WWWednesday: What Are You Reading?

This is one of the few posts that I am scheduling ahead of time, because I am currently travelling in Romania and have only occasional access to the internet. I have taken my Kindle and a physical book with me, plus will have access to my parents’ library, which contains many of my own books that I have not yet taken to the UK.

A lovely meme that I get to do about once a month. All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three questions or Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

 Currently reading: 

I was planning to take The Brothers Karamazov with me on holiday, even though it’s such a chunkster, but I somehow picked up Bulgakov instead from my Russian writers’ shelf. So I am now rereading one of my favourite books of all time The Master and Margarita. The cover is pretty boring, nothing like the brilliant (or awful) choices I once researched.

Just finished:

Lisa Gabriele’s The Winters is a retelling of another of my favourite books, Rebecca. In an article I recently read, the author explains how rereading Rebecca in the time of Trump made her question all her previous memories of the book.

 
After a whirlwind romance, a young woman returns to the opulent, secluded Long Island mansion of her new fiancé Max Winter—a wealthy politician and recent widower—and a life of luxury she’s never known. But all is not as it appears at the Asherley estate. The house is steeped in the memory of Max’s beautiful first wife Rebekah, who haunts the young woman’s imagination and feeds her uncertainties, while his very alive teenage daughter Dani makes her life a living hell. 

Will read next: 

I want something not too challenging and entertaining while travelling, so I’ve found a book on my Kindle that I downloaded so long ago that I can’t even remember when or why. Probably because it was free, just when I got my Kindle for the first time. The Middle Temple Murder by JS Fletcher was originally published in 1919. Given my older son’s interest in the legal profession, I might even pick up some odd tips about barristers past and present! I’d never heard of JS Fletcher, but apparently he was a journalist who wrote more than 200 books across all genres, from poetry to crime fiction. As this article about him states:  How fame eluded a man of many words

WWWednesday: What are you reading on 8 Aug 2018?

I only get around to doing it approximately once a month, but here is a lovely meme you might want to take part in, hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open for anyone to join in and is a great way to share what you’ve been reading! All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A similar meme is run by Lipsyy Lost and Found where bloggers share This Week in Books #TWiB.

Current:

For review:

Antti Tuomainen: Palm Beach Finland

From being a very dark, existentialist writer, Finnish author Tuomainen has evolved to become one of the funniest noir writers around – yes, black humour, sometimes even slapstick. The thought of Finland’s beaches becoming the next hot tourist destination doesn’t seem so far-fetched this long hot summer, the writing is sharp and there are plenty of dead bodies, but also inept criminals, entrepreneurs who’ve seen too much Baywatch and groaningly recognisable house renovation situations to keep you entertained along the way.

For #WITMonth:

Marina Tsvetaeva: Moscow Diaries 1917-22

How do you stay sane when the world you knew is collapsing around you, when you are struggling to survive and feed your children, when there seems to be no point in producing literature anymore?

Recently Read:

Beatriz Bracher: I Didn’t Talk

Asymptote Book Club title for July was perfectly timed to arrive just before #WITMonth. Gustavo, a former school principal and university lecturer, is ‘downsizing’. The family house is being sold and he is moving out of Sao Paolo. As he goes through the paperwork, old memories resurface: of his family, his friendships, his pedagogical beliefs and how all of these fared under the military junta in Brazil. I’m planning to review this one very shortly, perhaps tomorrow.

Next:

I’ve got a craving to read something in a different language. I’ve recently finished reading a German book (which will also be reviewed shortly for #WITMonth), but I’d like to settle down with a French one. I’ve got a Veronique Olmi that I haven’t touched yet, or some Swiss Romande authors.

And Melissa Beck, classicist and avid reader, who blogs as The Bookbinder’s Daughter, has very nearly convinced me I should The Brothers Karamazov another go. This is my lasting shame: I love Dostoevsky and yet I’ve never been able to finish this book. Perhaps a different translation might do the trick. Fifth time lucky? It really gets going after the first 500 pages or so, I understand.

 

 

 

WWWednesday: What are you reading on 13 June 2018

I only get around to doing it once a month, but here is a lovely meme you might want to take part in, hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open for anyone to join in and is a great way to share what you’ve been reading! All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A similar meme is run by Lipsyy Lost and Found where bloggers share This Week in Books #TWiB.

Current:

For review:

Carol Fenlon: Mere

Not ‘mere’ as in ‘mother’ but as in Windermere, it is a cross-genre novel set in rural Lancashire. Part family story, part crime, with elements of ghost story, it is about the destruction of the landscape, death of farming and the revenge of nature as well as about the human beings living there.

For leisure:

Ali Smith: Autumn – progress on this one has been slow, as I put it down to read something else and haven’t really returned to it. I rather like it, but clearly it does not grip me.

Finished:

For review:

John Berger: G.

Winner of the Booker Prize in 1972, I’ll be doing a brief write-up of it for Shiny New Books Golden Booker special. It will never be a popular or highly readable book, but I found this retelling of Casanova or Don Juan set at the turn of the 19th to 20th century a lot more fun than I expected.

For leisure:

Marian Keyes: The Break

I was in the mood for a little mid-life crisis and man-bashing, and Keyes is always brilliant at observing couples or parent-child dynamics. However, it did feel rather long and unedited, a bit self-indulgent for both the writer and the reader.

Next:

For David Bowie Book Club:

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason – halfway through June and I still haven’t read the choice for May – don’t know why I hesitate about picking up this book, perhaps fear that it will make me rant about politics once more?

For leisure (and next on my #20booksofsummer list):

Belinda Bauer: Snap

Not sure if maternal abandonment is a subject that will cheer me up, but at least this book should have me reading well into the night, knowing the author. Not many books have done that lately!

 

WWWednesday 9th May 2018

I only get around to doing it once a month, but here is a lovely meme you might want to take part in, hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open for anyone to join in and is a great way to share what you’ve been reading! All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A similar meme is run by Lipsyy Lost and Found where bloggers share This Week in Books #TWiB.

Currently reading:

Negar Djavadi: Disoriental, transl. Tina Kover

A saga of 20th century Iran seen through the eyes of a young woman who came to France as a child.

… the truth of memory is strange, isn’t it? Our memories select, eliminate, exaggerate, minimize, glorify, denigrate. They create their own versions of events and serve up their own reality. Disparate, but cohesive, Imperfect yet sincere. In any case, my memory is so crammed with stories and lies and languages and illusions, and lives marked by exile and death, death and exile, that I don’t even really know how to untangle the threads anymore.

Just finished:

Olga Tokarczuk: Flights, transl. Jennifer Croft

Not quite a memoir or travel journal, more like a writer’s notebook crammed full of pithy observations, fragments of stories, snatches of ideas waiting to be developed, and beautiful phrases just made to be quoted.

Describing something is like using it – it destroys: the colours wear off, the corners lose their definition, and in the end what’s been described begins to fade, to disappear. This applies most of all to places. Enormous damage has been done by travel literature… Guidebooks have conclusively ruined the greater part of the planet… they have debilitated places, pinning them down and naming them, blurring their contours.

Next up:

Eliot Pattison: Savage Liberty

This is a book I’ve been sent on Kindle to review, a historical mystery set during the period of the American Revolutionary War. This is the fifth in a series, but I hope to be able to keep track of things. and find some good escapism along the way. The summary is as follows:

After a ship from London explodes in Boston Harbor, Duncan MacCallum, an exiled Scotsman living in Boston, discovers that the ship was deliberately sabotaged by two French agents who stole a secret ledger being sent to the Sons of Liberty. In his attempt to pursue the truth, Duncan winds up falsely charged with treason and murder and is left with no choice but to find the guilty men and the stolen document, in order to clear his name. Historical figures like Samuel Adams and John Hancock show up along the way.  

WWWednesday 18th April, 2018

Let’s try once more to do the spring season then and hope that this time it’s here to stay. My April turn to take part in the meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open for anyone to join in and is a great way to share what you’ve been reading! All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A similar meme is run by Lipsyy Lost and Found where bloggers share This Week in Books #TWiB.

I seem to be travelling quite extensively in this week’s selection of books: Germany, France, Japan and Iran.

Current:

Philip Kerr: Prussian Blue

I’d forgotten how much fun Berliner Bernie Gunther is, especially across two timelines – on the brink of war in 1939 in Berchtesgaden and in 1956 France. Second World War and Cold War collide in spectacular fashion, with each crime having endless ramifications. 1939: A sniper assassinates a construction engineer on the very terrace of Hitler’s villa on the mountaintop in Bavaria. 1956: Bernie is on the run as he refuses to collaborate with the Stasi and fears for his life. Good old-fashioned suspense, wit, well-developed characters and attention to period detail – I will miss Kerr!

Just read: 

Yuko Tsushima: Territory of Light, transl. Geraldine Harcourt

A book initially published in monthly instalments in a literary magazine in 1978-79, which explains why in the story it is still so difficult for a woman to demand a divorce and live successfully as a single mother (especially in conservative Japan). There is no story as such, merely a succession of thematic snapshots of coming to terms with a new way of life. Light crops up both as an actual detail (they live on the top floor of an apartment block, bathed in light, which is what attracted the narrator to the location), and of course metaphorically.

Next: 

Négar Djavadi: Disoriental, transl. Tina Kover

In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic Kimiâ Sadr is preparing for fertility treatment. She is the only one there without a partner, but she has more than enough family (both immediate and extended, alive and remembered over generations) surrounding and influencing her, and she tells the saga of her family like a modern-day Scheherazade, as she straddles that uncomfortable border between her ‘homeland’ Iran and her feeling of ‘disorientalisation’ as she grew up in France.

WWWednesday 21 March 2018

First proper day of Spring, apparently, so I thought I would take part once more in what is in fact a weekly (but to me more like monthly) meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open for anyone to join in and is a great way to share what you’ve been reading! All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A similar meme is run by Lipsyy Lost and Found where bloggers share This Week in Books #TWiB.

Current:

It’s nice to have friends who write crime fiction, as you have a never-ending supply of books that you want to read. I always make a point of reading the blog posts of Margot Kinberg and Rebecca Bradley, who are keen crime readers as well as writers, so it is an absolute pleasure to delve into their recent releases.

Rebecca Bradley: Fighting Monsters

This is the third book (plus a novella) in the crime series set in Nottingham and featuring DI Hannah Robbins and it’s fair to say that, as the book opens, Hannah has been through the mill. A colleague was killed in action (something she still blames herself for), she herself was wounded, her relationship with an attractive journalist has ended… and now it appears she may have a leak in her own team. How else would gang leader and cop killer Simon Talbot walk away freely and triumphantly after his trial, and in possession of the name of the witness who spoke out against him?

Margot Kinberg: Downfall

This is the fourth novel featuring ex-cop turned professor of criminal justice Joel Williams. In this book Joel is conducting some research with two friends of his into alternatives to prison for young offenders and come across the organisation Second Chance. In one of their schools a young boy died after sneaking out and climbing up a building on a construction site. But if it was merely an unfortunate accident, why is everyone trying so hard to cover it up?

Just read:

Two rather emotional but very different reads, one slim and concise, taking place over the course of one night, one long and rangey, taking place over several decades and countries.

Hanne Ørstavik: Love, transl. Martin Aitken

The story of a single mother and her young son, both of them dreamers, both of them slightly naive and wanting to believe the best of people, both of them doomed to be forever disappointed. Over the course of one cold night, they roam around town, and your sense of foreboding gets worse and worse. A book that broke my heart a little.

Victor Del Arbol: A Million Drops, transl. Lisa Dillman

It’s being marketed as a crime novel, but it is more of a historical saga of betrayal and revenge, Fascism and Communism, in both Spain and the Soviet Union, as seen through the eyes of individuals who lived through those troubled times. The atrocious conditions of Nazino Island in Siberia were so vividly described that I thought it must be fiction, only to discover that this place really did exist.

Next:

I’ll be going to two countries I like very much (despite their -very different – problems) with my next two books: South Africa and Germany.

Karin Brynard: Weeping Waters, transl. Maya Fowler and Isabel Dixon

A young artist and her adopted daughter are brutally murdered on a farm near the Kalahari. But was this just a typical farm attack, or was it something more personal? Townie Inspector Beeslaar has his hands full trying to get his head around this landscape with its tensions, secrets and hostilities.

Ödön von Horváth: Jugend ohne Gott

I so enjoyed rediscovering Horváth in the German section of the library, that I already have my eye on reading another book by him, this time a novel about a teacher who watches, horrified, as his students become enamoured with racist and Fascist ideology.

Oh, dear, all the subjects seem rather grim as I write them up here. Clearly I’m not much of a believer in uplifting, feel-good literature, right?

WWWednesday What Are You Reading? 7 February 2018

It has been a few months since I last joined in with this weekly meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open for anyone to join in and is a great way to share what you’ve been reading! All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A similar meme is run by Lipsyy Lost and Found where bloggers share This Week in Books #TWiB.

Current:

Muriel Spark was born on the 1st of February 1918, so what better time to celebrate the #murielspark100 than this month? I have embarked the brief Symposium, one of her later novels – one that I hadn’t read before. It seems to be tour de force of characterisation through dialogue, something Spark does so well.

Just read:

The Asymptote Book Club’s January title Aranyak by the incredibly beautifully named writer Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, one of the greatest writers of modern Bengali literature. It is truly ahead of its time: a 1930s ecological novel, although it seems to stem from an older man’s regret for the events which he has witnessed and played a part in bringing about (the deforestation of Bihar to make way for agriculture and the disappearance of a traditional way of life).

To be read:

I will read two simultaneously, as is my wont. The two I’ve got my eyes on are from Croatia and Wales, respectively. Dubravka Ugresic’s Europe in Sepia is a collection of what one might call travel essays (not just about Europe), full of sharp observations about populism and the hunger for imagined past glories. Meanwhile, Stuart Evans’ The Caves of Alienation has been waiting for me since I reached Chapter 3 during my residence at Ty Newydd, but couldn’t  find the book anywhere outside Wales. I’ve got a rather mangled former library copy at long last and will probably have to restart it.

So, what are you reading this week? Anything that might tempt me? (Luckily, you know I have a will of iron, don’t you?)

WWWednesday: What Are You Reading? 15 Nov 2017

I skipped last month, so am coming back to it this November, but WWW Wednesday is actually a weekly meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open for anyone to join in and is a great way to share what you’ve been reading! All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A similar meme is run by Lipsyy Lost and Found where bloggers share This Week in Books #TWiB.

Current:

Miklós Bánffy: They Were Counted – yes, still going… To be honest, I only started reading it properly in November, as I let it slide after the first page or two in September. But I am enjoying the descriptions of the sumptuous parties and large families (with far too many names). For #EU27Project.

Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled – Rather enjoyed this one to begin with. A famous concert pianist arrives in a new town and promptly has everybody demanding things of him – it has all of that surreal quality of a dream (or a Kafka or Murakami Haruki story). But it just goes on for far too long. I am about halfway through and really wondering if I can be bothered to finish.

Recent:

Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen: The Wife Between Us – unsolicited ARC of a book to be published by Macmillan in Feb 2018. I just received it last Thursday and had no intention of reading it yet, but then I had a shouting match  civil altercation with my ex on the phone and was in the mood for some psychological drama where the husband is to blame for everything. I read it in two big gulps (helped by the fact that I was sick on Friday) and it’s what I would call ‘popcorn fiction’: very moreish, pleasing in the moment… but it doesn’t satiate you in the long run. Still, I can admire pacing, structure and twists even if I am not enamoured with the writing. The sleek New York lifestyle is a bit too far removed from my concerns.

Murder on Christmas Eve – anthology of previously published mysteries with a Christmassy twist, with well-known authors ranging from Margery Allingham, G.K. Chesterton and Michael Innes to more modern ones like Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. Full review to follow on CFL, but let me say here: I’m never quite sure who the target market is for these kind of books, as avid crime readers tend to prefer more in-depth mysteries, while the uplifting Christmassy story readers will be put off by the murders. Still, I suppose they make a handy gift if you don’t want to put too much thought into what someone likes to read. [In case anyone is asking, I would much prefer the new translation of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson, which is due to come out in hardback just before Christmas.]

Next:

I’ll be moving on to two Alpine countries next, because it is that time of year when my thoughts turn to skiing and snow. Besides, it was high time I read in French again.

Thomas Willmann: Das finstere Tal (Dark Valley)– it was filmed in Austria and it sounds very Austrian to me, although it is set in Bavaria, I suspect, and the author is a German Piefke (Austrian derogatory term for Germans). For #GermanLitMonth too.

Max Lobe: La Trinité bantoue (The Bantu Trilogy)- the author was born in Cameroon and settled in Switzerland (Geneva) at the age of eighteen. This book describes the life of a young man Mwana who tries to find work in a country somewhere in central Europe, where his white cousins are trying to chase out the black sheep (allusion to a disturbing election campaign poster in Switzerland). When he tries to return home to Bantu-land, he realises his mother doesn’t recognise him anymore. I think this story of displacement (at either end) is perfect for me. Lobe hasn’t had his novels translated into English yet, but you can read a story of his in Words Without Borders.

 

WWWednesday: What Are You Reading? – 13 Sep 2017

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open for anyone to join in and is a great way to share what you’ve been reading! All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A similar meme is run by Lipsyy Lost and Found where bloggers share This Week in Books #TWiB.

Current:

Miklós Bánffy: They Were Counted – for #EU27Project and because it is about Transylvania just before, during and after WW1. Bánffy was a politician as well as a writer born in Transylvania, and he is nostalgic but also scathing about the Hungarian aristocracy. It is a massive tome (and it’s just the first of a trilogy), so I think it should keep me quiet for months to come.

Laura Kaye: English Animals – one of those cultural exploration stories which I find so fascinating. A Slovakian woman gets a job as a sort of housekeeper in an English country house owned by an eccentric mismatched couple. Library book which I couldn’t resist getting. Even better: it’s in large print, so the pages just whizz by!

Santiago Gamboa: Return to the Dark Valley – what is it about these Latin Americans that they are so visceral and interesting and wild? An impossible to define novel about fear, dislocation, crimes, revenge and an increasingly global world. Experimental and yet immensely readable.

 

Recent:

Grazia Deledda: After the Divorce – I will write a proper review of this for #EU27Project, but it’s a sweeping picture of a Sardinian village, with all its poverty, gossip, violence and passion. There have been some complaints about the translation, but it sounds quite modern (perhaps too much so?) to me.

Terence Portelli (ed.): Tangerine Sky: Poems from Malta – review to come for #EU27Project. Nice to read something from a culture and country that I know very little about.

Maggie Nelson: Bluets – is this poetry, essay, memoir? A bit of each? An investigation into the colour blue (my favourite) and the end of a relationship.

Future:

Helen Dunmore: Birdcage Walk – the last novel of a wonderful writer, who will be much missed

Sarah Vaughan: Anatomy of a Scandal – political thriller, was going to be part of my summer reading, but I never got around to it

I will be starting a new full-time job on Monday, which will involve daily commuting into London. Whether that adds to my reading time remains to be seen. I am afraid it may sadly eat into my writing and blogging time. However, I suspect that all those who follow me on Twitter will be hugely relieved that I will be spending less time on that platform!

 

WWWednesday: What Are You Reading? – 16th August

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open for anyone to join in and is a great way to share what you’ve been reading! All you have to do is answer three questions and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

The three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A similar meme is run by Lipsyy Lost and Found where bloggers share This Week in Books #TWiB.

Current:

Ileana Vulpescu: Arta Compromisului (The Art of Compromise) – a Romanian writer for #EU27Project, although I can’t really claim her for #WITMonth, as she hasn’t been translated into English

Chris Whitaker: All the Wicked Girls – to be reviewed soon on Crime Fiction Lover. I loved his previous book Tall Oaks, but this one is quite different, although it still depicts small-town America.

Finished:

Svetlana Alexievich: The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II (transl. Pevear & Volokhonsky) – another wonderful choice for #WITMonth, this is oral history at its most riveting and poignant. Such strong women, but the scars are there. Review to follow.

Elena Varvello: Can You Hear Me? – a perfect fit for #WITMonth and #EU27Project

 

Next:

Mohsin Hamid: Exit West – this one doesn’t fit into any of my reading plans, but I saw the book at the library and I’d better read it before I need to return it. Besides, I can never resist a story about refugees. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017.

Margaret Millar: Collected Millar (Vanish in an Instant, Wives and Lovers, Beast in View, An Air that Kills, The Listening Walls) – this is for a feature I’ll be writing for Classics in September for Crime Fiction Lover, reviewing the work and legacy of Margaret Millar and suggesting the top five reads if you are new to her excellent suspense novels. The real and inimitable creator of domestic noir.

Have you read any of the above? And what are you currently reading or planning to read? Do share in the comments below. You know I am such a nosey parker!