July 2019 Reading

All good reading for July, with one exception.   

Fiction (in no particular order within the star ratings)

5 stars: 
If Beale Street Could Talk by Baldwin, James (public library)
War, So Much War by Rodoreda, Mercè; translated from the Catalan by Maruxa Relaño and MarthaTennent (my collection)
Hollow Kingdom by Buxton, Kira Jane (Advance Review Copy, Shelf Awareness)
Eight Stories: Tales of War and Loss by Remarque, Erich Maria (translators unidentified) (my collection)
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Lombardo, Claire (public library)
The Imagined Land by Berti, Eduardo; translated from the Spanish by Charlotte Coombe (my collection)
Solovyov and Larionov by Vodolazkin, Eugene; translated from the Russian by Evgenij Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (advance review copy, LibraryThing

4 stars:
L'Amour by Duras, Marguerite; translated from the French by Kazim Ali and Libby Murphy (my collection)
The City Where We Once Lived by Barnes, Eric (public library)
The Vagrants by Li, Yiyun (my collection)
San Diego Noir edited by Hart, Maryelizabeth (my collection)

3 stars:
The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Lefteri, Christy (Advance Review Copy, Shelf Awareness)
The Quest by Baroja, Pío; translated from the Spanish by Isaac Goldberg (my collection - Amazon freebie)
Smoking Kills by Laurain, Antoine; translated from the French by Louise Lalaurie Rogers(blog win)
The Evenings: A Winter's Tale by Reve, Gerard; translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett (public library)

1 star
The Skin Is the Elastic Covering That Encases the Entire Body by Rasmussen, Bjørn; translated from the Danish by Martin Aiken
I did actually finish this but did not like it. Yes it was poetic, well written, etc. Best I can say about it is that it is short. (from my collection but I'm not keeping it!)

Nonfiction
 
5 stars:
The Man Between: The Life and Legacy of Michael Henry Heim by Heim, Michael Henry (and others) (my collection)

3 stars:
Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln by Glückel von Hameln; translated from the German by Marvin Lowenthal (my collection)
On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane by Guendelsberger, Emily (public library)
Fire and Ice by Mingle, Jonathan (Advance Review Copy--from ages ago)
Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race by Prior-Palmer, Lara (public library)
 

August (fifth week) 2018 Reads

I had planned to be away from home most of the week, but the place had no air conditioning.  Monday night was quite pleasant, Tuesday night was miserable so we gave up and came home on Wednesday morning. It was too hot to do anything but read so I made a dent in the owned-but-unread stack.

This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Seven of Hearts; the selection is The Provincials by Daniel Alarcón (in The best American short stories, 2013, Kindle ed.)

Online...
The Illegal Ramen Vendors of Postwar Tokyo: Black markets and American wheat imports popularized ramen. By Hunter Lu
Two of my favorite topics - Postwar Japan and Food.

from my shelves...

When Adam Opens His Eyes by Jung-Il Jang; translated from the Korean by Sun-Ae Hwang and Horace Jeffery Hodges
 Coming of age...

Lost Cities Found Objects, linked stories by Robert Fagan
 OK, but it was my least favorite of this week's reading

The Animal Gazer by Edgardo Franzosini; translated from the Italian by Michael F. Moore 
 bio-fic inspired by the life of sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti

Brother in Ice by Alicia Kopf; translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem    
 A young woman muses on her family relationships (including a disabled older brother) whilst engaging in research on the polar regions and other icy things. Excellent!


Sight by Jessie Greengrass
 Advance Review Copy. As in Brother in Ice, a young woman muses on her life and family (especially pregnancy and mother/daughter/grandaughter relationships) whilst researching. This time the research involves Freud, Rontgen, and William and John Hunter. Also Excellent!
Allmen and the Dragonflies by Martin Suter; translated from the German by Steph Morris
  Underhanded shenanigans in the world of art collectors and thieves. In this case the art is five missing Art Nouveau glass bowls created by renowned French artist Émile Gallé. Fictional account of what might have happened the the bowls.

The Baklava Club (Yashim the Eunuch #5) by Jason Goodwin 
 A pleasant mystery--not nearly as much fun as Allemen (above)--but OK.  I haven't read the others in the series, I might pick one up at the library when I want a not too demanding diversion.

The Endless Summer by Madame Nielsen; translated from the Danish by Gaye Kynoch
  Had trouble getting into this but it turned out to be a favorite. It just took a while to click. 

January (third week) 2018 Reads

Only brief notes and no images on the blog this week. But I have been reading.
 
The  "Deal Me In"  card this week is the 4 of Diamonds. It brings a nice, old fashioned ghost story: The Shadows on the Wall (in The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural,  by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman).
Freeman (1852-1930) was an American writer. She lived in Massachusetts and Vermont and wrote about New England life. Much of her work is available on Project Gutenberg and also on American Literature.com. 

from the library...

Karate Chop: Stories by Dorthe Nors; translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken 
Loved these stories.

The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki: translated from the Japanese by Edward Seidensticker 
If Jane Austin had been Japanese....

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor 
A beautifully written book that doesn't go anywhere. 

from my shelves...

The Golden Cockerel & Other Writings by Juan Rulfo: translated from the Spanish by Douglas J. Weatherford

May (fourth week) 2017 Reads

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

The card this week: Six of Clubs which means the "story" this week is not-a-story, it's an essay:

Identities in Motion -- My Mythomanias by Julia Schoch; translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire
How do we remember when the landscapes of childhood are gone? Schoch grew up in a town modernized in the Communist era and the made obsolete by the 1989 revolution.

  "They say the only things that count in life are the things we remember. That seems to be all the more important when there is no longer any evidence of the past.
   I no longer have any evidence of my past."


From Literature Across Frontiers (LAF) "a European Platform for Literary Exchange, Translation and Policy Debate."

Card is a stock image from dreamstime
It seems to go with the deterioration of the town (both the original and the new) and the hammer suggests the politics involved.

 



other essays online...and slow reading

Dorthe Nors on the best Contemporary Scandinavian Literature
The Danish author discusses Scandinavian Lit in general and specific authors:  Naja Marie Aidt, Yahya Hassan, Karolina Ramqvist, Lena Andersson, and Sjón.


 All Writing is a Kind of Realism: In Conversation with Rodrigo Fresán, author of The Invented Part
A conversation between Fresán and Will Vanderhyden, translator of The Invented Part. I am slowly reading this novel as part of Chad Post's Two Month Review  project.Chad has put together comments, podcasts, a Goodreads group, and more to help guide us through a difficult book. So far, we have read only the first 45 pages (which I loved).

 
I am also slow reading The Magician of Vienna by Sergio Pitol because that is the way I read Pitol. See: Pitol readings and More Pitol readings


Just because my card this week was for an essay doesn't mean I neglected short stories. In fact, I read some gems...

I read some of the O. Henry Prize Stories for 2017 that are available online:
Something for a Young Woman  by Genevieve Plunkett
The Buddhist by Alan Rossi 
Protection by Paola Peroni
Night Garden by Shruti Swamy
Paddle to Canada by Heather Monley
Mercedes Benz  by Martha Cooley
A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness by Jai Chakrabarti

Two other stories I read online...

An Affair Before the Earthquake by Samrat Upadhyay
Samrat Upadhyay is a Nepalese writer who writes in English. He teaches at Indiana University. This is from his collection of short stories, Mad Country.

The Great Disaster  by Alanna Schubach; with an introduction by Halimah Marcus
Young survivors of a community disaster play a Zombie game.


some novels from my shelves...


ME  by Tomoyuki Hoshino, Kenzaburō Ōe (Afterword), Charles De Wolf (Translation)
This started out as if it were going to be about telephone scams, but it turned into something else--a dystopian world of almost interchangeable ME's. Just when it seems to be headed in one direction, it makes a turn and is off somewhere else. A great read.

Advance review copy via LibraryThing

The Outlaw by Jón Gnarr; Lytton Smith (Translation)
The third volume of Gnarr's childhood memoirs covers his teenage years. Misunderstood and misunderstanding, Gnarr ends up in a remote boarding school in the Westfjords district of Iceland (a Google search shows that the school is now a hotel). After leaving school he returns home to face so many problems--drugs, alcohol, medical treatments, family--that one wonders how he ever go it together.

From my subscription to Deep Vellum Books


 
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
It's always gratifying to see a second novel live up to the promise of the debut novel. This one does that without repeating the characters and plot of the first
(We Are Called to Rise). This one is also set in Las Vegas and, like the first, brings together a set of diverse characters and deals with immigrants and family problems. But the main characters are fresh and this one spans a long time period (about 1960-2010) as Vegas booms and busts. The four main characters are strong women in difficult circumstances. An absorbing read.

Advance review copy.

February (fourth week) 2017 Reads

This week I tried to limit myself to reading only from my "owned-but-unread" shelf. The exceptions were online and associated with the Deal Me In short story challenge and research related to the books I read.

Two novels of life in Russia in the post-Soviet era. These are lyrical and haunting, full of family and national myths. Both are from my subscription to New Vessel Press.


Oblivion by Sergei Lebedev, Antonina W. Bouis (Translation)
A man travels to a former prison camp in search of the story of an odd neighbor who was a sort of adoptive grandfather to him.

The Year of the Comet by Sergei Lebedev, Antonina W. Bouis (Translation)
Coming of age in Moscow as the USSR collapses. Impossible to put this down.


Some  background by Sergei Lebedev on the New Vessel Press blog:
A biographical essay North and East
A biographical poem Two Red Stars


Seeing Red by Lina Meruane, Megan McDowell (Translation)
In this (somewhat autobiographical) novel a Chilean writer becomes blind from a complication of Diabetes. While there is description of the clinical progression of her condition, it is much more about her sense of self and her relationships, particularly with her lover and her mother, as she becomes (or is perceived by them to become) dependent on them.
Another excellent book from my subscription to Deep Vellum Publications.





The Game We Play by Sooze Lanier
There is a lot of variety in these stories. There are a couple of misses, but most are quite good. Most are set in Washington, DC. How Tommy Soto breaks you heart is a girl-loses-boy high school story; In Cat and bird two college freshman girls get to know each other; Over Shell Drive is a puzzling father-daughter tale; Raz-Jan deals with an immigrant father-son relationship; Sophie Salmon has an eating disorder; Felicia Sassafras is fiction is about a writer bored with a character she has created; Night hawk is a drug deal gone bad; Selflessly, with pleasure is a mercifully short (two pages) bit about a sex toy; Now that all danger is averted has a couple dealing with loss; At bat tells of a crucial ninth inning at bat from two points of view: batter and fan. (I've highlighted my favorites.) My copy from a blog win at The Quivering Pen.


 
The Pirate by Jón Gnarr, Lytton Smith (Translation)
The second book in the three-part memoir of the Icelandic actor, comedian, and politician. This one deals with his teenage years when he tried to start an anarchist punk band, avoided school, and endured a great deal of bullying.
Gnarr is really fun to read although he deals with serious topics of a difficult childhood. The first book was The Indian which I read in August 2015. The final book is The Outlaw which should arrive any day now. (They have already sent me the ebook but I prefer to wait for the print edition.)
Another book from my subscription to Deep Vellum Publications.

Justine by Iben Mondrup, Kerri A. Pierce (Translation)
Justine is an artist who loses everything--her house, her work, all her belongings--in a fire. She has also recently split with her lover. As she tries to rebuild her life and prepare some pieces for a scheduled exhibition, her story is revealed in layers of out-of-sequence memories. This is a dark tale, with frantic sexual exploits, misogyny, jealousy, as she searches for artistic expression in the male-dominated world of Denmark's art scene.
One of my subscription books from Open Letter Books

Cutting Back: My Apprenticeship in the Gardens of Kyoto by Leslie Buck
The title almost says it all--except it doesn't explain that Leslie Buck was a thirty-five year old American woman serving as a tree pruning apprentice in an almost all male workplace. Adjusting to the cultural differences between being her own boss in California to taking orders from everyone on her work crew in Japan wasn't always easy. The tools were new to her so her body ached, there was no stopping work because of rain and snow, and it was a six day work week. She got through it with grim determination, a sense of humor, and a love for her art. A very enjoyable account.
I received Free advance review copy.

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

This week's story:  The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick
This was published in  Science Fiction Stories 1953 and is now free on Project Gutenberg. It is a tongue-in-cheek account of an odd group of alien life forms. The first sentence: "It was quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven’t done anything about it; I can’t think of anything to do. I wrote to the Government, and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses."
Quite short and fun to read. Hard to say more without spoiling.



This week's card: Ace of Diamonds. This one is part the Odd Bods deck from Art of Play. "When they first appeared in 2012 for the exclusive enjoyment of members of the prestigious Folio Society, the design world fell in love. Odd Bods were playful, charming, elegant, and above all else, a joy for the eyes."
This woman on the ace catches the whimsical spirit of Dick's story, but a scroll through the samples provided by Art of Play brings up the Ten of Spades, which better illustrates the story.



The Faithful Soldier, Prompted by Saladin Ahmed
Much of the pleasure of the Deal Me In short story challenge is discovering what others are reading. I read this story because of a brief review by participant Katherine at The Writerly Reader.

August (first half) 2016 Reads

Starting off August by trying to finish several in my "currently reading" list :

Rock, Paper, Scissors ; Aidt, Naja Marie    on page 109
What If the Queen Should Die? ; Flintoff, John-Paul  on page 131
The North Water ; McGuire, Ian  on page 56

I'm enjoying all of these, can't decide which to finish first, page numbers are as of 8am EDT, Aug 1.

10pm, Aug 1
Finished  What If the Queen Should Die? I enjoyed this historical novel--The Queen in the title is Queen Anne of England, Scotland and Ireland. The main protagonist is the writer Daniel Defoe acting as a spy for the Earl of Oxford during the Court intrigue over the line of succession.
My copy. Note: I am a contributor to this crowd sourced book, published by Unbound

I also read a few more stories in St. Louis Noir, an anthology I won on Library Thing. I started reading it in mid July.

5pm, Aug 2
Finished The North Water  It's not very good. I won a this ARC on Goodreads.

3pm, Aug 5
Needed something light after the gruesome whaling adventure. What better than an informative book on what goes into making bread in France: Bread of Three Rivers: The Story of a French Loaf  by Sara Mansfield Taber. My copy (picked up for a dime at a college book sale).

Aug 6
The Best Plays of 2014 (Best Plays of Year) by Lawrence Harbison (Editor)
Library book.
I read three of the six plays:
The Country House, by Donald Margulies. This was ok, but theater pieces about theater people just don't excite me.
Dinner with the Boys, by Dan Lauria. I liked this dark comedy about a most interesting dinner party. Of the plays in this collection, this is the one I'd most like to see performed.
Our Lady of Kibeho by Katori Hall. Based on real events, this is about schoolgirls in Rawanda having visions of Mary. This one made me head to the Web to find out more about the event.

The other three plays are:
Mala Hierba by Tanya Saracho, inspired by Latin American culture. I may get the book again to read this one.
When January Feels Like Summer by Cori Thomas, set in Central Harlem. Not interested in this
Year of the Rooster by Eric Dufault. A comic play about cockfighting, connections, and clawing your way to the top. I don't think I want to ever read this.

Aug 7
Finished  St. Louis Noir  edited by Scott Phillips
I like this series from Akashic books. This one is pretty good with a mix of people--some skin-head vigilantes along with drug dealers, whores, ex-cons, guys evening scores and the other usual suspects . A couple of the stories are a bit self-conscious in trying to make sure people familiar with St Louis know for sure that the story is really set there. Too many street names--that sort of thing. Overall the anthology is quite good with thirteen stories with an interesting "poetic interlude" in the middle. There is also a map which is helpful.
Contents (I highlighted my favorites):
Introduction / Scott Phillips -- Part I: The city. Abandoned places / S.L. Coney -- Deserted cities of the heart / Paul D. Marks -- Blues for the River City / Colleen J. McElroy -- Fool's luck / La Velle Wilkins-Chin -- Attrition / Calvin Wilson -- Tracks / Jason Makansi -- Part II: A poetic interlude. Four St. Louis poems / Michael Castro -- Part III: The county. A paler shade of death / Laura Benedict -- Have you seen me? / Jedidiah Ayres -- A St. Louis Christmas / Umar Lee -- The pillbox / Chris Barsanti -- The brick wall / Lohn Lutz -- Part IV: Across the river. Tell them your name is Barbara / L.J. Smith -- One little Goddamn thing / Scott Phillips.
Free from publisher through LibraryThing

Aug 9
Finished Umami by Laia Jufresa, Sophie Hughes (Translation)
The stories of five people living in an apartment court in Mexico City. What they remember, how they interact with one another and with their families. They face loss, coming of age, love, dislocation, and family problems. It's all told with an underlying empathy. The language is wonderful--the translator must have quite a time with the word play created by one character who makes up names for "new" colors.  I loved this one. Free copy from publisher through LibraryThing.

Aug 10
Finished   Rock, Paper, Scissors by Naja Marie Aidt, K.E. Semmel (Translation)
Good story, some parts moved too slowly, slap in the face ending.  My copy.  

Just for fun I read Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy by Doug Savage
This was a fun comic--a bit of a send-up of super hero comics. Free from publisher 

Aug 12
Finished a nonfiction book. The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland
by Dan Barry. Exploitation and mistreatment of intellectually impaired men.  Library book.

Aug 15
Finished You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice by Tom Vanderbilt
Nothing to see here, Folks.  Library book.

February (first half) 2016 Reads

Oh boy! Seventeen books in fourteen days? Not exactly--some were holdovers from last month and a couple were not very long. Also it's been less than ideal weather for going out. Brrr. And today my internet/tv/phone was out for twelve hours. So reading was the way to spend the day.

Still it was a lot of reading, most of it excellent or very good. Three were so-so, one was pretty much a dud, and one went back to the library unread.

Finished the Hašek (a holdover from January),  made some progress on The Art of Flight by Sergio Pitol, and dipped in my "owned but unread" pile for five (it didn't make much of a dent as I rec'd five more books in the mail). Also read some good new books from the library (but sent The Portable Vleban back without finishing--just not my cuppa).



The Good Soldier Švejk; Hašek, Jaroslav; Cecil Parrot (Translator), Josef Lada (Illustrations)
The absurdities of the military during wartime. A thoroughly satisfying read. The book that inspired Joseph Heller's Catch-22
Library Book

Cover art: Josef Lada




The Vegetarian; Kang, Han; Deborah Smith (Translator)
Frighteningly beautiful. A young woman's descent into madness as viewed by her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister. I'm glad it is only 188 pages because I had a hard time putting it down. Library book

Jacket design: Christopher Brand
Jacket photo: 100 / Moment/ Getty Images

Unspeakable Things; Spivack, Kathleen
Spivack dares to speak about the terrible things people do to one another. The telling is sometimes poetic, sometimes mythic, and often uncomfortably graphic and realistic. Hard material but well worth reading. Library book.







The Swans of Fifth Avenue; Benjamin, Melanie
Gossipy, bitchy, delightful fictional account of Truman Capote, Babe Paley, and their crowd. Library book.

Jacket design: Belina Huey
Jacket photo: Lillian Bassman, 1956







The Pets; Ólafsson, Bragi; Janice Balfour (Translator)
Very funny tale about a man sort of trapped under his own bed whilst an odd group of friends, acquaintances  and strangers have a sort of party in his flat. My copy.

Cover design: Milan Bozic


 
The Age of Doubt (Commissario Montalbano #14); Camilleri, Andrea; Stephen Sartarelli (Translator)
Camilleri is fun to read. Interesting plots, limited violence, a touch of romance, and food! My, my Inspector Montalbano eats well. He also manages to tell white lies in awkward situations--reminds me of the Judi Dench role in the Britcom As Time Goes By. My own copy, picked up at a library friends' sale.

Cover design: Paul Buckley Interesting Q & A with Paul Buckley, Penguin US  at The Casual Optimist
Cover illustration: Andy Bridge





New Islands And Other Stories; Bombal, María Luisa; Richard and Lucia Cunningham (Translators)
Five short stories about women. Magical realism. My copy.






 

Baboon; Aidt, Naja Marie; Denise Newman (Translation)
Strange (but good) short stories. Most start out as normal vignettes of everyday life--but then things happen. My copy.

Cover design: Gabriele Wilson

A Meal in Winter; Mingarelli, Hubert; Sam Taylor (Translator)
Three German soldiers face a war time choice. A difficult, disturbing tale told in simple, direct language. My copy.










Dreams of Dreams and the Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa ; Tabucchi, Antonio;  Nancy J. Peters (Translator)
My reading of  The Art of Flight by Sergio Pitol led me to Tabucchi. Pitol discusses a different Tabucchi book (Pereira Declares) but I decided to start with this one. It's delightful! Tabucchi creates dreams for twenty great minds (writers, artists, etc.).  Highly recommended.

Cover design: Rex Ray






35 Sonnets; Pessoa, Fernando 
Written in English, self-published by Pessoa in 1918.
In the Shakespearean style. Worth reading & studying. Read on Project Gutenberg.



 


Pereira Declares: A Testimony; Tabucchi, Antonio; Patrick Creagh (Translator)
Politics in Salazar's Portugal. Library book.










Ginny Gall; Smith, Charlie
Growing up black in Jim Crow America.  Lovely, poetic writing. Makes me want to read more by this author. Library book.








Also read:

Where My Heart Used to Beat; Faulks, Sebastian
Kinda boring with some brilliant passages. Middle age Englishman remembering his career, his war, his life...When I can set a book aside in the middle of a sentence to go get a snack, the book isn't holding my interest. Library book.

Identity (Fina Ludlow #2); Thoft, Ingrid
Fina is a private detective working for her father's law firm. The case she is working on involves a woman who wants to sue a sperm bank to learn the identity of donor who is father to her seventeen year old daughter. There are lots of complications. The basic story is good, but at times it moves a little slowly. I didn't read the first Fina book, and I probably won't read the next. Advance Review Copy.

Slave and Sister; Waldfogel, Sabra
Jewish plantation owners and their slaves in Georgia. Interesting premise, characters and situations. Drags a bit in the middle. Wavered between two and three Goodreads stars, finally gave it three. My copy from blog win.

One More Day; Simmons, Kelly
I jumped all over the place--skipping sections, reading the end after I'd read about a third of the book, annoyed because of the paranormal elements, the teases about secrets, the uneven pace, etc. I think I actually read the whole thing. Generous with my stars (two).  Library book.