March (fifth week) 2018 Reads

This week I juggled several short story collections and only finished one book (a biography, not short stories).

The "Deal Me In" card this week is the Five of Diamonds; the story is The Last Asset (on Project Gutenberg in The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories, by Edith Wharton)
Americans in Paris. Love this sentence "He was presumably a bachelor—a man of family ties, however relaxed, though he might have been as often absent from home would not have been as regularly present in the same place—and there was about him a boundless desultoriness which renewed Garnett's conviction that there is no one on earth as idle as an American who is not busy."

from the library...

Empress of the East; How a Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman empire by Leslie Peirce
A biography of Roxelana, wife of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. 

also from the library....a film

 

The French minister / directed by Bertrand Tavernier. New York, NY : IFC Films, [2014]

A spoof on french involvement in international diplomacy.

October (first week) 2017 Reads

Finished an Indonesian novel and continued with an Icelandic one. The reading for this week from Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, was especially challenging.


Another Project Gutenberg find for this week's story.

“Deal Me In 2017!”

Story: The Hermit and the Wild Woman (in The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories, by   Edith Wharton)
As much as I like Wharton's writing this is not at all my kind of story. I can do without asceticism.




Card: Five of diamonds

The card had to be as plain as possible to go with the story.



 
from my shelves...




Home by Leila S. Chudori; translated from the Indonesian by John H. McGlynn 
Novel of late twentieth Century Indonesian history, set in Jakarta and the exile community in Paris. Another fine book from my Deep Vellum subscription.






and a film...
Tickets [videorecording] / produced for Fandango, Medusa Produziona, and Sixteen Films Ltd. ; written by Abbas Kiarostami, Paul Laverty, and Ermanno Olmi ; directed by Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach, and Ermanno Olmi.
A life-changing trip on an Italian train. Three stories, three directors.
from the library

Bout Update (5)

Bout of Books 20

I know it's called "Bout of Books" but on Friday it was hard to concentrate because they are tearing up the street in front of my house, very noisy and distracting. So it turned into a short attention span online reading day. Saturday & Sunday should be better because I don't think they work on the weekend--the street will be a mess, but a quiet mess.

Did not do challenge.

Here is what I read on Friday

Approx 15 pages on comedy films from the BBC. (Hard to count pages as there are lots of pictures and lists.
The 100 greatest comedies of all time
What the critics had to say about the top 25
The full list of critics who participated – and how they voted
Why Some Like It Hot is number one
Does comedy differ from region to region?
Do men and women find different films funny?
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Approx 8 pages (again lots of pictures, so hard to count--I'm thinking "time spent" on very bookish topics)
For Centuries, Readers Annotated Books With Tiny Drawings of Hands
17 Living Writers Currently Immortalized on Stamps 
Two Never Before Published Letters from Marcel Proust to His Neighbor translated by Lydia Davis
English Translations of Obscure Medieval Texts Go Online

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Approx 10 pages (more pictures since this group is about art)

Ikebana – vision of transcendence 
The Divine Calligraphy
Enrique Chagoya, (Mis)Appropriation: Then and Now
Dan Woodger channels the fun of the beach for McDonald’s Japan
Geta Brătescu: Romania's remarkable avant-garde artist is more resilient than ever
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Approx 25 pages (short stories)
Motherhoods by Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, a Ruwandan writer; translated from French by Edward Gauvin. (4 pages)
The History of Grains by Gianni Skaragas in which Greek islanders witness the mysterious arrival of abandoned vessels. (5 pages)
Refuge By Dina Nayeri  (Excerpt from the novel, Refuge) The experience of an Iranian teenage refugee in Oklahoma. (14 pages)
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Totals:

Monday:         80 pages

Tuesday:       116 pages
Wednesday:  156ish pages

Thursday:      257 pages

Friday:             58ish pages