June 2021

I wasn't planning on listing my non-reading, used to be routine, activities but getting my hair professionally cut for the first time in sixteen months was a really Big Deal! I cut it myself three times (with in between trims on the bangs) during quarantine: the first time I did a really good job but who could see it? the second time was so-so but it looked OK for a medical visit; the third time was a real mess and by the time I was fully vaccinated it looked terrible! 

Another biggie! I resumed my water exercise class. Ahh, did it feel good to be back in the pool! 

As for the reading...some surprises, a couple of disappointments, but mostly good reading.

Fiction:

 Abide with Me by Strout, Elizabeth
  Always reliable Ms Strout

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Zapata, Michael

 I loved this!

Summer : a novel by Wharton, Edith 

  One of my "Twenty Books of Summer 2021"

  Unusual Wharton - it's not about the gilded privileged set.

Checkmate to Murder: A Second World War Mystery by Lorac, E.C.R.
 So enjoyable to read the classic mysteries from the British Library/Poisoned Pen Press. Ah the world without smartphones!

Maids by Skelly, Katie
  A graphic interpretation of a real crime (murder) that took place in France in 1933. Grisly but good. 

They Were Found Wanting - They Were Divided (The Writing on the Wall: The Transylvania Trilogy #2-3) by Bánffy, Miklós; translated from the Hungarian by Thursfield, Patrick and Bánffy-Jelen, Kathy
   The Trilogy has been on my to-read list for ages, I'm glad I finally got to it.

 

Turbulence by Szalay, David 

 Linked short stories. One of my favorite reads this month.

A Passage North  by Arudpragasam, Anuk
  I really liked the author's The Story of a Brief Marriage so I was looking forward to this. I received an electronic review copy from the publisher and it was a real struggle to read in that formatI think I need to get a print copy and read it again.

The Charmed Wife by Grushin, Olga  

 I enjoyed this modern day look at the aftermath of the Cinderella story, but I liked Grushin's Forty Rooms more.

Migrations by McConaghy, Charlotte  

 An Irish/Australian woman breaks her parole to follow the migration of arctic terns from Greenland to Antarctica. 

How Beautiful We Were by Mbue, Imbolo 

 An African village vs American Oil interests. This one fell flat for me.

Christmas at The Mysterious Bookshop edited by Penzler, Otto

 Seventeen short mystery stories, each by a different author, set in and around Penzler's Manhattan bookshop.  A fun "summer" read.

 Authors:  Charles Ardai, Lisa Atkinson, George Baxt, Lawrence Block, Mary Higgins Clark, Thomas H. Cook, Ron Goulart, Jeremiah Healy, Edward D. Hoch, Rupert Holmes, Andrew Klavan, Michael Malone, Ed McBain, Anne Perry, S. J. Rozan, Jonathan Santlofer, Donald E. Westlake.

 

Juvenile fiction:

A Tale of the Summer Holidays by Mockler, Geraldine

  One of my "Twenty Books of Summer 2021"

  I was surprised. This was written in the 1890s. I expected tame and sedate. I got a contest the resembled the grass-bomb wars we had defending our "forts" in 1940s rural California.  Good fun.

 

Poetry:

Mortal Summer by Van Doren, Mark

 One of my "Twenty Books of Summer 2021"

 What a mishmash! Greek deities and Christian archangels journey to America and mess with rural (hillbilly?) society. Why? Not Van Doren's best effort.  It made little sense.

Nonfiction:
Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way by Gaines, Caseen

 A learning experience.

 

The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into the Spotlight and Made History by Givhan, Robin 

  High fashion never made much sense to me. Still doesn't.

 

Letters to Camondo by Waal, Edmund de 

  Well worth the read..

 

Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America’s Most Exclusive Shoreline by Kahrl, Andrew W.

 Some Connecticut history. Wish it had been better organized because it's an important story.

 

Bounty from the Box: The CSA Farm Cookbook by Lipe, Mi Ae 

 Great book but its 4.1 pound weight overwhelmed me even more then the overabundance of collards, chard, lettuce & other greens in our very own CSA box!

My Summer in a Garden, and Calvin: A Study of Character by Warner, Charles Dudley 

  One of my "Twenty Books of Summer 2021"

  Warner was a neighbor of Stowe and Twain in the Nook Farm area of Hartford. Similar writing style to Twain. Fun to read. Gardening is not easy in these parts which is why I don't do it.

Online:

Enough with Copenhagen! It is Time for U.S. Cities to Learn From Models Closer to Home by Juan Miró 

Six Degrees of Wikipedia: Find the shortest path between any two Wikipedia pages

 

Several short pieces at New World Writing (published on June 11):

 

   Mary Grimm ~ Her Sketchbook, Found Among Her Things
   Maria Robinson ~ The Requirement
   Mike Itaya ~ Rasthole Flats
   Laurie Blauner ~ Four Pieces
   Daniel Adler ~ The Lion Tamer

 

The Filing Cabinet by Craig Robertson "The filing cabinet was critical to the information infrastructure of the 20th-century. Like most infrastructure, it was usually overlooked."

 

20 Best Zucchini Recipes We signed up for a CSA subscription and expect the zucchini will soon be filling the box. I do know lots of zucchini dishes but more is more. In addition to the recipes, this site has tips for handling (including freezing) the squash.

Mary Grimm ~ Her Sketchbook, Found Among Her Things

Maria Robinson ~ The Requirement 

Mike Itaya ~ Rasthole Flats

Laurie Blauner ~ Four Pieces

Daniel Adler ~ The Lion Tamer

High Voltage

Mary Grimm ~ Her Sketchbook, Found Among Her Things

Maria Robinson ~ The Requirement 

Mike Itaya ~ Rasthole Flats

Laurie Blauner ~ Four Pieces

Daniel Adler ~ The Lion Tamer

October (second week) 2018 Reads and day trips

Saturday - a return to Rodgers Orchards in Southington. In addition to an apple pie for home we got an apple cider slush and an apple cider donut each. Couldn't wait to get home so we stopped by Memorial Boulevard Park in Bristol for a snack.

Sunday - Picnic - food from River Valley Provisions (95 Bridge Road, Haddam); Picnic at
Hurd State Park, East Hampton.

Wednesday (an unseasonably warm day) - Picnic -  Food from The Bronx Deli in Oxford CT. Picnic and walk at Southford Falls State Park Southbury. And on the way home ice cream at Sweet Claude's Ice Cream in Cheshire.

Saturday - Leaves are turning so we explored Suffield, Granby, and a little of the part of Massachusetts that dips into Connecticut. Lunch at Three Figs in Suffield. Went for dessert at Lost Acres Orchard in North Ganby. Too full from lunch to eat more so we got some apple dumplings, some gingersnaps, and a loaf of cheese bread. Had the dumplings for supper at home. Delicious.

Read this week:

The "Deal Me In" card this week is the Eight of Hearts; the selection is Viewer, Violator by Aimee Bender (in Watchlist : 32 stories by persons of interest)

Gutenberg find...
Hawaiian Flowers by Loraine E. Kuck and Richard C. Tongg; Illustrated by Ted Mundorff
Pretty to peruse.

from my shelves...excellent issues of two of my favorite periodicals...

Korean Literature Now (Vol. 41, Autumn 2018) edited by Agnel Joseph
Two Lines: World Writing in Translation (Issue 29), The Japanese Vanguard edited by CJ Evans

September (Third week) 2018 Reads (and day trips)

Sunday drive: Weston to pick up picnic stuff at Peter's Market and then to Putnam Memorial State Park to eat.

Monday drive: Lunch at Panera Bread in Lisbon, CT; then a swim at Hopeville Pond State Park (most likely our last outdoor swim of the season); followed by ice cream at Buttonwood Farms.

Saturday drive: Explored Mashamoquet Brook State Park in Pomfret, CT. On the way home we stopped for lunch at Hank's Restaurant  in Brooklyn, CT.

Reading this week:

The "Deal Me In" card is the Two of Clubs; the selection is Muqtatafat: Part two: Arabic language (translated into English). Slop / by Magdy el Shafee -- Where our stories collide / by Jana Traboulsi -- Gauche droite & estamba / by Mohamed el Shennawy -- Nap before noon / by Barrack Rima -- The bike / by Mohamed Tawfik.

from the library...

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker


from my shelves...

Our Woman in Havana: Reporting Castro's Cuba by Sarah Rainsford
Advance review copy through LibraryThing giveaway 

March (fourth week) 2018 Reads

Didn't finish any books this week. March Madness! 

This week the "Deal Me In" card is a Joker which means a wild card pick and a second draw.

I made a library trip this week. I was looking for a book by Joanna Hershon when I noticed a book of Herman Hesse stories so I picked it for my Joker.  It turned out to be a great find.

The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse by Hermann Hesse; translation and introduction by Jack D. Zipes; Woodcut illustrations by David Frampton

So far I've read the introduction which gives a brief biography, a general summary of Hesse's work, and a discussion of the tales in this collection. I've also read the first three stories and enjoyed then very much. The Dwarf is a tale of revenge set in Venice; Shadow Play is set in the surrounds of a semi-deserted castle and concerns a mysterious woman and a jealous man. Both of these stories reveal the dark side of human nature.

A Man by the Name of Ziegler has a very different tone from the first two--there is nothing particularly mysterious or dark about Herr Ziegler. In fact, he is extremely ordinary until he visits a museum and somewhat inadvertently acquires a strange object. Enough said, no spoilers here.

Contents: The dwarf -- Shadow play -- A man by the name of Ziegler -- The city -- Dr. Knoegle's end -- The beautiful dream -- The three linden trees -- Augustus -- The poet -- Flute dream -- A dream about the gods -- Strange news from another planet -- Faldum -- A dream sequence -- The forest dweller -- The difficult path -- If the war continues -- The European -- The empire -- The painter --
The fairy tale about the wicker chair -- Iris.

The second card I drew is the Ten of Spades and its story is The Fire by Birutė Jonuškaitė; translated from the Lithuanian by Jayde Will (in Best European fiction 2015).

This is a perfect story to accompany the Hesse tales. It is about a young man who is a fire lookout in a forest tower. There is a mystery about him and his relationship to a local wood carver. It has the same dark fairy tale mood and I could easily imagine this story taking place in the same time and place as Shadow Play. 



Gutenberg find...




The Bashful Earthquake : & other fables and verses by Oliver Herford. Illustrated by the author. (c.1898)
Fun poems and illustrations. Not at all like the Hesse, these are light and airy and rather silly at times. And nicely illustrated with black and white sketches (only the cover is in color).

December (fourth week) 2017 Reads

Once again my reading was all over the map: Libya/Italy, Sudan, New York's Chinatown, Chile, and a creepy unnamed fantasy village from a Catalan author.

Deal Me In

This week's story: The Past by Ellen Glasgow: In The Best Short Stories of 1921 originally published in Good Housekeeping, October 20, 1920. (The anthology covers the period from October 1920 through September 1921).
This is a gentle ghost story set in a Fifth Avenue mansion.





Card: Queen of Diamonds from a  promotional deck printed by B. Dondorf for Saks & Company, New York, late 1920s. Found at The World of Playing Cards.








A picture book from from Project Gutenberg...
My Book of Ten Fishes by Rosalie G. Mendel

from my shelves...

 
Morning Sea by Margaret Mazzantini; translated from the Italian by Ann Gagliardi
The stories of two mothers and their son are told in this short novel of migration between Italy and Libya. One pair are boat refugees-a mother and her young son traveling from Libya to Sicily. The other story line involves a nineteen year-old son of a woman who was born in Libya of Italian immigrant workers.


 
Death in Spring  by Mercè Rodoreda; translated from the Catalan by Martha Tennent
Weird and compelling world building. This is part of Open Letter Books Two Month Review Project.
Rodoreda is a fine writer. Actually the guided read has another week to go but I couldn't stop myself from finishing ahead of time.





  
Navidad & Matanza by Carlos Labbé; translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden 
Another weird one from Open Letter, this one from Chile. Teenage brother and sister go missing, there is an odd research lab, a group writing of a story. It's all mixed up but worth figuring it out. 


 


 
Mambo in Chinatown by Jean Kwok  
Two American born Chinese sisters live with their immigrant father (a noodle maker in New York's Chinatown). The father and his brother (an herb doctor) are traditionalists. The girls must deal with living an "American" life while trying to respect the views of their elders. 

The Book of Khartoum: A City in Short Fiction by Raph Cormack (Editor), Max Shmookler (Editor); translated from the Arabic
Contents:
 The tank / Ahmed al-Malik ; translated by Adam Talib --
 In the city / Ali al-Makk ; translated by Sarah Irving --
 A boy playing with dolls / Isa al-Hilu ; translated by Marilyn Booth --
 It's not important, you're from there / Arthur Gabriel Yak ; translated by Andrew Leber --
 Next Eid / Bawadir Bashir ; Translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes --
 Passing / Rania Mamoun ; translated by Elisabeth Jaquette --
 The story of the girl whose birds flew away / Bushra al-Fadil ; translated by Max Shmookler --
 The passage / Mamoun Eltlib ; translated by Mohamed Ghalaeiny --
 The butcher's daughter / Abdel Aziz Baraka Sakin ; translated by Ralph Cormack --
 The void / Hammour Ziada ; translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. 
 
 

July (first week) 2017 Reads

We actually had a couple of really nice weather days--nice enough on Monday to go for a drive to a library we usually don't visit, combined with an outdoor lunch at a favorite seafood place.  And on Wednesday another outdoor lunch at a place closer to home. Then on Friday it poured all day so I got some reading in.

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

The Deal Me In story this week is non-fiction
 Life in the Qandil Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan by Linda Dorigo
A photo essay on this disputed region. Brief, but informative.

The card I found has nothing to do with the essay.  It's so silly. Yep, it's Freddy Mercury! It's part of Long Live Queen Freddie!.  This series by artist, illustrator/cartoonist, and game designer Chuck Knigge features Freddie as various other famous queens. Knigge has other fan art and some comics on the site. Fun to explore.

 




Elsewhere Online...

The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away, by Bushra al-Fadil; translated from the Arabic by Max Shmookkler. This is the winner of The Caine Prize for African Writing. There are links to both text (pdf) and sound (soundcloud) files of this and the other four shortlisted entries on the Caine Prize Shortlist website.


Home is a Cup of Tea by Candace Rose Rardon
The story of a search for the meaning of home told through words and sketches of habitations and teas. This illustration is from her first stop in England. Her travels also take her to New Zealand, India, Canada, Spain, Guatemala, Norway, and Uruguay where she now lives.






From the Library...

Varieties of Disturbance: stories by Lydia Davis
A good collection. Many are super short, there are a few longer ones.
The cover doesn't display very well, but that fly on it really bugged me. Whenever I put the book aside, I put it with the front cover down.

Loved the stories--Hated the fly...







From my Shelves...

Killing the Second Dog by Marek Hłasko; translated from the Polish by Tomasz Mirkowicz; introduction by Leslie Chamberlain

The woes of two Polish con men in Tel-Aviv. Their mark is an American tourist. Problems ensue when she turns out to have a bratty son and a (possibly) dangerous brute of an ex-husband.

My copy through New Vessel Press subscription.




 
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha; Translated from the Portuguese by Eric M B Becker
A bored Brazilian housewife tries to find interesting ways to amuse herself but is stymied by her "no wife of mine is going to..." husband. Things get better when her run-away sister returns to the fold with a son and tales of a marriage gone bad. Not great literature but an interesting look at Brazilian life from the point of view of women. 

Advance review copy through LibraryThing giveaway.
 



The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra; translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
This short novel (104 pages) takes place in a single night while a Chilean man and his step-daughter wait for the mother to come home. Once the bedtime story is done and the child is asleep the man becomes increasingly anxious about his wife's lateness and begins examining the familial relationships in detail.

June (first week) 2017 Reads

Since I usually post on Saturdays and this Saturday is June Third, I'm labeling this June even though the week has more May days than June ones.

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

Story: The Relive Box by T. Coraghessan Boyle (in Watchlist : 32 stories by persons of interest)
What would you watch if you had a magic box that allowed you to relive episodes from your past?  Would you choose happy times, bad times, erotic times? And how addictive could it be?

Card: Four of  Hearts
In the story, the box display "...isn't a computer screen or a hologram or anything anybody else can see--we're talking retinal projection, two laser beams fixed on two eyeballs. Anybody coming into the room...will simply see you sitting there silently in a chair with your retina lit like furnaces."
(Card found on playingcard collector)

some stories online...

The Scent of Paradise and Oussama Two stories from Another Morocco by Abdellah Taïa; translated from the French by Rachael Small. "These are stories of life in a working-class Moroccan family, of a writer's affair with language, & much more."

Toward Marzahn: A Story by Bae Suah ; translated from the Korean by Annah Overly
From the translator's introductory paragraph: "With its shifting timeframes, ambiguous narrator, and apartment empty except for small traces of previous inhabitants, Bae’s “Toward Marzahn” perfectly depicts a hypnagogic atmosphere unlike any other. Marzahn is not in Korea but rather a corner of Berlin, a city where Bae has spent long stretches of time, and her words give life to this realm far removed from her Korean readers’ homeland. Yet the loneliness of these characters never feels foreign or unfamiliar. Rather, it transplants Bae’s readers to her reality, which her critics have hailed as “a world of dreams . . . through which lost voices drift.” 

The Size of Things, by Samanta Schweblin; translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
A toyshop keeper acquires an unusual helper.

Labrador by Daniel Dencik; translated from the Danish by Mark Mussari
"We’d always put off any proper introduction to each other’s parents, because we had enough problems of our own without complicating matters even further. If you’re going to introduce someone to your family, you better be sure."

other online reading...

Lessons in Slowness  by Susanna Basso; translated from the Italian by Matilda Colarossi
An essay on the role of patience when doing literary translation. "I began to wonder if translation was, in fact, a waiting game."

A Brief History of a Decline: The Iranian Novel at the Dawn of the Millennium by Amir Ahmadi Arian an Iranian novelist and journalist.

Read Dozens of Historical Architecture Books for Free Online Thanks to New Library Exhibition 
"Buffalo and Erie County Public Library of Buffalo, New York, has recently opened a new exhibit at their Central Library titled Building Buffalo: Buildings From Books, Books From Buildings. The exhibit will feature a large selection of rare, illustrated architectural books from the Library’s collection dating from the fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The bonus for those who are geographically distant from Buffalo is that, as part of the exhibit, the Library has also made dozens of historical architecture books available online, completely digitized and free to the public." Article includes highlights and photos of the exhibition. The list of online books (with links) can be found here. (warning: PDF)




Inside the Bizarre Personal Lives of Famous Architects by Megan Fowler
Gossipy paragraphs about five mega-star architects with some links to more information. Fun illustrations.



Most of the World’s Bread Clips Are Made by a Single CompanyA brief history of the Kwik Lok Closure. by Eric Grundhauser 
and
Twist-Ties vs. Plastic Clips: Tiny Titans Battle for the Bakery Aisle
by Paul Lukas


from my shelves...

Landscape in Concrete by Jakov Lind; Ralph Manheim (Translator); Joshua Cohen (Introduction)
A tragic/comedic tale of the absurdity of war told from the prospective of Bachmann, a WW2 German soldier, the survivor of a devastating battle where almost his entire regiment was lost in the mud of the Eastern Front. He is declared mentally incompetent  and is set for discharge. He runs away and tries to find his regiment. Strange adventures ensue with an assortment of odd characters: a poisoner/deserter, a homosexual officer, a deranged former schoolteacher turned double agent, Bachmann's large girlfreind, an odd judge, Gypsy musicians....  I must read more by this author.

 

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

In 1978 the Bui family left Vietnam in a boat to Malaysia and a refugee camp. Eventually they made their way to relatives in Chicago and then to California. Their story is well told by one of the daughters who searches for her family identity. The graphic format works well for this story.

Advance review copy.

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....

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!

November (second half) 2016 Reads

A real mixed bag to end November-

La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer; Michele Hutchison (Translation)
Adventures of a Dutch ex-pat in Genoa (aka La Superba). Along with his implausible adventures (often the case when ex-pats spin their stories) there is some history and a lot of tales about the plight of African immigrants. All is told with humor, empathy, and a great love for the city of Genoa. My copy through a subscription to Deep Vellum Books.

Urushi: Proceedings of the 1985 Urushi Study Group by Norman S. Brommelle (Editor)
 I've been reading various parts of this since February 2016. The history part was what interested me most, but I did read the entire collection (skimming some of the science). Some of it is very technical, examining methods of identification and preservation of oriental lacquer ware using chemicals, radiography, and other methods. Much of this was fascinating once I accepted that I didn't have to totally understand the science in order to appreciate the studies. I finished it wondering what progress has been made in the thirty years since this was published. The illustrations were numerous and extremely helpful. This is available online, free from the Getty Virtual Library.

The Old King in His Exile by Arno Geiger, Stefan Tobler (Translation)
A true story of an Austrian family dealing with dementia. Beautifully told by a son who learns a lot about his father, his family, and himself.

 My copy through subscription to And Other Stories.

The Little Hotel by Christina Stead
This 1973 novel is set in a small, slightly seedy Swiss hotel. There's a thin plot, but mostly it is character studies of an odd set of hotel workers and off-season residents who grudgingly accept each others company. They fret about communist threats, the British limits on taking currency abroad,  their personal relationships, their health problems, and boredom. An enjoyable read. Library book.

Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife) by Christina Stead
This was OK but I didn't like it as much as I liked The Little Hotel. This had more plot but it dragged in places.

News of the World by Paulette Jiles
Following the War Between the States, veteran Jefferson Kidd travels around North Texas reading various newspapers to locals hungry for world news. One night in Wichita Falls he is hired to transport a child recently ransomed from her Kiowa kidnappers. She is ten years old and has been a captive since she was six and remembers little of her life before capture. Kidd is to deliver this orphan to family in San Antonio, a four-hundred mile journey through dangerous territory.  A great story full of adventure and a developing relationship. Library book.

The Arab of the Future 2: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1984-1985: A Graphic Memoir (L'Arabe du futur #2) by Riad Sattouf; translated from the French by Sam Taylor.
Riad is different from the other children in his school in Syria--he has light hair, his mother is French, and he often doesn't understand what's going on. A difficult family life, serious, but told with a touch of humor. I must read Part 1. There is a Part 3, but I don't think it's been translated yet. Free copy from the publisher.



Returned to library unread or partially read:

   Engleby : a novel / Sebastian Faulks.
   Work Like Any Other : a novel / Virginia Reeves.
   The Nix : a novel / Nathan Hill. Read a few chapters...meh...
   Britt-Marie Was Here : a novel / Fredrik Backman
I have enough to read without spending time reading things I don't like. But then again, in a different mood, I may actually like a couple of these. I may give the Faulks and the Reeves another try.


Online
Ode to Canned Fish: A defense    By Aaron Gilbreath
Canned fish is more than just tuna. 

URUSHI-KOBO   Web site of Mariko Nishide, Urushi artist and restorer/conservator

Urushi - Japanese Lacquer in modern Design Text by Susanne Fritz
Illustrated article on some modern artists working with Urushi