March (fifth week) 2018 Reads

This week I juggled several short story collections and only finished one book (a biography, not short stories).

The "Deal Me In" card this week is the Five of Diamonds; the story is The Last Asset (on Project Gutenberg in The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories, by Edith Wharton)
Americans in Paris. Love this sentence "He was presumably a bachelor—a man of family ties, however relaxed, though he might have been as often absent from home would not have been as regularly present in the same place—and there was about him a boundless desultoriness which renewed Garnett's conviction that there is no one on earth as idle as an American who is not busy."

from the library...

Empress of the East; How a Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman empire by Leslie Peirce
A biography of Roxelana, wife of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. 

also from the library....a film

 

The French minister / directed by Bertrand Tavernier. New York, NY : IFC Films, [2014]

A spoof on french involvement in international diplomacy.

March (fourth week) 2018 Reads

Didn't finish any books this week. March Madness! 

This week the "Deal Me In" card is a Joker which means a wild card pick and a second draw.

I made a library trip this week. I was looking for a book by Joanna Hershon when I noticed a book of Herman Hesse stories so I picked it for my Joker.  It turned out to be a great find.

The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse by Hermann Hesse; translation and introduction by Jack D. Zipes; Woodcut illustrations by David Frampton

So far I've read the introduction which gives a brief biography, a general summary of Hesse's work, and a discussion of the tales in this collection. I've also read the first three stories and enjoyed then very much. The Dwarf is a tale of revenge set in Venice; Shadow Play is set in the surrounds of a semi-deserted castle and concerns a mysterious woman and a jealous man. Both of these stories reveal the dark side of human nature.

A Man by the Name of Ziegler has a very different tone from the first two--there is nothing particularly mysterious or dark about Herr Ziegler. In fact, he is extremely ordinary until he visits a museum and somewhat inadvertently acquires a strange object. Enough said, no spoilers here.

Contents: The dwarf -- Shadow play -- A man by the name of Ziegler -- The city -- Dr. Knoegle's end -- The beautiful dream -- The three linden trees -- Augustus -- The poet -- Flute dream -- A dream about the gods -- Strange news from another planet -- Faldum -- A dream sequence -- The forest dweller -- The difficult path -- If the war continues -- The European -- The empire -- The painter --
The fairy tale about the wicker chair -- Iris.

The second card I drew is the Ten of Spades and its story is The Fire by Birutė Jonuškaitė; translated from the Lithuanian by Jayde Will (in Best European fiction 2015).

This is a perfect story to accompany the Hesse tales. It is about a young man who is a fire lookout in a forest tower. There is a mystery about him and his relationship to a local wood carver. It has the same dark fairy tale mood and I could easily imagine this story taking place in the same time and place as Shadow Play. 



Gutenberg find...




The Bashful Earthquake : & other fables and verses by Oliver Herford. Illustrated by the author. (c.1898)
Fun poems and illustrations. Not at all like the Hesse, these are light and airy and rather silly at times. And nicely illustrated with black and white sketches (only the cover is in color).

March (third week) 2018 Reads

The poet (Shelley) askes "O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?" Apparently in Connecticut this year the answer is "NO!" Another storm predicted for next week. According to WFSB.com "Of course, the usual disclaimer applies now: keep abreast of the forecast.  Great uncertainty still exists and a much greater impact on New England is still possible."

This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Ace of Clubs and the story is an essay: Someone Without Peers  by Mohammad Tolouei, Translated from the Persian by Farzaneh Doosti (in the October 2017 issue of Asymptote)
Good essay on the influence of a favorite childhood read on an author and his work.

From my shelves...

Mouths Don't Speak by Katia D. Ulysse
Perhaps Ulysse tries to cover too much material in too little space. This story of a woman with a dysfunctional relationship with her parents and a husband with PTSD jumps all over the place. She lives in Baltimore and is trying to come to terms with the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti--where her parents live but where she herself hasn't lived since she was ten years old. With several digressions, switches in points of view, characters who really don't add to the story, I just couldn't get a handle on what story she was trying to tell.
Free copy from publisher through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

From the library...

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabov
Very informative account of a journey through the Bulgaria/Turkey/Greece border area. The map at the beginning was extremely helpful.

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness (Kindle ed) by Sy Montgomery
An enjoyable read but almost more than I wanted to know about octopuses and the people who study them. Some fine pictures.

The Aeneid by Virgil; translated from the Latin by David Ferry
 About time I got around to reading this and it was not a difficult read.


Gutenberg find...



High Society:  Advice as to Social Campaigning, and Hints on the Management of Dowagers, Dinners, Debutantes, Dances, and the Thousand and One Diversions of Persons of Quality by George S. Chappell, Frank Crowninshield, and Dorothy Parker

Need I say more?

March (second week) 2018 Reads

I've been juggling a bunch of books and only finished two this week.

This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Seven of Clubs and the story is Uncle Enoch (in The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader)
A temperance lecture in the form of a short story. I'm enjoying Stowe and am glad I drew her two weeks in a row.

Online...


From Catapult
Say It with Noodles: On Learning to Speak the Language of Food by Shing Yin Kohr
A charming story with delightful illustrations.







 from my shelves...

Fado by Andrzej Stasiuk; translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston
Essays on travel and culture in Eastern Europe (Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Albania, and Poland). This fit nicely with my ongoing reading of a Bulgarian novel Physics of Sorrow and the non-fic Border: a Journey to the Edge of Europe (Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey) that I found at the library this week).

Two Lines 28 a journal edited by C.J. Evans
As always, this issue brings a nice mix of translated prose and poetry.

March (first week) 2018 Reads

Some dark, but very good, reading this week.

This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Eight of Clubs and the story is Modern Uses of Language (in The Oxford Harriet Beecher StoweRreader)
Tongue in cheek essay that is every bit as relevant today as when it was written in the 1830s.


from my shelves...

Oliver Loving by Stefan Merrill Block
A town deals with the aftermath of a school shooting. Told from several points of view. Along with the big question of "Why did he do it?" each character wonders if somehow they could have intervened to prevent it.
Advance review copy

How To Be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman

Marta and Hector have been married for twenty-five years and have a grown son. They live by a small Scandinavian village. Their lives are pretty uneventful until Marta quits taking her medicine. She starts having hallucinations or are they really memories?  What is the truth about her past? Did her parents really die in an accident when she was a teenager or was there something more sinister in her past?  Post traumatic stress disorder or false memory syndrome? An oddly satisfying read.

Free review copy through Shelf Awareness. A debut novel. 

House of Rougeaux by Jenny Jaeckel

This is a far flung family saga that begins with slaves in Martinique and skips back and forth in time and place. To Canada, The United states, Europe, and back to the Caribbean. The story  jumps from 1785-1869, then to 1949, then 1964, then 1925, then 1853, then 1883-1889, and then the late 1800s. Each section looks at a different family member. They are like a series of interrelated stories.

I rather liked this approach. It's very much the way we learn our own family history, with this great aunt telling us about one journey, a grandmother filling us in with stories of her childhood, another bit learned from a document--all coming at different times, out of order, leaving us to piece together what we can.

If this seems confusing and disjointed there is a nice family tree to help keep track of everyone. If this hadn't been provided, I would have had to draw one up.

A sequel is promised. I look forward to it.

Advance review copy through LibraryThing. A debut novel.