Japanese #scifi about a military a.i. that takes the form of a six year old girl named Jonah. We follow Jonah over centuries, to a distant planet called Caritas, inhabited by outcasts and run by an a.i. which has gone mad. Ambitious (characters are constantly grappling with the texistence of a god-like creator) and humane - Ohara has a singular vision of the future which both mesmerizes and terrifies. #womenintranslation #readwomen #japanese
The first novel translated from the Lingala language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. #Translated #translation #Africa #DRC
Night Comes to the Cumberlands #virginia #blueridge #road trip
Just started. Too early to make a judgement. But wanted to share this pretty cover.
pickThis memoir written by a woman who lost most of her family to the Rwandan genocide is heartbreaking. Scholastique Mukasonga writes very simply and starkly about terror and grief, making it just bearable to keep reading. 5 stars - I highly recommend.
This is just doing absolutely nothing for me. #anothergirl #train
Heda Margolius Kovaly was an admirer of Raymond Chandler (she translated his books into Czech). She's written a hard-boiled crime novel, with a female protagonist, based in part on her life. The weird merging of those two things - the tough dame detective story superimposed over factual events - works surprisingly well. Only a chapel or so in, but enjoying it.
My nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature - Mexican writer Sergio Pitol. #NobelPrizeforliterature #Mexico #translation #authorcrush
Saw the #AgnesMartin retrospective today at the Guggenheim. Absolutely brilliant. Such an important American artist, too often overlooked. Looking forward to starting this new biography.
So, so pretty. I 💟 the Dorothy Project. #judgingabook #cover #translation
Planning on reading this over the weekend. The author refers to himself as the only Afro-Czech writer and published a memoir about his search for his Congolese father (which I don't think has been translated into English). This novella appears to be the story of a marriage, but I am not convinced that is all it is about. #Czech #marriage #translation
Me after my husband steals my eReader and refuses to give it back until he finishes the ENTIRE Jack Reacher series.
The newest book in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series has been announced for 2018! The title is The Labyrinth of Spirits.
I keep hearing good things about Garnier, including comparisons to Simenon. This is the first book of his that I have tried. So far, so good.
pickBetter than The House of Silk (which was very good) - I felt uneasy the entire time I was reading. Horowitz does a brilliant job of creating a sense of menace, while at the same time never establishing exactly where it is coming from. The best Sherlock Holmes pastiche I have read in a long time.
"...that's my definition of urban vitality: constantly running into people who aren't like you, who don't think, look, or act like you, people who have fundamentally different values & backgrounds. And in the mix there is always the possibility to reimagine and remake yourself - a world of possibility that is driven by public life & space, that at its best turns into common places & neighborhoods." #urbanism #cities #nonfiction
pickThis little novella is pure magic. Everything that is wonderful about Cesar Aira - the imagination, the imagery, the feeling of being in a place where fables and the modern world overlap - is in this book. When I get to the end I want to immediately begin again at page one. #Aira #translation #Argentina
It's impossible to resist a Sherlock Holmes pastiche - and if Moriarty is even a fraction as good as The House of Silk I'll be happy! #Elementary #mystery #Sherlock (Side note: recently discovered Horowitz wrote early episodes of British detective drama Midsomer Murders, which is absolutely addictive).
"Anyone coming to the Place d'Arezzo for the first time would experience a sense of strangeness. In spite of the opulent Versailles-style stone and brick houses lining the square, where the shady lawn, the rhododendrons, and the plane trees suggested a Nordic kind of vegetation, there was a hint of the tropics about the place..."
