Notes on Bookmarks & My Favorite Book of the Year, “The Silver Bone,” by Andrey Kurkov

I have collected  100 bookmarks over the years (but who’s counting?) since booksellers used to tuck them into every newly-purchased book. Borders was the last corporate bookstore to do so, and Amazon and Barnes & Noble stopped  years ago.

That leaves the indies.

Bookmarks often disappear.  Where?  Who knows? I find them behind the couch, on top of the buffet, and even in tea cups.  Sometimes they turn up in books we are donating to a sale!

So I have founded… Project Bookmark.   I plan to write requests to bookshops for bookmarks and enclose self-addressed envelopes with literary stamps. 

I may or my not have the energy to execute this task.

Do you think Amazon has any leftover bookmarks? I especially loved their turn-of-the-21^st-century bookmarks with quotes by Cicero. 

And do recommend your favorite bookstores!

 My Favorite Novel of the Year, The Silver Bone

Note: This book is on the International Booker Prize longlist.

I highly recommend the Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov’s The Silver Bone, a brilliant and hugely enjoyable detective novel which, like all classic detective novels, is more than a mystery.  (Historical novel fans will equally enjoy it.)  Set in Kiev in 1919 during the Russian Revolution, the novel chronicles the chaos of war and a young detective’s investigation of a crime ring.

It begins with violence.  The hero, Samson, a young engineer, and his father are attacked by Cossacks on a mundane walk to the tailor’s. The Cossack splits his father’s head in half and cuts off Samson’s ear.  There is no reason.  They are just there.

Life is tough without his father.  Even hanging on to the flat is a challenge for Samson now that he lives alone. All over the city soldiers appropriate houses and apartments. One day two deserters pose as soldiers and raid Samson’s flat, then return to appropriate the study as their bedroom.

 Fortunately, Samson’s lopped-off ear, tucked into a box in the desk in the study, has the magical  power of transmitting the deserters’s conversation to Samson.  When they discuss killing him, he is prepared to deal with them.  And then he is hired by the police as a detective.

A beautifully-written, intelligent, and ripping good read!

It is translated by Boris Dralyuk.