September 2020

Still staying home...

Activities outside the house:

9/2 Library curbside; JC Farms; Lyman Orchards; Lino's Deli

9/11 Lib returns; JC Farms; Lyman Orchards

9/18 JC Farms

9/22 library curbside; Gardener finally came and cleaned up tree debris from Isaias

9/24 bank (atm); gas (full serve); car maintenance  

Books Read (ratings don't seem to reflect much so I won't put them in. These are listed in reverse of order read. All were good but the Clapsaddle was my least favorite. Best is a tossup between Makumbi and NDiaye):

A Girl Is a Body of Water by Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga
Even As We Breathe by Clapsaddle, Annette Saunooke
The Cheffe: A Cook's Novel by NDiaye, Marie; translated from the French by Stump, Jordan
Bluebeard's First Wife by Ha Seong-nan; translated from the Korean by Hong, Janet
Time After Time by Grunwald, Lisa
Summer (Seasonal, #4) by Smith, Ali
Beethoven: Variations on a Life by Bonds, Mark Evan

 

Online:

Portuguese Landscapes: 12 Projects Exploring the Relationship Between Natural and Built 

 OK, this just makes me want to go back to Portugal and go for a walk.

 

A 16th-Century Portuguese Plan of a Moroccan Palace by Jonathan Bloom

 and this makes me want to read Bloom's book Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700-1800. (Yale UP, 2020)

100 Essential Books by Iranian Writers: An Introduction & Nonfiction, by Niloufar Talebi

 Introduction to a five part series which includes "Poetry, Hybrid Works, Anthologies"; "Graphic Novels, Culinary Books, & Children’s Literature"; "Classics in Translation", and "Fiction."

I've read a few of these, mostly in the fiction category. A good resource from Asian American Writers' Workshop.

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.

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?

October 2014 Reads, Post Readathon

Here is what I read in October after I crashed out of Dewey's Readathon (hey, I lasted 17 & 1/2 hours). I continued my delight in the works of Pascal Garnier and Eduardo Halfon, got a head start on German Lit Month, made a stop in Montana, and revisited Iran in two very different books set in two different eras (but both from the amazing Akashic Books).

Moon in a Dead Eye; by Pascal Garnier; Emily Boyce (Translator)

 Library book. Another fine story from Garnier. This one shows the retirement community from hell. Really rather funny in a horrible way.

In My Brother's Shadow: A Life and Death in the SS; by Uwe Timm; Anthea Bell (Translation).
 Library book. This is as much about Timm's relationship with his father as it is about his brother. Interesting look at the attitude toward the war of children who came of age during the 1950s (Timm was born in March 1940).

The High Divide by Lin Enger
 Library Book. Set in Wisconsin and Montana Territories in 1886. A man leaves his family to travel to Montana to try to seek redemption for acts committed during the Indian wars. His young sons, and later his wife, set out to find him. The library I borrowed this from labeled it "Western" which highlights the problems with genre labeling. This puts it on the shelf where a large number of users do not browse. Its appeal is much broader than one genre.

Monastery; by Eduardo Halfon, Lisa Dillman (Translation), Daniel Hahn (Translation)
 Uncorrected proof from publisher through LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. More delight from Halfon. Breif review posted on LibraryThing and Goodreads.

Tehran at Twilight; by Salar Abdoh
 Advance review copy from publisher through LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Double-dealing and intrigue in Tehran in 2008 as an Iranian/American man deals with loyalties to friends, family, and country. Brief review posted on LibraryThing and Goodreads. 

The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.; by Gina B. Nahai
 Library book. This stunning saga of Iranian Jewish refugees in Los Angeles is one of the best books I've read this year. A story of rejection, revenge, and a kind of redemption, told with passion, compassion and a lot of wit, wisdom and a touch of magical realism. I loved it. Gina Nahai is from the Iranian Jewish community of Los Angeles--her family left Tehran shortly before the Revolution when she was a teenager. Brief review posted to Goodreads and LibraryThing. Note: I am not Iranian, nor am I Jewish, but I did experience Iran in 1977-78.

Online I explored French poetry (bilingual editions), Japanese art of 1950s, and browsed some nostalgic clothing. 

A post on France Book Tours announcing a blog tour for the book Delirium: The Rimbaud Delusion; by Barbara Scott Emmett led me to search for some Rimbaud poems online. Which resulted in a great find: beautiful online excerpts from bilingual editions of French poetry from the University of Chicago Press.

Five Poems by Rimbaud; from Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition, Translated by Wallace Fowlie and revised by Seth Whidden.

Four poems, from One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine, A Bilingual Edition, Translated by Norman R. Shapiro. 

Three poems; from Selected Poems from Les Fleurs du mal, A Bilingual Edition; Charles Baudelaire, Translated by Norman R. Shapiro with engravings by David Schorr.

Four poems, from Selected Poems of Victor Hugo A Bilingual Edition, Translated by E.H. Blackmore and A.M. Blackmore.

Protest Art in 1950s Japan: The Forgotten Reportage Painters; by Linda Hoaglund with an introduction by John W. Dower.

 Essays with rich visuals. This is part of the excellent MIT Visualizing Cultures project.

Worn Stories; edited by Emily Spivack since 2010. "... a collection of stories about clothing and memory...." There is a picture for each story. There is also a place to add your own picture and story. This is a kind of a "coffee table book" web site. You can't read the whole thing at one sitting, but it's fun to browse.
The stories Spivack originally collected (not the shorter reader submissions) have been made into a book published on August 26, 2014 by Princeton Architectural Press.