Incoming Books for the Winter Months

I didn’t receive any books for Christmas, other than the Vintage Crime Advent Calendar I offered myself. I don’t think I have any more books currently on order, and I have tried to weed out some of my shelves. Nevertheless, quite an alarming pile of new books have somehow managed to wing their way to me over the past month or so. And I’m not even counting e-books, although I might mention one or two below.

From top to bottom:

The first four books – I suppose my Berlin shelf is getting quite well-stocked now, in preparation for my move towards the end of the year. Although I can understand people’s fascination with Weimar Berlin and the rise of Fascism, MY Berlin (and the Berlin of my generation) is the city just after the fall of the Wall, so I’ve acquired quite a lot of books describing that period: Sven Regener’s Berlin Blues is set in 1989 and translated by John Brownjohn. Wladimir Kaminer’s Russian Disco is a memoir about coming to Berlin in 1990 from Russia as a DJ, translated by Michael Hulse. Ulrike Sterblich’s book is also a memoir, this time of a childhood spent in a city that no longer exists, namely West Berlin. And finally, Carmen-Francesca Banciu is a Romanian writer and her collection of stories and micro-memoirs entitled Berlin Is My Paris (because most Romanian intellectuals of the interwar period and even those escaping Communism ended up in Paris) captures the atmosphere of the whole 1990s in Berlin.

Tone Schunnesson: Days Days Days, transl. Saskia Vogel, published by Heloise Press.

If you haven’t heard of Heloise Press, a small indie publisher in the UK dedicated to contemporary female narratives (both fiction and non-fiction), then I can heartily recommend them. This Swedish novel is about a reality TV star who’s fast approaching middle age and can feel success is beginning to slip through her fingers… and is prepared to do anything to maintain her ‘D’ list status.

Robert Coover: Pricksongs & Descants, Penguin Modern Classics.

I can’t remember who recommended this on Twitter, and I’ve not always gelled with American fiction of the 1960s-1990s, but I’ll give it a go. I think someone said that his short story The Babysitter is one of the best in all of American fiction.

Percival Everett: Erasure, Faber.

By way of contrast, I’ve been amused, horrified and fascinated by every book by Percival Everett that I’ve ever read (he never seems to write the same book twice, does he?). This is not a new book, it was originally published in 2001, but there’s a film out called American Fiction based on this book, so it’s been given a new lease of life.

Felix Hartlaub: Clouds Over Paris. Wartime Notebooks, transl. Simon Beattie, Pushkin Classics.

I do know who is to blame for this acquisition: two of my favourite bloggers. Jacqui reviewed it on her blog, while Kaggsy(aka Karen Langley) reviewed it for Shiny New Books – and it sounds so compelling: the observations of a German embedded journalist who comes with the Nazi occupiers to Paris. Meanwhile, I have the dilemma of deciding where to shelve this: in my German section or my French section (it’s not just about the origins of the author, but also about subject matter).

Jan Morris: Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Faber.

Hilde Spiel and her novella set in Trieste are to blame for this one, but to be honest, Trieste has always fascinated me as a mix of Austro-Hungarian, Italian, Slavic and other elements. Jan Morris first visited the city as a soldier at the end of the Second World War and has seen it change and evolve over the decades.

Clarice Lispector: The Besieged City, transl. Johnny Lorenz, Penguin Modern Classics.

Her least-known and least-Clarice-like novel, but the reason I want to read it is not just because I’m a completist (although it’s been a long time since I read her, high time to reread, perhaps in chronological order), but also because she wrote it while she was an (unhappy) expat in Switzerland.

Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic, transl. Olena Bormashenko, AND The Inhabited Island, transl. Andrew Bromfield, both published by Gollancz SF Masterworks.

I enjoyed reading Roadside Picnic so much (very different but just as brilliant as the film Stalker) that I recommended it to someone and lent it to them, but can’t remember who. So I had to buy it again, and while I was ordering it, I came across this other novel which I hadn’t heard of, so now I have two of theirs, as well as the utterly hilarious political satire of Monday Begins on Saturday.

Elvin James Mensah: Small Joys, Scribner.

I think I must have come across this one in one of the Best of 2023 lists, but I apologise once more for not remembering whose list it was (identify yourself in the comments if it was yours). A book about friendship, homophobia, race, depression and suicide – but ultimately about hope and loyalty.

Nikhil Krishnan: A Terribly Serious Adventure. Philosophy at Oxford 1900-1960. Profile Books.

This is a direct result of a discussion about Iris Murdoch on #DevonBookHour on Twitter, where the founder of the Devon Book Club, Ian, said he was rereading her fiction and someone else mentioned that this book also talks about her philosophy. Of course, when I proudly produced it in front of my older son, who’s studying philosophy, he dismissively said: ‘I think the Cambridge version of this might have been more interesting!’