March 2021

Now that I'm fully vaccinated I've resumed some activities but I'm still sticking to essentials. Next month I'll have a dental check-up and resume my mahjong games. Also can do more as my housemate will also be vaccinated. I read plenty this week--lots of library books plus one off my "owned-but-unread" shelves. Once again I think I added more to the latter than I read...

Activities:

3/1   Library to pick up holds and browse! Yes, I went inside but only for about 5 minutes. 

3/4   Library (book drop only); JC Farms: Lyman Orchards 

3/10 Lab Work

3/11 CVS Cromwell

3/12 Eye Dr 

3/15 DR; Library; gas

3/16 Tree removal. I didn't leave home for this (other than moving the cars to neighbor's driveway) but I did have to interact with tree guy who was probably not vaccinated.

3/24  Library pick up & browse; Durham Dari-serv

3/24  Took E to Uconn (Munson) for 1st dose vaccine; Neil's Donuts

Reading:

 

Fiction (roughly in the order I liked them but The Rib King was the only real disappointment among the fiction):

Dear Child by Hausmann, Romy; translated from the German by Bulloch, Jamie
Lost Girls: Short Stories by Morris, Ellen Birkett 

 A fine collection.

Elemental International short stories by various authors and translators (my copy)
The Caretaker by Arbus, Doon
Indelicacy by Cain, Amina

Mona and Other Tales by Arenas, Reinaldo; translated from the Spanish bt Koch, Dolores M.
The Bass Rock by Wyld, Evie
Inheritance from Mother by Mizumura, Minae; translated from the Japanese by Carpenter, Juliet Winters
The Glorious Ones by Prose, Francine 

Archipelago by Roffey, Monique

The Last Garden in England by Kelly, Julia
The Rib King by Hubbard, Ladee

  Started out fine but bogged down...I admit to a bit of skimming...

 

Nonfiction (three good, one meh, and a bomb):

Finding Dora Maar: An Artist, an Address Book, a Life by Benkemoun, Brigitte; translated from the French by Gladding, Jody
The Chiffon Trenches by Talley, André Leon
A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America's First All-Black High School Rowing Team by Cooper, Arshay

The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Shah, Sonia 

  this was kind of disjointed and, not exactly to the point (of the title), wish I hadn't bothered..

Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Knighton, Conor 

  Too much "I" more a memoir than a travelogue, he tried to give a thematic presentation but ended up just wandering. His skipping all over the place made me want to do the same with his book.  Didn't make me want to visit any park I haven't already visited (and some that I have visited were barely recognizable). 

 

Online:

 I somehow stumbled onto to the site Olive Oil Times which has a lot of good stuff of interest to the industry and the consumer, see:  Remains of 2,500-Year-Old Mill Discovered in Italy  and Volunteers in Italy and Spain to Track Spittlebug Activity both by Paolo DeAndreis. In addition to news there are producer profiles, health info, and a bunch of recipes.

 

Paolo DeAndreis

Paolo DeAndreis

The Mystery of New England's Gray Corned Beef  by Anne Ewbank

 I was wondering about this as we ate our boxed take-out St Pat's dinner.

Yaupon: The rebirth of America's forgotten tea by Matt Stirn

 Humm..wonder is this stuff will grow in Connecticut...according to the USDA apparently not...see  Plant Guide: Yaupon and Plants profile: Ilex vomitoria Aiton yaupon and Willis Orchard Company: Yaupon Holly Tree

 

Iceburger No, not some crazy frozen dessert. This is an oddly compelling site that lets you create an iceberg an see how it floats. 

How Cats Walk In case you were wondering...

10 Incredible Women of Route 66 by Candacy Taylor (Moon Travel Guides). Interesting sidelights for a road-trip. A couple of the links are broken but easily found by Googling. The hotel in Winslow, AZ is where I want to stay if I ever go to the area again. (We stayed at a Holiday Inn in Williams on our cross country trip in 2001.)

Evolution of the House Plan in Europe: from the Industrial Revolution to the Interwar Period

 by Hana Abdel & Christele Harrouk

February 2021

More isolation, more (mostly good) reading, and a reaction to second covid shot. Such an exciting life!

 

Activities:

2/4    Gas; Neil's Donuts; Ace Hardware

2/11  Library (curbside pickup); Lyman Orchards (breakfast fruit & other essentials)

2/17  Library (curbside)

2/21  CVS

2/25  Nissan (key battery replacement); West Side Market (Rocky Hill); traffic check E.Berlin Rt 372

2/26  covid vaccine dose 2 (followed by two days of nothing but sleeping, mild aches, and light eating)

 

The reading was, as usual, all over the map both geographically and thematically.  The Passenger, set in Nazi Germany, and Pigeons on the Grass, set in Post War Munich, went nicely with Endpapers a family memoir that covers both periods and more.

 

Fiction: 

The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpí, Conquistador   

 and Founder of New Catalonia by Besora, Max  (a fun romp)

The Passenger by Boschwitz, Ulrich Alexander
Pigeons on the Grass by Koeppen, Wolfgang

The Theory of Flight by Ndlovu, Siphiwe Gloria (Zimbabwe?)
The Cat and The City by Bradley, Nick (the city here is Tokyo)
The Mission House by Davies, Carys (India)
The Last Moon Before Home (Moon Trilogy, #2) by Dzikowski, Barbara J. (USA; nice, but not necessary, to have read the first of the trilogy)

At the Edge of the Haight by Seligman, Katherine (Post hippie Golden Gate Park, these are not flower children)

The Ancestry of Objects by Ryckman, Tatiana (meh)
White Ivy by Yang, Susie (My least favorite of the month)

Nonfiction:
Uprooted: A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again by Dickey, Page (This was a nice read. In the past the garden (in northwestern Connecticut) has been open occasionally for tours. I hope they can do it again. It would make a good day trip)
Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home by Wolff, Alexander   
The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Nimura, Janice P.
 

Online:

I won't be trying this at home. I never even got past a simple paper airplane...

These impossibly detailed origami figures are made of a single piece of paper Thousands of folds. By Lilly Smith "Several months. One sheet of paper. Juho Könkkölä’s origami characters have to be seen to be believed."

 

Speaking of Neil's donuts...

Food & Wine magazine names Neil's Donuts as Connecticut's best

 

And still on the calorie laden treats theme...

I am impressed with once having a First Lady who behaves as a human (as opposed to a clueless mannequin) that I have been following Dr. Jill on Twitter. Sooo...when Dr. Jill visited a DC bakery. The Sweet Lobby I couldn't resist checking out their site. I was quite taken with their boozy Cocktail Cupcake Menu. I shared this find with my housemate and she countered with a local source of treats -- Nora Cupcake Company -- which offers several cupcakes featuring boozy additives. So we spent a pleasant few minutes at our laptops in a sort of Cupcake War, reading delicious descriptions to each other.

Best Places to Visit in Europe (according to USNews)

I love lists like this one. They open up memories of places I've been to and dreams of places I'd like to go. It's a good list of 25 places, 16 of which I've visited.

November 2020

Activities:

 

Not much outside the house.

11/5 doctor 

11/16 lab; gassed car

11/24 pickup at libraries (2); jc farms for pie!

Books:

 Some good novels and lots of non-fiction this month.

Fiction:
Lovely War by Berry, Julie
Jean-Luc persécuté by Ramuz, Charles-Ferdinand; translated from the French by Baes, Olivia
How to Stop Time by Haig, Matt
Autopsy of a Father by Kramer, Pascale; translated from the French by Bononno, Robert
The Midnight Library by Haig, Matt
Forty Rooms by Grushin, Olga 

Poetry:

The Golden Goblet: Selected Poems of Goethe by Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von; translated from the German by Ozsváth, Zsuzsanna and Turner, Frederick  

Nonfiction: 
The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War by Nasaw, David
For the Love of Music: The Art of Listening by Mauceri, John
The Simpsons: A Cultural History by Fink, Moritz
A Promised Land by Obama, Barack 

Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Slaght, Jonathan C.
Music to Eat Cake By: Essays on Birds, Words and Everything in Between by Parikian, Lev

The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Harris, Kamala

Online:

Sabine Meyer

 While reading For the Love of Music and Music to Eat Cake By I wondered why I was reading about music but not listening to music?  So I put the books aside and went searching for music, specifically Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. As a result I've spent a least an hour a day on YouTube listening to Sabine Meyer play. Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms,....

Sublime Swimming: 14 examples of custom pools by María Francisca González

  I sure do miss my swims ... sigh...

Wagenhallen Stuttgart Cultural Center ArchDaily article

Wagenhallen official site

 a part of Stuttgart I've never seen (because it was something else when I lived in Germany)

June 2020

 Books in the Time of Quarantine

Durham, Connecticut, June 2020

Even though the state is slowly reopening I continue, because of my age, to self quarantine. It's been warm and humid so I haven't been getting much exercise. Outings have been limited in June. Two for library curbside pickup which I combined with a trip to a farm market. Another was also a produce run combined with a stop at a fish market. Then, on the most comfortable day weather wise, we had a picnic!

Reading:

Lots of good books this month...

On Lighthouses by Barrera, Jazmina; translated from the Spanish by MacSweeney, Christina - 3 stars
I enjoyed these essays but this didn't give me much that was new to me.

Gathering of Waters by McFadden, Bernice L. - 4 stars
I liked this a lot but not as much as her The Book of Harlan which I read in 2016. I think when interlibrary loan opens up I'll be reading more of her work. I also enjoy following her tweets. 

b, Book, and Me by Kim Sagwa; translated from the Korean by Sunhee Jeong  - 4+ stars
A kind of  "almost coming of age story." It's worth a re-read.

Big Machine by LaValle, Victor - 5 stars
The Craft Is All the Same: A Conversation with Victor LaValle; Ayize Jama-Everett interviews Victor LaValle. Another author to add to my list of writers to read.

Conjure Women by Atakora, Afia - 5 stars
A Conversation with Afia Atakora, Author of Conjure Women

Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions (Auntie Poldi #1) by Giordano, Mario; translated from the German  by Brownjohn, John - 4 stars
Fun, but not sure about following the series...

Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Washburn, Kawai Strong - 5 stars
How Kawai Strong Washburn Opened Up the Legends of Hawaii for Mainlanders author interview with Anderson Tepper (Vanity Fair)

The Man in the Red Coat by Barnes, Julian - 4 stars
Dr Samuel Jean Pozzi was the man in the portrait but this gossipy book is about so much more...

Berkeley Noir edited by Thompson, Jerry -  4 stars
One of the better anthologies in the Akashic Noir series.

Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River by Jung, Young-moon: translated from the Korean by Jung Yewon  - 4 stars
Korean writer Texas culture.

Online: 

Rayuela by Hugo Passarello Luna
"This is a series of portraits, taken in Paris, of friends and readers of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Depicting Writing
This was a double treat: a fine, nicely illustrated essay AND my discovery of The Crews Project! Thanks to The Literary Saloon (29 June 2020 blog) for leading me there.

Whonamedit? - A dictionary of medical eponyms
I found this when I was looking for more information about Dr. Pozzi. (See The Man in the Red Coat in my reading list above.)

New World Writing
I'm finding lots to like at this lit magazine.

Transformations
A new online site featuring narrative essays.

Breaching the Levee of Rage
A moving piece on taking a knee at a peaceful George Floyd protest/vigil. By David Abrams.

Joie de Vivre in Joyce's Garden
Another private garden tour by Jana Milbocker. This one, in Natick Massachusetts, is especially colorful.

Providence Pedestrian Bridge
A place I want to visit when I'm ready to expand my circle of comfort...

Collecting Guide: Wayne Thiebaud
Thiebaud turns 100 in November! That calls for cake and ice cream!

Cake Rows (1962)

 

Three Cones (1964)

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)
 

June 2019 Reading

An enjoyable bunch of books this month, only a couple I didn't much like. Only online reading was the Ibsen play.

Fiction 
Exposed; Blondel, Jean-Philippe; translated from the French by Anderson, Alison *****
City of Jasmine; Grjasnowa, Olga; translated from the German by Derbyshire, Katy***** (advance review copy through LibraryThing)
77; Saccomanno, Guillermo: translated from the Spanish by Labinger, Andrea G. *****

A Brightness Long Ago; Kay, Guy Gavriel ****
The Porpoise; Haddon, Mark ****

Lifelines; Diehl, Heidi **** (advance review copy through Goodreads)

Southernmost; House, Silas ***
The Spies of Shilling Lane; Ryan, Jennifer ***
The Electric Hotel; Smith, Dominic ***
All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother; Teller, Danielle ***

Mistress of the Ritz; Benjamin, Melanie **

Short Stories
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories; Rubin, Jay, editor*****

Orange World and Other Stories; Russell, Karen *

Play
The Lady from the Sea; Ibsen, Henrik ****  (on Project Gutenberg)


Nonfiction
Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler; Olson, Lynne ****
1941: The Year Germany Lost the War; Nagorski, Andrew ****
A Foodie's Guide to Tuscany: Places, Flavours, Itineraries, Must Do for the Epicurian Explorer ; 20 Fabulous Recipes; Lepore, Gabriella **   (Kindle freebie)

All Over the Map

Six books in the second fourteen days of the year. Excellent reading and mapping them was fun. Last year's World of Reading map has no markers in Africa and the 2019 map already has three!

All of these were from my "owned-but-unread" shelf. The last two on the list were Christmas presents. 🎁

Sydney Noir edited by John Dale
This is one of the Akashic Noir Series so there is a map showing the fourteen sections of Sydney where the crimes are committed. Review Copy through LibraryThing giveaway

Adua by Igiaba Scego; translated from the Italian by Jamie Richards
This story of a Somalian emigrant takes place in Rome with flashbacks set in Somalia and Ethiopia.
   
Gesell Dome by Guillermo Saccomanno; Translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger
Only one place in this one--a small, corrupt, Argentine resort town.
   
The Elusive Moth by Ingrid Winterbach; Translated from the Afrikaans by Iris Gouws
Set in the Free State Province of South Africa

🎁The Flying Mountain by Christoph Ransmayr; Translated from the German by Simon Pare
The author is Austrian, the story is set in Ireland and Tibet.
   
🎁The Sad Part Was by Prabda Yoon; Translated from the Thai by Mui Poopoksakul
Short stories set in modern Thailand.

Fourteen days, fourteen books?

I set my Goodreads goal at 200 books--the same as last year even though I didn't meet it last year. Today it shows that I have already read 14 books this year. That's a book a day, right? Uh, not quite. Three of these are ones I started before the year started; two of the nonfiction ones were highly pictorial; and one of the novels (by McGregor) was short with lots of white space.

All of this was good reading with the exception of the disappointing Italian food one (some of the pictures were good).


Short Stories:
The Future Is Not Ours: New Latin American Fiction by Diego Trelles Paz (Editor), Janet Hendrickson (Translator) I've been reading this anthology off and on for a couple of years.
Vertical Motion by Can Xue; Karen Gernant (Translator), Chen Zeping (Translator) I started this one in December 2018
Florida by Lauren Groff

Poetry:
Whipperginny by Robert Graves
New Hampshire--A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes by Robert Frost
Read both of these on Project Gutenberg

Fiction:
Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl by Uwe Johnson; Damion Searls (translator)  This is over 1650 pages long--I started it in October 2018
She Would Be King by Wayetu Moore
Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon
The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor
Disoriental by Négar Djavadi; Tina Kover (Translator)
Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller

Nonfiction:
The Push: A Climber's Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits by Tommy Caldwell
Why did I read a book about rock climbing? Because it was reviewed on that curious wrapping paper I received a couple of weeks ago. (That wrapping paper may have been the last thing I read in 2018.)
Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture by Matt Goulding
Actually this wasn't especially deep.
City Farmhouse Style: Designs for a Modern Country Life by Kim Leggett
I really enjoyed the pictures, but my farmhouse will never classify as a city one.

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. 

July (third week) 2018 Reads & Day Trips

Beautiful weather for outings this week.
Wednesday - Picnic & Swim - Chatfield Hollow State Park, Killingworth CT
  Followed by ice cream at HK Dairy Barn, 986 Killingworth Rd (Rt 81), Higganum, CT
Friday - Picnic - Indian Well State Park, Shelton, CT Sandwiches from See More Sandwich Shoppe, 130 New Haven Road (Rt 67), Seymour, Ct. 
 Ice cream later at Whittemore Ice Cream, 114 So. Main (Rt. 115), Seymour, Ct.
Saturday - Lunch and walk at Lavender Pond Farm, Killingworth, CT.

Also, a good reading week...
  but not for writing...
This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Ten of Hearts; the selection is Strava by Steven Hayward (in Watchlist: 32 Short Stories by Persons of Interest).

from the library...

A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas; translated from the Hungarian by Ivan Sanders and Imre Goldstein

The Hare by César Aira; translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor


An Invisible Country by Stephan Wackwitz; translated from the German by Stephen Lehmann

from my shelves...
  
The Best of Adam Sharp by Graeme Simsion
Advance review copy. I choose not to review.

July (first week) Reads

No day trips during the beastly heat wave--just a quick trip to the library.

This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Three of Diamonds; the story is De Amicitia (in Orientations by W Somerset Maugham)

Online... 

The Guardian's Poem of the week: Typewriter by Matthew Francis 
Loved the poem; the commentary (by Carol Rumens) following was OK even if it did remind me of those dreary lit classes where we picked at a writing until it was completely dead. 

'My daring grandfather took a bit of East Berlin for himself' by Elaine Chong
The story of  the Treehouse on the Wall, das Baumhaus an der Mauer.

from Project Gutenberg... 


Cliff Dwellings of the Mesa Verde by Don Watson
Published in 1954 by the Mesa Verde Museum Association, Mesa Verde National Park. Colorado
Many photographs. I think I used this as a source for one of my junior high term papers.




from the library...

Fire and Knowledge: Fiction and Essays by Péter Nádas; translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein

 from my shelves... 

Just Call Me Superhero by Alina Bronsky; translated from the German by Tim Mohr 

Lion Cross Point by Masatsugu Ono; translated from the Japanese by Angus Turvill 

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina García

June (second week) 2018 Reads & Day Trips

There was lots of meandering this week:
   Sunday drive - This time in Fairfield County, CT. with lunch Easton Village Store and ice cream at Holy Cow in Newtown.
   Wednesday picnic - Harkness Memorial State Park, Waterford, CT. A gorgeous day to view Long Island Sound and the islands. Did not tour the house, it's open on weekends only.
   Thursday Shopping - three specialty food markets.
      The Olive Bazaar in Berlin, CT - Middle Eastern specialties, halal meats, fresh produce & bakery,  frozen ingredients and entrees, dairy, bulk and packaged staples, lots of special treats. Clean and roomy, a fun place to shop. Owners very helpful and friendly.
      Asia Grocers in Cromwell, CT - large, clean, well stocked with a beautiful produce section. Plenty of Asian foods (mostly Indian). The most "supermarket-like" place of the three.
      Euro Grocery, Rocky Hill, CT - Mostly Greek, but they do have some other European foods. A small shop with a good cheese selection.
  Friday Picnic - This time by the Connecticut River at Haddam Meadows State Park, Haddam, CT
  Saturday Picnic - Picked up picnic stuff at Highland Park Market in Farmington and drove to Topsmead State Forest, Litchfield, CT for picnic and house tour.

There was also a library trip in there somewhere, Wednesday? No, it was Thursday. Picked up 5 books I had requested + 5 from browsing. 

The reading this week...

This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Four of Spades; the selection is Together With Chicken by Jung Young Moon; translated from the Korean by Jung Yewon (in A Most Ambiguous Sunday, and Other Stories)
I'm enjoying these offbeat stories.

online... 
What better reading for our day trip season than this?  An Illustrated History of the Picnic Table by Martin Hogue. 

I've been exploring the first issue of Panel Magazine. This Budapest based magazine looks promising.

I love this house! One of my recent enthusiasms is looking at houses with indoor swimming pools. This pool isn't exactly indoor, but then it's not exactly outdoor either.

Issue 52 of The Quarterly Conversation is full of good stuff: Emma Ramadan on being a translator;  Chad Post makes me want read a 640 page book I would never have considered if I hadn't read his review of Lost Empress* by Sergio de la Pava; and J. Daniel Elam reviews Alan Hollinghurst's The Sparsholt Affair makes me so glad I read the book. I'm hesitant to read more of this issue--my TBR list is already so long....
*am delighted to find I can get this at my local library.

Speaking of Chad Post, The Reykjavík Grapevine has a good post about Chad's Open Letter Books.
Ten Years in Translation: US Publisher Of Icelandic Fiction Open Letter Books Fills A Decade

I spent a lot of time browsing at The Reykjavík Grapevine, which bills itself as "Your essential guide to life, travel and entertainment in Iceland." 

from the library...

The People in the Photo by Hélène Gestern; translated from the French by Emily Boyce and Ros Schwartz. A fun read.

Black Vodka: Ten Stories by Deborah Levy 
Can't go wrong with Levy.

from my shelves...

The Tidings of the Trees by Wolfgang Hilbig; translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole

April (first week) 2018 Reads

This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Two of Diamonds; the story is Old Man Savarin (on Project Gutenberg in Old Man Savarin and Other Stories, by Edward William Thomson)
A fun story about fishing rights in Canada. Difficult to read because of the dialect.


online...
This Spanish Architect Wants to Revolutionize the Home—by Getting Rid of Kitchens by Samuel Medina"Few spaces of the home are as coveted as the kitchen. But Anna Puigjaner is showing the way out of these wasteful private cooking boxes toward more efficient “shared” alternatives."

from the library...


The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse by Hermann Hesse; Translated from the German by Jack D. Zipes; Illustrated by David Frampton (Illustrator) 








from my shelves...

The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov; translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
I've been reading this as part of Season Four of the Two Month Review
A great read and I really enjoyed the podcasts and essays on the Three Percent blog.









Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones
An excellent collection of short stories of African Americans in Washington, D.C. 
 

 

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).

November (fourth week) 2017 Reads

This week was a mixed bag of short stories, non-fiction, a mystery, and not much time for making notes on the books and uploading cover images. I'm really surprised that I've been pretty faithful with the Deal Me In challenge.
A lot of my reading this week had to do with places I've been.

Deal Me In

Story: The Boar-Pig (in  Beasts and Super-Beasts by Saki)
A short piece involving party crashers, a mischievous girl, and a ferocious beast. This is a gentle story, not one of Saki's macabre pieces.






Card: Ten of Diamonds.
This card from Roy at Deviant Art has nothing to do with the story. I just thought it was a fun design.








from the library....
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware (Kindle edition)


from my shelves...
Conversations on Art and Aesthetics by Hans Maes
One of my better wins. This is a keeper. 
free finished copy from publisher through Goodreads

Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky by Bryan Karetnyk (Editor/Translator)
Super anthology. 

Old Rendering Plant  by Wolfgang Hilbig: translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole
Not crazy about this one.

Three Stones Make a Wall: The Story of Archaeology by Eric H Cline, Glynnis Fawkes (Illustrator) (Kindle ed)
Kind of a refresher course for me. Read it mostly to get updated on recent stuff.

  

The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader by Lawrence Durrell, Clint Willis (Editor) (Kindle ed)
And this was a bit of a trip down memory lane.

San Francisco Noir by Peter Maravelis (Editor) (Kindle ed)
I've read a bunch of these anthologies in the Akashic Noir series and this is my least favorite. I really didn't much like any of the stories.
Stories by  Domenic Stansberry, Barry Gifford, Eddie Muller, Robert Mailer Anderson, Michelle Tea, Peter Plate, Kate Braverman , David Corbet , Alejandro Murguía, Sin Soracco , Alvin Lu, Jon Longhi, Will Christopher Baer, Jim Nesbit, David Henry Sterry.

Ccaspian Rain by Gina B. Nahai (Kindle ed)
A tragic story of a Jewish family in Tehran immediately preceding the 1979 Revolution. I really liked this. 

Return to Dust (Rick Van Lam Mystery #2) by Andrew Lanh 
Set in Farmington, Connecticut with a Vietnamese-American private investigator. An ok read with nice local color.

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.

July (third week) 2017 Reads

Not much to add to the reading log this week. Continued with the slow read of  Rodrigo Fresán's The Invented Part with Chad Post's Two Month Review  by reading  "Meanwhile, Once Again, Beside the Museum Stairway, Under a Big Sky" (The Invented Part, Pages 405-440). Also reading Chad's comments and listening to the podcast about this section. And, as usual, spending a lot of time Googling because Fresán has so many literary and pop culture references. I'm lovin' it.
Next week will be the final section. The next slow read is Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith. My copy arrived in the mail on Monday.

This week...

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

Story:   Collection by Camille Meyer (flash fictions)
There are eight very short, interrelated stories in this collection. They read a bit like primitive attempts to explain how giants came to Earth or, perhaps, little stories made up by an older child trying to entertain a younger sibling. Or maybe those stories that develop from a party game in which one person says the first sentence and then each person in the circle adds to it. The results can be an interesting, but not very cohesive, story.

At Big Bridge, "a webzine of poetry and everything else...."  Fun to explore.



Card: Eight of Clubs from Demon Deck by Ukrainian artist Egor Klyuchnyk. I'm not sure that I'm seeing what was intended here, but this looks a bit like shrubbery and that fits the story because plants play an important part in the giant's adventures.








online...


Cartoons magazine. v.10:pt.2 (1916). Linen Islands Sea by Helena Smith-Dayton 
A light commentary on the dining habits and conversation circa 1916.
Smith-Dayton is particularly amused by the gentlemen.

I found this because of a comment  Katherine Nabity made on my post last week. I had a lot of fun with this and ended up reading more than the article  relevant to Katherine's comment. 

The "Cartoons" of the magazine title is used in the "political cartoon" sense--there are a lot of political articles and a lot of European war news and commentary. This was before the USA entered the war.



An Entire Family Disappears by Gunnhild Øyehaug; Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson
Another excerpt from the story collection Knots. (I also read one of these last week.)

Three Principles of Architecture as Revealed by Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities'  by Osman Bari

These next two pieces discuss  Lima-based architect Karina Puente's  project to illustrate each and every "invisible" city from Italo Calvino's 1972 novel.
Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities', Illustrated  by James Taylor-Foster (6 images)
Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities', Illustrated (Again)   by AD Editorial Team (16 images)



This Drone Video Captures the Mesmerizing Geometries of The World's Most Vertical City  by AD Editorial Team
Presentation of an eight minute film from architect Mariana Bisti exploring Hong Kong by drone videography. "Not limited to vantage points accessible to humans, the video zooms and pans deliberately over, across and into the city’s enormous residential blocks..."


Seven Questions for Lytton Smith on Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson
Scott Esposito interviews Lytton Smith. Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller is the next book we will be reading for Chad Post's Two Month Review  project.

 from my shelves...



Summer Before the Dark by Volker Weidermann; translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway.
Stefan Zweig reunites with his estranged friend Joseph Roth in Ostend, Belgium in 1936.  At the time Ostend was a quiet refuge where a group of exiles and soon to be exiles joined together in a fragile social circle. Lots of booze, affairs, and rivalries mixed in with the really serious decisions that they must make about their futures in a crumbling European society.
A must read for anyone interested in Zweig, Roth, or European culture in the interwar years.

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.