I am enjoying this Chinese SF novel, which turns out to be speculative fiction rather than dystopia, as I previously thought. This is why I read translated fiction: to discover other cultures and see how people whose thought process is different from mine see the world. I don't necessarily quite follow every reflection (how I wish there were translator's notes!) but it is still intellectually stimulating.

#SF #China

A Chinese dystopic novel and a cup of lavender and pineapple tea to fend off the (relative) cold.

The weather has definitely turned autumnal: it's grey, windy and wet outside. And cold, but my thermometer is stuck at a balmy 25.8°C, to add insult to injury.

Just starting La stupeur, Aharon Appelfeld's last book before his death in 2018.

It turns out Ruben is a real person: he's not the book's main character - that's Mor-Zamba (who as far as I know is fictional) - but his unseen presence permeates the whole novel. Ruben Um Nyobe was the leader of the Cameroon independence movement UPC from 1948, until he was killed by the French authorities in 1958 in appalling circumstances.

#Cameroon #Africa

Photo of UPC leaders from wikipedia - Ruben is the one with sunglasses

A hard-hitting novel set around the Second World War and the struggles for independence in Western Africa. Mongo Beti needs to be better-known.

I've just finished a short book about a novice teacher's first year in her home town's secondary school, in the Innu reserve of Uashat. She teaches French (the local population's first or second language) and the Head gets her to put on a play (Corneille's Le Cid). Many teenage mums and older pupils. Difficult family situations, deaths and suicides. Bleak and uplifiting. The usual Teacher In A Deprived Area story.

The Perfect Nine and a bowl of githeri, a hearty red bean and white maize stew from #Kenya, which I will definitely make again.
#foodandlit #foodandlit2022
 @Butterfinger, @Texreader, @Catsandbooks

I started Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's epic poem about the Gĩkũyũ people's origin story for #foodandlit #Kenya. Loving it so far, but then you can't go wrong with wa Thiong'o! When will he get his Nobel Prize for Literature?

@Butterfinger, @Texreader, @Catsandbooks

PS: there is something geological about the book's illustrations...

We‘re reading a book about losing and finding mummy to ease grandbaby‘s separation anxiety.

Another book for the grandbaby 💗

#feminism

Look what I‘ve found for the grandbaby today! And as it happens, the skies have turned dark and the night is growing stormy as I‘m typing, but you‘ll have to take my word for it because my camera can‘t take a decent photo of a sky at dusk...

I don't know what to make of this book. I suspect it might be a pastiche of Cuore (Heart: A School-Boy's Journal) by Edmondo de Amicis but I'm not sure because I haven't read it. It's just that none of the characters' behaviours make sense in a contemporary setting...

A novella about a woman who spends winter on her own in a cabin in the woods in Kamouraska (Québec) in very rough conditions, inspired by Thoreau & Anne Hébert's Kamouraska. It's the first of a trilogy, and I feel it might be more satisfying to read all 3 books as a whole.

#Canada #Quebec

This picture has the best backdrop I could find where I live, but thankfully, the book's cabin was (marginally) more weatherproof than this hut!

I‘ve been waiting so long for this book! The previous reader returned it over a month late to the library 🤨

I haven't had to research so many things (Baltic geography, the various people that live there, WWII in Finland, Sami cultures, the difference between a Finn and a Finlander...) for a book in a long time and I'm enjoying it, although I do wish they had gone for footnotes! Thank all that is holy for Wikipedia!

#Lapland #Finland

As today is International Dog Day, and I had a parsing malfunction involving this dog breed in my current read, here's a picture of a Lapponian Herder dog... (The French said “bergers lapons“, and I first pictured human shepherds, not dogs, which didn't make sense in context.)

#Finland #Lapland

Picture of a Lapponian Herder from Wikipedia

And a picture for the coming month: September. It's making me wistful: this year, where I live, the hollyhocks are already dead and have been for the last couple of weeks. Thanks to the heatwaves brought on by climate change.

#naturalitsy

One of the pages for the month of August
#naturalitsy

I like that the author pictures not just pretty flowers and birds, but also insects, as he observed them on plants.

#naturalitsy

Nicolas Jolivot watched and drew his garden over a whole year. I love the illustrations, but the writer comes across as a bit grumpy and negative in the text...
#naturalitsy

You know a book about Ireland was written before the nineties when it‘s depressing 😑

Well, I downloaded this poetry collection thinking it was by Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame, the Somali poet whose obituary I'd just read in the Guardian, and it's not, but it's OK: it's very readable and I'm happy my money is going to a living poet! I do wish I could get hold of a book written by the other Warsame, though...

#poetry

Reading the memoirs of Kofi Yamgnane, who became mayor of a small Breton village in 1989, the first Black mayor of a mainland French commune born in Africa (Togo in his case) elected after decolonisation. The hate mail he received is unbelievable.

Yoko Tawada is better known as the author of The Emissary and Memoirs of a Polar Bear, but she has a long backlist of titles, originally written in Japanese or German, and I like a bi- or multi-lingual writer!
The narrator of Train de nuit avec suspects (Night train with suspects) is a dancer who takes the train to various European and Asian cities for work. There is a chapter for each journey, and they're all high- or low-key stressful...

A map of feminism(s)

Hot chocolate duly drunk! (See my previous post.) The tagged book is an international history of tea, coffee and chocolate.

I found something I liked on Wikipedia's On This Day page today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xicolatada . It's Hot Chocolate Day in Catalonia today, as a hangover cure after Assumption festivities. I know what I'm going to drink today 😁 ☕

Slightly disappointing. I couldn't empathise with the narrator (a good part of the novel is taken with descriptions of past and present “romantic“ encounters with women who are never fully characterised, which was rather unpleasant), and the translation was awkward.

#Turkmenistan #GlobalChallenge

I like a good description of the natural world.

#naturalitsy

Japanese rice, kelp salad, salmon, stir-fried courgettes and homemade ponzu sauce for lunch. Based on ideas from Bento Boxes, tweaked with what I had in the fridge.

I am reading an interlinked short stories collection by Yoshimura Akira. It's not as dazzling as Shipwrecks or The Water Convoy (if that's the right title in English?), but it's still good!

#foodandlit #Japan @Butterfinger, @Texreader, @Catsandbooks

This poetry collection was a fantastic find on scribd. It's quite intense and almost brutal, and although written in English, very Indonesian.

#poetry #Indonesia

(photo of the author from the book's back cover)

I've taken my 2 Japanese cookbooks - Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art and Practical Japanese Cooking; Easy and Elegant - out of the bookshelves to leaf through, but I have to say Shizuo Tsuji is a professional chef and his cookbooks are informative, but “simple“, “easy“ or “practical“ they are not 😏

Oh and in case you're wondering, the shutters are halfway down because it's scorching today 🌞
#foodandlit
@Butterfinger, @Texreader, @Catsandbooks

Am reading Ultimatum Orangutan, a poetry collection by Indonesian poet and artist Khairani Barokka. I suppose it's like this on purpose, but what an awful cover!

#Indonesia #poetry

I found a book about women philosophers at the library. Its presentation is very textbook-like, but I'm not complaining: I'm learning 🙂

I know we did #France in July and we're now in August, but here's one last #FoodAndLit post for the quintessential Northern French (and also Belgian) meal we had for lunch today. I'm allowed - I had an early Japan post in July 🙃

Back from the big open-air market. Everything is put away. Time to relax with a cup of coffee, blueberries straight from the punnet (I did wash them!) and an SFF short story collection, before I have to start on Sunday lunch...

Why did I borrow this compendium of first-world problems? If you like reading about a Louboutin-obsessed young Parisian mum with impossibly long legs and not a real care in the world, this is the comic book for you...

Interesting cookbook but the French translation is terrible.

Reading Shrikanto (Srikanta), a Bengali classic written in 1917 - a lucky find in the sales held by my local library. No idea why there are Buddhas on the cover...

#India #Bengal

That was a fantastic book - very modern in its outlook.

(picture of Bridlington Town Hall - as a stand-in for Kiplington - from Wikipedia)

South Riding is emotionally draining - I'm taking a break and reading a vintage cookbook on PDF. So many ridiculously complicated recipes!

Oh Lydia! I‘m so worried for you! You‘ve just started school again on a scholarship, but if your mum stays pregnant, you‘ll have to leave high school to help her and say goodbye to your dreams. I hope that plot gets resolved soon because I couldn‘t bear to be strung along for another 350 pages. My heart couldn‘t take it. I‘m rooting for you!

Working my way through 1945 Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral's poetry collection Tala (French title: Essart). It's quite long for a poetry book: I hope I'll have finished it before I have to take it back to the library...

#poetry #Chile #NobelPrize

Have started South Riding and enjoying it very much so far! This is my second early 20th-century small-town (gentle) social satire this month (the other being Ces dames aux chapeaux verts).

I read an article about this collection of dystopic graphic short stories by Ersin Karabulut, a Turkish artist who fell foul of the Erdogan régime. I was intrigued and decided to borrow a copy from the library. It's thought-provoking and the art is stunning, but I can't say I enjoyed it (too graphic!), except for the last story.

#PoliticalWorks #Turkey

Having discovered Haitian poet/playwright Jean d'Amérique a couple of weeks ago through Opéra poussière, I am now reading his bilingual French/Haitian Creole poetry collection Petite fleur du ghetto / Touf flè nan pikan. It's very accomplished. And I found a video on YouTube of Gaëlle Bien-Aimé reading his poem (p 22-23) in memory of actor and photographer Régina Nicolas, murdered in 2015.

#Haiti #poetry

The Virago Book of Wicked Verse is an anthology of poetry by female authors, mostly, but by no means all, writing in English. Very enjoyable. The male-gazy, orientalist cover does not at all reflect the content.

#poetry

Sekiguchi is a Japanese poet, translator, artist and food writer.
I loved her essay about nagori (definition below) so much when I read it in 2019, I knew when I returned it to the library that I'd have to get my own. And now I do. I love it just as much on its second read 😁. It's about food, poetry, nature and seasons, cultural habits, and language: that's about 3/4 of my interests all in one book!

@Butterfinger, @Texreader, @Catsandbooks

Potato and cured, smoked herring salad. With raw beetroot juice. Not an imaginative menu, but very local to the North of France and all I could bear given the temperature!

#France #foodandlit #foodandlit2022 @Butterfinger, @Texreader, @Catsandbooks

Thank you @Pip2!

1. Not voluntarily. 2/3 of my bookshelves are in my living-room, so they are effectively part of the décor, and I try to keep them reasonably tidy, but I'm not sure they are *decorative*. In an ideal world, I'd have a separate library, big enough that having 4 walls of shelves does not feel suffocating.

2. The Internet, I'm sorry to say (and work, I suppose). Also the grandchild when she is around.

#Two4Tuesday