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)
 

Slowing Down

Doing some very slow reading recently because:

 1. Back in October I won a lovely book from the Columbia University Press Blog
The book is Remains of Life by Wu He, translated from Chinese by Michael Berry. I started it this week and it's a slow go for me partly because it concerns an incident in Taiwanese history and my knowledge of the topic is thin. Lots of Googling necessary. Adding to that is the format of the book. A stream of consciousness novel with no sentence, paragraph, nor chapter breaks. It is well punctuated with commas, semicolons, dashes, etc. so it actually reads rather smoothly. So smoothly that I didn't actually realize it was all one sentence until about page 45 when I started looking for a place to break, turn off the light, and go to sleep. I finally stopped at a semicolon and had no trouble at all when I picked it up again the next day.

2. The current selection for Chad Post's Two Month Review is Radiant  Terminus by Antoine Volodine, translated from French by Jeffery Zukerman. (Open Letter books) I read this last spring and I'm enjoying this review.

3. When I got the forthcoming notice for Sergio Pitol's Miphisto's Waltz from Deep Vellum I was sure that the moment it arrived I would pop it out of its package and start reading. But it arrived just after I started the Taiwan novel...but I want to read this soon!

4. I also started The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan, Yuri Machkasov (Translator) at about the same time I started the Taiwan epic sentence. I figured I might read them concurrently. That's not happening.

Too much going on. I should make some progress today & tomorrow since its 5℉ (feels like -8) and there is a thin layer of snow/ice from yesterday's squall. Stay inside and read, read, read!

Online
For some breaks from all of the above there's always my daily shot from Bloglovin...which leads to some interesting reading:

Nice profile of one of three presses where I have a subscription (the other two are Open Letter and Deep Vellum)  Small Press Profile: Two Lines Press  by Liz Button

This one struck a chord taking me back to my ex-pat days...Grocery-store Nationalism

August (fourth week) 2018 Reads

Sunday drive - Explored Scoville Reservoir and Hancock Lake in Wolcott, CT. Lunch (omelets  at El Cafesito Diner, 1804 Meriden Road (Rt 844), Wolcott.
Ice cream - actually fresh peach sundae free with purchase at Rodgers Orchards, 2876 Meriden-Waterbury Turnpike (Rt 322), Southington.
Another day (I forget which day) - picnic from home at Devil's Hopyard State Park East Haddam

This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Ten of Diamonds; the selection is The She-Wolf (in  Beasts and Super-Beasts by Saki)


from the library...

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.
Sure hope I can get something else by her.

from my shelves...
Two fine novels of Dagestan:
The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva; translated from the Russian by Carol Apollonio Bride and Groom by Alisa Ganieva: translated from the Russian by Carol Apollonio

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.

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.

January (third week) 2017 Reads

Not as many entries this week as I had for the previous two weeks because I read one very long (880 page) book, did one MOOC course and half of another, and I finished all the Pushkin material I had on hand.

As much as I liked 4 3 2 1, I felt a real need to read something really different when I finished it. So I went for the delights of a foodie in Spain and a book of short stories. That's how Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain's Food Culture by Matt Goulding  and We Live in Water by Jess Walter jumped to the top of my reading stack for next week.

Finished!
 

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster
Superb! All 880 pages. Some of it was painful to read as it covers the unrest of the student and civil rights activities of the 1960's and Auster doesn't pull any punches. The structure of the book--taking one character and giving him four alternate lives to lead worked very well.
Advanced Reader Copy 




More Pushkin: (for a full list of the contents of the volumes I've been working with see my post Pushkin - Contents notes)
From: The works of Alexander Pushkin : lyrics, narrative poems, folk tales, plays, prose; selected and edited, with an introduction, by Avrahm Yarmolinsky.  (Random house, 1936)
   Kirejali (p 590-598) translated by T. Keane
  Folk Tales (p 315-329) The Tale of the Pope and of His Workman Balda, translated by Oliver Elton;  The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, translated by Babette Deutsch
  The Captain's Daughter (p 599-741) translated by Natalie Duddington
  Unfinished Stories p 745-891): The Negro of Peter the Great; Dubrovsky; Egyptian Nights, all three translated by T. Keane
  Boris Godunov (p 333-411) translated by Alfred Hayes
  Introduction  As I often do when reading classics, I read the introduction last. 

The Little Tragedies; by Alexander Pushkin; translated and with introduction and critical essays by Nancy K. Anderson.  (Yale University Press, 2008)
I originally pick this up because I wanted to read A Feast During the Plague which is not included in the Random House edition (above). However, after finishing the entire Random House book, I decided to read more in this volume to see how a different translator worked with the material. The opening essay The Little Tragedies in English: an Approach addresses this question and was an informative discussion. As to the plays themselves, at times I preferred this 2008 translation over Keane's 1936 translation, although in a few places I felt hers was a bit too modern. I'm glad I read both.
Her critical essays really added to my appreciation of the plays. I'm glad I went to the trouble of tracking down a copy of her book.




Auditing another online course Visualizing Japan (1850s-1930s): Westernization, Protest, Modernity 
This one is self-paced and I tried to avoid going too fast, but it was so interesting that I finished it in a week. It is part of a series so I moved on to Visualizing Postwar Tokyo, Part 1. I'm not moving as fast on this one, but I'm finding the material fascinating.

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

This week's story: Fish Spine by Santiago Nazarian
(in The Future Is Not Ours: New Latin American Fiction)
In this story  a young man who helps his parents in the market. tries to wash the smell of fish from his hands before spending an evening with his friends.



Online

This week's card for  “Deal Me In 2017!” is the Ace of Spades. I thought in honor of the story's setting I would try to find a Brazilian card. I found a brief illustrated essay on Playing Cards in Brazil one of their examples is this scenic Ace of Spades made by Azevedo, Recife, Brazil, c.1925.

This is part of a large web site, The World of Playing Cards, which has information on all kinds of cards and card collecting. They also sell cards.

13 of the Most Fascinating Public Sculptures This is from Architectural Digest and I'm not posting a picture--but they really are fascinating!

January (second week) 2017 Reads

Snow, snow, snow
Read, read, read
Eat, eat, eat
Sleep, sleep, sleep
Sun, sun, sun
Read!

This week I finished another of my Christmas gift books, almost finished a second one, continued with Pushkin, and did a lot of online reading. (I found some fun things, much of it through blogs I follow.) I also started a real chunkster--4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster, which weighs in at 880 pages (and this is a paperback ARC). Haven't read very far, but am liking it. 

The gift I finished:
Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories; Robert Walser, Tom Whalen (Translator) (Kindle ed)
Very short stories and sketches (flash fiction?): little nibbles, each a delight to savor and digest.These little morsels are not to be gobbled up, there is a lot of wordplay, gentle satire, sarcasm, and subtlety that requires more than casual reading. To quote Walser himself "To treat food attentively enhances its value"  (in Something About Eating).

The translator's Afterword is more like a full meal. It is an informative essay with biographical material, a discussion of Walser's critics, comments on the challenges of translation, and more. The book concludes with a comprehensive list of Walser's works available in English translation.



The gift I almost finished:
Long Belts and Thin Men: The Postwar Stories of Kojima Nobuo; Nobuo Kojima, Lawrence Rogers (Translation)
American Occupied Japan is one of my favorite areas of reading, so this is a book I'm really enjoying. I've read all but one of the stories. Since I put that story on my Deal Me In 2017 Roster I won't be finishing the book until I pull the six of spades.

More Pushkin: (for a full list of the contents of the volumes I've been working with see my post

Pushkin - Contents notes

From: The works of Alexander Pushkin : lyrics, narrative poems, folk tales, plays, prose; selected and edited, with an introduction, by Avrahm Yarmolinsky.  (Random house, 1936)

  The Covetous Knight (play, p 412-427) translated by A.F.B. Clark
  Lyric Poems and Ballads, (p 50-90) various translators (an oopsie here because I got carried away with reading and ended up reading something from my Deal Me In Roster)
  Eugene Onegin (p 111-311) translated by Babette Deutsch

From: The Little Tragedies; by Alexander Pushkin; translated and with introduction and critical essays by Nancy K. Anderson.  (Yale University Press, 2008)
   A Feast During the Plague (play)

Online (Spent most of Sunday with these gems before getting back to books. 
Some days are like that.)
 

The Giving Up Game by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
A young woman tutors the teenage son of a famous actress. The story was ok, but I'm not sure what it wanted to say.  This was my second selection from my Deal Me In 2017 Roster Odd two Jacks in a row.


This weeks card:  The Valet de Cour from a pack of French Cards, of the time of Henry IV. Found in Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards by Chatto (Project Gutenberg)



California by Amanda Fletcher
Asian Pears and Red Azaleas by Gwen Francis-Williams
Two daughters remember their mothers. Fletcher covers a period of years, while Francis-Williams focuses on a single event.Both very good stories.
  From Hippocampus Magazine "an exclusively online publication set out to entertain, educate and engage writers and readers of creative nonfiction. "

A Hard-Boiled Slang Glossary for Something More Than Night  by Ian Tregillis
Tregilles put together a glossary of over 750 terms as preparation for writing one of the characters in a novel. He has published the document on his website. Such fun to browse.

Nameplate Necklaces: This Shit Is For Us by Collier Meyerson
I'll put this one in my "I didn't know that" file. A friend of mine who died in 2001 wore one of these.  She was Latina but I had no idea that nameplate necklaces were an ethnic thing.

Changing of the Tide: The Galician Sisters Chipping Away at the Patriarchy, One Barnacle at a Time.  by Matt Goulding, Slate; adapted from Grape Olive Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain's Food Culture, Harper Wave; 2016 

I enjoyed this essay about barnacle harvesting so much that I have requested the book from library.

Photo by Michael Magers






The Wards of Old London: Fleet Street - Wordsmiths, Pubs, and an Unexpected Ghost by Mark Patton
This is a series I have been following for some time; it's always interesting and I learn a lot from it. One thing I learned from this post is that the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) maintains an English Broadside Ballad Archive "Making broadside ballads of the seventeenth century fully accessible as texts, art, music, and cultural records."




A Bill of Fare: / For, A Saturday nights Supper, A Sunday morning Breakfast, and / A Munday Dinner, Described in a pleasant new merry Ditie.
A delightful meal--this link is to the recording on the  UCSB archive mentioned above. There is also a text transcription of the lyric. What a great resource!

Crawfie and The Little Princesses by Linda Fetterly Root
Linda Root hit the mark with me with this informative essay on one of my childhood favorite books. Like Linda Root, the book made me fascinated with the Royals, but it also made me interested in reading biography.
A helpful librarian aimed me toward another royal biography--one about Queen Liliʻuokalani of Hawaii. I have no idea which bio it was but is was one written for young people.




On the Arab page by Jonathan Guyer
"Much connects art and comics in Egypt and the wider Middle East, even if publishing houses keep fine art and graphic narratives on different shelves." A discussion of the development of Arab comics in Egypt and their connection with fine art. This one had me making a list of things to Google.

Illustration “Self portrait with Spider”, 1945, Adham Wanly
Abushâdy archive








The Long, Unusual History of the Pickled Cucumber by Ernie Smith
The focus here is on the commercial history of the pickle in the USA. There are lots of links to follow if you want to know more about the salty, crunchy snack.




Poor Nancy Young, the Suspected Teen Vampire of Rhode Island A graphic history of an 1827 exhumation by Jamison Odoneby Ernie Smith
Oh my, sometimes the Atlas Obscura email newsletter has nothing of interest to me, then there is a day like Tuesday that brings pickles (above) and gruesome "comics."






The 'Balloon Maps' That Aided Exploration, War, And Tourism by Cara Giaimo
Another from Atlas Obscura. Do they know I love pickles, graphics, & old maps?





The Broomway is known as the most perilous path in Britain – "and is a favourite walk of writer Robert Macfarlane, who describes it in this adaptation from his book The Old Ways." A close up look at one of the features of the Thames Estuary. This one with georgous photographs. (see my post January (first week) 2017 Reads for more on the estuary)

This 3,500-Year-Old Greek Tomb Upended What We Thought We Knew About the Roots of Western Civilization. The recent discovery of the grave of an ancient soldier is challenging accepted wisdom among archaeologists. By Jo Marchant; Photographs by Myrto Papadopoulos. Smithsonian.com

And now--back to Pushkin and Auster....

January (first week) 2017 Reads

This month I'm publishing my Reads posts weekly because...
The weather has been cold and snowy so I've been reading a lot this week. I finished one of my Christmas gifts, read some classics, read a YA,  read a bunch of short stories (online and in my Christmas gift books), read some essays online, and watched a lecture.

The gift I finished:
 
Estuary: Out from London to the Sea by Rachel Lichtenstein
An exploration of the Thames Estuary told in segments covering a period of about five years. Rachel Lichtenstein explores by boat and by land, meeting a lot of interesting people and hearing great stories along the way. She goes to the old defensive towers in the sea, she visits beaches and mudflats, she goes along with cockle gathers, she visits the new London Gateway Port, she explores nature preserves, she spends some terrifying bad weather nights on boats, and she listens and retells tales of the region. There are a lot of photos (black and white) and nice end maps. This is one of those books that causes extensive Googling. An excellent adventure by a hardy soul.



Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
It's about time I read this. I decided to read it now because Conrad is quoted in the above work (he lived in Kent near the Thames) and the narrator in the novel tells his story of the Congo to his friends while on a boat moored in the Thames.
I read this on Project Gutenberg.

I have been reading some Pushkin... (for a full list of the contents of the volumes I've been working with see my post Pushkin - Contents notes )
The works of Alexander Pushkin : lyrics, narrative poems, folk tales, plays, prose / selected and edited, with an introduction, by Avrahm Yarmolinsky.  (Random house, 1936)
This is not the complete short works, but there is plenty to read. This is a library book so I probably won't read the whole thing.
So far I've read:
  The Tales of Belkin  translated by T. Keane, revised by Yarmolinsky (pp 467-555) Five stories of rural life: The Shot, The Snowstorm, The Undertaker, The Postmaster, Mistress into Maid.
  The Queen of Spades (pp556-589). Also translated by Keane.
  Mozart and Salieri (play, pp 428-437) Translated by A.F.B. Clark

The YA novel..
Burned (Burned #1) by Ellen Hopkins
A coming of age story of a seventeen year old Mormon girl who has an unhappy family life. When she rebels against the church and her abusive father she is sent away to a ranch near Ely, Nevada to live with an aunt. Her story is told in verse format, which I found appealing. I may read more by Hopkins.
Read free online at Simon & Schusters' Riveted website


online
Secret Coders: Lost & Found by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes
A short comic in which a group of kids figure out how to do an aerial grid search for a lost dog. A simple lesson in logic and coding. A very light one for my first read for the Deal Me In Challenge.

10 Outstanding Short Stories To Read in 2017
Mumbai-based writer-filmmaker Pravesh Bhardwaj says "I’ve been doing this for some time now — seeking out short stories from free online resources, and sharing them on Twitter (#fiction #longreads). It’s now a habit: Every night after dinner, before I start writing (screenplays), I look around for a story and read it."  She shares a list of ten of her favorites on Longreads.




Andrew Joyce on Sand Paintings
While hitchhiking when he was a young man, the author had a chance encounter with a sand painter. I loved this memoir/story which he shared as a guest poster on A Bookish Affair blog. It includes a few examples of sand paintings. He is the author of Yellow Hair, a fact-based work of fiction about the Sioux Nation.


The delta on London’s doorstep: a walk around the Thames estuary by Joanne O'Connor
This write-up from The Guardian travel section is nicely illustrated with photographs and has links to some of the sights and establishments along the way. It makes a nice companion piece to Estuary: Out from London to the Sea by Rachel Lichtenstein which I have been reading.








"Hardcore Heritage": RAAAF Reveals Its Latest Experiment in Historical Preservation
One approach to dealing with abandoned architectural sites. "The multidisciplinary Amsterdam-based studio Rietveld-Architecture-Art-Affordances (RAAAF)... proposes to make history tangible by altering...decaying structures in a way that makes their stories plainly visible."





The Destruction of Cultural Heritage: Project Description by Pamela Karimi and Nasser Rabbat
The project is a series of essays (available free online) which "...illuminate the larger contexts—historical, political, and ideological—within which the destruction of Middle Eastern monuments has taken place and acquired meaning over the last two centuries." I will be reading these over the next few weeks.
   The Demise and Afterlife of Artifacts by Pamela Karimi and Nasser Rabbat
This is the introductory essay of the above project. An overview of the problem, previews of the essays, plenty of illustrations, footnotes, & links.

 
Architecture for the Search for Knowledge
Video of Iñaki Ábalos' Walter Gropius Lecture at Harvard GSD Dives Into the History and Evolution of the Monastery. There is an accompanying text outlining the important point of the lcture. "Throughout the event, Ábalos delved into various mixed-use typologies, each of which is in some way related to the basic typology of the medieval monastery."Quote from beginning of lecture "It's a little bit boring but I like it." I was not boring to me.

Pushkin - Contents notes

The Little Tragedies; by Alexander Pushkin; translated and with introduction and critical essays by Nancy K. Anderson.  (Yale University Press, 2008)
Contents:
Introduction
The Little Tragedies in English: an Approach (essay)
The little tragedies: The miserly knight ; Mozart and Salieri ; The stone guest ; A feast during the plague
Critical essays. The seduction of power: The miserly knight ; Betrayal of a calling: Mozart and Salieri; The weight of the past: The stone guest ; Survival and memory: A feast during the plague.

The works of Alexander Pushkin; lyrics, narrative poems, folk tales, plays, prose,
selected and edited, with an introduction, by Avrahm Yarmolinsky.  (Random house, 1936)Contents:
INTRODUCTION

I. LYRICS and BALLADS
Old man --
To Chaadayev --
To N.N. --
Gay feast --
A nereid --
Grapes --
"I've lived to bury my desires" --
The lay of the wise oleg --
The coach of life --
"With freedom's seed" --
Epigrams --
"Beneath her native skies" --
Winter evening --
The prophet --
Message to Siberia --
Arion --
Three springs --
Remembrance --
"Casual gift" --
"The man I was of old" --
The upas tree --
Portrait --
"Lovely youth" --
"I loved you once" --
"Here's winter" --
Stanzas --
To the poet --
Madonna --
Elegy --
"My critic, rosy-gilled" --
"For one last time" --
Verses written during a sleepless night --
On the translation of the Iliad --
"Abandoning an alien country" --
Work --
"When in my arms" --
"No, never think" --
Autumn --
Funeral song --
" ... I visited again" --
"'Tis time, my friend" --
Secular power --
"Pure men, and women too" --
"In vain I seek to flee" --
"When, lost in thought" --
"Unto myself I reared a monument" --

II.NARRATIVE POEMS
Poltava --
The bronze horsemen --
Eugene Onegin --

III. FOLK TALES
The tale of the pope and of his workman Balda --
The tale of the golden cockerel --

IV. DRAMATIC WRITINGS
Boris Godunov --
The covetous knight --
Mozart and Salieri --
The stone guest --

V. PROSE
The tales of Belkin --
   The shot --
   The snowstorm --
   The undertaker --
   The postmaster --
   Mistress into maid --
The Queen of Spades --
Kirdjali --
The captain's daughter --
Omitted chapter --
Unfinished stories --
The negro of Peter the Great --
Dubrovsky --
Egyptian nights.

POSTSCRIPT

December (second half) 2016 Reads

I  read a few things Christmasy which I note in a separate post: Christmas Reading.

I continue to work on my owned-but-unread stack but I also added to it with some nice Christmas gifts (I've already started the first three.):

Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories; Robert Walser, Tom Whalen (Translator)

Long Belts and Thin Men: The Postwar Stories of Kojima Nobuo; Nobuo Kojima, Lawrence Rogers (Translation)

Estuary: Out from London to the Sea; Rachel Lichtenstein
The Naked Eye; Yōko Tawada, Susan Bernofsky (Translator)    
Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara; Ellah Wakatama Allfrey (Preface), Wole Soyinka (Editor)

Also received a couple of ARCs and some subscription books. So the following reads didn't make much a dent--but still, only one library book.

A Greater Music by Bae Suah, Deborah Smith (Translator)
In the wandering of memories time has no real meaning and this is a novel of memories. It's difficult to follow the sequence of events as the narrator, a young Korean novelist, house sits in Berlin for her sometime boyfriend and recalls her relationship with the mysterious M--a woman who was her German tutor and lover. The writing is eloquent, especially when she thinks about music. I look forward to reading more by this author. My copy from a subscription to Open Letter Books; which will be publishing another Bae Suah book next fall. (Deep Vellum also has a Bae Suah book coming in the spring of 2017)

A Rogue by Compulsion by Victor Bridges

A classic spy story (and a good read) first published in 1915. Set mostly in London and the Thames Estuary although it starts out in Dartmoor Prison. Available free from Project Gutenberg, Amazon and others. 



Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories by Mikhail Shishkin, Marian Schwartz (Translation), Leo Shtutin (Translation), Mariya Bashkatova (Translation), Sylvia Maizell (Translation)
This collection includes both fiction and essays. Shishkin talks about writing in exile, the inadequacies of language, and the impossibility of translation. Some of the material is memoir about growing up in the "slave state" that was the USSR. My copy via subscription to Deep Vellum press.  
Contents:  The half-belt overcoat / translated by Leo Shtutin -- Calligraphy lesson / translated by Marian Schwartz -- The blind musician / translated by Marian Schwartz -- Language saved / translated by Marian Schwartz -- Nabokov's inkblot / translated by Mariya Bashkatova -- Of saucepans and star-showers / translated by Leo Shtutin -- The bell towers of San Marco / translated by Sylvia Maizell -- In a boat scratched on a wall / translated by Marian Schwartz.

The Secrets of Flight  by Maggie Leffler
Secrets and lies are revealed as an eighty-seven year old women and a fifteen year old girl forge a friendship. They meet in a writers group and the young girl agrees to help the woman write a memoir about her time as a pilot during World War 2. I like the smooth way the narration moves between present events and the memories of the past. There are some surprises and some not-so-surprising revelations. As the older woman tries to unburden herself of what she once felt were necessary lies, the younger is getting caught up in her own "necessary" lies. An interesting cross generation story with perhaps one too many twists, but a nice read.  Advance review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories by Mariana Enríquez (translated from the Spanish - by the author?)
Superb collection of eerie short stories, some are frightening -bordering on  horror. Domestic violence, hallucinations, ghosts, serial killers, etc. Not for the faint of heart. Wonderfully creepy. Terrific writing. Free advance reader copy (EPUB) from Penguin First to Read program.

Contents: The dirty kid - The inn -The intoxicated years - Adela's house - Spider web - End of term - No flesh over our bones - The neighbor's courtyard - Under the black water - Green red orange.

A Barcelona Heiress by Sergio Vila-Sanjuán; (translated from the Spanish, no translator credit given)
A sometimes confusing novel set in a confusing time just before the Spanish Civil War. Billed as "A historical detective story set against the social and political tumult of 1920s Barcelona and based on the real events...," it is more historical than detective. It's also very difficult to follow, but it does shed some light on Spanish history. Title and cover are a bit misleading--it's really more about the lawyer/journalist narrator than it is about his heiress friend.

The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy; Louise Maude (Translator), Aylmer Maude (Translator)
To escape boredom (and his debts) a young Russian enlists as a cadet and secures a post in the Caucasus. He lodges with a village family and attempts to "go native and live the simple life." Wonderful descriptions of village life. An enjoyable read.  Library book.

Abandoned: Three Short Stories by Jim Heskett
Sex and drugs in two of these, but the middle one is different. Heskett writes noir mysteries and thrillers. I'm not sure I would want to read a full length novel by him, but the short stories are OK.
From my Kindle freebie collection.

Contents: To Build a Helicopter; The Meanings of Words; Shots and Strippers

online 

Number Six, Drama by José Ignacio Valenzuela; Translated from the Spanish by Aurora Lauzardo, Sofía García Deliz, and Edil Ramos Pagán.
In this micro-play a distrustful woman debates whether she ought to allow a stranger into her home. 

Carmen Boullosa: Raising Consciousness
The poet, novelist, and playwright is interviewed by Aaron Bady for Guernica magazine.

Human Hair, Dolls Clothes, Love Letters and Other Strange Things Found in Old Books
UVA's Book Traces Project tracks human interactions with physical books  By Emily Temple

For other stuff found in old books see used bookseller Michael Popek's blog Forgotten Bookmarks
Fun to browse, posts are nicely categorized by type of object.

The empire the world forgot text and photos by Joseph Flaherty
"Ruled by a dizzying array of kingdoms and empires over the centuries...the city of Ani once housed many thousands of people, becoming a cultural hub and regional power under the medieval Bagratid Armenian dynasty. Today, it’s an eerie, abandoned city of ghosts that stands alone on a plateau in the remote highlands of northeast Turkey...." Brief article with spectacular photographs of this city that was featured in the history of architecture class I took online.

Isthmus by Brian Davis, Rob Holmes & Brett Milligan
"The shockwave of Panama Canal expansion is reshaping cities throughout the Americas. We need to look through the lens of landscape, not logistics." The far reaching economic, ecological, and cultural effects of the expansion. For example: United States ports are expanding their facilities to accommodate post-Panamax shipping. [Map by the authors]


Architecture's "Political Compass": A Taxonomy of Emerging Architecture in One Diagram
by Alejandro Zaera-Polo & Guillermo Fernandez Abascal
It's a complicated -but interesting- diagram and the explanation of how and why they did it gives some insight into current trends in architecture.

Christmas Reading

Some seasonal things I read this week

A Very Russian Christmas: The Greatest Russian Holiday Stories of All Time
These are great stories, but don't expect jolly old St. Nick type cheer. Many are gloomy and tragic. In other words, they are very Russian stories.

Contents: New Year's tree / Mikhail Zoshchenko - Boys / Anton Chekhov - Christmas tree and a wedding / Fyodor Dostoevsky - At Christmastide / Anton Chekhov - Dream of the young tsar / Lev Tolstoy - Makar's dream / Vladimir Korolenko - Woman's kingdom / Anton Chekhov - Distant Christmas eve / Klaudia Lukashevich - Little boy at Christ's Christmas tree / Fyodor Dostoevsky - Christmas phantoms / Maxim Gorky - Lifeless animal / Teffi -- My last Christmas / Mikhail Zoshchenko.A Very Russian Christmas: The Greatest Russian Holiday Stories of All Time

Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving by Washington Irving; Illustrated by R[andolph] Caldecott
An American traveler spends Christmas at an English country estate where the Squire tries to maintain the old customs. First written around 1820, but this is the 5th edition; 1886. It has the following note: "Before the remembrance of the good old times, so fast passing, should have entirely passed away, the present artist, R. Caldecott, and engraver, James D. Cooper, planned to illustrate Washington Irving's "Old Christmas" in this manner. Their primary idea was to carry out the principle of the Sketch Book, by incorporating the designs with the text. Throughout they have worked together and con amore. With what success the public must decide. November 1875."

The illustrations are delightful.

An Old Fashioned Christmas Day by Washington Irving; Illustrated by Cecil Aldin
This is also from the Sketch Book of Washington Irving, but it only covers one day. Aldin's illustrations are in color and present a different look, but are also delightful. On Gutenberg.

I enjoyed reading both on Christmas Night after my much less elaborate holiday.  And I also sort of read....


König Nußknacker und der arme Reinhold, by Heinrich Hoffman. Another beautifully illustrated book on Project Gutenberg. I didn't really read this--that will take a lot of work as it is in German, but from what I gather it is a moralistic tale. I shall work a bit with it when I'm not as tired as I am tonight. The pictures inside are much better than the cover.

 

A Defective Santa Claus James Whitcomb Riley; Illustrated by  C. M. Relyea and Will Vawter
A poem in which Santa has an accident, but the adults still manage to keep his secret.






Happy New Year to All and to All a Good Night!