so-soLove in a Fallen City was the first in the Eileen Chang Author Spotlight group read. An interesting author to meet for the first time and quite unlike any other writer I‘ve read. Two stunning short stories, the rest were novella length and good but not brilliant imo.
The Author Spotlight Series are organized by @HardcoverHearts
Train reading across my small country to The Hague.
One of the best places to read! 🚂
pickA wonderful, warm and heartfelt story about four friends in NYC, but centering on the main character Artie, a gay man who has turned sixty and doesn‘t know how to pick his life back up again after all his loved ones have passed away. In chapters alternating between the 1980‘s and the present time, written in gentle prose, we learn how he copes.
#gayliterature #gaybooks
The Author Spotlight reading group started the Eileen Chang month. First up is her story collection Love in a Fallen City.
The Author Spotlight series is organized and hosted by @HardcoverHearts
Sarah @HardcoverHearts and I are buddy reading Emile Zola‘s Rougon Maquart series in publication order. Starting no. 9 today: Pot Luck.
It‘s National Book Week in the Netherlands, a yearly celebration of books for a whole week, since 1930. There are bookish events all over the country and when you buy a book you receive a free novella that is written for this week by a literary author.
My buys were French author Eric Chacour‘s debut about a gay doctor in Cairo, and the new book by Annet Schaap, a children‘s author who excels in Dutch language and is read by kids and adults alike.
pickThis was the first of my picks from this year‘s Women‘s Prize longlist. A bit of a mixed back for me, but overall I liked it. A story of three women, of three generations and how abuse by men defined a great part of their lives. And about the invisible ties that hold family together.
Train reading! Starting the next Tove Johansson: Fair Play. The first two in the Author Spotlight, organized and hosted by Sarah @HardcoverHearts were great reads, so my hopes are up for this third one.
pickThe True Deceiver was the second book we read in the Tove Jansson Author Spotlight Series, which are group reads, organized and hosted by Sarah @HardcoverHearts .
Again an amazing novel, this one set during a dark winter in Scandinavia. Who is the true deceiver among the small village people? It ends with a satisfying answer.
My picks to read from the International Booker Prize 2025: the Dutch one: On a Woman‘s Madness by Astrid Roemer, and the Danish one: On the Calculation of Volume I.
#astridroemer #solvejballe #internationalbookerprize
pickThe Summer Book was the first book we read this month for the Tove Jansson Author Spotlight.
This is a unique story about the relationship of a grandmother and her granddaughter Sophia, set on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland during a warm summer.
Told in beautiful prose, it deals with life and death, old and young, nature, resilience and loss.
A great first meeting with Jansson!
The Author Spotlight series is hosted by @HardcoverHearts
The two books I plan to read from this year‘s Women‘s Prize for Fiction longlist: A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike and Amma by Saraid de Silva.
A Little Trickerie came with a surprise: a signed edition!
#womensprize #womensprizeforfiction #womenwriter
Today is the start of the Tove Jansson reading group in the Author Spotlight Series, organized by Sarah @HardcoverHearts starting with The Summer Book.
I have never read anything by Tove Jansson, so I‘m very curious!
Finally climbing The Mountain!
pickHello, Litsy bookish people! This is my first post and it‘s about a brilliant novel imo that I finished last night: Radetzky March by Josep Roth, here shown in my Dutch translation copy. About the dying Habsburg empire, told through the eyes of a father and his son, a reluctant military man, the threat of oncoming war looming constantly. About loss of innocence, withholding emotions and the passage of time.
#josephroth #radetzkymarch
