Petroglyph's 2019 Challenge

Books from countries I have not read (enough of)

1. Colombia:
   Collected stories by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Finished: 30th December 2019
   This one was also on the 2016 tbr challenge, but I only completed a few stories. I’ll try again this year.


2. Canada/Caribbean:
   Cereus blooms at night by Shani Mootoo. Finished: 8th March 2019
   A gift from my SO. Set in the Caribbean.


3. Sénégal:
   So long a letter by Mariama Bâ. Finished: 23rd December 2019
   My first Senegalese author. A recommendation by my SO, who specialises in African literatures. I’d much rather read this in the original French, but couldn’t say no to a second-hand English-language copy for only $1. So it goes.


4. Sudan:
   Season of migration to the north by Tayeb Salih. Finished: 2nd August 2019
   My first Sudanese author. Comes warmly recommended by my SO.


5. Yugoslavia/Serbia:
   Houses by Borislav Pekić. Finished: 19th August 2019
   My first Serbian author. A random choice, motivated entirely by my crush on NYRB Classics (almost anything they put out is worth reading).


6. Hungary:
   The door by Magda Szabó. Finished: 26th December 2019
   I’ve heard nothing but good things about this novel, but know very little about it going in.

Reading projects

1. Das Muschelessen by Birgit Vanderbeke. English title: The mussel feast Finished: 1st November 2019
   Part of an effort to read more in German. This book is a recommendation by a colleague, and I have no idea what to expect.


2. Beckomberga by Sara Stridsberg. English title: The gravity of love Finished: 23rd November 2019
   Part of an effort to read more contemporary Swedish authors (I live in Sweden). About a girl growing up in a psychiatric hospital (though not as one of the patients).


3. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Emperor of Rome. Finished: 17th September 2019
   Part of an effort to read more by the Ancients. I made it through a third of this book as a teen before just never picking it up again, though not for any real reason (I’m always reading too many books at once). This time I intend to see it through.


4. Le colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac. English title: Colonel Chabert. Finished: 18th June 2019
   This year’s Big French Classic. I gather that the main character got declared dead in absentia, but is very much alive and wants to reclaim their forfeited possessions. Sounds interesting enough.


5. The gate of angels by Penelope Fitzgerald. Finished: 4th January 2019
   After Jane Austen, I’ve decided to make Penelope Fitzgerald my next Completist Author, meaning I’ll be reading all nine of her novels. Four I’ve already read, and and this is the only unread book by her I own (though I might buy and read more by her in 2019). From the blurb, The gate of angels is an academic novel and a romance set in 1912 Cambridge. Also, it apparently features a character based on M. R. James, whose early 20thC horror stories I will always have a soft spot for.


6. Two Spanish picaresque novels by Francisco de Quevedo. Finished: 21st March 2019
   This year’s Big Classic: a book containing the 16thC The life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Anonymous) and the 17thC The swindler (El buscón) by Francisco de Quevedo. I’m fond of reading the occasional picaresque tale, and this year I’ll finally be reading a purchase of eleven years ago.

General Owned-but-Unread

1. Een zwerver verliefd; Een zwerver verdwaald; Het fregatschip Johanna Maria; De wereld een dansfeest by Arthur van Schendel. Finished: 27 January 2019
   An omnibus of four novels (published between 1904 and 1938) by the neoromantic Dutch writer Arthur van Schendel. I bought this omnibus over a decade ago on the strength of the fourth novel, De wereld een dansfeest, which I’ve read twice already (it is due for a reread). The other three will be new to me. I will be counting this as a single item.


2. De koffiedief by Tom Hillenbrand. English title: The coffee thief Finished: 20th December 2019
   This year’s Doorstopper. A present from my SO. An historical adventure thriller set during the 17thC when the lucrative coffee trade is dominated by the Ottoman Empire. (Translated from German.)


3. Ten days in a mad-house by Nellie Bly. Finished: 13 January 2019
   Back in the 1880s a investigative journalist had herself temporarily committed to an asylum for the insane in New York, in order to write a series of articles documenting the (mal)treatments that the inmates were subjected to. That sounds super interesting! (As does the rest of her life, btw.)


4. A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce. Finished: 31 January 2019
   I’m unlikely to ever read Ulysses, and I’ll never read Finnegan’s wake, but I remember enjoying Dubliners. Joyce’s other book has stood unread on my shelves since I was 17, and this year I’ll finally scratch that vague itch and move it into the Read section of my library.


5. The image of a drawn sword by Jocelyn Brooke. Finished: 2nd January 2019
   This was an impulsive purchase, and the only unread item from a 2014 London book haul. Some kind of fantasy-horror to do with World War Two. Sounds like the kind of thing I would read ;)


6. Samlade dikter by Edith Södergran. English title: Collected poems. Finished: 29th December 2019
   My SO’s favourite Swedish-speaking poet. Let’s give her a go!


7. Tabac by Gerda Dendooven. Finished: 10 June 2019
   A Belgian author’s debut novel. I know Dendooven primarily as an illustrator of YA books; this is her first novel for adults.


8. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor. Finished: 9th April 2019
   I’ve been itching to dip into the books of Elizabeth Taylor -- no, not that one -- and this book, about a writer’s life, is what a local independent bookshop happened to stock.


9. The bluest eye by Toni Morrison. Finished: 15th March 2019
   Because it is high time I read something by her.


10. Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars. Finished: 5 September 2019
    Some books sound like they were written to please me in particular (Earlier instalments from this challenge include The towers of Trebizond and The Wake). This year’s candidate appears to be Moravagine, a Decadent novel, in which an escapee from a psychiatric hospital and his doctor traipse around the world, witnessing the global chaos that were the 1910s.


11. The Satanic verses by Salman Rushdie. Finished: 18th September 2019
    On this list because a) it’s one of those books and authors I feel I really ought to have read, and b) I’ve owned a copy for a shameful mumbleteen years now.


12. The obelisk gate by N. K. Jemisin. Finished: 10th September 2019
    The second volume in her Broken Earth trilogy. I enjoyed the first one quite a bit, and will definitely read the rest of the series.

Some photos:



The book pile & Category 1 (6 books of 6)



Category 2 (4 books of 6) & Category 3 (7 books of 12)


The books not pictured I will be reading as ebooks -- either because that's how I acquired them in the first place (Ten days in a mad-house and The obelisk gate) or because my physical copies are in storage and I've had to get digital replacements. Meditations, the Two picaresque novels, A portrait of the artist as a young man and the Arthur Van Schendel books are all too old for copyright to apply. That leaves The satanic verses, which I'll borrow from the library when its time comes.

I only realized after I made my selection and went to pull the volumes off their shelves that this year's challenge consists primarily of fairly slender volumes. True, I'll be reading an omnibus of 4 and have it count as one item, and some of the books not pictured are hefty, but still. I guess this year I'll have an unfair advantage ;)

I thought The Satanic Verses was quite good. And James Joyce is interesting in a different sort of way. I'm a fan of Toni Morrison, although I haven't read that one. And I have Meditations sitting on my shelf as well, so I look forward to seeing your thoughts. You have a very interesting list. Should be a great 2019. :)

I appreciate the thought you put into your lists. I've played with the idea of adding rationales to choices myself, but a lot of it might read like 'just because'.

I think I would like to read more by Marquez someday, although I haven't rated him a favourite. The NYRB Classics series does seem pretty amazing in its spectrum and I like their covers; coincidentally I've got one for my 2019 list too. Marcus Aurelius has a rep for being one of the more impressive emperors of Rome, so he's probably worth the revisit (I'll be getting to know a fictional version of Hadrian). Hope Balzac is a better French choice this time! Portrait is my favourite Joyce novel, I rate it #1 for capturing the spririt and sensation of boyhood. I'm on the fence about visiting Toni Morrison, I should probably try. I didn't like Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" but I've kept the Verses in TBR; won't be this year, maybe your review will help me decide when. I really, really must read Jemisin's trilogy, just don't know when I'm ever going to find the time/room in one of my lists.

I believe that Portrait of an artist was on my challenge list from a couple of years ago but I never got to it. Maybe you reading it in 2019 will inspire me to add it back for 2020. Nellie Bly was so fascinating to read about that I wanted to read more about her but just haven't yet. Toni Morrison is one of those authors I'm embarrassed to have never read, so I'll be interested to see what you think of The Bluest Eye in case I finally do read something by her, I might know where to start.

You always have such interesting lists. I'm following along as again. Happy reading!

>3 billiejean:
2019 looks like it's going to be a good reading year. I'm thinking of trying another challenge (the category challenge or Reading Our Own Tomes) -- purely to finally deal with a bunch of books at the bottom of mount tbr, the ones that got added early on (Joyce's Portrait of the artist being possibly the earliest). Weirdly looking forward to 2019 for that reason.

>4 Cecrow:
I typically read loads more books during a given year than these 24; these happen to be the ones I make myself "finally get to". These lists probably look more interesting than they are because they've gone through filters: a mix of eager and more reluctant reads; balanced for gender (half male, half female); at least four or five famous "classics" (broadly speaking) that people will have heard of.

>5 LittleTaiko:
Nellie Bly does look like it's a fascinating read -- I probably won't be able to keep myself from reading it soon. Tony Morrison I've planned for February -- I'll let you know!

>6 Narilka:
Thank you! Happy reading to you too!

>7 Petroglyph: - It's funny - my work secret santa bought me a Toni Morrison book. It wasn't one of her fiction books though, instead it's a collection of essays called Playing in the Dark. Guess I'll be reading her sooner than I thought!

>8 LittleTaiko:
Sampling a writer's non-fiction together with their fiction is always an interesting exercise. Her introduction to The radiance of the king by Camara Laye was very good (which is the only non-fiction by her I have).

I've updated >2 Petroglyph: with photos and some comments.

Also, earlier tonight I finished #1: The image of a drawn sword. No great feat, though: it's barely over 140 pages!

The image of a drawn sword by Jocelyn Brooke



Why did I choose to read this?
This was an impulsive purchase, and the only unread item from a 2014 London book haul. Some kind of fantasy-horror to do with World War Two. Sounds like the kind of thing I would read ;)

Review (Also posted here.)
This wasn’t quite fantasy-horror, but more of a cross between Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense and Kafka’s The Trial.

Reynard Langrish, former soldier declared physically unfit during WWII, lives with his mother just outside a village outside the town where he works at a bank. Above all, he feels increasingly untethered to reality: his senses are dulled, and the world feels washed-out. One night, a particularly dark and stormy one, an army captain called Archer calls at his house, claiming to have taken a wrong turn and asking for directions. The two strike up an awkward, almost compulsory friendship. As Langrish’ encounters become increasingly dreamlike, he soon finds himself training to join a British Army battalion that is being raised in secret.

This was a weird read: not quite horror, not quite Weird Fiction, not quite suspense. Horror tropes that are seemingly used straight (cf. the dark and stormy night when Langrish and Archer meet) are treated as irrelevancies; the nightmarish quality present in the Weird is primarily due to a regimented and unquestioned army bureaucracy; and the dreamlike reality flows along a little too predictably for the suspense to be gripping. This short novel is situated in the periphery of several different genres but isn’t really at home with any of them.

At 140 pages, this is a quick but unsettling read, as much for its contents as for its genre indecisiveness.

Interesting. And great start to the year.

>11 Petroglyph: What a strange book. Thanks for the review.

>11 Petroglyph:, that vaguely reminds me of Howard Waldrop's story "Ninieslando" in the Warriors anthology. It seems like a weird setting for a fantasy, but then I'd imagine there must have been something that felt unreal about those frontline experiences.

>14 Cecrow:
Never heard of that author, or that anthology, though I have read several items from it (just via other channels).

"Kafkaesque" is a massively overused term, I think, but it is just such a perfect term to apply to The image of a drawn sword: the near-existential absurdity of army discipline, physical training for training's sake, the chain of unquestioned obedience, nobody really knowing why, in the grand scale of things, certain decisions are being made, increasingly superior ranks of officers who all have a vested interest in not bothering their superiors... Plenty of unreality there, no need to even make it to the front.

Currently reading The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald, who published her first novel when she was sixty. Enjoying it very much, in part because of Fitzgerald-esque paragraphs such as the following. One of the main characters, Daisy, has just been dishonourably dismissed from the hospital where she had a position as a nurse-in-training:

It was made clear that she must leave by Monday week. This was a concession, because it was known that Daisy had no home to go to. Kate Smith and some of the eighteen other second-year probationers -- but not all of them, some were cautious -- bought a leaving present for her. There was not much time, and they had to settle for a travelling salt-and-pepper set, said to be new china, and decorated with a view of the coronation of George V. Daisy was grateful. Disgrace contaminates, even though it makes everyone else feel a little safer.

That combination of slightly absurd, barely-humorous mundanity (the uninspired farewell gift) with resigned but true observations about the unpleasantness of human interaction: I just love that about her writing. She's been around, and writes such truths, such insights into how people in a society treat each other. It's fiction, and made-up people, but it all feels so true.

And that is #2 wrapped up! The gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald was a lovely, lovely read. I enjoyed it so much, you guys!

You're off to a great start!

Looks like 48 days oughta about do it for you this year. ;)

>18 billiejean:
I am!

>19 Cecrow:
Lol, four months, maybe? Perhaps if I read nothing but these books...

I'm feeling like a bit of a slacker - I haven't even started any of my challenge books yet! Though I have moved two into my upcoming reads pile so hopefully I'll get to them before January is over.

And that is #3.1 wrapped up: Een zwerver verliefd (A vagrant in love), the first in the Van Schendel omnibus of four novels.

I didn't like it very much: too sappy, too saccharine. Onwards with the next item, though. This one was written early in his career, and I suspect he got better.

>21 LittleTaiko:
Start with a short item! Does wonders for morale!

The gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald



Why did I choose to read this?
After Jane Austen, I’ve decided to make Penelope Fitzgerald my next Completist Author, meaning I’ll be reading all nine of her novels. Four I’ve already read, and and this is the only unread book by her I own (though I might buy and read more by her in 2019). From the blurb, The gate of angels is an academic novel and a romance set in 1912 Cambridge. Also, it apparently features a character based on M. R. James, whose early 20thC horror stories I will always have a soft spot for.

Review (Also posted here.)
An academic novel and a romance set in 1912 Cambridge is indeed a good way to describe this novel. The two main characters, Fred Fairly and Daisy Saunders meet by (literal) accident, and since the former is a Physics fellow at a tiny Cambridge College, and the latter is a working-class nurse-in-training, there is the expected attraction of opposites. Well, kind of. The book never specifies that that is what’s going on, but merely implies it.

In fact, Fitzgerald leaves lots unsaid in this book: she juxtaposes sections that may differ in tone, location, sometimes even genre, and leaves it up to the reader to connect them -- the well-read reader, who knows how romances and academic novels typically develop. Characterization is bare-bones, mainly done through dialogue and Omniscient-Narrator commentary, only hinting at a more coherent personality in the background -- all this is again to be assembled by the reader. I imagine that this may feel disjointed or even unfinished to some, but reading one section in the spirit of the others worked wonderfully for me (or perhaps I merely like the way my own imagination works). Carrying over the subtle silliness and absurdity from some of the sections and treating the novel as though that is the kind of heightened reality in which it is set makes the whole thing come together beautifully.

For silly and absurd is what this novel is -- quietly and occasionally at first, but the mainly straightforward romance plot, which runs so much on readers’ expectations of both romances and academic settings, acquires more and more sudden absurdities and tongue-in-cheek moments until it reaches a crescendo and turns into what I unrepentantly call “uproariously funny”. I giggle-laughed with delight repeatedly.

It turns out there is a character based on M. R. James in there -- a pipe-smoking mediaeval palaeographer who writes ghost stories in his spare time and is fond of reading them out loud to colleagues at various Colleges. Fitzgerald even includes her take on one of his ghost stories -- a case of sudden genre shift, at which point the novel finally comes into its own as an unapologetically funny book. Seriously, the crowning moment of awesome in this book is a reference to another writer’s style -- I love it when media can pull that off. (Does it work if you haven’t read M. R. James? Totally! The genre shift even comes with foreshadowing!) After that, the book coasts to an ending on a wave of good-will.

Penelope Fitzgerald has an exquisitely calibrated sense of humour, and she puts it to excellent use in The gate of Angels. I absolutely loved this book: it’s going to be hard to beat this one in terms of shameless fun.

Great to find an author you love, and even better when they can write consistent quality entertainment, whatever the genre. I try to circle back for one or two of these each year.

>25 Cecrow:
It is! Unfortunately, I only have four Fitzgerald novels left. And a short story collection. I'm going to space them out a little bit -- though not one per year. I'm too impatient: I want to have reached the stage where I have read all of her fiction. I think I'd really enjoy having read her, but it might be more fun to yet have to read her. Decisions, decisions...

I'm going to have to check her books out.

>27 billiejean:
Oh, do! The Bookshop is probably her best-known book (easiest to get a hold of. It's also been turned into a 2017 movie by Isabel Coixet) I'd also recommend The beginning of spring as a starting point.

Een zwerver verliefd (English title A wanderer in love) by Arthur Van Schendel



Why did I choose to read this?
One of an omnibus of four novels spanning an early 20thC Dutch author of the Neo-Romantic persuasion. I liked one of his books enough to buy this collection.

Review (Also posted in Dutch here.)
A wanderer in love is historical fiction, set in twelfth-century (I think) Northern Italy during the wars between the Holy Roman Emperor and the forces of the Pope. The titular wanderer is Tamalone, unable to hang around the same place or the same people for too long. And so he wanders passionately, taking full advantage of his network of wealthy contacts around the city states and his near-total lack of strings attached. Then, when hanging around the retinue of a friendly Imperialist warlord, one of his contacts, he is tasked with keeping safe the warlord’s mistress, and he falls in love.

This short novel is short on substance. Characterization is barely there, emotions and nature descriptions too saccharine, too Romantic. The setting -- Northern Italy during the Investiture Controversy -- seems ripped from an uninspired children’s book: Tamalone and his friends walk everywhere with ease, nothing’s too far away, travelling is fun, and food and shelter and clothes present no obstacle whatsoever. Van Schendel clearly expected the Big Emotions to do most of the legwork, the passionate paean to carefree vagrancy and, above all, the tropes of Courtly Love. Sadly, I think I may have outgrown those tropes.

So yeah. This didn’t do it for me: too facile, too childish, too hackneyed, too antiquated.

>28 Petroglyph: - The Bookshop is the only one of hers I've read so far. I remember enjoying it. Obviously I should be looking for more of her books based on your glowing recommendations.:)

Yes, thanks for the recommendations.

>30 LittleTaiko:
>31 billiejean:
Welcome! Always happy to get people hooked on some P. Fitzgerald.

(I saw the movie of The Bookshop (2017) earlier tonight. Don't bother: it's a disappointment.)

Just had another look at my much-treasured list of 501 Must-Read Books and discovered The Blue Flower is on it.

Susan Hill, in Howards end is on the landing, includes The blue flower among the 40 books she would want to bring along to an uninhabited island. She also writes this:

I have never, ever understood why it did not win every prize extant but prize-judging is a law unto itself, as it were. I have been on the panels of many, and never once have things gone as might have been predicted. I was a judge for a major prize the year The Blue Flower was entered and I have never tried so hard to convince others of anything as I did that this was a rare, a great, novel whose like we might none of us see again. It was not that my fellow judges were wilfully determined not to agree, or had anything whatsoever against Penelope Fitzgerald – for who could? They simply could not see it. They saw something pleasing, short. Slight. That was the word I heard again and again. ‘Slight’. I think I sweated blood, but to no purpose.
‘Slight’. Slight? SLIGHT?
The Blue Flower is a masterpiece. It is the most extraordinary book, and half of it is in invisible writing, so much is there that is not there, so much lies below the surface, so much is left unsaid and yet is redolent and rich with meaning. Fitzgerald manages that quite remarkable feat – she simply walks into another world, one of several hundred years ago in another country, and takes up the story, moving among the characters as if she had known them all her life, and so the reader does so, too. Her prose style, like the line of the drawing on the Christmas card, is so clear, clean and simple, and yet so full of meaning. She was a past-mistress of dialogue, she knew how to make places taste and smell, knew what they sounded like. She saw into other people’s minds and hearts with complete empathy. It is my favourite of all her books and it is gratifying that slowly, slowly over a decade or so, The Blue Flower is being recognised and lauded as indeed a novel of genius, and a masterpiece. During the celebrations for the fortieth anniversary of the Booker Prize, time and again it was mentioned with bewilderment as ‘the one that got away’. I hope that she knew her value. She was a shy and modest woman and yet underneath that exterior, I think she did realise her own worth, though she would never have been vain about it.

After reading that, well, I simply had to check it out. I'm so glad I did.

Thank you for sharing that.

>35 billiejean:
With pleasure!

I've also just finished #3.2: Een zwerver verdwaald, the second volume in the Van Schendel omnibus.

Een zwerver verdwaald by Arthur van Schendel



Why did I choose to read this?
One of an omnibus of four novels spanning the career an early 20thC Dutch author of the Neo-Romantic persuasion. I liked one of his books enough to buy this collection.

Review (Also posted here, though in Dutch.)
This book picks up the story a few months after Een zwerver verliefd. Tamalone, on a mission for one of his wealthy contacts, has temporarily settled in Venice, and meets a noble lady who falls in love with him. Just like in the previous book he'll have to choose between love, which perhaps will finally settle his profound longing for something unknown, and the carefree wandering life, which is at least a known pleasure.

Van Schendel once again tries to build the novel up around the theme of Fate: the outcome, in the end, is ineluctable. And once again, I must admit I am not convinced. Tamalone refuses to think through his decisions and takes everything as it comes; instead of Fate I think it is systematic unpreparedness and panic attacks that really drive this novel's plot.

Still, I enjoyed this one more than the previous book: no more love triangle, no more bland Courtly Love. Instead, we get a disappointing and unreliable human being whose imprecise dreams of stability will only ever see half-hearted attempts at realization. That, I can appreciate!

>37 Petroglyph:, on the strength of that, sounds as though you'll finish the omnibus at some point. They can be tricky investments sometimes, even more than anthologies. I take the same approach of not committing to the whole thing in one bite.

>38 Cecrow:
Oh yes, I will finish the omnibus -- sunk cost and all that. And they're not terrible books, merely too sentimental for my tastses. And I get to remove that "unread" tag from the omnibus, too!

Its selection is chronological: his earliest books (from his "Italian period") are very neo-romantic. Apparently he got more modernist as time wore on, and so I'm looking forward to the 3rd book (new to me, from his "Dutch period", when he wrote maritime novels about 19thC Dutch sailors) and a reread of the 4th book (which I love, and is from his "mature period"). So I'm expecting things to improve, lol.

Systematic unpreparedness and panic attacks sounds like a plan some people use. :)

>1 Petroglyph: I always love seeing your list, such different titles you always have, so intriguing!
I read my first Morrison a few years ago, went with the default Beloved, was excellent.

>11 Petroglyph: Welp now my curiosity is piqued, that sounds really interesting!

>39 Petroglyph: Bummer that the earlier ones aren't panning out as well, but sounds good for the later two, at least!

>41 .Monkey.:
re: different titles, I refer you to my comments to Cecrow in >7 Petroglyph:

The image of a drawn sword seems popular. Good! I think you would like it.

And the later books are definitely more to my tasts. Or perhaps I'm getting used to sentimentality, reading these in rapid succession. It hasn't been a waste of time, though.

Het fregatschip Johanna Maria by Arthur van Schendel



Why did I choose to read this?
One of an omnibus of four novels spanning the career an early 20thC Dutch author of the Neo-Romantic persuasion. I liked one of his books enough to buy this collection.

Review (Also posted here, though in Dutch.)
Het fregatschip Johanna Maria, or in English The frigate Johanna Maria, is about the forty-year career of a three-masted sailing ship, and about the sailor whose life merges with hers over the decades. In other words: a man and his ship, or perhaps a ship and her man.

This was a classically beautiful book, the kind of old-fashioned sentimentality that my parents and grandparents would appreciate. Van Schendel does tug on those heartstrings sometimes, but not to the extent that pathos begins to dominate. As a novel, this book reminded me a lot of the Naturalistic Farm Novels (cf. Streuvels), and of other Neoromantic novels (cf. Den Doolaard, or perhaps The old man and the sea): there's tacit suffering through abuse, pure hard graft for an uncertain reward years in the future, the fusing of Man and Nature.

At times I was even reminded of sad animal books, of the type where the family dog or the racehorse is stolen and ends up in various criminal milieus: the ship’s standing, through ever-changing owners, names, and career paths, has its ups and downs as it traverses the seven seas. But the steadfast sailor is always there to see her through the worst of it.

In all, I must say that I was pleased with this novel. Not overly sentimental, entertaining enough, and tastefully nostalgic for the lost art of handling square-sailed three-masters. Three and a half stars!

Earlier tonight I also sped through Nellie Bly's Ten days in a mad-house, which was a surprisingly short read. Very interesting, and very good. Review on the way.

Ten days in a mad-house by Nellie Bly



Why did I choose to read this?
Back in the 1880s an investigative journalist had herself temporarily committed to an asylum for the insane in New York, in order to write a series of articles documenting the (mal)treatments that the inmates were subjected to. That sounds super interesting! (As does the rest of her life, btw.)

Review (Also posted here.)

Well, this was a sobering read. It’s also really good, and it’s freely available online.

Nellie Bly, an investigative journalist from the 1880s, had herself temporarily committed to an asylum for insane women in New York, in order to write a series of articles documenting the (mal)treatments that the inmates were subjected to. This book was a reissue of those articles to satisfy the high demand.

Things start off amusingly, when Bly has to try and convince people to section her -- essentially, she shows up at a short-term lodging place for women and acts suspiciously, while pitying the kind people she is deceiving in the process. But once she is transported to the asylum, she puts on her journalist hat, acts completely normal, and records what is allowed to happen to her.

It’s not pretty. The inmates are always cold (due to insufficient clothing, non-existent heating, and cold baths); the food is execrable; they are under constant threat of violence; and humiliations are frequent and issued with glee by the power-tripping staff. The maltreatment of the patients rises to the level of prison camp torture: they are deliberately and methodically kept in a state of sleep deprivation, malnourishment and under-stimulation. Worse: there is no way to prove their sanity, nor will the staff be even willing to listen. A diagnosis equals a sentence for life.

Bly describes a typical day as she underwent them, which is a terrible enough ordeal, and adds other inmates’ stories and experiences -- which are worse (lifelong imprisonment for not speaking English? How xenophobic can your medical system get?). Bly uses no rhetorical flourishes; there is no need for jokes or cutesy asides: drily narrated reality is harsh and unforgiving and undermines trust in fellow human beings, if not in society at large. I knew 19th-century treatment of The Other was atrocious, but reading contemporary reports really drives home that message.

The only good thing about Bly’s undercover stint is that, as a response to this exposé, the city of New York increased the funding (and, through increased inspections, the living standards) of its asylums.

Finally: my edition of this book also contains two shorter articles, in which Bly goes undercover to secure a job as a maid, and works briefly as an inner-city factory girl. Those as well show off her on-point observational skills. Good stuff!

Great review!

Wow, she sounds like a pretty awesome woman.

That sounds intense. So the asylum staff didn't know she was under cover?

>46 billiejean:
Thanks!

>47 .Monkey.:
She totally was. I've added her book on how she went Around the world in seventy-two days to my wishlist.

>48 Narilka:
Nope! Once inside, she behaved like she would have behaved outside. Granted, low-level staff aren't supposed to be in charge of admissions, and have no reason to question the specialists' decisions. And they are likely confronted with plenty of mentally disturbed people every day saying whatever in order to get released -- it just stops registering after a while. But Bly makes it clear that she is not the only inmate who has no business being locked up on charges of insanity (non-English speaking patients, for instance).

Once you've been diagnosed as insane by specialists (or even because of a misfile or a bed switch), it's almost impossible to convince medical staff you're not. It's a known bug.

>49 Petroglyph:, awesome link re Rosenham, thanks. Especially this part of his experiment:

The second part of his study involved an offended hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients {i.e. fake actors} to its facility, whom its staff would then detect. Rosenhan agreed and in the following weeks out of 250 new patients the staff identified 41 as potential pseudopatients, with 2 of these receiving suspicion from at least one psychiatrist and one other staff member. In fact, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients to the hospital.

Other books in my TBR that deal with psychiatric institutions are Beckomberga (currently reading; also on this challenge) and Inconvenient people by Sarah Wise, a non-fiction treatment of psychiatric practices in 19thC England. The two items on this challenge have definitely bumped the Wise book up to near the top!

And that's #3.4 wrapped up, the fourth and final novel in the Van Schendel omnibus. I loved it: the book was as good as I remembered it being all those years ago. Review on the way!

#5 has been tackled as well: A portrait of the artist as a young man. The "owned but unread" book that has stood on my shelves the longest.

It must feel great to cross that one off. :)

>54 billiejean:
It did! Finally got rid of that niggling feeling of unfinished business. Well, one of them ;)

I've managed to get rid of everything I could remember was outstanding in that regard, no idea which is oldest out of my remaining 115 on the pile. But yeah, I had to work at it and it was pretty annoying to realize how long some had been around. I'm sort of glad I'm oblivious now, lol.

De wereld een dansfeest by Arthur van Schendel



Why did I choose to read this?
This is the fourth and final item in an omnibus of four novels (published between 1904 and 1938) by the neoromantic Dutch writer Arthur van Schendel. I bought this omnibus over a decade ago on the strength this, the fourth novel, which I’ve read twice already (it is due for a reread).

Review (Also posted here, albeit in Dutch.)
I love this book.

Published in 1938, De wereld een dansfeest is a romance with a narrative twist. The love story develops normally (that is, with delaying obstacles) between two people who love to dance: Daniel de Moralis Walewijn, and Marion Ringelinck. The twist is that neither of the couple gets to speak directly to the reader. Instead, each of the nineteen chapters is told in the first person by someone who knows them or who knows of them. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what the current narrator’s relation is to the main couple, or how far time has jumped forward. That said, the structure does provide a solid framework: the plot develops chronologically, starting when Daniel and Marion are children in the Netherlands in the early 1900s, and ending when they are adults living in London post-WWI; and the chapters alternate between Daniel and Marion.

The thing that binds the central couple together is dance. Both Daniel and Marion are portrayed as natural dance prodigies: everyone they know remarks how essential music and dance are to them, how their lives seem are governed by an innate rhythm that makes them different from everyone else but perfect for each other. At the centre, really, this novel is a love story along along traditional lines -- tragic separation, will-they-won’t-they, psychological obstacles, and a joint passion that makes the central couple seem like a natural fit.

But the splintered narrative device functions as a tempering balance to a saccharine love story. For one, merely telling the story through nineteen indirect narrators has a distancing effect: the love story is kept in the middle distance, and so it develops mainly through hearsay and second-hand comments. That tones down the sentimentality considerably.

Secondly, the novel is primarily concerned with the effects of the central couple’s story, rather than with the romance itself. Individual narrators have their own concerns: they are stuck in a rut, lonely, working through a divorce, cynical, living through a world war, or sunk in poverty. Having Daniel and Marion pass through their lives, even briefly, brightens the narrators’ existence a little and leaves them with wistful memories. Think how easy it is to give people musical earworms -- songs they’ll be humming for days whether they want to or not. That is the effect Van Schendel goes for. The central couple aren’t merely brighter and more special than anyone else by authorial fiat, they have a noticeable impact on the people around them, too. The narrators have, in their own way, been swayed by the charms of one of the couple, by the conviction that the two belong together, or by the universal allure of music. That kind of worked contagious.

I thought this balancing effort worked splendidly: on the one hand there’s a Romantic romance to indulge in, and on the other there are the layers of emotional distancing to work through that really work to encourage said indulgence. The way that the novel’s seductiveness and the required mental work build on each other left me feeling very satisfied at the end.

A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce



Why did I choose to read this?
I’m unlikely to ever read Ulysses, and I’ll never read Finnegan’s wake, but I remember enjoying Dubliners. Joyce’s other book has stood unread on my shelves since I was 17, and this year I’ll finally scratch that vague itch and move it into the Read section of my library.

Review (Also posted here.)
In Portrait, James Joyce dramatises incidents and periods from his own childhood and adolescence, and I don’t really know what to feel about this book. Parts of this were brilliant: the writing, the rhythm, the selection of words and images. This book is excellent at expressing the unscratchable ache that is growing pains: the death of a child’s naïve belief in Justice when unfair punishment is handed out; the intensity of adolescent frustrations, both sexual and religious; and the search for fundamental meaning in life.

On the other hand, well, there were numerous occasions where I felt like rolling my eyes at the text, because I’ve read too many books about sensitive, intelligent, precious little main characters who struggle mightily against their schoolboy tormentors and an understimulating environment. I know that I can’t really hold that against this book -- the century of intervening literature that makes this kind of story feel so trite is not this book’s fault. But still: the story feels so trite in many places.

This book left me feeling very ambiguous. For example: a very large section of this book is taken up by a series of fire-and-brimstone sermons delivered by a Jesuit hell-bent on frightening children into good old Catholic obedience through extensive and lascivious descriptions of torture. I can appreciate what Joyce was going for here, and it’s well done indeed: I can really taste the hunger for power, the emotional manipulation, the all-encompassing prison that this kind of mentality wants to enforce. But these sermons take up 12% of the text. 12%! That is way, way too long, and spoils the effect. Then there are later bits, where the main character expounds his views on beauty and art which serve as a replacement for his earlier religiosity, and which are intellectually impressive, but they are shoehorned in in the clumsiest of ways. Again, the effect is spoiled.

Both of these -- the fire-and-brimstone, and the intellectualizing theories -- overstay their welcome and tip the balance from “Impressive, well done” into “Man, Joyce really loves hearing himself talk”. And self-important smugness is a sin I find hard to forgive. So yeah. Three stars?

>57 Petroglyph:, I might be able to endure a will-they-won't-they plot centered on dancing, under those conditions, maybe.

>58 Petroglyph:, it definitely did not occur to me to run the 12% calculation, lol. But yes, I sort of just skimmed through that part. What grabbed me was his way of capturing boyhood through particular descriptions, moments and ways of thinking that hit me like a bolt of lightning: I'd completely forgotten some of that frame of reference for viewing the world, and there it suddenly was again, right on the page. Reading those sentences, I was briefly that age again. That effect floored me. I can better remember the later upper schooling, but that too is captured well, about believing myself too smart for my own good.

Portrait was the high point of Joyce for me. I went on to read Ulysses and could appreciate what he did there, but nothing in it struck me with the same power to equal those Portrait moments. Like sending me to a really amazing opera as you explain the form to me, I came away understanding why it was a big deal but not interested in buying a 2nd ticket. And the Wake just looks like alphabet soup, yet another kind of form that might require aliens to understand and explain.

Really nice reviews. :)

>59 Cecrow:
anything can be turned into a good novel -- that includes will-they-won't-they type stories. I think this one was a success!

Re: 12%: I read this on an ereader (thank you Project Gutenberg), and it becomes really noticeable there. I believe the sermons last from 38% through 50%. And I agree that many of his scenes are spot-on evocations of what it feels like to be a child or an adolescent. They are intensely accurate, feel-wise. And the language is beautiful. It's just that the novel's shortcomings, as I see them, are in very different areas (showing off, bloviating clumsily about art). From what I've read about Ulysses and especially Finnegan's Wake, those shortcomings will become more central. An online friend once remarked that the Wake is an instance of an author crawling so far up their own arse that no-one can follow. I've not the least inclination to even try.

>60 billiejean:
Thanks!

The life of Lazarillo of Tormes by Anonymous



Why did I choose to read this?
This is half of this year’s Big Classic: a book containing the 16thC The life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Anonymous) and the 17thC The swindler (El buscón) by Francisco de Quevedo. I’m fond of reading the occasional picaresque tale, and this year I’ll finally be reading a purchase of eleven years ago.

Review (Also posted here.)
This was fun!

I do like a good picaresque story now and again, and this stone-cold classic of the subgenre did not disappoint me much. The main character, Lazaro, is a down-on-his-luck rogue, who prefers easy money and free food to honest work and paying his dues. He serves a succession of masters, each of which is a terrible human being, and develops a taste for conning people along the way. It’s unapologetic in its comedy and gleefully and consistently mocks 16thC authority figures, and it does so echoing New Testament verbiage when appropriate. Good stuff.

My edition also included a sequel, written after the original had become popular, and which purports to be by the same author as the first instalment (although it isn’t). That one was less fun: it’s less concerned with taking up overinflated authorities and more with illustrating the dog-eat-dog world that is everyday life. Everyone tries to out-con everyone else, and while that setup leads to more overt laughs, it’s a more diffuse approach as well. This section also indulges a little in fantastical nonsense when Lazaro is suddenly able to survive under water, which is a jarring break with the rest of the narrative.

The swindler by Francisco de Quevedo



Why did I choose to read this?
This is half of this year’s Big Classic: a book containing the 16thC The life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Anonymous) and the 17thC The swindler (El buscón) by Francisco de Quevedo. I’m fond of reading the occasional picaresque tale, and this year I’ll finally be reading a purchase of eleven years ago.

Review (Also posted here.)
This one was a lot grittier and more bleak than The life of Lazarillo de Tormes: the main character genuinely suffers, and has the permanent scars on his face to show for it.

Unlike Lazaro, the narrator of The Swindler is not born into conning people: Pablo of Segovia starts off as a good-natured, naive youth, before bullying and an unreasonable first master abuse that out of him, and he sets himself the goal of becoming a systematic con-man, because that is exactly what the world deserves. As he travels around central Spain, he tells the reader all about his tricks, his cheats, his misadventures. But where Lazarillo de Tormes was cheeky and at least trying to arrive at a place of quiet and independent wealth, Pablo of Segovia is stuck in the Spanish underbelly, with no hope of ever leaving his dishonest days behind.

That also makes for a more boring book: there is no narrative arc, no movement towards an ultimate goal. Just episode after episode, and then the book just ends, promising the next episode that doesn’t materialize.

Yesterday I also started reading Angel, by Elizabeth Taylor. It's great fun so far (I'm about one quarter in).

It looks like it's shaping up to be a female, teenage version of Hadrian the Seventh, that self-indulgent catholic fan-fic written by Frederick Rolfe -- that, too, deals with an impossibly smug writer convinced of their natural superiority and unwilling to compromise.

>65 Petroglyph:, made me blink a couple of times. No, not that Elizabeth Taylor.

>66 Cecrow:
Indeed not. It appears (from reviews and online articles about the author) that many people are momentarily confused upon finding this Elizabeth Taylor.

Alternatively, you could also take the viewpoint of literary critics fom Borges' made-up world of Tlön:

It is uncommon for books to be signed. The concept of plagiarism does not exist: it has been established that all works are the creation of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres...

So I suppose it would be interesting in a parallell-universe kind of way to attribute both bodies of work (writing and acting) to the same, multi-talented person.

lol - I've only read Ficciones and I don't recall the world of Tlon, but sounds like an interesting place.

>68 Cecrow:
It's one of my absolute favourite short stories. An English translation is available online here, or as pdf here. It's only 5,600 words. Alternatively, it was anthologized in The fantasy hall of fame edited by Robert Silverberg.

The bluest eye by Toni Morrison



Why did I choose to read this?
Because it is high time I read something by her.

Review (Also posted here.)
This was very good. Starting with Claudia and Frieda, two preteen sisters from a dirt poor black family in Ohio in the 1940s, the focus soon shifts to twelve-year-old Pecola, a temporary foster child, whose father raped her and got her with child. Later in the novel, extended flashbacks delve into the histories of each of Pecola’s parents.

This is not a happy read: essentially, the book deals with successive generations succumbing to cycles of abandonment, violence and internalised inferiority complexes. It is about concentric circles of rancor: within each marginalised group a power dynamic develops that recreates that external enmity -- all the way down into the individual. The bluest eye is not a straightforward read, either: different focalisers skip from first-person to third-person, and the story jumps back and forth between several decades.

Speaking as a white person, grokking systemic racism is hard to do. This book definitely helps in turning intellectual understanding into a glimpse of, well, grokking.

And that's #9 finished: Angel, by Elizabeth Taylor. A wonderful character at the centre of a sincere novel (for lack of a better word). I'll be reading more by Taylor!

I've got that 'high time' feeling about Toni Morrison too, haven't gotten there yet.

I had a poke around Taylor's novels after your link and she seems highly rated for someone I've never ... well, this version of the name, never ... well, you know what I mean ... heard of.

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor



Why did I choose to read this?
I’ve been itching to dip into the books of Elizabeth Taylor -- no, not that one -- and this book, about a writer’s life, is what a local independent bookshop happened to stock.

Review (Also posted here.)
This book, about a writer’s life from around 1900 through the 1960s, started off as great fun and grew more serious as it went on. But all of it was good. As an introduction to Elizabeth Taylor it’s certainly made me want to read more by her.

The best comparison I can make is that Angel starts like a female, teenage version of Hadrian the Seventh, that self-indulgent catholic fan-fic written by Frederick Rolfe: that one, too, deals with an impossibly smug writer convinced of their natural superiority and utterly unwilling to compromise. Angellica Deverell (to give Angel her full name) is a confident teenager who is bored with her and her timid mother’s bland life above a shop they keep for someone else, and decides randomly to start writing a novel. The end product reflects Angel’s values: great flights of fancy, purple prose and a firm conviction that her imagination is a superior substitute to real life -- in short: over-wrought romance among the upper classes. Her manuscript sees print on a lark, by a publisher who laughed themselves silly at Angel’s so-bad-it’s-hilarious efforts. In later sections of the book Angel will become a wealthy, highly successful author whose career and emotional life will see the impact of the events of the 20th century.

I have a penchant for books about what I call magnificent megalomaniacs, larger than life characters who take their obsessions so seriously they become absurd. And that is definitely what Angellica Deverell is: she goes all the way and pursues her (petty and ridiculous) goals with a seriousness that commands respect. And in many ways, that is how this book feels on a meta level, too: Elizabeth Taylor definitely sees the funny side of Angel, tongue firmly in cheek, and she makes sure that at least a few of the other characters are prone to snarkiness and eager to egging things on just to see how far they will go. But Taylor herself does not relent in supporting Angel all the way: any meanness in the humour is entirely the characters’. Like any good parent, Taylor stands by her creation and insists on seeing them develop on their own terms, socially awkward though they may be. That is the space in which this novel develops, and Taylor did a masterful job of being fair to all sides.

In all, I think this was a lovely character study of a slightly absurd, magnificently megalomaniacal writer. A very charming surprise, but a book I loved and one which I recommend warmly!

Cereus blooms at night by Shani Mootoo



Why did I choose to read this?
A gift from my SO. Set in the Caribbean.

Review (Also posted here.)
This was such a solid read that I paradoxically have very little to say about it.

Cereus blooms at night is the story of Mala Ramchandin, set at various stages during her life, but all in and around the same village. As a semi-senile she is barely tolerated at her nursing home, though one caretaker goes the extra mile and becomes quite close; he is the focalizer of these chapters. Prior to her (forced) admission there, she lived on her own in her family’s dilapidated home, shunned and feared by the village, though a former lover’s son secretly brings her food; he is the window into Mala’s life here. Only as a child is she her own main character, but even then her life is one of generalized abuse lightened by a few individual loves and friendships.

Much of the appeal of this book derives from that tension: a harsh life of poverty, violence, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, bullying, incest, shunning, abandonment and sacrifice made bearable by one or two largely secret friendships. And these happy patches do make things better, though they also make the nearly all-enveloping maltreatment comparatively harsher. Dealing with abuse involves sneaky rebellion, and may take place over a timespan counted in generations rather than years.

Several characters in this book are casually LGBTQ: Mala’s caretaker is gay; her mother runs off with a lesbian lover; her former lover’s son is trans. And by "casually" I mean that their orientation is barely remarked-upon and is not presented as an obstacle or as a conflict-generating device.

I thought this was a pretty good book, and memorable, too, and a very solid read written in beautiful language.

>74 Petroglyph: I totally read the title as Cerberus Blooms at Night! Talk about changing the whole perspective on your review lol Yeah, I had a long day and my eyes are tired :)

>75 Narilka:
That would change the book entirely! Cereus is a cactus that grows messily and in large columns; it blooms once a year at night and spreads a sickly-sweet scent for hundreds of metres around. (According to the book, that is.) Mootoo has her characters take important decisions at the blooming of Cereus.

Tabac by Gerda Dendooven



Why did I choose to read this?
A Belgian author’s debut novel. I know Dendooven primarily as an illustrator of YA books; this is her first novel for adults.

Review (Also posted in Dutch here.)
This was a very Flemish book.

Tabac starts out as the story of a train trip to the sun. Thirty-something Connie sneaks out of her mother’s house at the butt-crack of dawn: she has at last found the courage to start a new life in southern Europe with Tabac, her partner who is much older. She is an adult runaway as much as she is enforcing no-contact with a toxic mother. Chapters about the train trip south alternate with episodes from her past: family trips to Italy; what her mother did to her dog; summertime chores; how Connie and Tabac met; how she was abused sexually in her teenage years. Typographically, these chapters are presented with a smaller line spacing, which makes them feel more petty-minded and repressive than the chapters set aboard the train.

It soon becomes clear that Dendooven’s main goal is to describe what life is like with a strict, almost narcissistic mother, a character so Flemish she approaches the status of archetype. She is a dominant control freak who will over-prepare for anything that smacks of novelty; her post-war frugality is pathological and is enforced with abusive discipline; her life is so regulated that each year is a repetition of the last; she has an unvoiced conviction that good behaviour is innate and that deviations are personality defects that deserve swift retaliation. Dendooven is clearly dealing with some issues.

While this novel may seem facile, I found it compelling: rather than a sequence of anecdotes that may or may not be autobiographical, Tabac is a confident exploration of a complex relationship between a daughter and her mother.

Sometimes it feels like you've stepped into another universe of books I know nothing about, reporting back now and then. There are wayyyy too many books to read in one lifetime.

>78 Cecrow:
Tell me about it! This year I'm keeping track of my reading over on Club Read (my thread is here), and I feel embarrassed about how unfamiliar I am with people's readings. Part of the reason is that I'm one of the few non-USians -- and that goes for this group as well. But mostly it's just the immense number of good books in existence (let alone the number of books tout court).

Le colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac



Why did I choose to read this?
This year’s Big French Classic. I gather that the main character got declared dead in absentia, but is very much alive and wants to reclaim their forfeited possessions. Sounds interesting enough.

Review (Also posted here.)
This was a lot shorter than I thought it was: my edition, slim though it may be, also contains extensive introductory essays and several appendices.

In Le colonel Chabert, the titular main character served under Napoleon and is believed dead at the battle of Eylau. As it happens, he survived, but he is in such bad health and finds himself without any credentials that he is reduced to vagrancy. By the time he has convalesced and returned to Paris to try and reclaim his name, several years have passed. His estate has been divided between the state and his widow, who has chosen to remarry a much wealthier man and who is a mother now, too. More generally, the political situation has changed drastically as well: in this post-Napoleonic era, France is once again a Kingdom, and few people of influence are willing to publicly support an Imperial claimant and his legal case for turning back time. It is much more convenient to pretend that the so-called Colonel Chabert is merely an impostor.

This is a very interesting situation to spin a story out of, and Balzac makes great use of it. There’s understandable emotional drama and ethical questions all-around, where (almost) every character has valid and above all just and even legal reasons for their behaviour: Chabert has been robbed of his estate, however legally binding the whole thing came about, and he is entitled to restitution; but the new situation has progressed so far that undoing it becomes itself a massive injustice to all involved. No surprise, then, that the main plot is concerned with finding a lawyer and with the legal intricacies of Restauration France.

I also liked the care that Balzac took to cite laws and governmental edicts (even though the footnotes point out where he confused dates) and to ground his work in actual fact: this novella is a great illustration of how day-to-day bureaucracy is run, and I don’t often get such a glimpse into a historical society. What I didn’t like, though, was the resolution, which I thought was a bit too facile. I won’t call it a cop-out, but I’m not really impressed, either.

Having said that: I enjoyed spending time in this bureaucratic universe, and I liked the way Balzac handled complex moral issues. I think I’ll read more by him.

---

Incidentally, I feel disappointed that the book I selected as this year’s Big French Classic turned out to be a short novella. My edition has only 188 pages, and it contains a lengthy Introduction, a Life of Balzac, and an extensive bibliography: the novella doesn’t start until page 60. And everything past page 130 consists of appendices -- editorial notes on the manuscripts and publications used for this text edition, as well as excerpts from the relevant laws and prescriptions. I feel like I should supplement at least one other book by Balzac for this one to properly count as a Big French Classic: 60 pages just won’t cut it.

Haven't read Balzac yet, but I've Old Goriot waiting. Haven't read Zola either, or Stendhal ... wow, I gotta catch up.

And frankly in your shoes I'd be like, woohoo, might get all 24 done now! :)

Season of migration to the north by Tayeb Salih



Why did I choose to read this?
My first Sudanese author. Comes warmly recommended by my SO, who specialises in African literatures.

Review (Also posted here.)
This book runs along two narrative strands. In the present, post-independent 1960s Sudan, an unnamed narrator returns to his ancestral village at a bend in the Nile after an education in London; his PhD was about an obscure English poet, which is an inevitably irrelevant training for his day job as a government clerk in Khartoum. The village is almost unchanged from when he left, and so he is surprised to meet Mustafa Sa’eed there, another Western-educated Sudanese, who was a professor of Economics in Interbellum London before serving a sentence for murdering his (white) wife. Sa’eed now has retired into obscurity, married a local woman and become a father. His life forms the second narrative strand, told largely through hear-say, letters and anecdotes, almost like a play within a play.

Form-wise, Season of migration to the north juggles its two timelines admirably. The unnamed narrator in the present tells his story linearly, whereas the flashbacks detailing Sa’eed’s life are lengthy first-person narratives given through second-hand intermediaries or letters, and they are presented non-chronologically. The former are almost entirely novel-like, the latter are definitely oral literature, and slot into place like similar passages in something like the Odyssey. Their integration is not all that smooth, though, in that transitions from one to the other draw attention to themselves in a way that cannot be but intentional. In fact, the entire novel is presented as a slightly oral version of a Western-style novel: the first line (and several other chapters later on) addresses readers directly (“Gentlemen”).

Content-wise, I am not sure what to think about this book, or more precisely, what to conclude about this book, which I think is the point: there are no easy answers. Sa’eed’s dealings with the West make heavy use of exoticising myths about Africa to gain influence among well-willing liberals and to seduce British girls. Similarly, the post-independence governmental systems in Sudan and their attempts to introduce modernity resemble Colonial forms of power too much for comfort. The unnamed narrator, though a civil servant in the capital Khartoum, feels powerless to effect any change, despite people clearly expecting this of him. His feelings towards his ancestral village importing mechanized water mills and farmer co-operatives are divided: he sees the improvement in living standards, but is reluctant to overwrite his sentimental memories. He is privately sympathetic to Bint Mahmoud, Sa’eed’s widow, though does nothing to prevent her independent streak and her shameful disobedience to her father’s ukase from escalating into irreversible damage at the hands of tradition. In other words: the tone is very much one of conflicting loyalties and an unacted-on disappointment at a lack of openness and honesty.

Season of migration to the north is a book about uneasy change, set before transitions have run their course. It’s a thoughtful mulling over opinions and feelings about those changes that are unformed and set in stone at the same time.

(The copy I read, published by NYRB Classics, features an excellent introduction by Laila Lalami.)

>82 Petroglyph:, you may need to start adding a note, "NYRB Classics did not pay me to write this review", lol.

Seriously though, I like it when I find certain editions worth pursuing. My wife, who doesn't share my book obsession, really doesn't understand it when I start getting particular.

>83 Cecrow:
They totally should, though! I'm going continue reading and reviewing them, so they might as well! This year's Challenge contains ... let's see ... three more NYRB Classics. A word of warning!

It's nice to have a few categories of books that you can buy no matter what, for when you want to buy a book but don't need yet another one: when you want to support the particular bookseller, or record on LT that you've been somewhere (*ahem*), or when you're trying to expand into a certain genre/country/type of literature. NYRB are one of mine such categories -- an almost-guaranteed winner.

Luckily, my SO, as a literary scholar, is more than understanding about getting specific about editions -- when it matters. It's one of the many boxes that both of us can tick.

The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie



Why did I choose to read this?
On this list because a) it’s one of those books and authors I feel I really ought to have read, and b) I’ve owned a copy for a shameful mumbleteen years now.

Review (Also posted here.)
The satanic verses is a book whose reputation precedes it. I found it an exciting read, dazzling, even, if I’m allowed such an over-used blurb cliché, for the book is all over the place and will shower you with impatient joy and breathless erudition.

The main plot deals with two Indian expats in London, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, explore their love-hate relationship with London (“Ellowen-Deeowen”) and Englishness through a series of semi-mythical sequences that may or may not be in-universe fictional echoes of each other. In one layer, Gibreel and Saladin miraculously survive a fall out of a terrorist-exploded airplane in mid-flight, drop into the sea, and swim ashore, where they each meet a series of odd characters. Each finds himself developing increasingly strange and magical powers that drive them towards extremes on the good-vs-evil spectrum. Saladin grows horns, goat legs and an epic case of sulphuric halitosis; Gibreel grows a halo and hallucinates giving Islamic revelations to the prophet Mahound.

(This, incidentally, pushes this book beyond “magical realism” territory and firmly into the “fantasy” genre. But that is my opinion, and not a hill I’m willing to die on.)

Interspersed with their wanderings through London’s postcolonial underbelly are other stories with other protagonists. One is a Historical Fiction (-ish) retelling of the beginnings of Islam; another is a fairy tale (-ish) about the foot pilgrimage of an entire Indian village to Mecca, led by a magical, butterfly-covered girl, and who experience a series of maybe-miracles on the road. These stories (and others) are thematically related to the main event, but crossovers do happen. It is not entirely clear whether these are hallucinations, dreams, phantasms or in-universe movies, perhaps based on in-universe hallucinations, etc.. The book takes a very playful attitude to narrative -- at some point, the author himself appears in a cheeky cameo.

Rushdie’s writing style is equally ebullient, with stream-of-consciousness puns and rephrasings stacked on top of each other, ADHD-like, and it relies on cleverness and sheer force of agitation to propel things forward. Motifs, themes and narrative echoes do tie things together, though, especially past the halfway mark.

This was an electrifying read. The satanic verses transforms an immigrant’s belonging to a duality of cultures into a kaleidoscopic dazzle, or a funhouse, surrounded by weird copies and echoes of the self. I’m not sure if the contents quite match up to the sensational fireworks of the presentation, but style over content this is most definitely not.

>87 Petroglyph:, did you come away with an understanding of why it was worth a fatwa? I understand from Wikipedia it has to do with Gabriel conveying the added verses about three goddesses. That seems like a small point to rest a death threat on.

I had this book on my challenge for next year but it's been bumped into 2021. I'm going to pair it with some background reading about Islam's origins so that I (hopefully) get a better sense of where it's coming from/criticizing/poking fun.

>88 Cecrow:
I did come away with an understanding of why the faithful might want this book banned. It's to do with a lot more than the three satanic verses, though. But I'm no religious fundamentalist, or even religious.

Outside of the novel, the three verses that were added because Mohammed was deceived into thinking they were from God are about three goddesses, and they really only mention them and don't really condemn them. They'd be unremarkable in a polytheistic society, even one where a single figure from the pantheon is the locally dominant godhead. Orthodox Islam has generally rejected the historicity of these verses (because prophetic/quranic revelations are infallible), and information about them can only be found in very early sources and biographies (some of which, if I understand correctly, are apocryphal precisely because they mention these verses), but orthodox doctrine and self-censorship have made sure that since like the 1100s pretty much everyone agrees the insertion of the three satanic verses never really happened. Many theologians (again, if I understand correctly) have claimed the story is an insidious invention by infidels to discredit Islam.

But in the book, there are multiple sequences set in Jahilia (the in-universe version of Mecca) and they feature the episode with the three verses in pretty much the same style as the rest of the story, giving it a level of in-universe "historicity". That is one reason why fundamentalists might reject the book sight unseen. Furthermore, the episode is then used as part of the less-flattering portrayal of the in-universe prophet Mahound: he's domineering, enjoys returning in power to the female-led city of Jahilia where he gleefully stamps out the goddess-worship. The episode with the verses is (partly) meant to illustrate that Mahound's revelations are self-serving: several other in-universe "revelations" are suspiciously convenient and double-standard-ish and coincide with what a power-hungry and lecherous Mahound wants. Similarly, the verses about the goddesses were at the time very convenient for him (the goddess-worshipers were in a position of relative power), but the fanaticism of his followers later made him come up with the "the devil deceived me" explanation. So that, too, is something that fundamentalists might take issue with: the calculated nature of Mahound's revelations that explictly serve to increase his influence and personal comfort and wealth.

Then there's also a sequence where the town's brothel organizes a counter-cultural rejection of the in-universe analogue of Islam by giving its twelve prostitutes the names of Mahound's twelve wives, so that Jahilia's recent converts-by-force can give power-hungry Mahound a surreptitious "fuck you" by patronizing his "wives". I guess I don't need to explain why fundamentalists find that objectionable. But it has nothing to do, really, with the episode of the satanic verses.

And then there's Gibreel Farishta, who sometimes hallucinates giving revelations to Mahound, and Gibreel is not portrayed as, well, an angel, but as very mentally unstable. Again, the satanic verses aren't relevant here, but I can see why that would be seen as objectionable by hard-core believers.

(There's more, but Wikipedia has got that covered. Spoiler warning, though!)

Is this deserving of a fatwa? I can see why the faithful might want to ban this book. It makes more sense than wanting to ban the Harry Potter books because "they teach children about sorcery and witchcraft, which are of the Devil" -- that is working hard at being stupid and narrow-minded in a way that an Islamic book ban on The Satanic verses absolutely isn't. But death threats? A carte-blanche assassination? Absolutely not.

But again: I'm no religious fundamentalist, so I don't think these things are worth getting all that worked up about.

Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars



Why did I choose to read this?
Some books sound like they were written to please me in particular (Earlier instalments from this challenge include The towers of Trebizond and The Wake). This year’s candidate appears to be Moravagine, a Decadent novel, in which an escapee from a psychiatric hospital and his doctor traipse around the world, witnessing the global chaos that were the 1910s.

Review (Also posted here.)
The narrator of this novel, freshly-graduated genius doctor Raymond la Science, lands a position at a renowned Swiss sanatorium for wealthy but criminally insane patients. This is where he meets one of the inmates, Moravagine, the last and very decrepit heir to a line of Central European nobility. The rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire have put him away to solidify their hold on the throne -- but also because he’s a psychopathic murderer with a near-inhuman psyche. Raymond and Moravagine discover they are kindred spirits, and decide to break out. Joined together like a pair of parasites they travel the unstable world of the early 1900s, hiding under a variety of spy-level disguises, aliases and false passports. Wherever they are -- masterminding the Revolution in Russia, rafting up the Orinoco, witnessing The Great War -- Raymond develops his anarchistic ideas in his journal, and Moravagine leaves behind a trail of butchered girls. They feed off each other, and as their picaresque voyages become increasingly deranged, they themselves become more and more unhinged.

The first chapter was great! It hit me with an unexpected twist that boosted my confidence in having found a wild reading experience. Wild it was, but I don’t think the momentum was adequately sustained: some parts dragged too much (the Russian Revolution sections in particular), and others felt more incoherently tacked on. As the novel wears on, unity and structure become looser and cease to apply; this is particularly clear in the WWI segments and everything after. And while this is absolutely intentional, I don’t think the various sequences lead all that well into each other.

Moravagine is a very angry book: it’s furious at the mechanised slaughter of WWI and the indifference of modern technology and the kind of societies they have created. It has no faith in any of the Great Narratives either, and even raving anarchy and a primeval pleasure at tearing down society’s values are ultimately unfulfilling and hollow.

I cannot help but think that this book would translate exceptionally well to the big screen -- its story and aesthetic would be much better served in a largely visual medium. I think it would make for an awesome movie in the hands of Ben Wheatley (A field in England) or Robert Eggers (The VVitch: A New England folktale and The lighthouse).

Das Muschelessen by Birgit Vanderbeke. English title: The mussel feast



Why did I choose to read this?
Part of an effort to read more in German. This book is a recommendation by a colleague, and I have no idea what to expect.

Review (Also posted here.)

One evening at dinnertime a family sit around the kitchen table waiting for Father to come home from work. The food on the table is a pot of mussels: it’s not something they particularly care for, but Father does, and so they accommodate him. But this time he’s late, and the family realizes they are waiting to eat food only Father likes, listen to music only he likes, obey rules only he thinks are important. The absurdity of the situation dawns on them.

It turns out Father is a full-blown narcissist, who rules his family with an endless parade of double standards that without fail end up in his favour. While the children are allowed to practice the piano (even though art and music are inferior to proper skills like engineering), they can only do so between the end of school and when Father comes home, for he wants peace and quiet. Father won’t visit his mother back in East Germany, for Father is a successful businessman and cannot be asked to put up with his poor Ossi mother and her sub-par living conditions. Father wants his children to get good marks at school -- that reflects well on him -- but when they do it’s not good enough: today’s subjects are watered-down versions of the ones Father had in his day, and so a good mark today really only translates to a middling-to-bad mark from his own schooldays, and approval is withheld.

Father excuses everything with the mantras of “this is how things should be in a proper family” and “appearances must be kept up”, and obedience is obtained on pain of punishment and violence. And because the family have been overaccommodating for so long, they don’t even realise how crooked they’ve grown placating someone who’ll never be satisfied. Until the night when they sit by themselves around the cooling mussels, increasingly less willing to slide into their role as Proper Family Members.

After finishing the book, I read that it was written as an almost allegorical tale of life in East Germany just before the Berlin Wall fell. Sure, why not? I didn’t spot that, and I actually think I would have found that a fairly cumbersome reading of the book. What I saw, and what I really liked, was the expert breakdown of a raging narcissist’s behavioral patterns, a dismantling of his power structures. I saw an excellent psychological portrait of abuse victims finally recalibrating their normal meters and recognizing their victimhood. And that, I thought, was very well done.

Your in-depth analysis brings these (to me) obscure titles to life. Glad you're finding them rewarding!

>92 Cecrow:
Thank you for saying so. I sometimes struggle to find something to say about books. Glad you find them worthwhile!

Houses by Borislav Pekić



Why did I choose to read this?
My first Serbian author. A random choice, motivated entirely by my crush on NYRB Classics (almost anything they put out is worth reading).

Review (Also posted here.)
From his penthouse high above Belgrade, Arsénie Negovan observes the city through a selection of military-grade binoculars. He’s old but wealthy, a retired architect, and has spent the last two decades in self-imposed quasi-exile in his flat. The only people he interacts with are his wife (much younger than he), his maid, and his lawyer. His wealth derives from an architectural empire of houses and tenants and sub-letters he runs indirectly, corresponding through his lawyer, but mostly by offloading the work onto his wife. When he begins to suspect that his intermediaries may be hiding things from him, Negovan decides to take matters into his own hands. For the first time in decades he leaves his flat and he sets out to revisit the beautiful houses he designed, to see what decades of urban change have done to them.

While Negovan wanders around a Belgrade that is almost-unfamiliar to him he mulls over his usual obsessions and so Pekić has the opportunity to take the reader along on a travelogue through large portions of the 20th century and its national delusions and changes in the zeitgeist. And yes, Negovan does remember the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia, Communist protest marches, and underhanded capitalist profiteering, but all he really cares about is how these things affected him and his Demiurg-style relationship with his houses: shortages of building materials, delays in getting to auctions, intransigent family members whose opinions of, say, the Fascists or the placement of a front portal differed from his. He also reminisces extensively about things he said once, as a hired speaker or one-time come-backs -- and while the occasions have long since been forgotten by the other people involved, or the organizations that he addressed may no longer exist, but in Negovan’s shrunken and exiled psyche they loom large.

Houses, or in other translations The houses of Belgrade, is a reliably solid instalment in that subgenre of litfic where an unreliable narrator with delusions about their grandeur looks back upon their life, which then segues into a literary commentary on much of twentieth-century history of a country and its pipe dreams. (See also: Kazuo Ishiguro.) I thought this book was a satisfactory read, but I’m not sure if I’ll remember much in a few years’ time. I do suspect, though, that this novel may have been more comedic than I picked up on: the pettiness of the aforementioned capitalist profiteering and the general siege-mentality when confronted with any kind of governmentally-promoted ideology reminds would slot right into place in black comedies from the Balkans.

Other than its general/generic solidness, I must say that architecture is a very nice medium through which to portray an entire city for the better part of a century. And while writing may not be the preferred medium for architecture, the book’s laser-guided focus on Negovan’s towards Possessions and Egotism does a lot to offset that.

Beckomberga by Sara Stridsberg; Translated into English as The gravity of love



Why did I choose to read this?
Part of an effort to read more contemporary Swedish authors (I live in Sweden). About a girl growing up in a psychiatric hospital (though not as one of the patients).

Review (Also posted in Swedish here.)

A chronological summary of the plot in Beckomberga (The gravity of love) runs like this: Jackie’s father is an alcoholic suffering from an almost congenital depression. After a failed suicide attempt he is admitted to Beckomberga, Stockholms great psychiatric hospital, where he will stay over a year. During this time her mother grows even more detached than before, when she was often abroad for her job, and takes herself off to somewhere on the Black Sea. Jackie is thirteen at this point and starts spending almost all her time at the hospital, making new friends among the patients. Later in life, when she herself is a mother, all three of them continue to live in different countries. While Jackie would like to show her parents she loves them, their personalities make this impossible.

This novel, however, is not told chronologically, but in a pointillistic series of small scenes, dialogues and observations that hop, skip and jump through Jackie’s life. Each scene takes only a page and a half, sometimes three, but then it’s the next scene’s turn. It took me some sixty, seventy pages before I understood the frame of the timescale, partially because all the characters are introduced by first name only, and figuring out how they all relate to each other takes time. The whole book is written like an intimate music video by a gentle indie rock band where initially unconnected images slowly congeal into a story that is at once maudlin but with a touching story about family filmed with pretty lighting.

I didn’t really like this book: small, sentimental family dramas leave me feeling indifferent, and books about a desire to properly belong to one’s family even more. My patience with delicately poetic descriptions of clouds and sea and how people stand or lie down also ran out quickly.

I suppose that on a purely stylistic level this book is pretty well-written, technique-wise, and it’ll certainly appeal to people who love small-scale family dramas. But sadly it didn’t do much for me.

The obelisk gate by N. K. Jemisin



Why did I choose to read this?
The second volume in her Broken Earth trilogy. I enjoyed the first one quite a bit, and will definitely read the rest of the series.

Review (Also posted here.)

Secondary world fantasy has two main challenges: one is to build an interesting universe that differs from our world along a few illustrative parameters; the other is to also set a good story in that world. The strength of this trilogy is that it does both very well, and in The obelisk gate the strands are pretty well intertwined, that is, the scenes about earth-shattering magic and worldbuilding also tie into issues of family, while the more mainstream-psychological scenes focusing on the central mother-daughter relationship aren’t just about that, either. Both enhance the other.

This second part of the trilogy is concerned with main character Essun’s attempts to find her daughter. Essun also continues to grow in her mastery of orogeny (the ability to control tectonic-like earth powers) as her grasp on the history of her world becomes firmer, while her daughter Nassun goes on a parallel voyage. At this point both could still become each other’s nemesis, a family cruelly broken up, or they could still ultimately bond as the only remaining members of their family. Nemisin has shown she can be hard enough on her characters for this still to be the case: no maudlin feel-good outcome is guaranteed. At least that is how this book feels, and I like it that way.

Pretty good. I’m looking forward to book three, because this trilogy promises a lot and seems like Nemisin has got the skills to deliver.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius



Why did I choose to read this?
Part of an effort to read more by the Ancients. I made it through a third of this book as a teen before just never picking it up again, though not for any real reason (I’m always reading too many books at once). This time I plan on seeing it through.

Review (Also posted here.)

This is not a book that was intended to be read all the way through: it’s a collection of notes to self, kept over a fairly long timeframe and across multiple locations, written in a terse, almost abbreviated style sometimes that would only have made sense to the author himself, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Emperor of Rome in the middle of the second century. Much of it is understandable, though, and even setting aside that the text is some eighteen hundred years old, it is a fascinatingly in-depth insight into a real person from Antiquity.

The Emperor tried his very best to be honest with himself and with others, and to treat his fellow human beings with the respect they cosmically deserve. He is nothing but frank and direct with himself; he is his own stern teacher and Superego.

Some bits are repetitive, in that there are things that Marcus Aurelius keeps reminding himself of over and over again: of his own mortality, first and foremost; of being ever rational; of his relative insignificance in view of time, space and the human multitudes; but also of the importance of maintaining mindfulness and humility while fulfilling his duties, or doing anything at all, for that matter. Above all he is concerned with occupying his rightful place in the order of things, both in the Universe and in Society. Presumably these were some of the things he struggled with most, or found hardest to implement consistently in his life.

Interestingly, there are many aphorisms strewn through the text, along with allusions to anecdotes or lines and characters from plays that illustrate a particular point: these Marcus Aurelius frequently does not elaborate upon and are merely there to serve as quick mnemonics for the larger lesson they remind him of. Some of these references are obscure, but others are to texts that have come down to us. That means it is important to find an edition with good footnotes! And my edition, edited and translated by Gregory Hays, was indeed wonderful. The translation really flowed: Hays clearly took pains to render the Emperor’s Greek into contemporary language. The footnotes and the explanatory introduction were great, as well.

Alright, taking stock.

1. Completed: 19
2. Started: 3
3. Unopened: 2

'I'm halfway through a Collected Poems by Edith Södergran and a Collected stories by Gabriel García Márquez; Tom Hillenbrand's fat tome I have completed two thirds of, and i expect to finish it in a few days: it's a fast read, really. Great fun, too.

That leaves me with one 90-page novella (So long a letter) and one 260-page novel (The door).

Good! Seems like I'll make it this year!

You are doing great :)

Very nice. I expect to come up three short, so I'm leaving space for those next year. I've also reserved three more spaces for Jemisin's trilogy, looking forward to it.

>99 Narilka:
Thanks! Feels good to accomplish something (or at least knowing you're likely to).

>100 Cecrow:
21 of the kind of books you choose isn't anything to sneeze at! Also, great that you're tackling the Broken Earth trilogy: I think you'll like them.

I don't know when I'll be buying my digital copy of the third volume (perhaps December, perhaps next year) but I could let you know when I've reviewed it, if you want.

Congrats on being so close! I'm sure you'll make it no problem. I think I'll end up 7 short this year. Ah well, you win some, you lose some. Next year!

De koffiedief by Tom Hillenbrand. English title: The coffee thief, originally in German.



Why did I choose to read this?
This year’s Doorstopper. A present from my SO. An historical adventure thriller set during the 17thC when the lucrative coffee trade is dominated by the Ottoman Empire. (I read this in Dutch, translated from the original German.)

Review (Also posted here.)
The coffee thief is set In the 1680s: The Ottomans are in complete control of the lucrative coffee trade, and the West is finally becoming addicted to that black gold. Whoever manages to break the Turks’ monopoly stands to make fabulous amounts of money. And so the Dutch East India Company, looking to hamper a competitor, hires a down-on-his-luck counterfeiter called Obediah Chalon to put together a team that can infiltrate the Arabian Peninsula and smuggle live coffee bushes across the desert and the seas. In other words: a heist movie set in the 17th century.

A premise like that can only work if all cylinders are firing, and Hillenbrand goes all-out.

The plot is very much a 21st-century creation: Obediah recruits a team of experts (a buccaneer, a botanist, a mistress of disguises, a master thief), which run through the usual thriller tropes (the Javert figure, the threat of an in-group traitor, Louis XIV’s Royal Musketeers and Suleiman II’s Janissaries hot on their heels) and a series of big-budget set pieces. Also, the Heist Gang itself consists of a checklist of minorities: a Catholic, a Protestant, a Woman, a Gay and a Bisexual. The plan is clever, the pace is electrifying and the plot runs on swagger and the Rule of Cool.

So far so thriller. Where this book really shines is its historical fiction spin on high technology: it flaunts its reliance on the bleeding edge of the Scientific Revolution as much as a film from the Mission Impossible or Ocean’s Eleven franchises does its near-future gadgets. This is evident from the initial setting of the coffee houses where intellectuals exchange international gossip as well as learned tracts on lens-grinding and alternative mathematical notations. But the heist also crucially relies on recent advances in botany, clock-making and state-of-the-art cryptography, as well as an international network of natural philosophers. Hillenbrand douses all the cogwheels that make a thriller run with a joyful helping of pioneering science and technology, and it’s an amusing gimmick that is expertly developed into the kind of almost-believable setting needed for this kind of plot.

This historical thriller was a solid read, and highly entertaining. Hillenbrand is on top of his game, knows exactly what expectations to fulfill, and keeps the thrills coming at a high rate. He clearly had a lot of fun writing it, and I spent a few great hours reading it. Warmly recommended.

So long a letter by Mariama Bâ



Why did I choose to read this?
My first Senegalese author. A recommendation by my SO, who specialises in African literatures. I’d much rather read this in the original French, but couldn’t say no to a second-hand English-language copy for only $1. So it goes.

Review (Also posted here.)
This was a solid read. Short, but impactful.

Ramatoulaye, a middle-aged teacher in 1960s post-independence Sénégal, looks back on her life, which fell apart after her beloved husband of many years took a new, younger wife. Islam technically allows for this, but Ramatoulaye cannot but see this as an act of betrayal that merits a break-up, emotional as well as in terms of living arrangements.

The book is less concerned with the trappings of fiction and of narrative throughline than it is with sketching the lay of the post-colonial land and the clash between traditional, islamic conceptions of families and the Western ones, both of which come with uncomfortable baggage and neither of which feels fulfilling. Cultural ideals and taboos come into conflict, and navigating them is a matter of staving off the inevitable failing as long as possible -- a situation made even more complex across generational gaps and class divides.

Consequently, the text feels more like a mulling over of large-scale societal issues, though it thankfully steers clear from preachiness. The fact that this novel takes the form of a long letter to a friend helps a great deal: addressing an Other, a ‘you’ lends the book the flavour of a discussion rather than a lecture. It treats the reader as a sounding board with which the author can clarify her own thoughts to herself as much as to her audience. Furthermore, Bâ drew on events from her own life, and that, too, goes a long way to grounding the plot in real life. So long a letter definitely has an agenda, but it’s not obnoxious about it.

Samlade dikter by Edith Södergran. English title: Collected poems



Why did I choose to read this?
My SO’s favourite Swedish-speaking poet (as a teenager). Let’s give her a go!

Review (Also posted in Swedish here.)
This was not for me. Södergran wrote many nature poems (which, honestly, weren’t all that bad, just not that special), but also lots of nonsense about poeta vates imagery complete with lyre, cheap drama featuring old gods, mysticism and, towards the end of her short life, pious bunk about god and his mother. Not for me.

The door by Magda Szabó



Why did I choose to read this?
I’ve heard nothing but good things about this novel, but know very little about it going in.

Review (Also posted here.)
Absent-minded and non-practical writer Magda, who has more than a few echoes of author Magda Szabó, hires elderly housekeeper Emerence, who is doggedly herself and refuses to compromise. Both women are diametric opposites in many respects: Magda is a politically active writer, but she is quick to give in, doesn’t speak up and lets everyday things happen to her; Emerece is a barely-literate who never rests, who even sleeps sitting up, and who has her unshakeable habits, which she is firmly convinced are the only way to live. Her bull-headed insistence on interacting with people on her own terms is enforced through sheer force of character. For a character she is: secretive, but known to all in the neighbourhood, and they are protective of her like a local semi-tame cat.

I found this novel to be strangely compelling. There really is not much to it, just the relationship between two women who are unlike each other, and the fascinating portrait of working class intransigence. But the development of the central friendship is captivating in a way I find hard to express in words. Much of the novel’s hypnotizing force, I think, rests on it feeling more like an autobiography or a character study than narrative fiction -- perhaps even a confession and a meditation on shame.

The door is not my usual cup of tea, but I’m glad I got to read it. It’s a book I’ll be turning over in my head from time to time.

Collected stories by Gabriel García Márquez



Why did I choose to read this?
This one was also on the 2016 tbr challenge, but I only completed a few stories. I’ll try again this year.

Review (Also posted here.)
This is a collection of García Márquez’ short stories sorted in more or less chronological order. His early work resembles that of Silvina Ocampo: alienating and untethered to traditional fictional representations of reality. The stories get less weird and more narrative over time, but even then their magical realism remains central to their character. Other definitional features are a confidence of voice and delivery paired with a calculated balance between sparseness and lyricism. The man could write, no doubt about it.

Many of these stories I enjoyed reading; others I enjoy having read more than ploughing through them. But on the whole this was a very worthwhile book.

Earlier today (30th December) I read the last story in the García Márquez collection, and that was the final entry in this year's Challenge. And that means that I'm finally done: all twenty-four books that I set out to read at the beginning of the year have been completed. Of course, I read much more than these, but many of these books were the kind that requires an extra nudge to actually start (or see them through), and so I feel pretty chuffed to have made my way through them, page by page.

Here's a few end-of-year overview-type thingies:

• The worst read of the challenge was definitely the collected poems by Edith Södergran (see >105 Petroglyph:): I think I've largely outgrown big-R Romantic drama and I'm definitely not putting up with insipid religious poems. I wasn't too chuffed about Beckomberga a.k.a. The gravity of love, either (>95 Petroglyph:). This year was not a good year for Swedish-language literature, I'm sad to say.
  
  
• The other books on my list this year all rated higher than these, that is they were ok-to-pretty-good. I call that a success.
  
  
• The best books, as measured by sheer joy of reading: The gate of angels by Penelope Fitzgerald (>24 Petroglyph:), and maybe De koffiedief a.k.a. The coffee thief by Tom Hillenbrand (>103 Petroglyph:). Also Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (>73 Petroglyph:)
  
  
• The best books for more intellectual reasons: The bluest eye by Toni Morrison (>70 Petroglyph:), Season of migration to the north (>82 Petroglyph:), Ten days in a mad-house by Nellie Bly (>45 Petroglyph:).
  
  
• This Challenge also introduced me to a few authors that I'm definitely going to be reading more of (or already have read more of): Honoré de Balzac and Elizabeth Taylor. Maybe also Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison and Jocelyn Brooke

And finally: I like my setup for this Challenge enough to re-use it for next year's. There are so many things I want to read (or at least, that I want to have read), and this particular combination of open-ended goals (reading more by women and POC, reading more globally), specific goals (narrow-focus reading projects), and the never-ending browsing of Mount TBR is fairly effective at keeping my nose to the grindstone.

Here's to a successful 2020! See you all next year!

Congrats on completion!

Congratulations! Off to see what your plans are for 2020.

Nice job, and congrats on so many good picks!