July (third week) 2017 Reads

Not much to add to the reading log this week. Continued with the slow read of  Rodrigo Fresán's The Invented Part with Chad Post's Two Month Review  by reading  "Meanwhile, Once Again, Beside the Museum Stairway, Under a Big Sky" (The Invented Part, Pages 405-440). Also reading Chad's comments and listening to the podcast about this section. And, as usual, spending a lot of time Googling because Fresán has so many literary and pop culture references. I'm lovin' it.
Next week will be the final section. The next slow read is Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith. My copy arrived in the mail on Monday.

This week...

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

Story:   Collection by Camille Meyer (flash fictions)
There are eight very short, interrelated stories in this collection. They read a bit like primitive attempts to explain how giants came to Earth or, perhaps, little stories made up by an older child trying to entertain a younger sibling. Or maybe those stories that develop from a party game in which one person says the first sentence and then each person in the circle adds to it. The results can be an interesting, but not very cohesive, story.

At Big Bridge, "a webzine of poetry and everything else...."  Fun to explore.



Card: Eight of Clubs from Demon Deck by Ukrainian artist Egor Klyuchnyk. I'm not sure that I'm seeing what was intended here, but this looks a bit like shrubbery and that fits the story because plants play an important part in the giant's adventures.








online...


Cartoons magazine. v.10:pt.2 (1916). Linen Islands Sea by Helena Smith-Dayton 
A light commentary on the dining habits and conversation circa 1916.
Smith-Dayton is particularly amused by the gentlemen.

I found this because of a comment  Katherine Nabity made on my post last week. I had a lot of fun with this and ended up reading more than the article  relevant to Katherine's comment. 

The "Cartoons" of the magazine title is used in the "political cartoon" sense--there are a lot of political articles and a lot of European war news and commentary. This was before the USA entered the war.



An Entire Family Disappears by Gunnhild Øyehaug; Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson
Another excerpt from the story collection Knots. (I also read one of these last week.)

Three Principles of Architecture as Revealed by Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities'  by Osman Bari

These next two pieces discuss  Lima-based architect Karina Puente's  project to illustrate each and every "invisible" city from Italo Calvino's 1972 novel.
Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities', Illustrated  by James Taylor-Foster (6 images)
Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities', Illustrated (Again)   by AD Editorial Team (16 images)



This Drone Video Captures the Mesmerizing Geometries of The World's Most Vertical City  by AD Editorial Team
Presentation of an eight minute film from architect Mariana Bisti exploring Hong Kong by drone videography. "Not limited to vantage points accessible to humans, the video zooms and pans deliberately over, across and into the city’s enormous residential blocks..."


Seven Questions for Lytton Smith on Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson
Scott Esposito interviews Lytton Smith. Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller is the next book we will be reading for Chad Post's Two Month Review  project.

 from my shelves...



Summer Before the Dark by Volker Weidermann; translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway.
Stefan Zweig reunites with his estranged friend Joseph Roth in Ostend, Belgium in 1936.  At the time Ostend was a quiet refuge where a group of exiles and soon to be exiles joined together in a fragile social circle. Lots of booze, affairs, and rivalries mixed in with the really serious decisions that they must make about their futures in a crumbling European society.
A must read for anyone interested in Zweig, Roth, or European culture in the interwar years.