The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo. Tom Reiss

Audiobook. I grew up with the Three Musketeers, is strange that in all these years I never tried to learn    more about Alexandre Dumas, I knew his son was also a famous writer, but I didn't know his grandma was a black caribbean slave, I didn't know his father was a legendary black fighter on the French revolutionary army and later the Napoleonic Egyptian invasion.

The book touches in several fascinating topics, the enigmas of current french bureaucracy, racism and  acceptance in France, the incredible contradiction of Napoleon's legacy (indeed it was the best of times, it was the worst of times), Paris pre-revolution, the reign of terror, the utterly adventurous and incredibly history of Thomas-Alexandre's Dumas, and no less fascinating way in influenced his son's novels. any true fan would love to know that some of the most beloved passages of Three Musketeers and Count of Montecristo were taking from his father's own adventures and later misfortunes.

Thomas-Alexandre was at some point sold as a slave along with his mother, by his own father who was the white plantation owner, but later re-purchased and recognized as a legitimate son, taken to France and spoiled rotten with a life of luxury, a Dandy in Louis XVI's france. He was incredibly tall, described as imposingly athletic and handsome even by his enemies, and a natural with the sabre.

I won't spoil the book by telling about his act of personal heroism that got him the General rank, or what happened between him and Napoleon later (you have to read the book!), but is amazing to see how progressive was revolutionary France when related to race (the author compares it constantly with how backward was the US then), and how, among the multitude of progressive ideas that Napoleon brought forward (meritocracy!), the one where he had to go back was slavery, given that his backers in his ascent to power were plantation owners.

A Pulitzer prize, and a great read. Finished it Dec 2013,

The plague of doves - Louise Erdrich

10. The best book I read in 2012. It was a 2009 Pullitzer Finalist.
The topic didn't seem very promising: the history of several characters in a first nations reserve in the 70's, but oh, boy was this book intense!

Each of the stories is engaging on itself, but the wordcrafting is superb, anecdotes of one character take another dimension when telling someone else's story later on the book. And the way it jumps from comedy, to drama, getting close to magic realism and horror at times it is very life like, those genres don't seem out of place, because life itself contains all those elements. I'd recommend this book to anyone.

Favourite scenes:
the little girl at religious school and the nun nicknamed godzilla; the tales form the grnadfather - the hanging; the sex driven preacher that gets struck by lightning; the faked kidnapping; the violin in the river and used to reform a thief; the psychology student reading Anais Nin and falling in love with a patient; the colonization of a patch of land during the winter.

The museum of innocence. Orhan Pamuk

(audiobook) Because of the topic, not a book that I would recommend. While the book has some very interesting depictions of Istambul's society, 80% of the narrative is about the character's obsession with a girl called Fussan.

The first few chapters read like a love story, it starts on a beautiful tone when he describes one evening making love with Fussan in his apartment, noise of kids playing coming from an open window. "That was the happiest moment of my life" he says describing the moment when he penetrates her from behind, kisses her on the shoulder and she looses an earring.

So, he has a fiance (Sibelle) who is a cultivated, european style society woman, and he has this beautiful young lover. He he loves them both and for a while sounds like a man really in love. I entertained long monologues about his bliss... But then it gets to the obsessive part, and I cringed page after page, skipping some sections. Since I was so ready to sympathize with the character, it took me a while to turn against him. Part of me still has lingering doubts about Pamuk's intention: does the author believes that he is a man really in love with valid feelings and expectations? But part of me says it can't be true, the character is such a creepy, sickly obsessed looser that the author must have planned all along to make you cringe by first make you like him, and then (by telling the story from his perspective), and then slowly turns things around until you realize that you simply can not feel any sympathy for the guy. As an exercise on the author playing with the reader very successful, you feel suffocated by the character's obsession and feel compelled to shake him by the shoulders and slap him  back into reason.

The parts where he describes Istanbul society, the obsession with virginity, the difference between the haves and have nots, the endless talks at cafes about making movies where really entertaining and I found many similarities with Guadalajara. Other than the creep factor, it was nice to hear the depictions of day to day life in the characters homes (like the chapter titled "sometimes". In the audiobook, I feel in love with the pronunciation of Beyoglu. Well written, I wouldn't have read it had I known what the topic was.