My birthday is in July and people tend to give me books - hardly surprising. Some ask for my wish list and I email a link to my prioritised list, not the one with all the books I want. If I showed people my true book soul they might get the wrong ideas about my mental health. Surely, many friends understand this kind of obsession with books, but I see no reason to flag it. The links in this reading journal entry had been nailed down when two gifts arrived, books by Janet Malcolm and Linn Ullmann, so I updated them; also my next reading list which was ready. Placing these two books on a shelf to read later was unthinkable.
My oldest gave me Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by writer and journalist Janet Malcolm, who mainly wrote for The New Yorker. Malcolm died earlier this summer; she was 86. She was born in Prague in 1934 but five years later, when the Nazi persecution of the Jews had started, her family immigrated to the US. Her writing appeared in various magazines and she also wrote books, e.g. these three that I would like to read: The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey and Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice.
My oldest gave me Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by writer and journalist Janet Malcolm, who mainly wrote for The New Yorker. Malcolm died earlier this summer; she was 86. She was born in Prague in 1934 but five years later, when the Nazi persecution of the Jews had started, her family immigrated to the US. Her writing appeared in various magazines and she also wrote books, e.g. these three that I would like to read: The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey and Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice.
A dear friend gave me Linn Ullmann's autobiographical novel, Unquiet, translated from Norwegian (De Urolige) by Thilo Reinhard - the cover is in my top image. Ullmann's parents were the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann and Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Last year she was a guest at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, streamed online for the first time due to the pandemic. The book was already on my TBR but after watching the event with Ullmann there was no turning back. One day I would buy and read it.
As a present for myself, I bought some books (see e.g. the first two below) that I have already featured in the reading journal, including This Little Art by Kate Briggs and the biography of Elizabeth Hardwick which comes out in November.
As a present for myself, I bought some books (see e.g. the first two below) that I have already featured in the reading journal, including This Little Art by Kate Briggs and the biography of Elizabeth Hardwick which comes out in November.
Bookmarks & journal notes
Books I recently bought:
✔ Essayism · Brian Dillon
✔ The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million · Daniel Mendelsohn
... added to my wish list:
✔ Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett · James Knowlson
✔ Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop
... added to my TBR:
✔ Edge of Irony · Marjorie Perloff
✔ Letters to Camondo · Edmund de Waal
... prioritised on my TBR:
✔ The Snow Lepard · Peter Matthiessen
Janet Malcolm links:
▶ In fun conversation with Ian Frazier at the 2011 New Yorker Festival.
✔ The Art of Nonfiction No. 4, an interview in The Paris Review, spring 2011.
✔ A life in writing: Janet Malcolm, an interview in The Guardian, June 2011.
✔ An excerpt, the title essay of Forty-one False Starts, her profile about painter David Salle for The New Yorker, the July 11th 1994 issue.
▶ Two events: A Brunch Conversation with Janet Malcolm in March 2013, hosted by the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. The evening before she read from Forty-one False Starts.
✔ She was also an artist. Her collages inspired by the poems of Emily Dickinson were her most famous artworks.
✔ Finally, her obituary in The Guardian.
✔ Essayism · Brian Dillon
✔ The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million · Daniel Mendelsohn
... added to my wish list:
✔ Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett · James Knowlson
✔ Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop
and Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton
... added to my TBR:
✔ Edge of Irony · Marjorie Perloff
✔ Letters to Camondo · Edmund de Waal
... prioritised on my TBR:
✔ The Snow Lepard · Peter Matthiessen
Janet Malcolm links:
▶ In fun conversation with Ian Frazier at the 2011 New Yorker Festival.
✔ The Art of Nonfiction No. 4, an interview in The Paris Review, spring 2011.
✔ A life in writing: Janet Malcolm, an interview in The Guardian, June 2011.
✔ An excerpt, the title essay of Forty-one False Starts, her profile about painter David Salle for The New Yorker, the July 11th 1994 issue.
▶ Two events: A Brunch Conversation with Janet Malcolm in March 2013, hosted by the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. The evening before she read from Forty-one False Starts.
✔ She was also an artist. Her collages inspired by the poems of Emily Dickinson were her most famous artworks.
✔ Finally, her obituary in The Guardian.
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