I have been holding off sharing this reading list because, instead of using Instagram pics, I wanted to use my camera to photograph the books with a cup of coffee and fresh flowers, perhaps. But I haven't been in the mood. Five weeks ago, I caught a mild version of COVID. I mainly slept due to exhaustion. The worst part is that I lost my sense of taste - 5 weeks without the taste of coffee! - and all books seemed boring. Should I take back the mild-version part? Let’s look at the books on the list, as I have yet to finish only one.
№ 33 reading list:
1 Pain · Zeruya Shalev
2 Small Things Like These · Claire Keegan
3 Night · Elie Wiesel
4 Nemesis · Philip Roth
5 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind · Yuval Noah Harari
1 Pain · Zeruya Shalev
2 Small Things Like These · Claire Keegan
3 Night · Elie Wiesel
4 Nemesis · Philip Roth
5 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind · Yuval Noah Harari
Translated by: 1) Pain: Sondra Silverston; 3) Night: Marion Wiesel
Claire Keegan's book, nominated this year for the Booker Prize, is a little gem set in an Irish town in 1985. It deals with a delicate subject: how the Irish Catholic Church got away with using young, pregnant girls as labour in convents and taking away their newborns after birth. Keegan says all that needs to be said, making the content of her 116 pages richer than many longer works of fiction. (I can recommend the film The Magdalene Sisters (2002; Peter Mullan), which deals with the same subject.) Another short but rich book on the list is the one by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He shares his experience in the concentration camps, Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and the reading is often painful. For years I have avoided reading the book; until now, I lacked the courage to pick it up.
In Nemesis, Philip Roth imagines a polio epidemic in his home town Newark in 1944, threatening the lives of children. Given that we are still dealing with the COVID pandemic, I wasn’t sure this was the right time to read about an epidemic breaking out. But it was fine. The book is well written (it won the 2011 Booker International) but perhaps a little too short for my taste. In the third part, we have reached 1971, and the narrator gives only a brief account of events since the outbreak. In this part, something was missing, and the sudden ending left me needing more.
I am wary of hyped books and tend to avoid books everyone seems to be reading at a given time and referring to as must-reads. Sapiens by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, translated into many languages, falls into that category. Yet, something kept pulling me, so I bought it for my son, thinking I could borrow it one day. I have now leisurely read the first part of four, and the book is promising. Harari’s approach is multidisciplinary; his writing flows easily.
In Nemesis, Philip Roth imagines a polio epidemic in his home town Newark in 1944, threatening the lives of children. Given that we are still dealing with the COVID pandemic, I wasn’t sure this was the right time to read about an epidemic breaking out. But it was fine. The book is well written (it won the 2011 Booker International) but perhaps a little too short for my taste. In the third part, we have reached 1971, and the narrator gives only a brief account of events since the outbreak. In this part, something was missing, and the sudden ending left me needing more.
I am wary of hyped books and tend to avoid books everyone seems to be reading at a given time and referring to as must-reads. Sapiens by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, translated into many languages, falls into that category. Yet, something kept pulling me, so I bought it for my son, thinking I could borrow it one day. I have now leisurely read the first part of four, and the book is promising. Harari’s approach is multidisciplinary; his writing flows easily.
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| Pain is a novel by the Israeli writer Zeruya Shalev |
I have a strange relationship with contemporary fiction. I keep up with news from the publishing world but rarely get excited about new novels. When I’m excited, it could be the book cover enticing me. The reading often leaves me disappointed, even frustrated or impatient. I decided to read Pain by Zeruya Shalev after reading a short interview with the French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, in which she praised Shalev's writing. Pain is about an Israeli woman who survived a terrorist attack ten years prior but still is dealing with the consequences. It starts well but soon becomes one of those novels that I finish only to be able to express my opinion. Shalev’s writing has plenty of decent strokes, no doubt, but let's just say that I won't be rushing to the nearest bookshop for more. That is entirely on me.
I mentioned boring books above. One of those was supposed to be on the list, In Patagonia, a travelogue classic by Bruce Chatwin, but I gave up after a few chapters. At first, I thought my all-books-seem-boring COVID symptom was why I found the book uninteresting. But as I continued the reading when no longer bedridden, the writing style did nothing for me and its short chapters, more like anecdotes than chapters, felt too disjointed for my taste. I have said before that life is too short and precious for books that don't make the reading heart beat faster.
I mentioned boring books above. One of those was supposed to be on the list, In Patagonia, a travelogue classic by Bruce Chatwin, but I gave up after a few chapters. At first, I thought my all-books-seem-boring COVID symptom was why I found the book uninteresting. But as I continued the reading when no longer bedridden, the writing style did nothing for me and its short chapters, more like anecdotes than chapters, felt too disjointed for my taste. I have said before that life is too short and precious for books that don't make the reading heart beat faster.
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