Another one I want to read / buy.
#MonthofBookDenial
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/books/review/jess-walter-the-angel-of-rome.ht...
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Another one I want to read / buy.
#MonthofBookDenial
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/books/review/jess-walter-the-angel-of-rome.ht...
Should we admit to being idiots?
[A subheading in my current read. But possibly more widely applicable]
Fallen the forest that one time...
Hallgrímur poetry extract in this novel.
pickA lovely gentle book, following one woman's life from the Depression to old age.
Much of any culture can be linked back to eating and food, food and care, eating and language. To eat one's feelings, to eat dust, words... to eat someone else alive.... Chinese isn't any different from English in this way... To eat punishment or get the worst of it, chi kui. And, most important, to eat hardship, suffering, and pain, chi ki, a defining Chinese quality, to be able to bear a great deal without showing a crack.
JANUARY WAS WELLNESS MONTH at the hospital, and HR sent us daily reminders to take time for lunch. ... On a scale of one to ten, what is your level of well? I found the last question confusing. Was ten the well of one? Because for patients there was a similar scale: in every exam room a series of cartoon faces morphed from happy to sad, from one to ten for pain and well on that scale was a one, while ten was exceedingly not.
I told them that the last time I saw my father was in spring. He had been in New York for business.... He bought me a cup of coffee and I was almost done with it when he had to leave and catch his flight. But to China, I rarely went, nor did I consider myself too Chinese.
The moment those words left my mouth, I wondered why I had said them. What was wrong with being too Chinese? Yet it'd always seemed that something was.
More tempting reviews, more attempts at resistance (to getting my online shop on).
#MonthofBookDeferral
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/books/review/metaphysical-animals-clare-mac-c...
Of course, words in computers tend to disappear, become nothing, become locked up in old programs, be erased when the computer crashes and our thoughts and actions turn to air; in a hundred years, let alone a thousand, no-one will know that we existed.
.... one day we come across old letters and something strange stirs inside us, we sense a thread that reaches from us back into the dimness of the past
Another one I didn't buy (it was in my library collection). Reading Jordan as she is newly included in an exam board list, and one of many I'd not read (and would like to).
https://www.ocr.org.uk/news/ocr-adds-diverse-voices-to-poetry-for-gcse-english-l...
Poetry means taking control of the language of your life...
I began reading even more than I normally did, with no censor to guard Baba Jan's library now, until Hakiman Bua, who had fed and nursed me, changed from her admiring, "My little bookworm finds no time for mischief" to remonstrating, "Your books will eat you. They will dim the light of your lovely eyes, my moon princess, and then who will marry you, owl-eyed, peering through glasses...
Another book read and recommended by a friend on LT.
It is not new, so normally I'd have a look on biblio.com to see if there are any cheap copies available.
Ì
#MonthofBookDeferral
Some of the longlist for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize.
Not buying. Yet.
#MonthofBookDeferral
Then I step out into the garden,
where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man, is tending his children, the roses.
My mother is the opposite. Words come easily to her, and she has a tendency to start up long conversations with people on the street, in a queue for coffee, or wherever. One time, a woman called our house by mistake and they ended up chatting for over an hour. When she hung up, my mother had said, "Oh, that was Raquel. She dialled the wrong number but we really hit it off."
In a bookshop (trying to get fathers' day present). Temptation.
pickPowerful read.
"To translate is never simple. To translate is to betray at the borders, it's to cheat, it's to trade one sentence for an other. To translate is one of the only human activities in which one is required to lie about the details to convey the truth at large. "
Five, six times I've read this letter. What am I to do, oh Lord? I feel like I did on Palm Sunday, when as a child I'd eat up all the jams-palm-fruit, citron, orange, prune, and pear jams—and madre Adelina would tell me I was going to hell for having such a sweet tooth.
Always a sucker for a book advert.
And I've never read Ulysses.
#MonthofBookDeferral
Book reviews are dangerous places...
#MonthofBookDeferral
Another LT review that makes me want to grab a copy...
#MonthofBookDeferral
Someone on Librarything reviewed this (not brand new) book.
My library does not have a copy.
Normally this would send me straight to biblio.com
#MonthofBookDeferral
Because kindle books don't count?
#MonthofBookDeferral
#Somuchfornobookbuys
Very sweet.
My grandmother died when I was in my mother's stomach and living with her in Keflavík, she died in front of the TV, in the middle of an evening programme. She just stayed sitting there, even though she was no longer watching. It took a while for Grandfather to realize, because when someone's sitting in front of the TV, it's kind of hard to say whether they're alive or dead.
"So you're Kalmann the shark catcher, right?"
Suddenly feeling self-conscious, I nodded and looked down at the floor. I like it when people call me a shark catcher. People usually call me something else. I looked around surreptitiously, but there was no one who could have heard, here in the school where I'd been called so many names. No witnesses. It was a shame.
Temporary madness, in war, is bravery's sister.
And then I visited my local bookshop (or one of them) to try and find their events listing page.
Found this instead
#MonthofBookDeferral #NewsfromNowhere
I can't buy this (they're for bookshop day in October). But ooh I wish I could 😍😍
#NotaBookDeferral
Mama would ask me if I wanted to get him something too. No, ma'am. That's just what I told her. No, ma'am.
So Tasheta and me, we fell in line somewhere in the space between Kimba and Renee. Like a daughter purgatory where you don't expect him to get you anything for your birthday or Christmas, ever, but it still hurts like hell every time he doesn't.
Another book I want.
This time from the NY books newsletter.
(Jhumpa Lahiri is an autobuy for me)
#MonthofBookDenial #MonthofBookDeferral
pickEach chapter takes a broad theme (the final one is monsters) and brings in contemporary attitudes to women along with wide ranging examples of artists and their work. McCormack argues powerfully against simplistic acceptance of women's position in art from the past, but also against losing this art altogether.
I'm no expert on art: the accessibility and range of this book was a real plus for me.
... a feminist fantasy banquet for 39 historical and mythological women...
Medusa's knotted mythography tells us that for millennia she was the epitome of female power - a mother goddess of healing, birth, immortality and knowledge, who was possibly connected with reproductive care for women and the education of female doctors, and who was a symbolic ruler of matriarchal societies. How was something so strong denigrated into a terrifying menstruating demon, whose power was weaponised against her....?
It's what we've always done. Left a mark on a cave, or on a page. Showing who we are, sharing our view of the world, the life we're made to bear. Our turmoil is revealed in those painted faces -- some times tenderly, sometimes grotesquely, but art becomes a mirror. All the symbolism and the paradox, ours to interpret. That's how it becomes part of us. And as counterpoint to our suffering, we have beauty.
Publisher websites are always tempting places.
This sounds brilliant.
"The Métro shudders to a halt: an unattended bag has been found. For the narrator, a Vietnamese woman... a fantastical interior monologue begins, looking back to her childhood in early ‘80s Hanoi, university studies in Leningrad, and life in France...."
#MonthofBookDenial #MonthofBookDeferral
pickGreat read. Order from the publisher and support a brilliant small press bringing out translated fiction.
https://www.tiltedaxispress.com/the-devils-dance
The lure of a lost manuscript is one of humanity's eternal temptations. Our ancestor Adam's first poem; the Mushaf of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet; Ibn-Sina's Eastern Logic; Yassawi's secret aphorisms... and these were just the Islamic works. If you included the lost books of other cultures, the list would number thousands, from St Margaret's gospel to the history of Genghis Khan.
Given that my TBR has overflowed the space available, and in a bid to avoid being squashed by a falling tower of books, posting pictures of books I want for a month on here. July 10th, I review. And possibly get out the cc.
This book was written about by an academic, Prof Gurminder K Bhambra, as a book they return to, on the politics of remembrance (around the revolution in Haiti). Want.
(This is the plan, at least)
#MonthofBookDeferral
Uzbeks have a custom of never calling a scorpion a scorpion: instead, they call it 'the thing with no name'. Was that why they could talk freely about Emirs Nasrullo, Umar and Madali, Shah Dost Muhammad and even Queen Victoria, but wouldn't dare mention his name? The interrogators ... never once let their mouths utter his name. Yet he was the heart and soul, the beginning and the end, of all the things taking place around him.
pickImpressive short fiction collection: I hope more of their work is translated soon!
Without seeking them, slogans were emerging.
STOP TELLING WOMEN TO SMILE. I'M NOT WALKING DOWN THE STREET FOR YOUR PLEASURE. CRITICISM OF MY BODY IS NOT APPRECIATED...I DON'T OWE YOU A SECOND.
I put a phrase under each portrait and printed them on enormous posters. Walking through Brooklyn, the first time I came across one I wasn't expecting, it affected me deeply...
Aunt Claire came to get her one Wednesday at the end of summer, and during the car journey she told her that a group from Syria had arrived a couple of weeks before and that people had sent food, clothes and toys. Those fleeing war are always better received than those trying to escape poverty, especially if the poverty is in a black skin, as if poverty isn't a bomb that will end up killing you.
