Only 70 more pages to go in Alice Zeniter's
L'Art de Perdre which I borrowed from the library. A wonderful novel following three generations of a family from pre-Independence Algeria to present-day France. I'll share more later. . . . just thought it would be good occasionally for this blog to feature what I'm reading along with the What I've Read. . . .
Speaking of which, I'm getting encouragingly closer to being caught up. Still no time to transcribe here or to augment my scratchings in my little paper journal, but if you're interested enough to need help deciphering a word or phrase, I'm happy to help.
Continuing from where I left off last post, here's Entry #50, for Tommy Orange's
There There. Highly recommended.
#51 is Slavenka Drakulić's
Cafe Europa: Life After Communism which broadened and added depth to my developing understand of Croatia.
#52-55, a run of mystery novels: Kate Atkinson's
Red Sky, Denise Mina's
The Red Road and her
Blood, Salt, Water punctuated by Sue Gee's
Reading in Bed which (another) Sue recommended.
#56 Etaf Rum's
A Woman Is No Man, recommended by my daughter (that, I must tell you, is a particular pleasure -- to have raised readers who return the favour by bringing good books to the table (or, rather, to the TBR list)
#57 Culling my bookshelves in September reminded me I hadn't yet read Cherie Dimaline's
Red Rooms. I've been hearing good things about her later writing, and I have to say this earlier title is well worth reading.
#58 Elizabeth Gilbert's
City of Girls I a book you might like to give a girlfriend for Christmas. Maybe you'll need to read it yourself first, turning the pages carefully -- but if it's less than pristine when you finally wrap it, just tell her you cared enough to make sure it was good enough for her. ;-)
#58 Next post I'll share the journal page I sketched in response to Carlo Levi's
Words are Stones (translated by
Anthony Shugaar with an introduction by Anita Desai.
And then Viglis Hjorth's
A House in Norway, trans. Charlotte Barslund
and #61 Nell Painter's
Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over. Definitely recommending this one, especially to encourage those of us trying new things as old dogs. . .
Only three titles now, and I'll be all caught up. Caught up with telling you What I've Read, that is. We will never be caught up with the reading, will we?!
And that's a very good thing.
Okay, comments open now -- I'm passing you the mic and going back to those last 70 pages. The present-day protagonist has just landed in Algeria, the first member of her family (disparaged in both Algeria and France as
harkis, a term and a disparagement that Zeniter unpacks trenchantly -- and humanely) to do so since they fled the country sixty years earlier. . . I need to know how the novel ends (as well as find out how the Elizabeth Bishop poem "The Art of Losing" featured in the title will show up, how it will signify).
So we'll chat later. I'm looking forward to it.
