School has started and I'm easing into the term, still taking moments every day to read the books on my latest reading list before the workload increases and deadlines take over. I have finished Patti Smith's
Year of the Monkey which, for me, never quite took off, if we can use that phrase for a melancholy memoir that is partly about loss. The presence of the late Sam Shepard on the pages saves it. I'm a fan of Patti's writing, of her 'writing about nothing', as she explains in the book
M Train, but here something is missing. The book has been praised but descriptions of dreams and diner food just didn't work for me. I wish she had waited and written about her trip to Australia the year after (among the many photos in the book is one she took of Uluru/Ayers Rock), but then the book would have had a different title.
Let us move on to the reading journal, the last entry for the 2017 reading lists. I know, I know, we have been through this.
Reading journal,
№ 13 reading list, 3 of 4:
·
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. This novel won both the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and the 2016 National Book Award for fiction, and in 2016 it was Oprah's Book Club pick. Perhaps this has done it some disservice because readers probably expect a literary masterpiece. Despite the grave subject matter, slavery, it's very readable, and I find my mind going back to it. To the story itself, not its characters. My only quibble over the novel was the characterisation, which I didn't find particularly strong. The main character, Cora, didn't make a great impression on me but what has stayed with me is that her story is the story of too many. The title refers to the network of secret routes to help slaves escape to the free states. However, Whitehead uses magical realism and gives it a physical form, which I thought would bother me, but didn't. I haven't read any of his other books but intend to, definitely. He's a good storyteller.
·
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. I wanted to like this book more than I did. Don't get me wrong, I liked it but I didn't love it. The Giovanni character annoyed me (although I did sympathise with him in the end) and I didn't believe that someone like David would fall for someone like Giovanni. This scene, though, has stayed with me, the night they meet at a bar in 1950s Paris:
And he took his round metal tray and moved out into the crowd. I watched him as he moved. And then I watched their faces, watching him. And then I was afraid. I knew that they were watching, had been watching both of us. They knew that they had witnessed a beginning and now they would not cease to watch until they saw the end.
This was my second book by Baldwin (I have since read more) but the first one I read,
Another Country, remains my favourite.
·
Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan by Bertolt Brecht. This play was the first German text I read after the move to Germany in 2017, an attempt to reclaim some of my vocabulary (there was a time when I read novels in German effortlessly). I didn't get every word but I got the meaning and enjoyed the play, which is set in China. It's a parable play about three gods that come down to earth to find one good person. The prostitute Shen Te is the only person who takes them in when they need a place to stay. Consequently, she gives up her profession and buys a tobacco shop for money they give her. Trying to be good in a corrupt world becomes difficult and she invents an alter ego, her cousin Shui Ta, to be able to run her business. In 1933 Brecht left Nazi Germany and this is one of the many plays he wrote in exile during World War II. His next play on my list is
Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (
Mother Courage and Her Children).
image by me, appeared on Instagram 11/11/2017 
