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My 2022 reading highlights : another excellent year with books
It’s already this time of year : the end-of-year wrap-up. I feel like I’ve been in a rush all year long but when I look at my reading year, I still managed to read 75 books (that’s my usual) and a lot of them were excellent.
As usual, I’m not big on statistics about genders, centuries, genres and translated books. I’ll give you my very subjective list of best books read in 2022 and in totally random categories that make only sense to me.
Best Least Commented Billet
I looked into my billets in search of the least commented ones. This year, the winner is Shiner by Amy Jo Burns. It could have been a solid contender for a Bleakest Book category too. What a terrible story of the domination of men over their wives and children, of ignorance, of lost opportunities, of poverty and of the dying way-of-life of the mountains.
It’s a good book, I wonder why almost nobody responded to this billet.
Is it well-known in America and in the UK?
Best Gallmeister Book
I’m fan of books published by Gallmeister. They publish excellent American literature with a focus on crime fiction and Nature Writing, the books that Oliver Gallmeister loves and wishes to promote. Since 2022, they’ve branched out and have Italian books too.
Among the ten books that I read this year from their catalogue, all of them could be on my best-of-the-year list.
For this category, I choose Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, it lives up to its reputation. I haven’t read a lot of westerns but this one is really beautiful on every aspect. The characters, the descriptions of landscapes, the atmosphere of the ending of the Frontier era.
Best Non-Book post
2022 was the centenary of Marcel Proust’s death and I’ve attended several exhibitions and read books by him or about him. I loved visiting these exhibitions and sharing them with you. Given the responses I received to these billets, you have enjoyed your travel armchair visits to Paris and Proust.
There has been two billets about Proust and Paris at the Musée Carnavalet, one about Proust’s life in Paris and one about People and Characters that compared characters of In Search of Lost Time and their real-life counterparts. I wrote about the exhibition Proust on his mother’s side at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme. This one explored Proust’s Jewish side as his mother was Jewish.
And the last one I attended was about the making of In Search of Lost Time at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Commenters were quite enthusiastic about it. Thank you for reading these billets about exhibitions you’ll most probably never attend.
Best Most Relaxing Book
Usually, this category includes lighter reads or books you read for entertainment only. This year I want to take “relaxing book” at face value and I pick Indian Creek Chronicles by Pete Fromm.
He describes his winter alone in the Idaho woods near Montana. It’s candid, well-pictured and it runs interference with whatever is bothering you.
Pure bliss, pure armchair travel and a book that reminds you what important and what isn’t.
Best Read With-Sister-in-Law
I read a book per month along with my sister-in-law. (Hi, S!).
In November, we had picked The Hot Spot by Charles Williams. I haven’t written my billet about it yet. I’m glad I waited until the beginning of 2023 to make my best-of-of-the-year list. This is a masterpiece of Noir crime fiction. Brilliant plot, excellent writing, convincing characters and all the Noir codes are respected. It was my first Williams and now he’s sitting next to Jim Thompson on my mental bookshelf.
Best Translation Tragedy
A Translation Tragedy is a book available in English but sadly not in French or vice versa. This year I’ve read twenty-three books that are not translated into English (more than last year, 15) and five that are not translated into French.
Only nine of the twenty-three books not available in English are French books, the others are from French-speaking Africa (Republic of the Congo, Benin, Algeria and Mali), Japan, Italy, Hungary, Mexico, Portugal and Sweden.
In this category, I also have Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami which is composed of various texts that exist in English but have not been gathered in a book. It’s the same for The Book of Christmas by Selma Lagerlöf.
On another note, I find it strange that The House Where I Once Died by Keigo Higashino hasn’t been translated into English since some of his books have been translated.
I’ve tried to read more books by African writers and I wish that Group Photo by the River by Emmanuel Dongala were translated into English. It’s a wonderful portray of women who fight for their rights in the Republic of Congo.
I can’t leave behind the wonderful Island of Souls by Piergiorgio Pulixi. It’s an excellent crime fiction book that mixes a fascinating murder plot, traditions from Sardinia, two catching investigators and a very atmospheric setting.
Among the five books not available in French, like last year, I wonder why Paul Thomas (New Zealand) is not available in French. Fallout was excellent just as Death on Demand in 2021. I’m would find its public in France as we are fans of crime fiction and his Maori maverick police officer would be a hit.
Best Book-I-Want-To-Buy-To-All-My-Friends
Well, it would depend on the time and the friend. I’d either pick All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren or The Marseille trilogy by Jean-Claude Izzo.
All the King’s Men is based on an actual politician and the author found the right balance between telling the rise and fall of a man, examine the life of his right-hand man and mull over the meaning of life and of right and wrong. Not a beach-and-public-transport book but still one I want to share and discuss. It has been republished in a revised translation and the book itself is beautiful.
The Izzo is more entertainment. I loved it and read it while I was in Marseille. It was a wonderful travel companion even if the city has changed a lot since Izzo wrote his books. The reason I loved it so much is the unique atmosphere of the books and how they transport you to Marseille and its area. And yet, Izzo doesn’t sugarcoat the Marseille reality and his tour-de-force is that you still want to hop on a plane and visit Marseille despite all the gritty places he takes his readers to in his books. You just wish that the main character, Fabio Montale, would take you on a ride by the sea and to a local restaurant.
Best Book Club Read
Our Book Club year picked In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and I’m really happy I have read it. I thought it could be too dry for me but not at all. I know it’s a controversial book because it’s based on a real case and it was written only a few years after it occurred but it’s still an excellent book.
Best Non-Fiction
I challenged myself with one non-fiction book per month. I’ve kept up with the list I had made, except for the “Derrida 101”.
The one I’d recommend, beside In Cold Blood and Indian Creek is Proust by Samuel Beckett. It’s an excellent companion book to In Search of Lost Time. Beckett wrote this when he was in his twenties and he’s incredibly insightful.
Best Recommended Book
My choice is Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk.
I started this reluctantly as I found it daunting but I trusted Bénédicte from Passage à l’Est when she told me I’d like it. I loved it and I’m grateful for book blogging or I wouldn’t have read it.
As we say in French, only stupid people don’t change their minds.
Best Book set in the Apalachees
I’ve read several books set in the Apalachees since we were travelling there in August. I read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson and was a bit disappointed by it. I thought it didn’t age well but their hiking on the Appalachian trail was still a performance.
There’s Shiner by Amy Jo Burns that I mentioned earlier. Bleak but based on real patterns and events in the mountains. It’s set in Virginia or West-Virginia.
I loved Country Dark by Chris Offutt and its character, Tucker. This one is in Tennessee and hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park helped me understand Offutt’s novel even better as the constraints of nature became clearer. This billet didn’t get a lot of audience but you’re missing out on a great book.
North Carolina was represented by two books. The first one is Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash. I wish I had had the time to do a proper billet about this excellent novel. Vishy read it too and wrote a review here.
The second one is The Night That Held Us by David Joy. It’s in the top five of the best books I’ve read this year and the winner in this category. You bet I’ll be reading more by him. He’s got everything I love in a writer: short books that pack a lot, a precise writing, a wonderful sense of place, complex characters who have to deal with a set of rotten cards and sometimes take wrong turns in their lives.
Best Chilling Book
That’s definitely Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett as it really gave me the chills but I could have chosen Little Rebel by Jérôme Leroy.
Both describe horrific situations that could come true. Vigilance is about a reality show that involves mass-shootings and Little Rebel how ordinary people become terrorists. Both plausible, both terrifying.
That’s when you need the comfort read delivered by novels set outdoors and with characters who find their peace of mind in a river.
Best Fly-Fishing Book
I didn’t read a lot of books involving fly-fishing this year but I did pass by a fly-fishing museum. I read another book by Keith McCafferty, Dead Man’s Fancy and it was lovely to spend more time with Sean Callahan and Sheriff Martha.
Best Feminist Book
Our Book Club had included in The Awakening by Kate Chopin in our choices for 2021/2022. I thought it was very ahead of its time as the heroin refuses to stick to the position she’s supposed to fill as a bourgeois wife in New Orleans.
Best atmospheric crime fiction
Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden took me to the Lakota reservation in South Dakota. The crime fiction plot was excellent, well-driven and kept my attention. I got attached to the main character who’s struggling to sort out his life, raise his nephew who has lost his parents, grieve his sister and accept the support of his community.
As I’m always curious, I loved reading about life on the reservation and about Lakota customs. The author doesn’t reveal anything about secret rituals that hadn’t been described before. I am grateful that he managed to share about his culture without betraying confidentiality about certains rites.
Well, that was my year 2022 in books. I’ve spent a lovely afternoon among my books and plotting my 2023 reading year.
What about you? When you think of 2022, which book comes on top of your mind?
Proust reads and reading Proust
Days of Reading by Marcel Proust (1905) Original French title: Sur la lecture. Suivi de Journées de lecture.
Proust by Samuel Beckett (1931) French title: Proust. Translated by Edith Fournier.
Proust died on November 18th, 1922. The centenary of his death has been celebrated here with books, TV specials, newspapers, podcasts, radio shows, exhibitions and so on. I meant to publish this billet on November 18th but life got in the way.
Days of Reading is a short essay by Proust, where he muses over the pleasure and the experience of reading.
As often, Proust shows his talent for a catching incipit.
| Il n’y a peut-être pas de jours de notre enfance que nous ayons si pleinement vécus que ceux que nous avons cru laisser sans les vivre, ceux que nous avons passés avec un livre préféré. | There are perhaps no days of our childhood that we lived as fully as the days we think we left behind without living at all:the days we spent with a favorite book. Translation by John Sturrock. |
In the subsequent pages, he remembers the glorious hours he spent with books as a child. He wanted to be left alone with his books and not do anything else. I can relate to that.
His thoughts about finishing a book, the fact that we leave the characters on the last page to never “see” them again is relatable too. Who has never reached the end of a book thinking “That’s all? What will become of them now?”. He muses over our relationship with books, our connection to writers and how they lead us to beauty and intelligence. La lecture est une amitié, he says. And yes, reading is a friendship with books, authors and imaginary worlds.
While Proust talks about his love for reading in Days of Reading, Beckett writes about his response to Proust’s masterpiece In Search of Lost Time.
Beckett wrote Proust, his essay about In Search of Lost Time, in 1931, when he was only 25. Time Regained had only been published four years before in 1927. Beckett was an earlier adopter of Proust and it says something about his ability to understand modern literature and spot a breakthrough in literature, even if Proust wasn’t taken so seriously at the time.
Proust is not an academic essay, it’s the brilliant review of a book through the eyes a passionate reader. Beckett shares his experience with reading Proust and displays a deep knowledge of Proust’s work.
He gives very detailed and precise examples – he quotes from memory, a nightmare for the French translator of his essay because she needed to find the actual quotes in French…He shows a profound understanding of what Proust intended to do with his work and he was ahead of his time.
Beckett goes through all of Proust’s favourite themes: the force of habit, the importance of a setting, his fascination for the Guermantes, his passion for art (literature, painting, opera, music, theatre and architecture.) He has valid points about the relationship between Albertine and the Narrator.
And then come thoughts about memory, remembrance and our thought process. He gives his perception of how memories are triggered by sensations.
Proust is an impressive review of Proust’s masterpiece and it’s a tribute to Beckett’s intelligence as much as an ode to Proust. It’s an excellent companion book for any reader of La Recherche, as we have nicknamed In Search of Lost Time in French.
Proust reads and Beckett reads Proust. I missed the actual day of the centenary of Proust’s death but still decided to bake madeleines to celebrate this anniversary.
Bookstores, publishers and readers – everlasting love
We, book lovers, are a different species.
We love to read, we love to read about reading, we love to read about people who run bookstores, we love to discover other people’s reading lists, we love to discuss our TBRs and self-imposed book-buying bans, we love to read about publishers, we love to talk about books, we love pictures of bookshelves, we love a good debate about the best way to organize the said bookshelves, we love visiting writers’ houses and we love to read about people going to bookstores.
Let’s own it: to non-readers, we’re weird.
Since I’m a proud card holder of the Weird Club, I had to read Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi – 2017. (Original French title: Nos richesses.)
Kaouther Adimi was born in Algeria in 1986 and she now lives in Paris. Her book Nos richesses has been translated into English under two different titles, Our Riches and A Bookshop in Algiers.
In 1936, Edmond Charlot, a French young man born in Algeria founded the bookshop Les Vraies richesses in downtown Algiers. Kaouther Adimi imagines that in 2017, Ryan, a young man gets an internship in Algiers that consists in tidying this old bookshop to turn it into a sandwich shop. That side of the story wasn’t very interesting: Ryan doesn’t read when he arrives and, no epiphany there, he still doesn’t read when his internship is over.
The most fascinating part of the book is the tribute to Edmond Charlot. This man was an incredible book lover, fostering talents and writers. He knew Albert Camus in Algiers and was his first publisher. He knew Mouloud Feraoun and Jean Giono. He published Albert Cossery and Emmanuel Roblès. He wanted to promote poets and authors from the Mediterranean. He had an incredible career as a libraire and as a publisher.
He was also a resistant, a promoter of literature and books for all, lending the books of his shop to his poorest clients. He published Le silence de la mer by Vercors during the war and L’armée des ombres by Joseph Kessel.
During WWII, he relocated in Paris, becoming a renowned publisher. He was inventive in the publishing industry but he was not a good enough businessman. He struggled with money, with paper procurement and never had enough working capital to weather all his business ups and downs. He went back to Algiers but had to move after Algeria became independent.
We owe him a lot. I’d never heard of him and I’m glad that Kaouther Adimi chose to write about him. It is important to know about men like him, who wanted people to be able to read, who wanted to spread the words of others, who believed in the power of books.
A healthy reminder. Read Lisa’s excellent review here.
The same Weird Club card played a new trick on me and I couldn’t resist buying Eloge des librairies (A Tribute to Bookshops) by Maël Renouard (2022) when I saw it on a display table in a bookstore in Montchat, Lyon.
I could totally relate to his first paragraph:
| D’un grand nombre de mes livres, je peux dire, bien des années après, dans quelle librairie je me les suis procurés, et je m’en souviens comme je me souviens de la ville où je me trouvais, du jardin public ou du café où j’allais en lire les premières pages. | For a lot of my books, I can tell, even years later, in which bookshop I bought them, and I remember that just as I remember in which city I was, or in which public park or café I went to read their first pages. |
I will remember where I bought his book and that I read it in one sitting, during a lazy afternoon on the beach in an incredibly warm October month.
Maël Renouard is about my age and this tribute takes us with him in different cities and different countries, sharing with us his bookshops and book memories.
He mentions San Francisco Book and Co in Paris and this is where I bought Cards on a Table by Agatha Christie for the #1936 Club. It was the only shop open in Paris on this Sunday morning. It was February 2021, we were under COVID rules and we had just driven our daughter to her school in the Paris suburbs. It was eerie, to be in Paris in such circumstance, with empty streets, no noise, no cafés and consequently no toilets.
I’m a reader of fiction, I didn’t go to university to study literature or any “soft science”. I have no culture of academics, nights in libraries or doing research. I don’t know the names of respected historians, linguists, literary critics or sociologists unless they are in mainstream media. So, he lost me when he talks about fantastic discoveries in second-hand bookshops, books for his studies and research. I have no clue how rare or precious these old editions are.
I felt a bit left out and would have wanted to hear more about literature but he still makes me want to visit the bookstores he writes about, especially the ones in Paris and London. Bookstores are the beginning of the relationship with the books we buy there.
I could relate to the passages about holidays, taking a big pile of books, knowing you wouldn’t have time to read them all but needing to have a wide choice on hand, and eventually reading a book you bought on impulse in a local bookstore. I managed to tame this (a bit) with a Kindle, only to end up taking with me a pile of already-read books to catch up with billets…Unless I have restricted luggage due to flights or train travels, I always load a bag of books when I go on holiday.
Eloge des librairies is a lovely book for book lovers and even if Maël Renouard and I don’t read the same kind of books, we still share an infinite love for wandering into bookshops and making a permanent link between a book and the place where we bought it.
Book Club 2022-2023 : The List
I’m a little late with my usual Book Club list but, here we go!
Our reading year starts in September with The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard (UK, 1990)
This is the first volume of the Cazalet Chronicles, the story of an English family from 1937 to the 1950s. It’s our September read and I’ve finished it now and won’t write a full billet about it. I know it is a beloved series but I was very disappointed and terribly bored.
I expected something between Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson and ended up in a plain soap opera full of clichés.
An eccentric couple as patriarch and matriarch of the family. A woman who left her career to marry and ends up stuck with a womanizer. A closeted lesbian spinster. A would-be painter, a widower remarried to a beautiful but vapid young woman who doesn’t like her step-children. An affectionate couple who can’t seem to speak to each other. A sister married to a scoundrel and struggling with money, until a dear old aunt dies. An ugly and poor governess. An army of children with the expected dreams and angst: being an actress, fleeing from home, fighting with each other…And servants as side characters.
All this in a style I found very plain. Tedious and lifeless descriptions of the countryside, the different homes or the cook’s culinary wonders. I expected a bit of humor and found none. I couldn’t find any interest in the characters’ fate and struggled to finish The Light Years. Needless to say, I won’t be reading the next one.
I couldn’t immerse myself in Downtown Abbey either, that should have clued me in. At this time, I don’t know if the other members of our Book Club enjoyed it more than me. I’m looking forward to hear their take.
Since several bloggers I respect and share literary interests with really loved this series, I wonder what I missed. A British cultural background?
October will bring another historical novel with Flight of the Sparrow by Amy Belding Brown (USA, 2014)
Like The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, Flight of the Sparrow is based upon the real life of a woman who feels stifled by the restricted status of women in her time and who starts questioning the vision of the world she was born in.
Set in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1676, Flight of the Sparrow is based upon the real life of Mary Rowlandson who lives in a Puritan community and is captured by Indians. Sharing the Indians’ quotidian, she’ll discover another way of living, another kind of civilization.
I’m looking forward to it.
November will be totally different with Animal Souls by Jose Rodrigues Dos Santos (Portugal, 2020).
It is the eleventh volume of a crime fiction series featuring a recurring character, Tomás Noronha. I’ve never heard of this writer, specialized in scientific crime fiction and who bases his books on true scientific research.
Animal Souls explores the topic of the intelligence and the consciousness of animals as Tomás Noronha investigates a murder at the Oceanarium in Lisbon.
It sounds fascinating. December will take us to India with Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga. (2011)
Set in Mumbai, it’s the story of a man who refuses to leave his apartment and sell to a property developer. On principle.
I like him already.
I hope to learn a bit more about India through this book even if it’s already eleven years old and many things have happened since.
January will bring us back to Europe and in the 19th century with The Waltz of the Trees and the Sky by Jean-Michel Guenassia (2016).
I don’t think it’s been translated into English and the original French title of the book is La valse des arbres et du ciel.
The beautfiful cover is spot on as this book relates the last days of Van Gogh’s life with the Gachet family in Auvers-sur-Oise. It’s based upon the latest research on Van Gogh’s life and his work.
February will see us back in the 21st century with Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov. (Ukraine)
Lots of reviews of this book have blossomed on our literary blogosphere since the war in Ukraine started.
I’m looking forward to understanding better the background of the war in Ukraine through Kurkov’s eyes.
I still have his other book, The Chameleon, on the shelf.
In March, we’ll go to Atlanta and read An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (2018)
According to the blurb, it sounds like the little brother of If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin.
A young couple with a promising future is set apart when the husband is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.
How will their couple survive this?
Then it’s back to France and crime fiction in April.
We’ll read Boccanera by Michèle Pedinielli, a crime fiction book set in Nice. Boccanera is a woman PI who will investigate a murder in the gay community. She sounds like a great character, a maverick in a men’s world.
On the cover it says : “If Montale and Corbucci had a daughter, she’d look like Boccanera.”
Doesn’t it sound great?
We’ll fly back to America in May, to New-York and his Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. (2021)
According to the blurb, it is a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.
It sounds more playful than the very serious Underground Railroad and Nickel Boys.
Let’s go to Harlem in the 1960s!
June will have a totally different vibe with L’Autre by Andrée Chedid (2005).
I don’t think that this one is translated into English. Andrée Chedid is a poetess and a novelist. In this novella, an old man sees someone at the window of a hotel just before an earthquake. He’ll do his best to steer the rescue teams towards this stranger and save him.
And July will be a reread, Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. No description needed. I’m curious to read it as an adult.
That’s all for the coming year. I’m happy with our choices, it’s a good mix of historical, crime and literary fiction. Did you read any of them and did you like them?
20 Books of Summer: how did that go?
Before diving into September, running into Fall and ending up doing Christmas shopping thinking that time flies and that 2022 is almost over, let’s have a look at my 20 Books of Summer challenge. It’s hosted by Cathy and I shared my selection here. I wasn’t sure I could read 20 books this summer but I did it!
I took some liberties with the original list and the books read that weren’t on the list are in bold. I haven’t had time to write billets about all the books I read but I’m on it! Hopefully, I’ll catch up in September.
I’m happy with my summer reads as I had a good mix of crime fiction, literary fiction and non-fiction. I managed to read a few books related to my trip in the USA, which I love to do when visiting places.
Summer with crime fiction:
- The Survivors by Jane Harper (Australia)
- Dead at Daybreak by Deon Meyer (South Africa)
- The Cut by George Pelecanos (Washington DC)
- Adios Madrid by Pablo Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico)
- Fallout by Paul Thomas (New Zealand)
- Winter Count by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (USA)
- Hell Is Empty by Craig Johnson (USA)
Trip related books:
- A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (Appalachians)
- Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash (North Carolina)
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Southern Region)
- Shiner by Amy Jo Burns (Appalachians)
- The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (South Carolina)
Other books
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (USA)
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (USA) This one counts for two and I loved it.
- Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Pineiro (Argentina)
- Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese (Canada)
- The Fire, Next Time by James Baldwin (USA)
- La véritable histoire de l’Ouest américain by Jacques Portes. (France) The most interesting thing I learnt in this one is that the film Stagecoach directed by John Ford is based on Boule de suif, a short story by Maupassant. (Translated as Dumpling or Butterball or Ball of Fat or Ball of Lard) It has also an excellent map of Native American tribes.
- A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi (Algeria)
Books on the list that I didn’t read:
- Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (Louisiana)
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (North Carolina)
- Serena by Ron Rash (North Carolina)
- All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (USA)
- Days of Reading by Marcel Proust (France)
- Proust by Samuel Beckett (Ireland)
- Lie With Me by Philippe Besson (France)
- The Miracles of Life by Stefan Zweig (Austria)
I need to change of scenery and I’m not ready to read other books set in the Appalachians or the Deep South right now. I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as they deserve it.
The upcoming billets about my 20 Books of Summer are…
I’m happy I signed up for the 20 Books of Summer challenge and I’m ready to do it again next year! Many thanks to Cathy for organizing this event.
Back from holiday!
Hello everyone! I’m back from my holiday and normal blogging will resume soon. I’ve read nine books and I’m on a good way to complete my 20 Books Of Summer Challenge! Now, I’ve a lot of billets to write to catch up as soon as I can.
Before diving back into the billet pool, some news about my time abroad. I’ve been to places I’m used to reading about in books, like Washington DC, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Appalachians, North and South Carolina as well as Virginia.
So, you won’t be surprised to read billets about Shiner by Amy Jo Burns, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead or The Cut by George Pelecanos. I’m currently reading The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd and still have When the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren and Serena by Ron Rash on the shelf. More Southern books to come!
We’ve been “colleging”, a new word I learnt when we moved our daughter into her apartment at USC. It was “move in” weekend and it was a bit surreal to do that in another country, so far away from home and yet be part of this collective move-in day.
We left a family member behind until Christmas. Well, here are book-friendly places at USC.
Until I have the energy to write proper billets about books, some photos about bookish stuff that came my way during this trip. I’ll do a Literary Escapade about the Library of Congress where I spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling and reading authors names and mottos about reading and books.
Otherwise, here are too Little Free Library boxes, including one in Halifax, North Carolina, a town officially on The Underground Railroad and proudly displaying two books by Colson Whitehead.
Of course visited bookstores and came come with three books, The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly, bought at Kramer’s, Justice by Larry Watson, discovered in a used bookstore and Jim Hanvey, Detective by Octavius Roy Cohen because I had to have a book in a Library of Congress edition.
We visited historic houses and two of them had home libraries.
And last, but not least, the fly-fishing running gag of Book Around the Corner.
Frequent visitors know that I have a knack for reading books that talk about fly-fishing even if I’ve never held a fishing pole in my life. I know an abnormal number of words about fly-fishing and Oliver Gallmeister should take full responsibility for this.
I’m thinking about books by Keith McCafferty, John Gierach or William G Tapply and other books published by Gallmeister. Now I’ve been to a sporting goods store and the area about fishing was huge. I got to see flies in real life.
And, surprise, there’s a fly-fishing museum!! We didn’t visit it, I’m not that interested in fly-fishing.
I hope you enjoyed these little snippets of my trip and that will be all for the pictures. I’ll be back soon with proper billets about books.
Quais du Polar 2022 : let’s get ready!
In two weeks, the crime fiction festival Quais du Polar will open. It’s a three-days celebration of crime fiction all over the city. The program is available on the Quais du Polar website and you can download it in pdf file if you’re interested.
The organization of the festival outdid themselves. There are the usual panels with several writers gathered around a theme, the giant bookstore in the gorgeous hall of the Chamber of Commerce, the mystery to solve in the city with a booklet of clues and questions. There are also crime escape games in several museums of the city.
Last year, the festival was in June, during COVID restrictions and they had to do things outdoors. They started the “literary cruises” on the Saône River, using the city’s bateaux-mouches. I went on the cruise with Florence Aubenas last year and this year, I’m very happy that I snatched a ticket for a literary cruise with Olivier Norek.
The Opera and Théâtre de l’Odéon are also involved and I booked a ticket for a Jazz & Literature event with Jake Lamar and Les Paons. I have wonderful memories of the one with James Sallis and Michael Connelly in a previous edition of the festival.
There are tons of talks with writers, opportunities to get signed books, chat with authors and discover the city of Lyon and sneak into places where you usually don’t go, like the grand room at the city hall. Almost everything is set in the city center withing walking distance and all events are free.
The festival has a broad approach of crime and works with the police and the justice to show how things work in real life. The police organize tours at the national school for commissaires de police and police officers set near Lyon. One year, you could do a tour at a police station with police officers to explain how they work. for a tour or have police officers explaining their jobs in police stations.
Last year, I attended a panel at the tribunal with judges and lawyers specialized in cold cases. This year, the festival goes further with bus tours with CSI, police and judicial experts. People you see on the screen and hope to never meet in real life, at least, not in their official capacity.
For the rest, I’m thrilled to spend time at the festival with friends and relatives. Let’s hope that the weather cooperates and it’ll be a fantastic weekend.
Last but not least, the authors without whom this festival wouldn’t exist. Here are the authors invited to the festival. The photos come from the official Quais du Polar website. I put a book sign on the writers I’ve already read (not many, actually). Let me know in the comments which ones you recommend.
Space Between Us by Zoyâ Pirzâd – Meet Edmond and his family in the Armenian community in Iran.
Space Between Us by Zoyâ Pirzâd (1997) French title: Un jour avant Pâques. Translated from the Persian by Christophe Balaÿ.
This is my last billet about the twenty books I read this summer for Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer challenge. It’s OK, it’s Indian summer at the moment, right?
I hoped to write about Space Between Us by Zoyâ Pirzâd for WIT Month but my TBW pile was too high. The French title of the book is Un jour avant Pâques, The Day Before Easter and it seems to be the direct translation of the original title. And it makes sense.
Born in 1952, Zoyâ Pirzâd is an Iranian writer from the Armenian community in Iran. Her book Space Between Us is set in this community and covers several decades of the main character’s life, Edmond. Three chapters, each set at a key moment of Edmond’s life, all three times around Easter day.
In the first chapter, Edmond is twelve. He’s an only child and lives in a small town by the Caspian Sea. His father is the director of the local Armenian school. Edmond’s best friend is Tahereh, the concierge’s daughter. She’s Muslim but goes to the Armenian school too, since its more practical. A drama will occur in the tight-knit community, forcing Edmond to grow up.
In the second chapter, Edmond is older, married to Marta and they now live in Teheran. They have a grownup daughter, Alenouche who announces that she’ll marry her Muslim boyfriend. Edmond accepts it willingly but Marta is rigid about it, a Christian devout and she takes it as a personal insult.
In the last chapter, Edmond is even older, a widower now. He hasn’t seen his daughter in four years, since her fight with Marta.
Space Between Us is a lovely book. It’s very poetical in its description of childhood, of food and smells. It has a melancholic ring that matches Edmond’s temper. He’s a quiet child, Tahereh is the daring part of their duo. He’s observant too and shares his thoughts about his family and the Armenian community around him. He knows that his mother is not the traditional Armenian mother, she’s not keen on housekeeping and she had to live with a formidable mother-in-law. Edmond’s father is a quiet man too who loves his wife the way she is and never pressures her to comply to traditions but the community, though helpful, is also stifling.
Marta was thick as thieves with Edmond’s grandmother. They shared the same sense of community, a strong will to keep traditions alive and not change anything in their vision of the place of men and women in a couple, the duties children had to pay or the fact that one remained in their community.
The grandmother never liked Edmond’s friendship with Tahereh and Marta didn’t take Alenouche’s engagement well. It felt more like a will to keep the Armenian community alive, not to have it dissolved into the Iranian society than anything else. They are survivors of the Armenian genocide and they have the duty to keep their community and their traditions alive not to lose their identity and lose their history. It would mean forget about their lost country, about the genocide and their tragedy as a people.
Zoyâ Pirzâd doesn’t write a political novel. She writes about the quotidian, its little beauties and the family traditions. She takes us into Edmond’s life, full of ladybugs, friendship, painted Easter eggs and Armenian dishes. He sees family politics with his child’s eyes and, as an adult, lives through it by avoiding conflicts. The French cover of the book, a watercolor is perfect for the book.
Pirzâd’s writing reminded me of Philip Roth’s when he describes the Newark of his childhood or when Peter Balakian remembers his youth in New Jersey among his Armenian family in The Black Dog of Fate, also published in 1997. A community of immigrants in a country with other traditions.
Highly recommended, both Space Between Us and The Black Dog of Fate.
Crime fiction readalong with S.
For our third readalong, S. and I have decided to leave American West books behind and have a year of reading atmospheric crime fiction from different countries. We have settled for twelve books that cover all continents. We’ll read one per month, starting this September.
Les larmes noires sur la terre by Sandrine Collette. It’s not available in English and the title means Black tears on the earth. It’s set in a junkyard in France, a place we’d rather think doesn’t exist. I’ve already read a Collette book Il reste la poussière and I was impressed by her style. Someone should translate her into English.
The Black Ice by Michael Connelly. No need to explain who Connelly and Bosch are. I’m looking forward to spending time in LA with them.
The Shaman Laughs by James D. Doss will take us to the Ute reservation. I’ve read several books by Tony Hillerman and I expect to find in Charlie Moon a cousin of Jimmy Chee or Joe Leaphorn.
L’île des âmes by Piergiorgio Pulixi. It means The souls’ island and it’s not available in English. Set in Sardinia, it’s Italian crime fiction that delves into local folklore and customs on top of the usual crime investigation.
Yeruldelgger by Ian Manook is the beginning of a French crime fiction series set in Lapland. According to Goodreads, it’s available in German, Italian, Greek, Romanian, Vietnamese, Czech and Spanish.
A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny. I’m looking forward to going back to Québec and see what Gamache is up to.
Adieu Oran by Ahmed Tiab. A series of violent crimes happen in Oran, Algeria. Commissaire Fadil is in charge of the investigation. Another book only available in French.
Les disparus de Pukatapu by Patrice Guirao is set in Tahiti. We’ll see what’s beyond the paradisiac islands. Only available in French.
La Maison où je suis mort autrefois by Keigo Higashino. The title means The house where I once died. This is a Japanese crime fiction book and it’s not available in English either.
The Survivors by Jane Harper will be an opportunity to travel to Tasmania.
Dead at Daybreak by Deon Meyer and we’ll fly out to South Africa
Les hamacs de carton by Colin Niel is set in French Guyana. As I’ve already read it , I will go back to New Zealand, reunite with the Maori cop Tito Ihaka and read Inside Dope by Paul Thomas.
I am grateful for translators who brings these books to French readers and for the publishers who promote foreign literature.
Twelve books, twelve months, twelve armchair travels. What do you think of our selection?
20 Books of Summer 2021 : It’s a wrap!
I’m late with the wrap-up of my 20 Books of Summer challenge. Life got in the way of blogging lately, mostly for good reasons. Holidays. Getaway weekends. Driving our daughter back to her campus. This summer, I’ve read 20 books, abandoned one, and wrote only 13 billets. *sheepish* I read seven books out of the original list.
I don’t think I’ll be able to catch up with all the billets as I’m drowning in work and I keep reading and adding to the billets pile.
I’m happy with my armchair travelling as my books took me to Egypt, Pennsylvania, Montana, Australia, Mississippi, Romania, Iran, Scotland, France, Denmark, Tennessee, New York, Colombia, Texas and Massachusetts.
As I began to compile the list of books, I noticed several recurring themes, all unintentional.
Uprooted, colonized and ostracized people
L’Arche de Noé by Khaled Al Khamissi. From story to story, the reader discovers all the reasons why people want to leave Egypt and how to emigrate to a Western country.
A Most Peculiar Act by Marie Munkara. Set in the Northern Territory in Australia, this satire explores the absurdity of the Aboriginal ordinances Act of 1918. You need to read it to believe the way Aborigines were treated by the Australian government.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Matthis. Mini billet upcoming. I expected to like this one better than I did.
The Man Who Saw the Flood and Down by the River Side by Richard Wright who comes back to the devastating 1921 flood in Mississippi.
Terre des affranchis by Liliana Lazar. Mini billet upcoming. Liliana Lazar is a French writer of Romanian origin. She writes in French but the story is set in her native corner of Romania. It’s not available in English.
Space Between Us by Zoyâ Pirzâd. Mini billet upcoming. I wish I had had the time and energy to write about this one for WIT Month. She’s an Iranian writer and Space Between Us is a lovely book that deserves to be read. It is set among the Armenian community in Iran.
In Search of One’s Self
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. I wasn’t completely fine with this one, too many irritating clichés for my tastes.
Rosa Candida by Auđur Ava Ólafsdóttir. A coming-of-age novel and thoughts about fatherhood, filiation, parenting and gardening.
Keep the Change by Thomas McGuane. The story of an outsider from Montana who feels like a fraud as painter but cannot run the ranch he inherited either.
Art related books
Sundborn ou les jours de lumière by Philippe Delerm. Sundborn is about a group of Scandinavian painters and incidentally, there’s an exhibition about one of them, Kroyer at the Musée Marmottan-Monet in Paris. You enjoyed the paintings I included in my billet. Here’s one of them
Monsieur Proust’s Library by Anka MuhlsteinThis is a perfect companion read for In Search of Lost Time. It focuses on reading in Proust’s masterpiece and on his literary influences.
Vers la beauté by David Foenkinos. Antoine, an art history teacher, becomes a museum attendant at the Musée d’Orsay after his life is turned upside down. Will staring at his favorite Modigliani painting heal his wounds?
The crime fest was bigger than expected.
Vintage by Grégoire Hervier. This one took me in search of a mysterious guitar and to the origins of rock music. I ended up with a new blues and rock playlist. Plus I had fun looking up all the guitars he talks about.
The Lonely Witness by William Boyle. An excellent neo-noir book set in the atmospheric Brooklyn.
Perdre est une question de méthode by Santiago Gamboa. I enjoyed my visit to Bogota in company of Victor Silanpa, journalist extraordinaire and amateur sleuth.
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke. I loved this multilayered book as it explores the early 80s in booming Houston, its oil industry, the years after the civil rights movement and the main character’s personal struggles.
Lesser Evils by Joe Flanagan. Upcoming billet. A book I’m ready to buy to all my friends and another great find by Gallmeister.
Money Shot by Christa Faust. Upcoming billet. This is the first book with Angel Dare, former porn star. It’s a hell of a ride in the world of crime and porn industry.
Dark Island by Susanna Crossman. No billet. I bought this one at Quais du Polar and read it right away. It’s the dark tale of a group of people who are invited by Josh on an isolated island in Brittany. Josh’s personality makes people uneasy and the tensions in the group are a recipe for drama. I haven’t been able to figure out whether it’s available in English or not. The author is British, the book has been written in English and yet it seems to be only available in French translation.
Colin-Maillard à Ouessant by Françoise Le Mer. No billet. A thriller set in Ouessant, Britanny. The plot was well drawn, the duo of inspectors was an odd pair but the writing wasn’t as fine as like it in my crime books now. It’s the first of a series, it may be a bit clumsy before the series improves.
Abandoned book
Call Mr Fortune by H.C. Bailey. It’s cozy crime from the 1920s, a collection of short stories with Dr Fortune as the amateur sleuth. The plots have the complexity of a Scooby Doo episode. The humor is fun but the stories weren’t catchy enough to keep my attention. And since reading hours are a rare commodity, on the Abandoned Books pile it went.
Books from the original list that I didn’t read
- Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett
- Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash
- Ballad of Dogs’ Beach by José Cardoso Pires
- The Wild Inside by Jamey Bradbury
- Tales From the Otherworld by Ji Yun
- On Monday Last Week and The Shivering by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I’m still interested in reading them, of course but I read Dark Island, Lesser Evils, Space Between Us right after buying them. When I received Eleanor Oliphant through my Kube subscription, an easy read was what I needed at the time, so I dived into it. I had Black Water Rising on the shelf and a discussion with Buried in Print pushed me to finally read it. I couldn’t resist Open Press’s copy of Monsieur Proust’s Library and I now have two other books by Anka Mulhstein on the TBR. And my visit to the Musée d’Orsay led me to Antoine from Vers la beauté.
I read 14 books from the TBR but new books have joined the pile. Oh well, now I’m all set for the next reading months.
Monsieur Proust’s Library by Anka Muhlstein – a delight for all Proust lovers
Monsieur Proust’s Library by Anka Muhlstein (2012) French title: La bibliothèque de Marcel Proust.
It isn’t enough that he names or quotes the great writers of the past: he has absorbed them; they are an integral part of his being, to the point of participating in its creation. As such their works will survive, not in the immutable way great monuments endure, but constantly rediscovered and reinterpreted thanks to Proust’s unexpected, playful, and intensely personal take on different masterpieces. One of the great joys of reading La Recherche is to disentangle the rich and diverse contributions of the past.
Marcel Proust was born in July 10th, 1871. We are now celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth and Open Press has published a new edition of Anka Muhlstein’s Monsieur Proust’s Library. It has new illustrations by Andreas Gurewich.
In a slim volume (129 pages), Anka Muhlstein explores Proust and literature. On one side, there’s Proust as a reader and on the other side, there’s literature in In Search of Lost Time, or as French fans call it, La Recherche.
I had a lot of fun going through Proust’s first bookish loves and discovering which foreign writers he admired. We know from La Recherche that Racine, Balzac, Mme de Sévigné and Saint-Simon were among his favorite writers. When you’ve read Proust and seen his style, it’s hard to believe that Proust as a reader enjoyed books with lots of action, like Capitaine Fracasse or novels by Alexandre Dumas.
I knew he was fascinated and influenced by John Ruskin. He translated his work into French, without knowing the English language. His mother, who was fluent in English, helped him and he learned how to read English on the go. He could read but he couldn’t speak. How incredible is that? I didn’t know that he was influenced by Dickens, Hardy and Eliot and loved Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
Proust was a great reader and the characters in his books are avid readers too. They all read but the Narrator sort them out between good and bad readers. In this chapter, Muhlstein picks characters in La Recherche and shows who’s a good reader in Proust’s opinion and who is not. Some are even an opportunity for Proust to convey his ideas about reading and literary criticism.
Mme de Villeparisis’s opinions about writers are a spoof of the theories of the great literary critic Sainte-Beuve, who held that knowing an author’s character, morals, religion, and comportment was indispensable for assessing the value of his work. This theory was so abhorrent to Proust that he wrote Contre Sainte-Beuve, arguing passionately that it represented the negation of all that a true writer is about. According to Proust, an artist does not express his inner self—the self that is never exposed in everyday life and is the only self that matters—in conversation, or even in letters. To look at the artist’s life in order to judge the work is absurd.
Unbeknown to be, I’ve always had the same opinion as Proust. How cool is that?
The chapter about the Baron de Charlus as a reader was enlightening too. He’s the homosexual character in La Recherche and an excellent reader. He bonds with the Narrator’s grand-mother over Madame de Sévigné. She sees in him a good, erudite and sensitive reader. In this chapter, Muhlstein demonstrates how much Balzac is embedded in Proust’s text. I discovered that Proust’s favorite works by Balzac are Girl With the Golden Eyes, a lesbian story, A Passion in the Desert, a strange love for panther, Lost Illusions, with Vautrin in love with Lucien de Rubempré and Sarrasine. I didn’t remember that Balzac had homosexual characters.
Another discovery for me was about Racine’s innovative ways with the French language. For me, Corneille and Racine are boring 17th century playwrights stuck in alexandrines. This chapter was truly eye-opening and the explanations about Proust’s fascination for Phèdre were very interesting.
The chapter on the Goncourt brothers was useful as their Journal was a source of information about the French literary world of their time. Proust won the Goncourt Prize in 1919 for In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.
A book about Proust and literature had to include a chapter about Bergotte, the great writer in La Recherche. It’s modeled after Anatole France, a very famous writer of the time that nobody reads anymore although Proust was convinced that France/Bergotte would reach immortality. Bergotte did as a character thanks to his author.
Proust has created a prodigiously interwoven universe,the form and complexity of which do not reveal themselves easily; but fortunately, it is a universe within which are to be found planets—the worlds of the Guermantes, the Verdurins, and the Narrator’s family, for example—inhabited by a diverse population of characters in turn moving, entertaining, hilarious, and cruel, to which readers are readily attracted. The same may be said of the complex world of literature that Proust himself inhabited.
As always with Proust, I’m amazed at how much I remember of the characters in La Recherche. They stayed with me and when Anka Muhlstein evokes a character or a scene, I know whom or what she’s referring to. I loved her short book about Proust and literature because it is accessible to common readers like me. You don’t need a PhD in literature to read it and it’s an enjoyable and instructive journey into Proust’s library.
Many thanks to Other Press for sending me a free copy of this affectionate book about La Recherche.
I’ve read it at the same time I went to Paris and visited the recently reopened Musée Carnavalet. They have made a whole room about Proust, since they have his bed in their collection. I wish they had redone the corked walls as well, to help us understand the atmosphere in which he wrote.
PS: Tamara at Thyme for tea organizes Paris in July again and that’s an opportunity for me to contribute to her event.
Quais du Polar 2021 – Day One
For newcomers to my blog, Quais du Polar is a crime fiction festival set up in Lyon, France.
In 2020, the festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, it was scheduled early in April but was postponed to July 2nd to 4th. Since we still have some restrictions, the organization was changed to avoid large gathering in closed spaces.
The former big bookstore set up in the Chamber of Commerce…
has been replaced by an outdoor book market along the banks of the Rhône river and you have to book a ticket online to attend a conference.
The conferences are still organized at the City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce but new places have been added to the mix. Tomorrow, I’m going on a literary cruise on the Saône river.
I had two reservations for today and I have two for tomorrow. I’m happy with the two events I attended.
This morning, I went to the Paradis Noirs panel. (Black Paradise) The authors were David Vann (USA), Susanna Crossman (UK and France. I wish my English were as good as her French), Patrice Guirao (France) and Piergiorgio Pulixi (Italy).
These four writers have written a crime fiction novel set up in a paradisiac place, namely Sardinia, Tahiti, Komodo Island in Indonesia and an island in Brittany. The journalist asked relevant questions, monitored the speaking time properly and ideas bounced between the writers, showing the similarities between the books. The authors had enough time to share their ideas and obviously enjoyed interacting with each other. I was intrigued by their books:
- Komodo by David Vann,
- Les Disparus de Pukatapu by Patrice Guirao
- L’île sombre by Susanna Crossman
- L’île des âmes by Piergiorgio Pulixi
I love reading crime fiction in exotic settings, I’m afraid the TBR increased by three books after this panel.
Quais du Polar is about crime fiction but the local authorities involved with crime solving partner with the festival to share how things are done in real life. It helps that Lyon is the city where CSI was developed (with professor Lacassagne, see my billet about Les suppliciées du Rhône by Céline Gatel), where Interpol is located and is the third largest criminal court in France.
Once I visited the school for commissaires de police and saw how they teach the students how to work on a crime scene. Sometimes, a police station is open to the public and the officers share their quotidian.
This year, I went to a conference about cold cases at the court. The speakers were a public prosecutor, Jacques Dallest and two lawyers specialized in solving cold cases, Maître Seban and Maître Corinne Herrmann. The discussion was about cold cases and how the French justice doesn’t handle them well-enough. They shared anecdotes, explained why the judicial system is not as efficient as it should be and how to improve it. They say that they manage to reopen cases when families or journalists come to see them with something new. There’s also the possibility to reexamine clues with new forensic methods.
It was fascinating to be in the room where the hearings are done and listen to them talk about their work.
If you’re curious about Quais du Polar, check out their website here. You can also see the conferences in replay.
20 Books of Summer Episode ’21: I’m in!
It’s that time of year again! We’re planning for Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer. The aim is to read 20 books from June 1st to August 31st. For most of you, it’s no big deal. It’s going to be a challenge for me, especially after starting a new job a month ago. But I’ll still try and, in any case, I had fun making my list, with a constraint: pick books that are already on the TBR.
Last year I did several categories, i.e. Book Club Choices, Read-the-West-With-Sister-In-Law, Ghosts of Trips Past, Ghost of the Missed Trip, Ghost of the Upcoming Trip to France. This year, I’ve decided upon categories as well.
*Drum roll*
THE LIST
Book Club choices.
This category remains as I’m still reading a book per month with my Book Club girlfriends. We’ve already picked:
- L’Arche de Noé by Khaled Al Khamissi (Egypt) –– Not available in English
- The Twelve Tribes of Hattie By Ayana Matthis (USA)
There’s another book TBD since at the moment, I don’t know what our choice for August will be.
With-Sister-In-Law Readalong choices
I’m on a monthly readalong with my sister-in-law too and our summer books are:
- Keep the Change by Thomas McGuane (USA)
- The Lonely Witness by William Boyle (USA)
- Money Shot by Christa Faust (USA)
Upcoming bookish events
If these events are organized as usual, I plan on reading a book for Lisa’s Indigenous Lit Week in June, two for Spanish & Portuguese Lit Month.
- A Most Peculiar Act by Marie Munkara (Australia)
- Ballad of Dogs’ Beach by José Cardoso Pires (Portugal)
- Perdre est une question de méthode by Santiago Gamboa (Colombia) – Not available in English. The title means Losing Is a Question of Methodology and it intrigued me when I saw it in a bookstore.
Cut the Kube TBR
Kube is my monthly blind date with a book chosen by a libraire. So far so good, they sent books I would have bought myself and I’d heard of only one of the books they sent my way. I haven’t read two of them:
- The Wild Inside by Jamey Bradbury (USA) It’s a Gallmeister book, I should be OK.
- Rosa Candida by Auđur Ava Ólafsdóttir (Iceland) I’m curious about this one, published by Zulma, an excellent publisher.
Of course, I’ll get new ones in June, July and August.
Old TBR members
Some books have been on the TBR for a looong time. I thought it was high time to read…
- Terre des affranchis by Liliana Lazar (France/Romania) – Not available in English. Liliana Lazar was born in Romania, emigrated in France and writes in French.
- Sundborn ou les jours de lumière by Philippe Delerm (France) – Not available in English. Delerm’s book is about the community of Scandinavian painters who lived in Grez-sur-Loing in France.
Cheating with the 2€ Folio collection
The 2€ Folio collection is made of short books (around 100 pages), often short stories by well-known writers and it’s a good way to sample a writer’s style and see if it’s worth trying a longer work. These three will help me reach the 20 books count.
- Nouvelles de l’au-delà by Ji Yun (China) – Tales From the Otherworld (18th C)
- The Man Who Saw the Flood and Down by the River Side by Richard Wright (1961 & 1938), from the collection of short stories Eight Men (1961) and Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) It was published in this collection after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans.
- On Monday Last Week and The Shivering by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Crime fest
On top of Boyle and Faust, already mentioned in my readalong picks, I love to read crime books while I’m on holiday or at home by the pool. I may switch some books later, after Quais du Polar, the crime festival in Lyon, scheduled for the first weekend of July. But at the moment, my choices are:
- Colin-Maillard à Ouessant by Françoise Le Mer (France) – Not available in English. Set in Brittany, it will be a great reminder of last year’s holidays in this beautiful region.
- Vintage by Grégoire Hervier (France) – Not available in English. This is a rock-blues thriller that should take me on a road trip to Scotland, Paris, Sydney and The Blues Highway, a trip I’ll definitely make as soon as my children are 21 and allowed in bars.
- Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett, USA, 2019.
Kindle Books to read while Mr Emma is driving.
I get car sick if I read a paper book but I don’t have this problem with Kindle books! 😊 So, I’ve added two books from the Kindle TBR for the long drives to our vacation spots.
- Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash (USA)
- Call Mr Fortune by H.C Bailey (UK)
And that’s it. 19 books, plus the unknown Book Club choice for August. 20 opportunities to cut into the TBR. The good news is that I’m still interested in reading the books that are on the TBR, even if some have been there for a long time.
What about you? Will you take part in 20 Books of Summer too? Have you read any book on my list?
The #1936Club starts tomorrow – some reading suggestions
Tomorrow starts the #1936 Club co-hosted by Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book. It lasts a week, from April 12th to April 18th.
I’m in with two books, Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie with clever Hercule Poirot and Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell with stupid Gordon. I should be able to post my billets about these two books in the upcoming week.
Incidentally, I’ve read two other books published in 1936 in the last four months.
In December, our Book Club had chosen War With the Newts by Karel Čapek, a stunning dystopian fiction. It’s an odd book, a strange patchwork of narration, board minutes, newspaper articles and other sources. It takes us to a fictional world where a population of working newts colonizes the world. It’s a humorous but serious declaration against the pitfalls of wild capitalism. If you haven’t read it, the #1936 Club might be the perfect time to do it.
In March, for Southern Cross Crime Month hosted by Kim at Reading Matters, I read Death in Ecstasy by Nagaio Marsh, a clever and entertaining investigation by Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn and his journalist friend Nigel Bathgate. It’s a perfect read to spend an evening with a book and forget about the world. Readers of classic crime will have a great time with it.
I also would like to draw your attention to Return to Coolami by Eleanor Dark. According to its blurb, it is an emotional novel that explores the psychological impact of four people thrown closely together during the course of a (…) two-day motor car trip from Sydney, across the Blue Mountains to the country property, Coolami. I heard of it in January, when Bill at The Australian Legend hosted his Australian Women Writer Generation 3 Week. I haven’t read it yet (I might read it in the summer when Lisa organizes her Eleanor Dark Week) but I’ve read her Lantana Lane and really enjoyed her writing.
I realize that this billet reveals one thing: how dynamic is our corner of the bookish bloggosphere. Events are numerous, varied and remain a wonderful and friendly opportunity to discover new books or eventually read ones lying on the TBR. Many thanks to all the bloggers who take the time to host such events.
Happy #1936 Club!
Two abandoned books, a bookstore and mimosa trees
I’ve been traveling the two last weekends and didn’t post anything. Before my billet about The Cut by Anthony Cartwright, a quick post about two books I couldn’t finish, a visit to a bookstore and a sunny picture of mimosa trees.
The first book I couldn’t finish is Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd. Here’s the blurb from Goodreads.
In the heart of a civil war-torn African nation, primate researcher Hope Clearwater made a shocking discovery about apes and man. Young, alone, and far from her family in Britain, Hope Clearwater contemplates the extraordinary events that left her washed up like driftwood on Brazzaville Beach. It is here, on the distant, lonely outskirts of Africa, where she must come to terms with the perplexing and troubling circumstances of her recent past. For Hope is a survivor of the devastating cruelities of apes and humans alike. And to move forward, she must first grasp some hard and elusive truths: about marriage and madness, about the greed and savagery of charlatan science . . . and about what compels seemingly benign creatures to kill for pleasure alone.
I couldn’t make myself care about Hope, her failed marriage to mathematician John Clearwater and her research about apes. I persevered until page 77 and opted out. I know it was a successful book when it was published but it wasn’t for me and I don’t think it’s a question of timing.
The second book I abandoned is Arsène Lupin in the Secret of Sarek by Maurice Leblanc. After the series Lupin went out (and no, I haven’t watched it yet) I picked the Arsène Lupin episode I had on the shelf, determined to read it and have fun. How disappointing!
Imagine a woman, Véronique d’Hergemont, who was kidnapped as a young woman, married to a cruel Count Vronski. She had a son with him and lost him.
Imagine an island in Brittany, called the “island of the thirty coffins”. A legend says that thirty people will die, among which four women on a cross. Véronique d’Hergemont arrives there to find the son she lost fourteen years ago and finds her face as one of the four crucified women.
I couldn’t get into the story and I found the premises quite farfetched. It felt like reading an episode of Scooby Doo, without the humor. I’m not into ghost stories, stuff about superstition and supernatural. And Leblanc’s style was a real disappointment. I thought it was flat. I lasted until page 82 and since I wasn’t into the story, I moved on to another book.
Feel free to tell me whether you liked either Brazzaville Beach or Arsène Lupin in the Secret of Sarek. I expected better from both.
Last weekend I was in Paris and let me tell you, Paris without its museums and its cafés and restaurants is not the same. It feels empty. I walked around in the Latin Quarter and stumbled upon San Francisco Books and Co, a bookstore that sells used books in English. Sorry the picture is askew, I didn’t want to take the car parked in front of the entrance.
Isn’t that ironic that you have City Light Bookstore in San Francisco and San Franscico Books Co in the City of Lights? Anyway, the libraire in San Francisco Books Co was British, couldn’t or wouldn’t utter a word in French when I said Bonjour and was listening to the BBC. The store is small but packed with books in English from the floor to the ceiling. I got Card on the Table by Agatha Christie for the #1936Club and found a copy of Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym.
I hope all is fine with you in your corner of the world. I leave you with a picture of mimosa in bloom in the South of France. Sending a friendly hello to Australian readers: I learnt these trees were brought to the South of France from Australia by James Cook.
Book Around the Corner 