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

September 2019 Reading

Another good reading month, mostly from public libraries. (Ma Bole's Second Life is from my collection.) No review copies in this bunch.

Fiction:
5 stars 
Quichotte by Rushdie, Salman
Ma Bole's Second Life by Hong, Xiao; Goldblatt, Howard (Translator)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Harrow, Alix E. 
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai by Anyi, Wang; Berry, Michael and Egan, Susan Chan (Translators)

4 stars
Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Khorram, Adib 
The Body in Question by Ciment, Jill

3 stars
This Tender Land by Krueger, William Kent
Sing to It: New Stories by Hempel, Amy

A Single Thread by Chevalier, Tracy

Nonfiction: 
London in Fragments: A Mudlark's Treasures by Sandling, Ted
Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian by Grant, James 
Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World  by Druett, Joan 
Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child by Cumming, Laura Freestyle Embroidered Mandalas: More than 60 Stitches and Techniques in Inspiring  Combinations by Blomkamp, Hazel

Online:

Community Plumbing: How the hardware store orders things, neighborhoods, and material worlds by Shannon Mattern

The Hooker Family of Kew by Judith M Taylor 

From Project Gutenberg:
The Sisters Rondoli and Other Stories by Maupassant, Guy de; Boyd, Ernest (Translator)



Oregon the Picturesque: A Book of Rambles in the Oregon Country and in the Wilds of Northern California; Descriptive Sketches and Pictures of Crater and Klamath Lakes, the Deschutes River Canyon, the New Columbia Highway, the Willamette and Rogue River Valleys and the Cities and Towns of Oregon; also of the little-known Lakes, Rivers, Mountains, and Vast Forests of Northern California, to which is added a trip to the Yosemite and to the Roosevelt Dam and the Petrified Forest of Arizona, by Motor Car. by Thomas D. Murphy; illustrated with paintings, photographs, and maps;  Page Company, 1917.

A LACK OF BALANCE.

A Wheel Within a Wheel:  How I learned to ride the bicycle, With some reflections by the way
By Frances E. Willard;  Illustrated with photographs; Fleming H. Revell company, 1895.

Frances Willard  (1839-1898) was an educator, temperance reformer, and suffragist.

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

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.

July (fourth week) 2017 Reads

We finished it!

The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán, Translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden
This has been an amazing experience. Chad Post of Open Letter Books has led the Two Month slow read of this fantastic novel by providing summaries of each section, broadcasting weekly podcast discussions, setting up a Goodreads group, and publishing a Will Vanderhyden interview with Fresán.

This book was so complex, so convoluted, so full of surprises, so much fun that I can't possibly do it justice here. The best thing is to defer to Chad's great material at the Three Percent blog.

I love this book. It's one of the best things I've read this year. I and look forward to more Fresán.







“Deal Me In 2017!” Story of the week: Joy of Traveling by Jung Young Moon (in A most ambiguous Sunday, and other stories), Translated from the Korean by Jung Yewon
Two men and a woman have agreed to go on a trip together, but one of the men, K, doesn't show up. The others decide to go anyway.
As they drive they have a disjointed inconsequential conversation, make a couple of stops, he takes some pictures.
The narration fills in with how the two met and how they met K, a bisexual. It's not quite clear what the relationships are, we can only guess...

Card: Seven of Spades from Zoe's blog thing:  Engineering! Art! Stuff!

Zoe and another artist started modifying a deck of cards with various designs. They seemed not to have finished the project (the blog hasn't been updated recently). The few displayed are quite fanciful and some are in full color. It looks like a fun project.

This card might describe the countryside the couple (their names aren't given) in the story are driving through. There are rolling hills with vineyards and a rice paddy.


online...

Sequoia Nagamatsu - Stories
The author of the story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone provides links to online publications of his stories. I'm slowly making my way through these links. Some lead to free, full text stories, other stories are available by purchasing online issues. I really enjoyed the ones I could freely access. In some cases I had to use a site's search function to find the story because it had gone to archive. But even if you can't find Nagamatsu's work these links lead to some interesting journals.

Translator as Medium by Charlotte Mandell

What Fourth-Grade Archaeologists Have Found in Their School’s Closet by Eric Grundhauser

The Ghost Villages of Newfoundland: A controversial government resettlement program has left centuries-old fishing villages abandoned by Luke Spencer
  A good novel about a holdout of the relocation is  Sweetland by Michael Crummey.

In Defense of the Emoji Building and Architecture Being Fun, Sometimes by Rory Stott
The arguments against seem to center around that these are frivolous, that they will go out of date, or that they are sending us down a slippery slope.
Maybe architects have to think that architecture must be serious, timeless, etc., but I come in on the side of being a little playful now and then. I like a building that makes me smile.
Dated? Let's get rid of gargoyles, coats of arms, art deco scrolls and flourishes, or anything else that suggests when a structure was built. Boring.
Slippery slope? What next? Does this open the door for medallions featuring @, #, recycling symbols, and other graphic signs of our times? So what? Shrug.

from my shelves...

Lunar Follies  by Gilbert Sorrentino
It's not quite accurate to say I've finished this book. I have read all fifty-three items, but I've only read them once. Like poetry, this is the sort of thing -if one likes this sort of thing- to reread. It is, so to speak, a parody of parody. A spoof on almost everything: art, sports, personal names, critics and criticism, writing, itself, four-letter words, and (I suspect) readers of books like this.

It seems oddly appropriate that I got this book in a ten dollar blind grab-bag purchase from the publisher. I also liked the other books in the bag, but this one was the most fun.



from the library....

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Kindle edition)
Somewhat innovative way to tell a story, too bad there wasn't much of a story. Lost souls wandering in the 'Bardo" of a Georgetown Cemetery, trying to pretend they aren't dead, try to convince the newly arrived Willie Lincoln that he should immediately move on to a better place. Gimmickry, maudlin--a graphic novel without any pictures. It's listed as having 368 pages, but there is a lot of white space so it didn't take me long to read it.

Blacklands (Exmoor Trilogy #1) by Belinda Bauer

Stand alone mystery/suspense. Young boy seeks answers to a long ago crime. Although the protagonist is eleven years old, this is not a kids book. Bauer's more recent Rubbernecker is a much better book so I won't give up on this author. But I won't be reading Parts 2 & 3 of this trilogy.

January (fourth week) 2017 Reads

This week I found time for a little net surfing, some Gutenberg browsing, more MOOC, and some real books too starting with...
                                                ...four goodies from my "owned-but-unread" shelf

The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys, Patricia Clancy (Translation)
A delightful piece of alternative history as Napoleon escapes from exile in a plan carefully constructed by his loyalists. The plan goes awry and he must make his way alone. Once in Paris, he finds that he has changed so much that he is unrecognizable and he must improvise and try to accept that his days of glory are past.
My personal Copy.


 

The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam
This compelling story of  love and death among Tamil refugees during the Sri Lankan Civil War is told in a time defying style that makes the reader momentarily forget what a short period of time actually passes. Stunning.
Free copy from publisher through Goodreads First Reads program.







An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell by Deborah Levy
A completely different kind of love from the above book. A fun to read she said/he said dramatic poem. Sly, witty, sharp. Something to read and re-read.
My copy from a subscription to & other Stories Publishing.



The Madonna of Notre Dame (Père Kern et Clarie Kauffmann #1) by Alexis Ragougneau, Katherine Gregor (Translation)
There has been a murder in the great cathedral and in its aftermath a great cast of characters is introduced. The suspect, an angelic looking young pervert; Clair, a young deputy magistrate haunted by memory; a bad cop and his good cop colleague; a homeless drunk Pole; and a host more. I'm glad to see this is a series as Père Kern is both engaging and ill so it's good to see that he will have another adventure. The delightful cover is designed by Liana Finck. (See below in Online section for link to interview with her.)
My copy from my subscription to New Vessel Press.

Then a couple of library books...

We Live in Water by Jess Walter
Short stories set in the Pacific Northwest. There are tough/not-so-tough guys, cons, ex-cons, future cons, dealers, hustlers--a range of "fringe people." There is also gentleness in the people, especially in their dealings with children. Their stories are told with compassion and humor.
Library book.
Contents:  Anything helps -- We live in water -- Thief -- Can a corn -- Virgo -- Helpless little things -- Please -- Don't eat cat -- The new frontier -- The brakes -- The wolf and the wild -- Wheelbarrow kings -- Statistical abstract for my hometown of Spokane, Washington.

Image is table of contents page, not cover

 Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain's Food Culture by Matt Goulding
Matt Goulding's Spain barely resembles the Spain I saw in the late 1970's. Yes we saw great sights, ate fine meals, and thoroughly loved the place, but at that time it was not the gourmet paradise described in this book. Then again, only once did we have to have a reservation for a restaurant.


This is a beautiful book filled with pictures and descriptions of foods I will never eat (and a few, very few, that I wouldn't want to eat). What I liked as much as the descriptions of the meals, was the background of the foods, the way they are produced. Goulding is a sort of insider/outsider--a foreign food writer married to a Spaniard--so he has a lot of experiences not available to most tourists. A top notch food appreciation tour. Library book.

A Project Gutenberg discovery

Armenian Legends and Poems
Compiled, illustrated, and translated by Zabelle C. Boyajian.

(Illustration on right: The Wedding)
"It rained showers of gold when Artashes became a bridegroom.
It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride."

This book should keep me busy for a while--Not the sort of thing to read all at once. I confess to be drawn to the illustrated entries, there are about a dozen. Just delightful. Originally published in 1916, the book (with illustrations) is available several places on the Internet--Google the title or author to find.

 “Deal Me In 2017!”  This week's story

Train by Alice Munro (in The Best American Short Stories, 2013; Kindle ed.) First published in Harper's Magazine, April 2012, and included in Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro. According to my records, I read Dear Life back in December of 2012. However, this story of a Canadian soldier returning from World War 2 jumping off a train before he reached his home stop seemed entirely fresh to me when I read it this week. Maybe I skipped it when I read the collection? Since it was a borrowed book I might not have had time to linger over, or even read, all the stories. Whatever the reason, I'm glad I found it. Now I can linger over it and ponder its meaning since it's in an anthology I own. (I haven't read all the stories in the anthology either since I tend to dip into the Kindle sporadically, mostly when I'm in waiting rooms.)


This week's card for Deal Me In 2017! is the Six of Hearts. This design is from  Jami Goddess Art. I selected it for several reasons:
  1. The elusiveness of Monro's protagonist--his inability to stay settled down--is like the flight of the birds on the card.
  2.  The card appears to be in rough shape like Belle's house was when Jackson first lit there.
  3. I really like Jami's art work. She hasn't posted on her blog recently (the card is from July, 2014) but she also has a Facebook page with more recent posts. Her photo section has a neat chess set among other fun artwork.

Online 

Finished auditing two online courses  Visualizing Postwar Tokyo, Part 1, and Visualizing Postwar Tokyo, Part 2. Lecturer: Shunya Yoshimi; Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo. A very interesting series. 

Started auditing Modern Japanese Architecture: From Meiji Restoration to Today. This course is from Tokyo Tech.

Interview with Liana Finck  by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren See The Madonna of Notre Dame, above, for a little sample of Fink's work. See the interview for a discussion and some illustrations from her first book, a graphic novel,  A Bintel Brief.  I'm happy to see that my library has a copy because the interview makes me want to read it.

Portugal's Unexpectedly Heroic Custard Tarts: The Portuguese have twice turned to the humble pastry to solve economic problems. by Karla Pequenino

Essays from The Destruction of Cultural Heritage project
    Exhibition and Erasure/Art and Politics by Annabel Wharton
    Memento Mauri: The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba by Michele Lamprakos
    DNA Damage: Violence Against Buildingsby Sussan Babaie
    Iconoclasm beyond Negation: Globalization and Image Production in Mosul by Thomas         Stubblefield

and now for something completely different...
                                                                        ....a couple of videos...
Manabu Himeda’s trippy animation takes us on a colourful car ride

Check out the first Eurovision entry to be performed in Belarusian

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.

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.

May (first half) 2016 Reads

In Progress:
Mirages of the Mind by Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi; Matt Reeck (Translation), Aftab Ahmad (Translation)
I had a problems with this one. It was long (574p) and it was very good. Not something to read at one or two sittings. Something to read closely and savor--no skimming. Easy to pick up where you leave off because it is a series of events that read like short stories and character sketches. All of this is fine with me EXCEPT--it's not my own book. The library wants it back. I ran out of renewals. So it goes back for a while or I buy my own copy. I'm loving it.

Read:
 From the Library:

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift
When I read Swift's short story collection England and other stories in October 2915, I was delighted by how much he could say in a short space. This short (177pages) novel is every bit as good--must read more of his work.
 
Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
World War 2, love and war during the blitz in London and the siege of Malta. Book had an unpromising start but got better and better as it went.

What Was Mine by Helen Klein Ross
A kidnapping and its aftermath told from several points of view--the kidnapper, the birth parents, the kidnapped, and other persons involved.

The Green Road by Anne Enright (Kindle edition)
 Man Booker Prize Nominee for Longlist (2015), Costa Book Award Nominee for Novel (2015), Women's Prize for Fiction Nominee for Shortlist (2016). Well, I just didn't think it was that good.

The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell
Shanghai in the late 1930s through the Communist takeover as seen through the eyes of a China born American business man and his daughter. A difficult family story of love and loss and reconciliation. Not the greatest read, but a decent one.

Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi by Hayden Herrera
Comprehensive view of Noguchi's life and work. I was glad it was so thorough because I knew very little about Noguchi.

Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya by William Carlsen
More stones--these much older than Noguchi's. Fascinating!

From my shelves:

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
An OK read but I wish I'd spent the time on something better. I'm thinking of avoiding novels about 40 somethings facing mediocre troubled lives in contemporary New York City.
ARC through Goodreads. 

Watched:
The Danish girl (Motion picture : 2015).[videorecording] / a film by Tom Hooper. Universal City, CA : Universal Studios, 2016. (based on the book by David Ebershoff.)
Really liked this story of a transgendered artist and his wife even though it was a bit slow in places. Based loosely on a true story.  Acting was excellent. Library Copy. (Library has the novel, but I don't think I'll read it.)

December (second half) 2015 Reading

According to Goodreads I more than met my goal of 200 books this year (read 209). Nice, but not too difficult--I do love retirement! The other goals, the challenges, reviews, blog entries, etc. pretty much fell by the wayside. I'm not especially concerned about that. I don't feel compelled to review or otherwise blog about every book I read. But I do try to make some brief comments. When I look back at this blog for March through June of this year, I'm sorry that I didn't say something about all those books. Spring was difficult this year. Sigh.

On to my final reads of the year and a kind of New year resolution: When I really like the cover art, I will try to give the artist credit and a link (if I can find one).


Paris Nocturne; Modiano, Patrick;Phoebe Weston-Evans (Translation) 
After the Circus; Modiano, Patrick; Mark Polizzotti (Translation)
Not going to attempt any mini-review or comment other than it's Modiano and Modiano's Paris, which I love.
Library books.
Left Cover Photo:  Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy/Stockbyte/Getty Images; Right Cover illustration: Paris at Twilight. Getty Images  Mel Curtis

My Documents; Zambra, Alejandro; Megan McDowell (Translation)
Short stories. I liked most of them. "I Smoked Very Well" is a gem. "Thank You" is a quirky tale about a kidnapping and theft in Mexico City.  The final story was the one I liked least, a good story but the sex element was too graphic. Library book.

Contents: Part 1. My documents -- Part 2. Camilo -- Long distance -- True or false -- Memories of a personal computer -- Part 3. National institute -- I smoked very well -- Part 4. Thank you -- The most Chilean man in the world -- Family life -- Artist's rendition.
  
An appropriate cover design by Sunra Thompson

 
 Blue Bamboo: Tales, Dazai Osamu; Dazai, Osamu; Ralph F. McCarthy (Translator)
The stories are good. Many are based on folk tales and other traditional literature--including a retelling/continuation of Rapunzel. My copy, from publisher via a win on Tony Malone's 2013 January in Japan event. It's about time I got around to reading it. Actually I started reading it in August; I often set story collections aside to intersperse with other reading.

Cover: 'Bamboo and chrysanthemum under the moon' by Hara Zaichū (1750–1837); Ota Collection, Fukuoka Art Museum.
Why does it bother me that the cover of a book with "blue" in the title is green? See note under online reading below.



Postcards from the Past; Willett, Marcia
After their respective marriages end, a brother and sister return to their childhood home to a comfortable retirement near friends. Their contentment is disrupted when postcards start arriving from a half-brother they haven't seen or heard from for 50 years. A nice story about good people facing unpleasant memories. There are also some nice dogs and maybe too much description of trivial objects and peripheral characters. Library book.

This charming cover is by Vitali Komarov, a Russian born artist who lives in the Czech republic.


Newport; Morrow, Jill
I didn't get much of a sense of place or time with this. It is set in Newport, Rhode Island during the 1920s but it could have been set in any wealthy enclave at any time. Secrets, seances, sinister siblings, and a few surprises. An OK read. Library book.


Cover has a soft gold sparkle which doesn't show up in the web image.  Photograph by Hungarian photographer Peter Zelei /Getty Images




Infinite Home; Alcott, Kathleen
I had no idea that I wanted to read this book. I picked it up from the library new book shelf the other day and devoured it! Perfect! Well developed characters and elegant writing. I am tempted to end my year with this one, but I picked up several other books that day and....Library book.

Jacket design by Alex Merto



Istanbul Noir (Akashic Noir); by Ziyalan, Mustafa (Editor), Spangler, Amy (Editor)
As with many anthologies some of these stories are better than others, but they all give a sense of place. Of course, because it's noir, the place can be bleak, scary, and downright creepy. I've had this book on my Kindle for over a year, reading it in various waiting rooms. Finally finished it the other day while my car was being serviced. This series is great waiting room stuff--makes the time go quickly. 
Contents: Lust & vengeance. The tongue of the flames / İsmail Güzelosoy; Hitching in the Lodos / Feryal Tilmac; The stepson / Mehmet Bilâl; An extra body / Bariş Müstecaplioğlu; Pushing limits, crossing lines. The smell of fish / Hikmet Hükümenoğlu; All quiet / Jessica Lutz ; Around here, somewhere / Algan Sezgi̇ntüredi; The spirit of philosophical vitriol / Lydia Lunch; In the dark recesses. One among us / Yasemin Aydinoğlu; Black palace / Mustafa Ziyalan; So very familiar / Behçet Çelik; The bloody horn / Inan Çetin; A woman, any woman / Tarkan Barlas; Grief & grievances. Ordinary facts / Riza Kiraç; Burn and go / Sadik Yemni; the hand / Müge İplikçi.
Cover Photo: Deniz Oğurlu


The Other Daughter; Willig, Lauren
Rachel, a young Englishwoman, is trying to make ends meet as a governess in France. Called home when her mother dies, Rachael discovers that she is not who she thought she was. She takes up a disguise in order to meet the man who she believes deserted her and her mother. Everything backfires but, of course, it all works out in the end. A pleasant, undemanding diversion with some interesting twists. A little bit better than the other book I read by this author (That Summer). Library book



Day Four (The Three #2); Lotz, Sarah 
I liked this, but not as much as I liked The Three. The cruise setting was great for a horror story (almost as good as the Ikea-like setting for Grady Hendrix's Horrorstör).  This is more a paranormal/disaster story than it is horror, but the whole genre thing is a mishmash of definitions. Another novel set on a drifting, lost ship is George Barr McCutcheon's West Wind Drift (1920, available on Project Gutenberg). A very different kind of story, but there are a few parallels--enough to make me think of it whilst reading this one.

Library book. 

didn't get cover info

 Non Fiction

Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession; Bostridge, Ian

This is an amazing discussion of a Schubert song cycle, about the meaning of the words (by Wilhelm Müller), the music, and the Romantic movement.

Library book.

Jacket design is by Peter Mendelsund -my favorite cover designer.







Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry; Goldberger, Paul
Interesting, but not critical either of Gehry's life or his work. Author is a friend of Gehry.
Library book.

Cover:  Photograph by Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty; Drawings by Frank Gehry early sketch of Walt Disney Concert Hall; Cover design by Peter Mendelsund

Online reading 

The next two were read in conjunction with reading The Art of Flight by Sergio Pitol (George Henson Translator), which has a critical essay, "The Great Theater of the World," discussing the Galdós novel. The next essay is on Chekhov, it may take me a while to finish this book--one thing leads to another.

The Court of Charles IV: A Romance of the Escorial; Pérez Galdós, Benito; Clara Bell (translation).
Read online at the Internet Archive

The Young Lady's Consent  Translator/Author: Christopher O. Kidder; Publication: University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations a translation of El sí de las niñasis a play by the Spanish playwright Leandro Fernández de Moratín.This translation is the only one I could find. It has problems, but at least it gave me an idea of what Pitol and Galdós are talking about.

From the BBC a fascinating piece on archaeology in the Orkney islands:  Were These Remote Wild Islands the Centre of Everything? Illustrated with beautiful photographs. Makes me want to go there.

My question about the cover of Blue Bamboo led me to this Wikipedia entry:  Distinction of blue and green in various languages

Arabic Literature (in English) offers links to some poetry in translation: 
A Holiday Gift: Ten Poems from Iman Mersal 

Stories from post World War II japan always interest me. Here from From The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus  is Muddy River by Miyamoto Teru; Translated and with an introduction by Andrew Murakami-Smith. This story won the Dazai Osamu (s Blue Bamboo, above) literary award in 1977. It is set in Osaka in the 1950s. The 1981 film Doro no kawa (Muddy River), directed by Oguri Kōhei, is based on it. There is a discussion of the film (illustrated with stills) on Cinema Talk. I'd like to watch this film, but it doesn't seem to be available with English sub-titles. It is on YouTube in Japanese. There are sub-titles available separately online, but coordinating them with a video is not ideal.

 New (to me) words:  
kintsuba: a regional name for a sweet treat made of a batter and filled with sweet bean past (or other sweet filling). More general term: Imagawayaki.
ragworms:  Nereididae, a family of polychaete worms, about 500 (mostly marine) species. They may be commonly called ragworms or clam worms. Used as bait.