Book Around the Corner

Reading Bingo is back, according to Cleo at Cleopatra Loves Books. The idea is simple: try to find a book you’ve read this year and that fits into the bingo card. I don’t have much time to do that, to be honest, but I find it entertaining. It’s also a way to remind you of billets you might have missed about books you might enjoy. I don’t read much compared to other book bloggers but apparently my reading tastes are eclectic because I manage to find a book for almost all the squares.

A Book with more than 500 pages : They Were Counted by Miklos Bánffy, the saga of a family at the turning of the 20^th century in Transylvania, Hungary at the time, Romania today. The first volume is 750 pages long, there are two more of them.

A forgotten classic : I don’t know if The Dark Room by RK Narayan is a forgotten classic but I don’t think I’ve seen a review of this book on another blog and yet, it’s worth reading. This is the story of an Indian woman trapped in her housewife life. For a book written by a man in 1935, I find it very feminist.

A Book That Became a Movie: Elle by Philippe Djian has been made into a film by Paul Verhoeven with Isabelle Huppert in the lead role. The film won a Golden Globe Award in Best Foreign Language Film and a César. I haven’t seen the film but Isabelle Huppert is a good fit for Michèle, the character of Djian’s novella.

A Book Published This Year: I rarely buy books that have just been published. I find them expensive and I like to wait after all the buzz is gone to read a book. But given my love for all things Romain Gary, I had to read Un certain M. Piekielny by François-Henri Désérade, a book based on the quest for a character in Promise at Dawn.

A Book With A Number In The Title: Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann.

A Book Written by Someone Under Thirty: Edouard Louis was that young when he wrote The End of Eddy, a book based on his childhood.

A Book With Non Human Characters: At first I thought I had not read any book with non human characters. Then I remembered that No Word From Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza has an alien as a main character and that an owl played a crucial role in one Craig Johnson’s short-stories. (Wait for Signs. Twelve Longmire Stories). And I’ve read books with an animal in the title. I tried to read Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I loved the grim Caribou Island by David Vann. And The Duck Hunt by Hugo Claus is deserves a special prize for desolate and bleak stories. But at least I had fun with My Life as a Penguin by Katarina Mazetti.

A Funny Book: No Word From Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza. An Extra-terrestrial lands in Barcelona just before the 1992 Olympic Games. We follow his journal and his discovery of human way-of-life. Hilarious.

A Book By A Female Author: I’ve read several books by female authors but I choose Lady Audley’s Secret by M.E. Braddon because she was a writer at a time when it wasn’t so easy for a woman to be an author.

A Book With A Mystery: Let’s choose a seasonal read: A New York Christmas by Anne Perry. It was a nice cozy crime fiction where Jemima Pitt plays amateur detective in New York.

A Book With A One Word Title: I had several books with a one word title but I wanted to draw your attention to Corrosion by Jon Bassoff. The billet about this book didn’t get a lot of readers and it’s a pity for Bassoff very dark debut crime fiction novel.

A Book of Short Stories: Datsunland by Stephen Orr is a collection of short stories set mostly in Australia.

Free Square: I decided to use my free square to present a book that is a translation tragedy, ie a book not available in English. My favorite of the year is probably Harmonics by Marcus Malte, a haunting crime fiction story with a jazz background and a link to the war in ex-Yugoslavia.

A Book Set on a Different Continent: I asked recommendations for Australian literature and gathered a huge list. I’ve started with My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin.

A Book of Non-Fiction : Not hesitation there, it will be Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, the book about his experience in the Spanish Civil War in 1936/1937.

The First Book by a Favourite Author

Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret. It is her first book about one of my favorite authors. That’s a stretch, I know. It’s a lovely book written on the basis of Céleste Albaret’s memories of her life as Proust’s governess.

A Book You Heard About Online: Datsunland by Stephen Orr came as a review copy from Wakefield Press, an Australian publisher.

A Best-selling Book: Was Thirteen Ways of Looking successful enough to be a best selling book? I don’t follow those lists much and usually, the more I hear about something in the press, the less tempted I am to read it.

A Book Based on a True Story: The Arab of the Future by Riad Satouf. This is a graphic novel where Satouf tells his childhood in Libya and Syria. His mother is French and his father Syrian.

A Book at the Bottom of you To Be Read Pile: The Romance of the Mummy by Théophile Gautier. Pfft. It’s short but reading it seemed to last a lifetime. Gautier is not a writer for me.

A Book Your Friend Love: A warm hello from France to the friend who shipped me Heed the Thunder by Jim Thompson.

A Book That Scares You: A Cool Million by Nathanael West, a book that reminded me of Donal Trump and that’s scary enough.

A Book That Is More Than Ten Years Old: Random pick because I read a lot of books that are more than ten years old. So it will be Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. It’s lovely, witty and a nice sugary ride in London in the 1930s.

The Second Book in a Serie: Sorry, I have nothing for this one.

A Book With a Blue Cove: Eldorado by Laurent Gaudé. I was blown away by Gaudé’s story about some immigrants’ journey to Europe and about life in on the coast of Italy where boats full of immigrants arrive after braving the Mediterranean Sea. It stayed with me.

That’s all for this year! I hope you enjoyed playing Reading Bingo with me. If you’ve done your own Reading Bingo post, please leave the link to your in the comment section.