October (third week) 2017 Reads

It's time to begin a new slow read project: Introducing Mercè Rodoreda [Two Month Review]  by Chad W. Post. Actually, I've already read the Selected Stories but it's been a while and I look forward to reading them again and hearing the podcast discussions from Chad & Co.

Meanwhile this past week's reads....

Story: Learn to Love the One Who Eats Your Porridge by Kristīne Ulberge: translated from the Latvian by Margita Gailitis (pages 108-119 in Best European Fiction 2015)
A patient in a mental hospital tells her story.




Card: Ten of Spades. This seems to go with the story, which features a young girl and a crow. It also seems appropriate that it comes from an artist that calls herself  psychobitchua.
(She also identifies as Lena from Kiev, Ukraine who says,  "I’m a rare combination of a bad temper and a good sense of humor. And I like merging photoshop layers."






from my shelves...
Red Dust and Dancing Horses: And Other Stories by Beth Cato
Loved these si-fi/fantasy/steampunk/apocalyptic stories and poems. Cato is a good writer who made me like things I wasn't sure I would like: Steampunk horses? They were great! Toilet gnomes? What fun! There are even five "Culinary Magic" stories for foodies.
One of my favorites in this collection, Roots, Shallow and Deep, is set in Hanford, California during the same period as a novel I've been struggling with for a couple of months --The Octopus: A Story of California by Frank Norris.  The amazing cover is by Kuzuhiko Nakamura.
Free advance reader copy via Goodreads giveway.
 

Gray areas : a short story collection by Carmen Burcea-Haber (Kindle edition)
Stories with a twist--some predictable and some with delightful surprises. The title is perfect with the "gray area"being what is between right and wrong, moral and immoral, the ordinary and the macabre.

 Contents:  Belleview hotel -- Earth like chocolate -- Afternoon tea -- The camera -- Headaches -- Hedda the wise -- Here kitty -- Roberta -- Driving home -- Lilac in blossom -- Rainy evening -- The party -- Lydia -- Grand finale -- The island -- The cavern -- The dinner date -- The dress in the window -- Welcome to the neighborhood -- Mood swings -- The coastal trail.



 


Blood of the Dawn by Claudia Salazar Jiménez; translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer
This short novel about the lives of three women during the "time of fear" in  1980s  Peru was a very hard read both because of the subject matter and the rather disjointed style. Difficult but worth reading.





 


The Tell-Tale Heart by Jill Dawson  by Jill Dawson
The stories of a heart transplant recipient and his donor.  Set in The Fens near Ely, UK. An OK read divided into several parts that didn't quite fit together.







from the library...
 

The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk; translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap
Another good one from one of my favorite authors.