September (second week) 2017 Reads

“Deal Me In 2017!”

Story: The Fair Imperia from Balzac's Contes drolatiques. Droll stories collected from the Abbeys of Touraine. Translated into English, complete and unabridged. Illustrated with designs by Gustave Dorʹe. [no translator credit given]
A delightful farce involving an innocent young priest, a courtesan, a bishop, and a cardinal. Churchmen behaving badly.


Card: Jack of Diamonds
The Jack is a fit for the story since the young priest becomes a knave.
However, this particular card has little to do with the story which takes place in Germany (they are at the Council at Constance). The card is from a Russian deck which I purchased in the USSR in 1979.






I didn't read much this week. Well, I did read quite a bit but I only finished one book. I continued with an especially difficult part in the Two Month reading of Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller
and I have a stack of other things "in progress."

from my shelves... 


Two or Three Years Later: Forty-Nine Digressions by Ror Wolf, translated from the German by Jennifer Marquart
Many of these very short stories (or "reports") concern observations of men who appear here or there or maybe somewhere else. Nothing much happens, but when there is action it is fabulous with improbable rescues at sea, a trek across Africa (but the narrator doesn't remember whether it was from East to West, or West to East) and exploding things. Goofy, surreal, whatever--I loved it.