love could not keep her.
The night is full of stars, and she is not with me.

That's all. In the distance, someone sings. In the distance.
My soul is not at peace with having lost her. 

As if to bring her closer, my gaze searches for her,
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, of then, now are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, it's true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched for the wind that would touch her ear.

Another's. She will be another's. As before my kisses. 
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is not at peace with having lost her.

Though this may be the final sorrow she causes me,
and these last verses I write for her. 

Pablo Neruda

Finished: And Quiet Flows the Don (Sholokhov) The epic tale by Sholokhov that most say was instrumental in him winning the Noble Prize in Literature, And Quiet Flows the Don is the story of several Cossack families who live near the Don River in Russia, and how they face the trials of World War I, and then the revolution and civil uprising in their own country. Often compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace, I don't think it was nearly on that level, but it was still a good book. It was difficult to get attached to the main characters, and I think that is mostly due to this particular translation, which seemed jerky at times, and much of the time presented the characters more robotically than passionately. We follow a few Cossack families, and a couple of upper class families, through four main sections in the book: Peace, War, Revolution, and Civil War. In Peace, we get to know the families and their relationships, their thoughts, their hardships of making their living on the land, etc. When War starts, many of the Cossack sons are sent off to the front lines to fight against the Germans. Being Cossacks, they take pride in their military ability and their bravery. However, as the war drags on and on, and they are constantly sent to the front lines to fight for mother Russia, some begin to wonder if they are being used to fight a battle they don't even believe in. Eventually, the Bolsheviks, the party backed by Lenin who wanted to overthrow the czarist rule in Russia, began the Russian Revolution and turned many of the Cossacks into believers of their cause. So, once the war with Germany came to an end, the Cossacks were thrown into the Russian revolution, which then led to Civil War within their own country. Much of the book was so political, that I had to consult my handy Russian history expert son for explanations, and I'm still not sure I understand it all! Anyway, the story followed the main characters throughout each of the four defined periods of their history. Some survived, many did not; some questioned their beliefs; some fell in love; some lost their loves; and some just wanted to not be a part of any of the major changes in their way of life. The book ended rather abruptly without wrapping up the story for each one of the major characters, but with enough of an ending to leave me wishing the translation had been just a bit more coherent.

Finished: The Sympathizer (Nguyen) Perhaps the first book I've ever read where not a single word of prose was wasted, at least not to me, The Sympathizer is a Pulitzer Prize winning book which tells the story of a communist double agent in 1975 South Vietnam. The narrator, a captain in the South Vietnamese military, working directly for a general and his family, tells his story in a 300+ page confession to his North Vietnamese commandant after he is captured by his own people during one of his double agent non-assignments gone wrong. I think I may have learned more about, or at least related more to, the war in Vietnam than I did when I was in my teens and living with it on our television news broadcasts every night. The story begins in April of 1975 with the fall of Saigon as the captain scrambles to get the general, his family, a select few of his officers, and his own best friend, Bon, with wife and child, out of the country. Their narrow escape by the last plane taking off from the airport as the enemy closes in with bombs and gunfire is harrowing and heartbreaking. All of the major players that move forward in the story make it out safely, except for his best friend's wife and baby son. :-( :-( It is just so horrific. And thus we see the first sign of the captain's grand dilemma. He's grown to care about the general and his family, but he loves with all his heart his best friend Bon. Yet, his complete allegiance lies with his communist cause. The captain, who is never named, and Bon and another Vietnamese man, named Man, all met as young teens at school, and then attended university in the United States. Man and Bon had jumped into a fight where the captain was being beat up by bullies, much larger than all three of them, and though they were all battered and bruised, they went that night together and sliced their hands and became blood brothers for life. From that moment on, they had each other's backs no matter what. What Bon didn't realize was that once Man and the captain got done with university, they had both bought into the Communist Manifesto and had turned against their country and his own ideals. Working in South Vietnam, but directly against Bon's own cause for a non-communist country, Man and the captain remained the best of friends with Bon, but never told him of their allegiance. So...after the captain, Bon, the general, his family, and the other few officers escaped from Saigon to the United States, they first suffered through the tragic funerals and burials of Bon's wife and child, and then through two different "refugee camps", before landing in California where they scraped by on menial jobs. The captain kept in touch with Man through super secret letters, reporting back to him all the details of how the general was planning to get his men back together to once again go and retake South Vietnam. Of course, it was a pie in the sky idea, but the general was determined, and so he actually got secret funding from one powerful congressman. So many details and a few notable side stories will not be in this recap, but as I said earlier, the prose was just riveting, heartbreaking, page-turning at times, introspective, and sometimes required me to read pages two or three times to make sure I understood exactly what was being said. The captain stayed loyal to his communist cause throughout the entire book, but it was definitely clear the he sympathized with the plight of his South Vietnamese countrymen and fellow refugees. In the last hurrah, when the general felt he had enough backing, he decided to send a delegation of his men back to Vietnam to penetrate into the North Vietnamese territory and go on a scouting mission to see if his idea was viable. Bon volunteered to go right away, on this mission that was basically a suicide mission. Bon had nothing more to live for but to die for his country after losing his wife and child. When Bon volunteered, then the captain volunteered immediately as well. Reluctantly, the general gave him the go ahead to be a part of the group. Man, however, in a secret-coded letter back to the captain told him his orders were to "stay there, do not come". The captain was determined, though, to go and in being there, figure out a way to save Bon's life, so he disobeyed orders for the first time in his life. Once there, having spent several grueling days in the heat penetrating all the way into Laos, the group was attacked by the enemy and taken to a prison camp. This camp is where the captain was kept in isolation for a year, writing his "confession" to his North Vietnamese superiors. That's all I'm going to say about this, because there are a couple more surprises towards the end. The book itself was just very, very good. It also forced me to look up things about the Vietnam War that I never knew, even though it was a prominent feature of my teen years. I'm so glad to have read this book and it will definitely be finding a place in my Top 100!