Ridiculously Long List for Library Browsing

Placed on blog for easy (and shared) access when in various venues...I probably won't read most of this...list is subject to frequent revisions.

At D:
   The square of revenge / Aspe,  Pieter      
    Flora : a novel / Godwin, Gail   
    A dual inheritance : a novel /     Hershon, Joanna    
     Pure / Miller, Andrew 

At R/M:
    The accordionist's son / Atxaga, Bernardo     
     How to build an android : the true story of Philip K. Dick's robotic resurrection / Dufty, David F.      Chronicle of a last summer : a novel of Egypt / El Rashidi, Yasmine,       
    A Bintel brief : love and longing in old New York / Finck, Liana  
    Sea room : a novel / Gautreau, Norman G        
    Gutshot : stories / Gray, Amelia         
    Stillwater / Helget, Nicole Lea        
    The line of beauty : a novel /   Hollinghurst, Alan        
    Montecore : the silence of the tiger /    Khemiri, Jonas Hassen        
    American meteor / Lock, Norma         
    Redemption in indigo : a novel / Lord, Karen       
    All that is solid melts into air / McKeon, Darragh          
    The city & the city /    Miéville, China        
    Confessions : a novel /    Minato, Kanae          
    In her absence / AMuñoz Molina, Antonio
   A teaspoon of earth and sea / Nayeri, Dina  
    Boundaries / Nunez, Elizabet.        
    You & me : a novel / Powell, Padgett        
    In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts. English / Ruge, Eugen       
    Naomi /  Tanizaki, Junʼichirō        
    The death of Ivan Ilyich : The Cossacks ; Happy ever after /     Tolstoy, Leo
    The dragon behind the glass : a true story of power, obsession... / Voigt, Emily   (639.3747 VOI) 
    Landfalls / Williams, Naomi J         
    A happy marriage : a novel / Yglesias, Rafael
       Arctic summer / Damon Galgut.
       Embracing defeat : Japan in the wake of World War II / John W. Dower. 952.03 DOW
O.brien, flann complete novels

At Meri:
    The piano teacher / Jelinek, Elfriede
    Sepharad / Muñoz Molina, Antonio 
    The bridge of beyond. Schwarz-Bart, Simon
    The pinecone : the story of Sarah Losh, forgotten romantic heroine...  (BIO LOSH)

At W:
    The spy's Little Zonbi /  Alpaugh, Cole       
    Camouflage : stories /     Bail, Murray       
    Eucalyptus : a novel /     Bail, Murray        
    Ten white geese : a novel / Bakker, Gerbrand        
    Silent day in Tangier / Tahar Ben Jelloun ; Ben Jelloun, Tahar    
    Horses of god / Binebine, Mahi       
    The collected stories of Lydia Davis /    Davis, Lydia        
    Portrait of the mother as a young woman / Delius, Friedrich Christian       
    The book of memory / Gappah, Petina        
    An elegy for easterly : stories / Gappah, Petina        
    Skookum summer : a novel of the Pacific Northwest / Hart, Jack        
    My lady of the bog / Hayes, Peter         
    At the mouth of the river of bees : stories /Johnson, Kij        
    All the rage : stories / Kennedy, A. L.         
    Sweet nothing : stories / Lange, Richard     
    The facades : a novel /    Lundgren, Eric 
    McGregor, Jon  / anything by him        
    Sea room : an island life in the Hebrides / Nicolson, Adam        
    White is for witching / Oyeyemi, Helen        
    The secret history of the Lord of Musashi ; and, Arrowroot /  Tanizaki, Junʼichirō        
    The misfortunates : a novel /    Verhulst, Dimitri        
     This Is Not an Accident : Stories and a novella / Wilder, April    
         A corner of the world / Fernández Pintado, Mylene
         No stopping train : a novel / Les Plesko.
Other Libs:
   
    The Transylvanian trilogy : Volume I, book one : They were counted /Bánffy, Miklós 
    The Transylvanian trilogy : Volume II, book two, : They were found wanting ; Book three : They were divided / Bánffy, Miklós  
    The timeless land / Dark, Eleanor   
     Life of a counterfeiter : and other stories / Inoue, Yasushi
    Odessa : genius and death in a city of dreams / King, Charles
    Eléctrico W /Le Tellier, Hervé,
    Bells in winter / Miłosz, Czesław.   (Old/say891.857 MILOSZ))
    The opposing shore  / Gracq, Julien, E.Ly
    A manuscript of ashes / Muñoz Molina, Antonio   
    Happiness, like water : stories /Okparanta, Chinelo   
    Blue : the history of a color / Pastoureau, Michel
    Soundtrack of the revolution : the politics of music in Iran / Seyedsayamdost, Nahid;  Ham/Miller   New Nonfiction 780.955/SEY    
    The sasquatch hunter's almanac : a novel / Shields, Sharma.   
    The whispering muse /     Sjón
    The moon in its flight / stories by Sorrentino, Gilbert Ham/Ml
    A cat, a man, and two women : stories /    Tanizaki, Junʼichirō      
    Some prefer nettles /Tanizaki, Junʼichirō       
    The key / Tanizaki, Junʼichirō
     Memoirs of a polar bear / Tawada, Yoko Ham/Mil
    Time on my hands / Vasta, Giorgio

June (fifth week) 2017 Reads

Still reading The Invented Part and I started The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas. Oops...maybe not a good idea to juggle two 500+ page books about writers and the writing process. But they are very different and I'm enjoying them both so I'll see if I can manage, if my wrists hold up.--Actually, it was a good idea. I finished the Wolas book and it was a complementary read (see below).

I also read a great novel by a Japanese author who lives in Europe and writes in both Japanese and German. This book is translated from German and is about a Vietnamese immigrant in France. Just the sort of international work I love.

Not much other reading this week except, of course, the short story challenge...

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

The Story: The Wild Pandas of Chincoteague by Gregory J. Wolos
A man, a boy, and an infant on a wintry vacation to the Outer Banks. They seem well prepared, but things go wrong. There's the odd landlady, the power outage, two dead batteries (car & phone) and the thing in the shed. They are left with stories to tell.

The Card: Two of Clubs: The story had a kind of Charlie Brown quality to it (though its protagonist is a bit more optimistic than Charlie) so I liked this card from a Peanuts deck.
This is how I picture the guy when he gets his phone back and calls his wife to tell her the story.

The story is in Post Road Magazine, an online journal that is new to me. I did a bit of browsing to see what else is there. I read another story -The Room Where Elizabeth Bishop Slept by Paola Peroni. In this one a translator is at a writer's retreat and isn't having a great time of it. I liked this story better than the panda one. (A telephone also has an important role in this story.)

Post Road is a print magazine published twice yearly by POST ROAD, Inc. in partnership with the Boston College Department of English. It features poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short plays and monologues, and visual art. Only a part of its content is available online. I enjoyed browsing the current issue and the archives.

more online...

The Person You Are Trying To Reach Is Not Available by Andrea Chapela; translated from the Spanish by Andrea Chapela
A daughter deals with her mother's illness in a future time when when people can live very long (with replacement parts).

In the 26 June 2017 issue of Samovar "a quarterly magazine of and about translated speculative fiction. We publish fiction and poetry in their original language and in English translation. We showcase the work both of writers and also translators, who we have to thank for opening doors to new worlds.
Our definition of speculative fiction is broad, and includes science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream, and other genres that may not fit neatly into labels. We also publish reviews, essays and interviews."

The American Experience in 737 Novels  Susan Straight discusses and maps her experience reading American regional literature.

from my shelves...

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby  by Cherise Wolas
An interesting novel to read in tandem with The Invented Part: both are about authors and their writing, but this one has a much more straightforward story line. While Fresán talks a lot about the loneliness of the author, Wolas protagonist just wants to be alone to get on with her writing. Beyond that one can't really compare the two, Fresán is a master, this is Wolas first novel.
Free advance review copy from publisher

The Naked Eye
by Yōko Tawada, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
Excellent novel about what is is to be an illegal immigrant. While in East Berlin to present an essay, a North Vietnamese girl is abducted and taken to West Germany. In an attempt to escape she boards what she thinks is a train to Moscow but ends up in Paris. She is befriended by several people and has a rough time since she cannot work or go to school as she has no visa. She becomes fascinated with the films of actress Catherine Deneuve and watches them over and over. She doesn't know French and often doesn't understand the films. Some of the best passages in the book are where she misinterprets the film and relates it to her own life. I loved this book.

June (fourth week) 2017 Reads

Still working through those slow reads. This weeks section of The Invented Part  was a short one so I  found plenty of time for a lot of other reading, most of it very good.

and, of course, the Deal Me In story.

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

The card this week is the two of hearts which turned out to be impossible to use to illustrate the story of isolation, abuse, and anger that was somewhat randomly assigned to it when I set up my roster. So here's the story and the collection that contains it.


The Pedersen Kid by William H. Gass (in In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and Other Stories)
Wow! This story left me more confused than anything I've read so far this year. And that's saying something since I'm currently reading Ricardo Fresán's thoroughly confusing The Invented Part.
So to help me figure out just what happened in this story (or find out if I missed something) I searched for some commentary on it. Here are a couple of things I found, both pretty thorough and both convinced me that I actually "got" the story. 
Let Me Make a Snowman: John Gardner, William Gass, and “The Pedersen Kid”  by Nick Ripatrazone
The True Intruder in William H. Gass’s “The Pedersen Kid”  by Ted Morrissey

Then I reread it for the writing: the amazing complex sentences that often lead to surprises; the sometimes devastating character descriptions; and the poetic, masterful prose.
I followed up by reading the other four stories in the collection: Mrs. Mean, Icicles, Order of Insects, and the title story. The Pedersen Kid appealed to me because of the interactions among the characters and its puzzling aspects. The title story had the richest language and was spot on in its descriptions of a dinky town. Mrs. Mean was, well, mean with a passel of (justifiably) ill behaved children and odd-ball neighbors (including the narrator). Icicles was cold and lonely. Order of Insects about a housewife and her fascination with an infestation of bugs was my least favorite.

The card: Can I find a Two of Hearts that fits a post modern story about a strange journey in the icy cold of North Dakota? Not really.  But I did find an interesting deck. 

MADDECK Playing Cards By Ozlem Olcer. "a series of playing cards which feature cubist illustrations..... The deck was created for PAG, an Istanbul based design company developing projects and manufacturing products in collaboration with graphic artists and illustrators."
"The name Maddeck - short for ‘Magicians, Astronauts & Dancers’ - is given after the first 3 dream jobs of the designer as a child."

The two of hearts is typical of the number cards in the deck, but the face cards are quite different in design--almost as if they are from a different deck.



more reading from my shelves.... 

Two Lines 23, by C.J. Evans (editor) The Fall 2015 edition of this bimonthly journal of The Center for the Art of Translation. It has fiction and poetry translated into English from eleven different languages. My favorite from this issue is The Piper by Yoko Tawada; translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani. It is a retelling of the legend of The Pied Piper of Hamelin told from several points of view. The author is a Japanese writer currently living in Germany. She writes in both Japanese and German. Here is a link to the full Table of Contents for this issue.


The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
An interesting survey of recent worldwide research in ornithology with particular attention to the function of the brains of birds. Not too technical, she is an entertaining writer.
Advance review copy.


Coincidentally, I ran across this online article  Power to the Bower: A Bird’s Architectural Method of Seduction by Osman Bari. Bowerbird (family Ptilonorhynchidae) building habits is one of the topics Ackerman discusses.


 
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink; Carol Brown Janeway (Translator)
Coming of age in Post World War 2 Germany. A young man is scarred for life by an inappropriate first affair. In later life he must face the collective guilt of his nation as his former lover is tried for war crimes.

(A library book sale bargain from their clear the tables day-- Five bucks for all the books you can fit in a large paper grocery bag. Yes, sir, yes, sir, two bags full.)






Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb, Len Rix (Translation)
A Hungarian on his honeymoon in Italy leaves his wife and wanders off perhaps to find some companions from his lost youth. Or maybe he's trying to escape the bourgeois life that is closing in on him. While he slinks around Italy (ending up in Rome) his abandoned wife joins a friend in Paris and tries to restart her life. All this is set in the period between the two world wars. A good story with lots of angst, strange characters, and touches of wry humor




What are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffe, Julia Sanches (Translation), Ellen Elias-Bursać (Translation) 
I'll admit to being a bit disappointed when this came with my Deep Vellum  subscription in September (2016). I just didn't want to read another concentration camp diary, so I set it aside (for nearly a year). I picked it up the other day and I'm glad I did; it is such a great book. Jaffe presents her mother, Lili Stern's diary which is brief and was not written in the camp. She wrote it immediately after she was liberated and was living in refugee camps in Sweden.

The real strength in the book is the daughter's commentary on the diary. She treats it as a memoir and as a springboard for a discussion on how her mother's ordeal affected her own life. But what I really found valuable was how she expanded the personal and specific into a more general discussion of how human traits and activities survive and are altered by horrific experiences. This is presented in a series of essay style entries on such topics as fate, cold, hunger, love, anger, desire, money, memory, desire, and others. She draws both on her mother's diary and writings of other survivors.

The book finishes with an essay by Jaffe's daughter Leda Cartum on how the legacy reaches into yet another generation.


 
The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian
A teenage girl copes with with family, boyfriend, and BFF troubles against the backdrop of a community that must be abandoned because of a new dam. An uneven read. The characters were fairly well drawn. Unfortunately at the end everyone behaved totally out of character. The wrap-up was too simplistic for a complicated situation.
My least favorite read this week, but not a total waste of time.

Advance review copy.


And Only One Library book.... 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Kindle edition)
What a great way to survey the history of Communist Russia! This novel begins in 1922 when Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest for life--in the elegant  Moscow Hotel Metropol and ends in 1954. Although he can't leave the hotel, a cast of interesting characters--hotel employees and guests--keep him well informed about the goings on in the world. Rostov is a charming fellow and this is a charming book. 

Shortly after I finished this book I found this delightful art work in The Calvert Journal. Witnesses to history: The turmoil of 1917 captured in children's drawings Text by Samuel Goff; Images taken from the book Moscow, 1917: Drawings by Child Witnesses. From the collection of the State Historical Museum in Moscow. 

         Other online reads...

Imagining the Future of Suburbia, From “Freedomland” to “McMansion Hell” by Kate Wagner

Georgia wins at Cannes for 6 Millionth Tourist Campaign
A great video from Georgia the country, not the US state.

Come for the Obscure Canadian Sport, Stay for the Buffet by Julie Stauffer
Who knew there is a sport called  Crokinole?

The 'Mystery Boats' of Tresco Island  essay by Mike Williams.
A bit of British WW2 espionage.

June (third week) 2017 Reads

Because I am slowly reading The Invented Part with Chad Post's Two Month Review  project and have a couple of other slow reads going, I decided to devote this week's other reading and posting to whatever source or format the card of the week indicates. If it is Spades it will be translated into English; Hearts--original language English; Diamonds--found on Project Gutenberg; Clubs--different format (narrative poem, short play or skit, graphic, clever title, narrative essay, etc.); Jokers--Pick something from another participants roster.

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

And the winner is

♠♠♠♠

Since it is a translated story in an online journal and is a four, I will highlight four online sources where I regularly read translated works and works about translation.

This week's story:  Cafés Morts by Maïssa Bey; translated from the French by Hodna Bentali Gharsallah Nuernberg
A young girl inadvertently catches glimpses the culture of Algeria's "Moorish cafés" which at the time were men only gathering places.

This story is from the October 2016 issue of Asymptote a free quarterly online journal founded in 2011. They have published "...work from 105 countries and 84 languages, all never-before-published poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, and interviews by writers and translators such as J. M. Coetzee, Patrick Modiano, Herta Müller, Can Xue, Junot Díaz, Ismail Kadare, David Mitchell, Anne Carson, Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, Ann Goldstein, and Deborah Smith."

The layout is attractive. The stories and articles are illustrated and are available in the original language as well as the English translation. Many also have sound files of authors or translators reading in the original language. There are bios and translators notes. Past issues are archived. There is a map which shows the locales of the works.
~~~~
The Buenos Aires Review  "presents the best and latest work by emerging and established writers from the Americas, in both Spanish and English [also some Portuguese]. We value translation and conversation. We publish poetry, fiction, essays, criticism, visual art, and interviews."
~~~~
Guernica/a magazine of global art & politics, a non-profit free online magazine founded in 2004. "A home for incisive ideas and necessary questions, we publish memoir, reporting, interviews, commentary, poetry, fiction, and multimedia journalism exploring identity, conflict, culture, justice, science, and beyond."
Material includes both translated and original English language works.
~~~~ 
Words Without Borders is a free monthly online magazine. Started in 2003, WWB publishes eight to twelve new works, in English translation, by international writers. Works include fiction, poetry and nonfiction, often related to a geographic or topical theme. Past issues are archived.
~~~~

This week's card is from Playing Arts Edition Zero, a deck for which "each card  has been individually designed by one of the 55 selected international artists in his distinct style and technique."

The Four of Clubs was designed by Anton Repponen, a New York based interactive designer with architecture background.

I selected for today's post because it strikes me as a kind of translation from the usual playing card, giving us a new way to view a familiar object.

June (second week) 2017 Reads

For my Deal Me In card this week I pulled the Eight of Clubs. This was originally assigned The Bronze Horseman: A Petersburg Tale by Alexander Pushkin (narrative poem). I forgot it was on the list and read it in January when I was on my Pushkin jag, so I made it a WILD CARD.  On my roster, Clubs are supposed to be something "different" (narrative poem, short play or skit, graphic, clever title, narrative essay, etc.) I chose a couple of news stories and an essay related to an important local event.

 A new bookstore opened in our town

 Wesleyan R.J. Julia Bookstore.
This is the bookstore for Wesleyan University and also a general indie bookstore. For more on this see: New Wesleyan Bookstore By R.J. Julia Now Open To Public In Middletown and for a little more background on the space see: Wesleyan partners with R.J. Julia Booksellers to open new bookstore in downtown Middletown.

 
The very first special event at the store was an appearance by Andrew Blauner editor of  In Their Lives: Great Writers on Great Beatles Songs.  He was joined by three of the book's contributors: Amy Bloom, Peter Blauner, and Nicholas Dawidoff. Of course I attended. Of course I bought the book. Autographs?  All four of course. And some swag: a very nice tote.


It was a good discussion, they didn't do readings. It was a conversation that ranged from  lyrics, the sequence of songs in the albums, and how the songs had different meanings at different times in their lives.
(Local note: Peter Blauner and Amy Bloom are Wesleyan grads. Bloom is now Wesleyan University’s Distinguished University Writer in Residence. Nicholas Dawidoff also has Connecticut connections: he grew up in New Haven and now lives there. He is a Fellow of Yale's Branford College.)

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

So in honor of this event I chose an essay from the book by a contributor who was not at the event. I selected this one because it is available online.
Remembering My Father Through My Favorite Beatles’ Song  Elissa Schappell revisits Octopus’s Garden.

During the week I read the rest of the book. Even though I've never been a huge Beatles fan it was fun to see what songs the writers chose and how they wrote about the choices. Most were personal and some went in to detail about the technical aspects of the music. I don't have a favorite Beatles song and I didn't listen to any while reading this book, but I guess I heard the music in my brain because I ended up with a four-day earworm. Finally got "Yellow Submarine" out of my mind by listening to classical guitar. Other than that It was a very enjoyable collection of essays.

 
And the card: A tiled design in homage to that amazing ceiling in the bookstore. (Do click on the picture above for a better look).

This is from the Piatnik: Jugendstil Art Nouveau Playing Cards deck. This is a gorgeous deck, the face cards are awesome, even the box is a work of art. Google it, there are vintage decks for sale online and the prices are not all outrageous.

Like last week's card,  I found this image on playingcardcollector.net



Poetry online...
Emoticons and Pros by Najat Sghyar
"Born and raised in Casablanca, Morroco, Najat studied corporate law in France and worked as a journalist in her hometown before moving to Istanbul in 2014 to focus on writing. Fluent in six languages, she writes short stories in darija- the Moroccan dialect-, poetry in English and Arabic and is currently working on a novel in French. She is a founder member of the Istanbul writing club Yirmi Yedi."

Lots of clever word-play for this world of social networking. These two excerpts lose the poem's visual appeal because I can't duplicate the formatting and spacing, but the language is a delight.

So I daydream in virtual blur
of good old smileys:
That naughty yellow face
On MSN messenger
Laughing silent hi hi hi's

Or the classic semicolon
resting on its side
With a bracket for a smile
Half asleep
winking deep
Minimal style
Of sarcasm quizz.

And later she speaks of 

Clogged in blogs and vlogs
Instakilograms
in filigran
Of snapshit
and vine.

from my shelves..

The Magician of Vienna (Trilogía de la memoria/Trilogy of Memory #3) by Sergio Pitol, George Henson (Translation from the Spanish); Mario Bellatin (Introduction); Margo Glantz (Afterword)
This is a mixed bag--literary criticism, personal anecdotes, travel stories, and passages on his own writing processes. I really liked the material on writing short stories.

When I read the first two volumes of the trilogy, I spent a lot of time Googling all the people and places that weren't familiar to me.* This volume was different because I recognized most of the authors he discussed. He talks about Chekhov, there are essays on Evelyn Waugh and Henry James, and many others--international in scope. His discussion on the Irish writer Flann O'Brien caused me to order At Swim-Two-Birds.

"On When Enrique Conquered Ashgabat and How He Lost It" (p.204-230) is a very funny episode that took place when Pitol and Enrique Vila-Matis managed to get together in Turkmenistan. It involved crashing a wedding party, a crazy opera singer and his crazier wife, embarrassed interpreters, and Vila-Matis being rushed out of the country.

Now that I've read all three volumes, I wish I had an index to them, there's so much to go back and reread. These came to me through my subscription to Deep Vellum and it includes both paper and electronic editions, so maybe I'll get some use of the Kindle search feature.

*See: Pitol readings and More Pitol readings, I didn't do a readings page for this volume.



Death of an Airman by Christopher St. John Sprigg
There were some surprises in this mystery from this British Library Crime Classics reprint. An Australian bishop signing up for flying lessons whilst in the UK made a lot of sense and he was a fine character. There were an assortment of eccentric women, a sappy American judge, a brief appearance by a German aviator, a French connection, some white powder, etc... What fun!
The motives for the crimes seemed rather modern for a book written in 1934.
I love this series. My copy is an advance review copy from Poisoned Pen Press, the USA publisher.