March 2021

Now that I'm fully vaccinated I've resumed some activities but I'm still sticking to essentials. Next month I'll have a dental check-up and resume my mahjong games. Also can do more as my housemate will also be vaccinated. I read plenty this week--lots of library books plus one off my "owned-but-unread" shelves. Once again I think I added more to the latter than I read...

Activities:

3/1   Library to pick up holds and browse! Yes, I went inside but only for about 5 minutes. 

3/4   Library (book drop only); JC Farms: Lyman Orchards 

3/10 Lab Work

3/11 CVS Cromwell

3/12 Eye Dr 

3/15 DR; Library; gas

3/16 Tree removal. I didn't leave home for this (other than moving the cars to neighbor's driveway) but I did have to interact with tree guy who was probably not vaccinated.

3/24  Library pick up & browse; Durham Dari-serv

3/24  Took E to Uconn (Munson) for 1st dose vaccine; Neil's Donuts

Reading:

 

Fiction (roughly in the order I liked them but The Rib King was the only real disappointment among the fiction):

Dear Child by Hausmann, Romy; translated from the German by Bulloch, Jamie
Lost Girls: Short Stories by Morris, Ellen Birkett 

 A fine collection which I won from The Debutante Ball which featured an Interview with Ellen Birkett Morris
Elemental International short stories by various authors and translators (my copy)
The Caretaker by Arbus, Doon
Indelicacy by Cain, Amina

Mona and Other Tales by Arenas, Reinaldo; translated from the Spanish bt Koch, Dolores M.
The Bass Rock by Wyld, Evie
Inheritance from Mother by Mizumura, Minae; translated from the Japanese by Carpenter, Juliet Winters
The Glorious Ones by Prose, Francine 

Archipelago by Roffey, Monique

The Last Garden in England by Kelly, Julia
The Rib King by Hubbard, Ladee

  Started out fine but bogged down...I admit to a bit of skimming...

 

Nonfiction (three good, one meh, and a bomb):

Finding Dora Maar: An Artist, an Address Book, a Life by Benkemoun, Brigitte; translated from the French by Gladding, Jody
The Chiffon Trenches by Talley, André Leon
A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America's First All-Black High School Rowing Team by Cooper, Arshay

The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Shah, Sonia 

  this was kind of disjointed and, not exactly to the point (of the title), wish I hadn't bothered..

Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Knighton, Conor 

  Too much "I" more a memoir than a travelogue, he tried to give a thematic presentation but ended up just wandering. His skipping all over the place made me want to do the same with his book.  Didn't make me want to visit any park I haven't already visited (and some that I have visited were barely recognizable). 

 

Online:

 I somehow stumbled onto to the site Olive Oil Times which has a lot of good stuff of interest to the industry and the consumer, see:  Remains of 2,500-Year-Old Mill Discovered in Italy  and Volunteers in Italy and Spain to Track Spittlebug Activity both by Paolo DeAndreis. In addition to news there are producer profiles, health info, and a bunch of recipes.

 

Paolo DeAndreis

Paolo DeAndreis

The Mystery of New England's Gray Corned Beef  by Anne Ewbank

 I was wondering about this as we ate our boxed take-out St Pat's dinner.

Yaupon: The rebirth of America's forgotten tea by Matt Stirn

 Humm..wonder is this stuff will grow in Connecticut...according to the USDA apparently not...see  Plant Guide: Yaupon and Plants profile: Ilex vomitoria Aiton yaupon and Willis Orchard Company: Yaupon Holly Tree

 

Iceburger No, not some crazy frozen dessert. This is an oddly compelling site that lets you create an iceberg an see how it floats. 

How Cats Walk In case you were wondering...

10 Incredible Women of Route 66 by Candacy Taylor (Moon Travel Guides). Interesting sidelights for a road-trip. A couple of the links are broken but easily found by Googling. The hotel in Winslow, AZ is where I want to stay if I ever go to the area again. (We stayed at a Holiday Inn in Williams on our cross country trip in 2001.)

Evolution of the House Plan in Europe: from the Industrial Revolution to the Interwar Period

 by Hana Abdel & Christele Harrouk

November 2020

Activities:

 

Not much outside the house.

11/5 doctor 

11/16 lab; gassed car

11/24 pickup at libraries (2); jc farms for pie!

Books:

 Some good novels and lots of non-fiction this month.

Fiction:
Lovely War by Berry, Julie
Jean-Luc persécuté by Ramuz, Charles-Ferdinand; translated from the French by Baes, Olivia
How to Stop Time by Haig, Matt
Autopsy of a Father by Kramer, Pascale; translated from the French by Bononno, Robert
The Midnight Library by Haig, Matt
Forty Rooms by Grushin, Olga 

Poetry:

The Golden Goblet: Selected Poems of Goethe by Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von; translated from the German by Ozsváth, Zsuzsanna and Turner, Frederick  

Nonfiction: 
The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War by Nasaw, David
For the Love of Music: The Art of Listening by Mauceri, John
The Simpsons: A Cultural History by Fink, Moritz
A Promised Land by Obama, Barack 

Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Slaght, Jonathan C.
Music to Eat Cake By: Essays on Birds, Words and Everything in Between by Parikian, Lev

The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Harris, Kamala

Online:

Sabine Meyer

 While reading For the Love of Music and Music to Eat Cake By I wondered why I was reading about music but not listening to music?  So I put the books aside and went searching for music, specifically Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. As a result I've spent a least an hour a day on YouTube listening to Sabine Meyer play. Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms,....

Sublime Swimming: 14 examples of custom pools by María Francisca González

  I sure do miss my swims ... sigh...

Wagenhallen Stuttgart Cultural Center ArchDaily article

Wagenhallen official site

 a part of Stuttgart I've never seen (because it was something else when I lived in Germany)

Online Goodies

The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde, and Other Stories by Mary De Morgan  on Project Gutenberg



Mary de Morgan: Subversion through Fairy Tales by Marilyn Pemberton







The Orchid Album, Vol 1  ; The Orchid Album, Vol 2 by Robert Warner and Benjamin Samuel Williams and Thomas Moore
There are over 40 colored plates in each of these two volumes.
On Project Gutenberg.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Pomological Watercolor Collection
This is an amazing collection. There are over 7,000 images in this searchable database.

Perusing Project Gutenberg

            Oats and Vetch


From...
Wayside and Woodland Blossoms; A Pocket Guide To British Wild-Flowers For The Country Rambler
by Edward Step (Published:1898)

Motoring Skills

Photo. H. W. Nicholls.
THIS LITTLE DRAWER IS THE GREAT SECRET

 The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for the Edwardian Motoriste
by Dorothy Levitt,
C. Byng-Hall (Editor, Introduction)
(published 1909)


And what should one keep in the secret drawer (the forerunner of the glove compartment)?

"This little drawer is the secret of the dainty motoriste. What you put in it depends upon your tastes, but the following articles are what I advise you to have in its recesses. A pair of clean gloves, an extrahandkerchief, clean veil, powder-puff (unless you despise them), hair-pins and ordinary pins, a hand mirror—and some chocolates are very soothing, sometimes!"

Some light Verse

The Motley Muse (Rhymes for the Times) by Harry Graham; Illustrations by Lewis Blumer (published 1913)

Many of these refer (in a light manner) to the politics of the time. There is also a section on clubs and another of seasonal verses. Clever rhymes although some of the terms used are considered unacceptable by today's standards.

Campy Camp Tales

Gutenberg has no cover image, but there are plenty of illustrations in the work

Romance of California Life by John Habberton; Illustrated By Pacific Slope Stories, Thrilling, Pathetic And Humorous

Was Habberton ever actually in California? It's not clear from his Wikipedia entry. In the book's introduction he writes "Although at present mildly tolerated in the East, I was "brought up" in the West [Illinois], and have written largely from recollection of "some folks" I have known, veritable men and women, scenes and incidents, and otherwise through the memories of Western friends of good eyesight and hearing powers."

Trains, Names, and Other Online Stuff

Monorail, monorail, monorail...  Osaka Monorail Train switching

Strange and Silly Street Names  by Elyssa Millspaugh
all in Connecticut but how did she miss Pumpkin Delight Road in Milford?

Architecture and Embroidery: Discover the Art of Elin Petronella and Charles Henry by Victor Delaqua; Translated by Zoë Montano
So cool I want to stich one of these...

Multitasking Trees by Sonja Dümpelmann
If you love street trees...

An incidental reference to Kasper Hauser in Wolfgang Hilbig's The Females sent me Googling. Here are just a few of the results for this interesting character: 
The Enduring 200-Year-Old Mystery Of Kaspar Hauser By Gina Dimuro
Kasper Hauser - Wikipedia
Kasper Hauser on Atlas Obscura

May (fourth week) 2018 Reads

Finished two really good books this week and a third one that I'm not so sure about. Also had a very pleasant picnic at the Hampton Reservoir Boat Launch. The picture shows that this a place for launching canoes, kayaks, and other small craft.
It's a really pleasant and restful place.
Saw some families of geese and some other birds. 

This week the "Deal Me In" card is, oops, cards are, a Joker and the Five of Spades.
The story for ♠5♠ is Way of Remembrance  by Jung Young Moon; translated from the Korean by Jung Yewon (in A Most Ambiguous Sunday and other stories)
A story of mourning and remembering. Weird and I liked it.

The Joker is a wild card...so here is something I came across this when I was looking at Lev Parikian's blog (see entry for his book below) Reasons to be cheerful

from my shelves...

Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? 200 birds, 12 months, 1 lapsed birdwatcher by Lev Parikian
I doubt that I will ever go bird watching in the UK (or anywhere else), still I thoroughly enjoyed this account of attempting to spot 200 species in one calendar year. It was really fun to look over Parikian's shoulder while he indulged his passion.

Actually I occasionally watch a few birds in my backyard--robins (our state bird), cardinals, some sort of woodpecker who drilled a hole in the eaves, a wild turkey, some migrating geese who liked the big puddle in the back yard, and an unidentified little bird that has set a nest in our hanging flower basket. And then those aquatic thingies (geese? ducks? loons?) at the reservoir. I enjoy looking at them without knowing details. Quoting the author (from his blog entry  Reasons to be cheerful) "Resisting the temptation to photograph the above and put it on Instagram, but just drinking it in and remembering it."

I also enjoy the author's blog where he talks about birds, music, cook books and other stuff.   

 I participated in crowdfunding this book through Unbound.


Radiant Terminus by Antoine Volodine; translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Stunning!







 

The Attempt by Magdaléna Platzová: translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker
Not sure how I feel about this novel about anarchists. I thin it deserves a reread before I comment or rate it.
Free from the publisher as a sort of "bonus" along with a book I requested through LibraryThing.

March (third week) 2018 Reads

The poet (Shelley) askes "O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?" Apparently in Connecticut this year the answer is "NO!" Another storm predicted for next week. According to WFSB.com "Of course, the usual disclaimer applies now: keep abreast of the forecast.  Great uncertainty still exists and a much greater impact on New England is still possible."

This week the "Deal Me In" card is the Ace of Clubs and the story is an essay: Someone Without Peers  by Mohammad Tolouei, Translated from the Persian by Farzaneh Doosti (in the October 2017 issue of Asymptote)
Good essay on the influence of a favorite childhood read on an author and his work.

From my shelves...

Mouths Don't Speak by Katia D. Ulysse
Perhaps Ulysse tries to cover too much material in too little space. This story of a woman with a dysfunctional relationship with her parents and a husband with PTSD jumps all over the place. She lives in Baltimore and is trying to come to terms with the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti--where her parents live but where she herself hasn't lived since she was ten years old. With several digressions, switches in points of view, characters who really don't add to the story, I just couldn't get a handle on what story she was trying to tell.
Free copy from publisher through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

From the library...

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabov
Very informative account of a journey through the Bulgaria/Turkey/Greece border area. The map at the beginning was extremely helpful.

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness (Kindle ed) by Sy Montgomery
An enjoyable read but almost more than I wanted to know about octopuses and the people who study them. Some fine pictures.

The Aeneid by Virgil; translated from the Latin by David Ferry
 About time I got around to reading this and it was not a difficult read.


Gutenberg find...



High Society:  Advice as to Social Campaigning, and Hints on the Management of Dowagers, Dinners, Debutantes, Dances, and the Thousand and One Diversions of Persons of Quality by George S. Chappell, Frank Crowninshield, and Dorothy Parker

Need I say more?

December (third week) 2017 Reads

This week I concentrated on the "owned but unread shelf" and came up with quite a mix.

Deal Me In:  This week's story was Referential by Lorrie Moore (in The best American short stories, 2013)
Not my favorite story. I read it on Wednesday and now, on Saturday, I have zero recollection of it.

Card: 7of Hearts --no image this week

from my shelves... 

 


Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
I really liked this debut novel. Review cross-posted on Goodreads and LibraryThing.
Advance review copy via Goodreads giveaway





 


A Brief History of Portable Literature by Enrique Vila-Matas; translated from the Spanish Tom Bunstead and Anne McLean
A lot of fun and full of literary references resulting in lots of Googling.

Best cover this week.

 





The Toaster Oven Mocks Me: Living with Synesthesia by Steve Margolis (Kindle ed)
Interesting memoir but I had hoped for more documented material on the condition.




 




American Phoenix: John Quincy and Louisa Adams, the War of 1812, and the Exile That Saved American Independence by Jane Hampton Cook (Kindle ed)
Well written but I think Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams by Louisa Thomas was a more readable coverage of the material. I would have found this more interesting if I hadn't read the Thomas book first.









Martian Goods & Other Stories by Noelle Campbell (Kindle ed)
Inter-related sci-fi stories.

November (first week) 2017 Reads

The story for this week is one of the best from my roster, the rest of my reading was also good stuff. (well almost all of it was good.)

“Deal Me In 2017!”

Story:   The Song the Owl God Himself Sang, “Silver Droplets Fall Fall All Around,” An Ainu Tale .
Transliterated in Romaji and translated from Ainu into Japanese by Chiri Yukie; Translated from Japanese into English and introduced by Kyoko Selden

This is wonderful. The introduction is quite detailed on the interesting history of the work. The preface to the work, Ainu Shin’yōshū (Ainu Songs of Gods), in which this song was originally published is also included. The song itself tells a story of how the Owl God takes pity on a pauper family.

From the Preface: Long ago, this spacious Hokkaido was our ancestors’ space of freedom. Like innocent children, as they led their happy, leisurely lives embraced by beautiful, great nature. Truly, they were the beloved of nature; how blissful it must have been.

On land in winter, kicking the deep snow that covers forests and fields, stepping over mountain after mountain, unafraid of the cold that freezes heaven and earth, they hunt bear; at sea in summer, on the green waves where a cool breeze swims, accompanied by the songs of white seagulls, they float small boats like tree leaves on the water to fish all day; in flowering spring, while basking in the soft sun, they spend long days singing with perpetually warbling birds, collecting butterbur and sagebrush; in autumn of red leaves, through the stormy wind they divide the pampas grass with its budding ears, catch salmon till evening, and as fishing torches go out they dream beneath the full moon while deer call their companions in the valley. What a happy life this must have been. That realm of peace has passed; the dream shattered tens of years since, this land rapidly changing with mountains and fields transformed one by one into villages, villages into towns. 

From The Song: 
“Silver droplets fall fall all around me
golden droplets fall fall all around me.” So singing
I went down along the river’s flow, above the human village.
As I looked down below
paupers of old have now become rich, while rich men of old
have now become paupers, it seems.
By the shore, human children are at play
with little toy bows with little toy arrows.

 

Card: 7 Clubs, Owl deck from Scout Playing cards at Zazzle

This finishes the club suit for this year. This suit was defined for my roster as "Clubs--different format (narrative poem, short play or skit, graphic, clever title, narrative essay, etc.)." It was fun to set up and fun to do so if I participate again next year I may use it this way again.


from my shelves...
 



Chocky by John Wyndham,  Afterword by Margaret Atwood
My kind of sci-fi. A classic.

And I like the cover too...







Dazzling the Gods: Stories by Tom Vowler
Wonderful collection.  This is one I helped crowd fund through Unbound 
Glad I did that.

Another great cover...


 
 


Not One Day by Anne Garréta, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
Memories of loves past.  Garréta is a member of Oulipo, but this work is not exactly Oulipo. She does set a rigid form--write at computer for five hours every day, with no revisions, for thirty days chronicling memories of women she has desired or has been desired by--but she doesn't stick to the program. So there are not thirty entries (she abandons the schedule early on) but what there is has wonderful insights, poetic writing and, at times, amusing encounters.

Old Demons, New Deities by Tenzin Dickie (Editor)

An anthology of contemporary Tibetan fiction. Some of these stories were written in English, others have been translated from the Tibetan or, in one case, from the Chinese. I enjoyed this look into the lives of Tibetan exiles.

 I must have been picking books from my to read shelves by cover this week.

 



Post Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven by Antoine Volodine, translated from the French by J.T. Mahany
The most difficult of this week's reads. A complicated fantasy world of experimental authors who are dying off in some sort of prison. When the last man dies there is no one left to tell the story but the story gets told. A book (and an author) to read and read again.

Not a dazzling cover but one that fits the material.



The Octopus: A Story of California (The Epic of the Wheat #1) by Frank Norris (Kindle ed)
I've been reading this off and on for several months--partly because it's on Kindle and I forget about it, but mostly because I found it a bit tedious. I would have appreciated it more if I had read it a long time ago when I was studying California history. Almost a bucket list read. Glad I read it, but also glad to scratch it off the list.

Image Googling will bring up some really fine covers for this, but I have used the generic, forgettable one from the Kindle edition to highlight my problem with remembering to read what is on my kindle.


Saving Tarboo Creek: One Family’s Quest to Heal the Land
by Scott Freeman, Susan Leopold Freeman (Illustrations)
A worthwhile book about an ecology project on a small piece of land in Washington state. This is a salmon breeding area so Freeman gives some background on what salmon need. The book covers the broader picture of how this small property fits into the wider ecology of the creek and the surrounding area and also why this small project matters in the world-wide ecological picture. One message here is: do what you can, every little bit counts.
A nice companion to Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees which I read in August.

free advance review copy from publisher.

August (fourth week) 2017 Reads

This is brief because it is Bout of Books 20  week I have posted every day.

“Deal Me In 2017!”

Story: California by Sean Bernard (in Watchlist : 32 stories by persons of interest)
A group of friends in a California suburb periodically receive very short film clips featuring a popular TV host. They are puzzled, yet fascinated, by the brief clips. Some appear to be outtakes from the show's filming, others seem to have been shot for the sole purpose of preparing mysterious clips to be sent to the group.

Card: 3  of Hearts

This week I chose to showcase this gold leaf deck, rather than isolate a specific card. Why gold? Well the TV personality in the story is identified only as "The Host" but most Californians will recognize him as Huell Howser the host of the series "California's Gold" which ran on KCET from 1991-2012.
Deck is for sale on several online shops.



online...

Old Hong Kong Mahjong  by Vicky Wong.
Article about the only female carver of Mahjong tiles in Hong Kong. Nicely illustrated with photos by the author. (I spend Tuesday mornings playing Mahjong)

 For Centuries, Readers Annotated Books With Tiny Drawings of Hands by Anika Burgess
"They were the medieval version of a highlighter." 

Yesterday (Friday) was an online only reading day which I reported in my Bout Update (5) posted earlier today. 

from the library... 

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World  by Peter Wohlleben, Tim Flannery (Foreword), Jane Billinghurst (Translator), Susanne Simard (Afterword) (Kindle edition)

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry (Kindle edition)
Too many notes. Is this a character study? A novel of place? of time? It tries too hard to be Victorian, tries to hard to be Essex. There are so many characters with conflicts within themselves and between one another that everything seems contrived and under developed.

Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City by James Gardner

from my shelves...

The Boys by Toni Sala,  translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem
Excellent story of how the tragic death of two brothers in a village affects those left behind.

June (fourth week) 2017 Reads

Still working through those slow reads. This weeks section of The Invented Part  was a short one so I  found plenty of time for a lot of other reading, most of it very good.

and, of course, the Deal Me In story.

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

The card this week is the two of hearts which turned out to be impossible to use to illustrate the story of isolation, abuse, and anger that was somewhat randomly assigned to it when I set up my roster. So here's the story and the collection that contains it.


The Pedersen Kid by William H. Gass (in In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and Other Stories)
Wow! This story left me more confused than anything I've read so far this year. And that's saying something since I'm currently reading Ricardo Fresán's thoroughly confusing The Invented Part.
So to help me figure out just what happened in this story (or find out if I missed something) I searched for some commentary on it. Here are a couple of things I found, both pretty thorough and both convinced me that I actually "got" the story. 
Let Me Make a Snowman: John Gardner, William Gass, and “The Pedersen Kid”  by Nick Ripatrazone
The True Intruder in William H. Gass’s “The Pedersen Kid”  by Ted Morrissey

Then I reread it for the writing: the amazing complex sentences that often lead to surprises; the sometimes devastating character descriptions; and the poetic, masterful prose.
I followed up by reading the other four stories in the collection: Mrs. Mean, Icicles, Order of Insects, and the title story. The Pedersen Kid appealed to me because of the interactions among the characters and its puzzling aspects. The title story had the richest language and was spot on in its descriptions of a dinky town. Mrs. Mean was, well, mean with a passel of (justifiably) ill behaved children and odd-ball neighbors (including the narrator). Icicles was cold and lonely. Order of Insects about a housewife and her fascination with an infestation of bugs was my least favorite.

The card: Can I find a Two of Hearts that fits a post modern story about a strange journey in the icy cold of North Dakota? Not really.  But I did find an interesting deck. 

MADDECK Playing Cards By Ozlem Olcer. "a series of playing cards which feature cubist illustrations..... The deck was created for PAG, an Istanbul based design company developing projects and manufacturing products in collaboration with graphic artists and illustrators."
"The name Maddeck - short for ‘Magicians, Astronauts & Dancers’ - is given after the first 3 dream jobs of the designer as a child."

The two of hearts is typical of the number cards in the deck, but the face cards are quite different in design--almost as if they are from a different deck.



more reading from my shelves.... 

Two Lines 23, by C.J. Evans (editor) The Fall 2015 edition of this bimonthly journal of The Center for the Art of Translation. It has fiction and poetry translated into English from eleven different languages. My favorite from this issue is The Piper by Yoko Tawada; translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani. It is a retelling of the legend of The Pied Piper of Hamelin told from several points of view. The author is a Japanese writer currently living in Germany. She writes in both Japanese and German. Here is a link to the full Table of Contents for this issue.


The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
An interesting survey of recent worldwide research in ornithology with particular attention to the function of the brains of birds. Not too technical, she is an entertaining writer.
Advance review copy.


Coincidentally, I ran across this online article  Power to the Bower: A Bird’s Architectural Method of Seduction by Osman Bari. Bowerbird (family Ptilonorhynchidae) building habits is one of the topics Ackerman discusses.


 
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink; Carol Brown Janeway (Translator)
Coming of age in Post World War 2 Germany. A young man is scarred for life by an inappropriate first affair. In later life he must face the collective guilt of his nation as his former lover is tried for war crimes.

(A library book sale bargain from their clear the tables day-- Five bucks for all the books you can fit in a large paper grocery bag. Yes, sir, yes, sir, two bags full.)






Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb, Len Rix (Translation)
A Hungarian on his honeymoon in Italy leaves his wife and wanders off perhaps to find some companions from his lost youth. Or maybe he's trying to escape the bourgeois life that is closing in on him. While he slinks around Italy (ending up in Rome) his abandoned wife joins a friend in Paris and tries to restart her life. All this is set in the period between the two world wars. A good story with lots of angst, strange characters, and touches of wry humor




What are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffe, Julia Sanches (Translation), Ellen Elias-Bursać (Translation) 
I'll admit to being a bit disappointed when this came with my Deep Vellum  subscription in September (2016). I just didn't want to read another concentration camp diary, so I set it aside (for nearly a year). I picked it up the other day and I'm glad I did; it is such a great book. Jaffe presents her mother, Lili Stern's diary which is brief and was not written in the camp. She wrote it immediately after she was liberated and was living in refugee camps in Sweden.

The real strength in the book is the daughter's commentary on the diary. She treats it as a memoir and as a springboard for a discussion on how her mother's ordeal affected her own life. But what I really found valuable was how she expanded the personal and specific into a more general discussion of how human traits and activities survive and are altered by horrific experiences. This is presented in a series of essay style entries on such topics as fate, cold, hunger, love, anger, desire, money, memory, desire, and others. She draws both on her mother's diary and writings of other survivors.

The book finishes with an essay by Jaffe's daughter Leda Cartum on how the legacy reaches into yet another generation.


 
The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian
A teenage girl copes with with family, boyfriend, and BFF troubles against the backdrop of a community that must be abandoned because of a new dam. An uneven read. The characters were fairly well drawn. Unfortunately at the end everyone behaved totally out of character. The wrap-up was too simplistic for a complicated situation.
My least favorite read this week, but not a total waste of time.

Advance review copy.


And Only One Library book.... 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Kindle edition)
What a great way to survey the history of Communist Russia! This novel begins in 1922 when Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest for life--in the elegant  Moscow Hotel Metropol and ends in 1954. Although he can't leave the hotel, a cast of interesting characters--hotel employees and guests--keep him well informed about the goings on in the world. Rostov is a charming fellow and this is a charming book. 

Shortly after I finished this book I found this delightful art work in The Calvert Journal. Witnesses to history: The turmoil of 1917 captured in children's drawings Text by Samuel Goff; Images taken from the book Moscow, 1917: Drawings by Child Witnesses. From the collection of the State Historical Museum in Moscow. 

         Other online reads...

Imagining the Future of Suburbia, From “Freedomland” to “McMansion Hell” by Kate Wagner

Georgia wins at Cannes for 6 Millionth Tourist Campaign
A great video from Georgia the country, not the US state.

Come for the Obscure Canadian Sport, Stay for the Buffet by Julie Stauffer
Who knew there is a sport called  Crokinole?

The 'Mystery Boats' of Tresco Island  essay by Mike Williams.
A bit of British WW2 espionage.

May (second week) 2017 Reads

This week's story:    The Ice Palace (in Flappers and Philosophers, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

"The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art jar, and the freckling shadows here and there only intensified the rigor of the bath of light. The Butterworth and Larkin houses flanking were entrenched behind great stodgy trees; only the Happer house took the full sun, and all day long faced the dusty road-street with a tolerant kindly patience. This was the city of Tarleton in southernmost Georgia, September afternoon.

Up in her bedroom window Sally Carrol Happer rested her nineteen-year-old chin on a fifty-two-year-old sill and watched Clark Darrow's ancient Ford turn the corner. The car was hot—being partly metallic it retained all the heat it absorbed or evolved—and Clark Darrow sitting bolt upright at the wheel wore a pained, strained expression as though he considered himself a spare part, and rather likely to break. He laboriously crossed two dust ruts, the wheels squeaking indignantly at the encounter, and then with a terrifying expression he gave the steering-gear a final wrench and deposited self and car approximately in front of the Happer steps. There was a heaving sound, a death-rattle, followed by a short silence; and then the air was rent by a startling whistle."

And that, Folks, was as much as I could take. Well, I did skim enough to find that it seems to be that Sally is rumored to be engaged to a Yankee, but I just couldn't bring myself to read this story. "...her ninteen-year-old chin on a fifty-two-year old sill..." ????




This week's card: Eight of Diamonds. "Biba" Playing Card 

OK, so in the spirit of the story I didn't read, here is a girl resting her twenty-something-year-old-tush on a two-day-old stool.





from my "owned-but-unread" shelf...
 
Voroshilovgrad by Serhiy Zhadan; Reilly Costigan-Humes (Translation), Isaac Wheeler (Translation)
In trying to save his brother's business (a gas station) Herman encounters thugs, gypsies, refugees, smugglers, ghosts, and various kinds of fanatics.Life is not easy in post-USSR Ukraine.

From my subscription to Deep Vellum Publishing





from the library...



 The Woman on the Stairs by Bernhard Schlink, Bradley Schmidt (Translation)
The story starts in Germany with a painting, three obsessed men, and a woman (the model for the painting). The model's husband owns the painting, the artist steals the wife, and the third man is a lawyer representing the artist. The painting is stolen and they all--the painting, the woman, the three men--end up in Australia where the majority of the story takes place.

It's a strange "love" story, maybe more about self love, than romantic love since no one here is really able to relate to the other.



 Gutenberg find...


With a Camera in Majorca by Margaret D'Este (With Illustrations from Photographs by Mrs. R. M. King) Putnam, 1907
Not just pictures, there is a lot of prose description. It was fun to read and view this 1907 book about a place I frequently visited in the 1980s.
Also includes Ibiza and Minorca. The prose is typical of travel writing of the time and I probably would have skimmed more if I weren't so familiar with the terrain and curious about how they saw it.




online...


I finished  the MOOC   Antarctica: From Geology to Human History
This was really interesting and well organized. It's a place I'm curious about but not interested in visiting.

February (first week) 2017 Reads

While there was still a little bit of January left I tried to trim my "owned-but-unread" shelf but too much came in the mail. Actually the shelf now has 409 books which is exactly one less than it had on the First of January.

I read my fifth short story for the  “Deal Me In 2017!” challenge; in fact, I ended up reading the entire collection that contained it. I also picked up a couple of library books, surfed a bit, and started a couple of books.

From the library...

Mister Monkey by Francine Prose (kindle edition)
We get to go not only backstage, but all the way home with a theater troupe (and audience members) trapped in a really awful production of a really terrible musical for children. It moves from character to character and it's almost like reading linked short stories. I loved it!


The Tree by John Fowles, Frank Horvat (Preface, Illustrations)
This is an astonishing long essay discussing attitudes towards nature in general and trees in particular. Fowles rejects the carefully tended fruit trees in his father's garden in favor of the tree in its more natural state. I got very engrossed in Fowles various arguments and his spectacular writing. Frank Horvart provided over fifty full-page color photographs to accompany the text. There are about a dozen that I really like. Too many are of free standing trees--I prefer to see my trees in relation to other trees in woods, forests, and even orchards. 


 from my "owned-but-unread"shelf...

Party Headquarters by Georgi Tenev; Angela Rodel (Translation) 
A very difficult book both in subject and format. It has a fictional plot based on the actual official Bulgarian reaction to the Chernobyl disaster, when the Party leaders acted in their own self interest and left the populace in ignorance of the event. In a more fictional scenario, the Party leaders stash briefcases full of cash around Europe as they flee the collapse of the USSR. The narrative wanders in time and point of view and is hard to follow. I read a lot of it twice.    

My copy via a subscription to Open Letter Books.

On the Run with Mary by Jonathan Barrow
Read halfway through...skimmed the rest...not going to spend any more time on this. Overkill, a little bit was kinda amusing (almost), but 100+ pages of shit in the face? No thanks. (The same way I felt about  Paul Beatty’s The Sellout.)

My copy via subscription to New Vessel Press.

 
Whispers from the Tree of Life by Frances L. O'Donnell
A book of quiet poetry, nothing spectacular, only a few of the poems spoke to me. It's worth hanging onto because next time I open it, it might be different. Nice illustrations (black and white). 

Free copy from author through a blog win.

The Collini Case by Ferdinand von Schirach; Anthea Bell (translator)
An excellent read. The mystery in this crime novel isn't who did it, we know that from the beginning. But, even though he confesses, the murderer refuses to provide a motive. A novice lawyer is assigned to the case as public defender. He is able to discover the motive, but there is a larger question: it has to do with German law, war crimes, and the statute of limitations--all still serious concerns in today's Germany.

My copy from a library book sale

 “Deal Me In 2017!”

 This week's story:  Night drive by Rubem Fonseca (The Taker And Other Stories) Clifford E. Landers (Translator)
Once again I unknowingly selected a very short story. It is only two pages but it is complete with an interesting character, some suspense, and a dark surprise. I originally chose it because it is the first story in a collection I own.

Since the story was so short, I read the next story--the title story. It is about a rather vicious killer and I found it extremely unsettling (think American Psycho without the brand names--only this is set in Brazil).

I, somewhat reluctantly, read on thinking "I paid for this book!" The next story, Betsy, about a gentle death was easier to take. In Angels of the Marquees a lonely man tries to help homeless derelicts with dire consequences. In Enemy another lonely man seeks out his old high school buddies. It is both funny and sad. Account of the Incident concerns an accident between a bus and a cow. Pride is about a man who refuses to die because he has a hole in his sock. Notebook is a tale of seduction, with an amusing twist. Eleventh of May is the name of a terminal facility for the aging. In Book of Panegyrics a man becomes a live-in caregiver to a dying man in order to use the place as a hideout, but we don't know exactly what he is hiding from. Trials of a Young Writer is the story of a man more interested in his press image than he is in his writing or his live-in girlfriend. In Other a busy man is harassed on the street by a beggar. Things got (more) violent again in Happy New Year; Dwarf is about an unemployed bank clerk with woman trouble; and Flesh and the Bones didn't make much sense to me.
All in all, it turned out to be a varied collection, most on the dark side, some macabre, some noir, all very readable. I'm not sorry I bought it. I've highlighted the ones that worked best for me.
This is also from my "owned-but-unread" shelf.

This week's card - Nine of Spades is from Oracle - Mystifying Playing Cards created by Chris Ovdiyenko. I found it on their Kickstarter Page  but  the sale of their cards is on Dead on Paper. The Oracle deck seems to be sold out, but they have other interesting decks and also prints, books, and specially designed coins.

I selected this card because it is dark and mysterious like Fonseca's stories.





online
Continued auditing Modern Japanese Architecture: From Meiji Restoration to Today. This course is from Tokyo Tech.

A suggested reading from the above course:

Kiyonori Kikutake: Structuring the Future by Mark Mulligan
"In the postwar decades, young Japanese architects confronted the challenge of rebuilding the devastated nation. Kikutake was one of the most gifted." Mulligan looks at two of Kiyonori Kikutake's masterpieces: the Izumo Grand Shrine Administration Building and the Hotel Tōkōen.

The Record Company Headquarters that Revived 1950s Hollywood with Iconic Architecture by Alan Hess
Some background on the design and building of the Los Angeles landmark.








Essays from The Destruction of Cultural Heritage project
Artfare: Aesthetic Profiling from Napoléon to Neoliberalism by Kirsten Scheid
The Thing We Love(d): Little Girls, Inanimate Objects, and the Violence of a System by Talinn Grigor
Modernity as Perpetual War or Perpetual Peace? by Esra Akcan
Appendix: A Selection of News Articles on the Destruction of Cultural Heritage in the Middle East by Pamela Karimi