№ 34 reading list: Annie Ernaux

Happy New Year! I decided to start the blog year with a new reading list which will also be the final one in this format. I'm thinking about giving the lists a break or turning them into round-ups where I recommend some of the books that I have read. Part of me will miss this format because it disciplines me to know what I will be reading a few weeks ahead. At the same time, it takes away the spontaneity when I get a new book that I want to start reading right away, but feel as if I first have to finish the books on my current reading list - a luxury problem, I know. Another reason for the change is that I would like to read more in German to get a better grasp of the language.

№ 34 reading list:

1  A Man's Place  · Annie Ernaux
2  Of Time and the River  · Thomas Wolfe
3  Letters of Leonard Woolf  · edited by Frederic Spotts
4  Útsýni  · Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir [Icelandic]
5  Dichter im Café  · Hermann Kesten [German]

Translated by: 1) A Man's Place: Tanya Leslie

Last year the French writer Annie Ernaux received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her book on the list, La Place in French, is about her relationship with her barely educated father and the gap that gradually forms between them as her education takes her onto the pathway to the middle class. A recurrent theme throughout the narrative is the importance he attributed to language: she describes an incident where he needs to sign some documents in the presence of a notary. The shame he experiences when he realises that the has misspelt a short phrase is way out of proportion. In this compact book of only 100 pages, Ernaux sometimes pauses to tell us a few words about the writing of it or to share her thoughts related to a certain memory. I read the English translation published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, which has already made 8 books by Ernaux available in English.

A December morning with books & coffee

I fell for Annie Ernaux when I read The Years (№ 20) for the first time, a kind of memoir that vividly captures a certain period in history, remarkably narrated without the personal pronoun I. Last autumn I bought the German translation, Die Jahre, so I could read the book yet again with the English translation as support. I have also read I Remain in Darkness, which is about her mother who died from Alzheimer's. Reading it sometimes felt like being punched in the stomach because of the raw and revealing writing.

If you are interested in Ernaux I can recommend an episode of the TLS podcast (min. 27:40), broadcast after the Nobel Prize announcement. The writer Lauren Elkin was a guest and mentioned e.g. Ernaux's interest in the theories of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. I first became familiar with his ideas when studying Museology and now I keep him in mind when reading Ernaux.

A coffee moment in January with a new Icelandic novel by Mínervudóttir,
a Christmas present from a dear friend

images mine, appeared on Instagram 28/11/22; 01/01/23; 02/12/22

№ 33 reading list: Keegan and COVID symptoms

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

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.

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.

images mine, appeared on Instagram 31/08/22 and 14/09/22

№ 32 reading list: Woolf, Hardwick & new books

Here is the reading list I promised. Perhaps I should have combined two lists into one because I have started reading books that will be on my next one. And I confess that I'm already looking longingly at books that will be on the list thereafter. One of those is Letters of Leonard Woolf. That would be the husband of Virginia, the man to thank for the access to her personal material, letters, diaries, etc. I enjoy reading letter collections, especially literary ones. Warner and Maxwell's letters on the new list, and in my image above, are gold. Each letter is well crafted and shining through is the mutual respect these writers and friends had for one another.

№ 32 reading list:

1  The Years · Virginia Woolf
2  Virginia Woolf · Hermione Lee
1  A Room of One's Own · Virginia Woolf [rereading]
3  The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick · edited by Alex Andriesse
4  A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick  · Cathy Curtis
5  De Profundis and Other Prison Writings · Oscar Wilde
7  The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and

William Maxwell 1938-1978  · edited by Michael Steinman

On my new list is Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf, which I'm about to finish and can highly recommend to all Woolf fans. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend Woolf's novel The Years. More on that disappointment later. My blog readers know that Elizabeth Hardwick is a favourite; on the list is a new essay collection and the only available biography of her. Now, let's look at a different list, my wish list.

Left: The autobiographical writing of poet Robert Lowell was published in August;
right: Elizabeth Hardwick on the cover of Darryl Pinckney's new book

The wish list keeps getting longer and I would like to mention two new additions. Come Back in September by Darryl Pinckney comes out in October. The book is about his friendship with Hardwick and the editor Barbara Epstein. Both founded the literary magazine The New York Review of Books and were best friends and neighbours on W 67th Street in New York. Memoirs came out in August, a collection of the autobiographical writing of poet Robert Lowell (he was Hardwick's ex). Critics have highly praised it.

A nod to my next reading list

images mine, appeared on Instagram 03/08/22 and 17/09/22

№ 31 reading list: the letters of Bishop & Lowell

Adding Swann's Way to my last reading list (№ 30) was an excellent idea. I'm still reading Proust and cannot understand why I waited so long to read him. His rich prose requires slow reading and I find it best to read 8-10 pages at a time, preferably in the morning. I start my day by reading; I wake up very early with my son, who has to cross Linz and its suburbs by tram to get to school. When he leaves - most people are still asleep - I sit down with coffee, toast and books. These days I start with the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, with the letters they wrote to each other, before turning to Proust and other writers. My routine ends with whatever German fiction I'm reading at the moment.

№ 31 reading list:

1  Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop

and Robert Lowell  · edited by Thomas Travisano & Saskia Hamilton

2  Upstream: Selected Essays  · Mary Oliver
3  Speak, Memory  · Vladimir Nabokov
4  Personal History  · Katharine Graham
5  Ein ganzes Leben  · Robert Seethaler [German]

I'm still reading Der Untergeher (The Loser, № 30), my third book by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. He is such a witty storyteller. I want to read everything by him in German (I think most of his novels and plays have been translated into English). I have never read anything by his countryman Robert Seethaler and now it's time for Ein ganzes Leben which I bought last summer (A Whole Life, trans. by Charlotte Collins).

Cherry blossoms, Antwerp 2011

My current bedtime reading is Personal History, the memoir of the late Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. I started the book a long time ago but held off adding it to a reading list until now. I knew she had devoted many chapters to her family story and upbringing (it's the part of biographies that least appeals to me), so I wanted to get through them first. When her story finally took off I often found it hard to put the book down, but more on that in my next reading journal entry.

images mine, 01 and 03 appeared on Instagram 12/04/21 and 24/04/21

№ 30 reading list: Proust in spring

Spring has arrived and it's time to update the blog with a new reading list. I shared the last one in January but in my defence, I'm more active on my Instagram account with book-related content. For over a decade I have wanted to read Marcel Proust’s masterpiece In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) and recently bought the 1st volume of 4 by Everyman’s Library. The novel has seven parts and this volume contains Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann), which most are familiar with, and the first part of Within a Budding Grove (À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs). I’m only a few pages in and am already captivated by the narrative voice and the rich prose. Proust in spring will be a gratifying pastime.

№ 30 reading list:

1  Essays Two  · Lydia Davis
2  Swann's Way  · Marcel Proust
3  What I Loved  · Siri Hustvedt
4  Der Untergeher  · Thomas Bernhard [German]
5  The Makioka Sisters  · Jun'ichirō Tanizaki [rereading]

Translated by: 1) Swann's Way: C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin;

5) The Makioka Sisters: Edward G. Seidensticker

Reading Essays Two spurred me on to read Proust. Lydia Davis translated the latest available English edition of Swann's Way and discusses the project in some of the essays. (The Moncrieff translation I’m reading is older but has been updated.) These essays are my first Davis and I’m also reading Siri Hustvedt’s fiction for the first time. A fun fact: Hustvedt has been married to American writer Paul Auster (4 3 2 1, The New York Trilogy) for forty years who before was married to Davis.

I have mentioned before that each time I’m disappointed with a book and decide to toss it I reread one of my favourite books. On my last list, I had My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, the first book of her Neapolitan Quartet. I truly made an effort but gave up on Chapter 20. Neither the plot nor the characters appealed to me, and the style felt repetitive. To make it up to me I decided to reread The Makioka Sisters, a Japanese classic by Tanizaki. Before going to sleep, it's comforting to spend some time in the company of the Sisters.

Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, 1981

image by me | Diebenkorn art via Richard Diebenkorn Foundation on Instagram

№ 29 reading list: Woolf starts the new year

Happy New Year! This week I realised that I completely forgot my New Year's tradition, reading Little Women into the new year. This tradition started in Scotland; I used to read a few pages or chapters into the new year while others were letting off fireworks or whatever entertains them, but this year I watched the fireworks with my son. I made up for my forgetfulness by watching Greta Gerwig's film adaptation (2019), starring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh and Timothée Chalamet. It's great. On New Year's Day morning, I relaxed on the daybed in pyjama bottoms and kimono with coffee and the fourth volume of Virginia Woolf's diary, which starts in 1931. It's on my new reading list.

№ 29 reading list:

1  My Brilliant Friend  · Elena Ferrante
2  The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 4 1931-35 
3  Mrs Dalloway  · Virginia Woolf [rereading]
4  Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold  · Stephen Fry
5  Wittgensteins Neffe: Eine Freundschaft  · Thomas Bernhard [German]
6  Póetík í Reykjavík: Erindi 14 höfunda  [Icelandic]
7  Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995  · edited by Avril

Horner and Anne Rowe

Translated by: 1) My Brilliant Friend: Ann Goldstein

The list has undergone many changes. Stephen Fry and the Icelandic book (14 literary essays) are the only works that were on the original one, which I meant to share last autumn. I don’t know why it took so long to put this one together, probably a mixture of being busy with my studies and restlessness. I read a few pages, even a few chapters, in a book that I wanted to have on the list only to put that same book aside a short time later. Wanting to read a book is sometimes not enough for me, the time and place have to be right.

I found many wonderful books under the Christmas tree which will appear on lists in the near future. I gave myself a few, e.g. used books that have never been read. Among these are the first two books of the Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante, the pseudonymous Italian writer. I also bought the Everyman's Library edition of The Makioka Sisters by the Japanese writer Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (№ 6). It's one of my all-time favourite books.

Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, 1949

images by me | Diebenkorn art via fan page on Twitter

№ 28 reading list | Oh, Vienna ...

Here you have my new reading list. Something about this stack of books delights me immensely. I had trouble deciding which book to start with (I'm trying to break the habit of reading many at once) and in the end, I picked up Max Perkins by A. Scott Berg, the winner of the 1980 National Book Award. This is the biography of perhaps the most important editor of the 20th century, a book about books and the act of writing. Perkins was the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, to name a few. Given that The Great Gatsby has become a classic, it's almost astonishing to read Fitzgerald's letters to Perkins before its publication in 1925, full of doubts, especially about the title. Unfortunately, his concerns were valid because the book sold poorly, compared to his first, This Side of Paradise (1920). If only the dear old sport had known its fate.

№ 28 reading list:

1  Essayism  · Brian Dillon
2  This Little Art  · Kate Briggs
3  Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers  · Janet Malcolm
4  Shuggie Bain  · Douglas Stuart
5  Unquiet  · Linn Ullmann
6  Max Perkins: Editor of Genius  · A. Scott Berg
7  The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million  · Daniel Mendelsohn

Translated by: 5) Unquiet: Thilo Reinhard

The Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Vienna

In my last reading list entry, I told you about the COVID-19 restrictions in post-lockdown Austria: This summer would be different and there would likely be some train-hopping if one could go to cafés and restaurants without planning ahead. Sitting down to enjoy refreshments one needs a negative test, which limits spontaneity. My oldest daughter and her Dutch boyfriend recently came for a visit and we spent a day in Vienna. We went to the Belvedere Museum, greeted Napoleon - or Napi, as we call him - and took our time to admire Klimt's Kiss. We walked all over the city and enjoyed lunch in a public park. Our stroll ended in the Jewish quarter, where the English bookshop Shakespeare & Company is located, in Sterngasse to be exact. I love this district in Vienna, thus I give the members of Ultravox the last word, Oh, Vienna ...

images mine, the 2nd appeared on Instagram 16/07/21

№ 27 reading list: Erpenbeck, Stepanova and Roth

In an April blog entry, I promised a new reading list after finishing the third volume of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography. I broke that promise because shortly after I was offered an unexpected assignment. Despite being busy, I have maintained a good reading routine that begins in the very early hours with my cup of coffee: I have finished Jenny Erpenbeck's book, I'm more than halfway through both Maria Stepanova and Philip Roth's biography, and I have started the others on the list. Two years ago The Years by Annie Ernaux became one of my all-time favourites and recently when I gave a friend a copy, I knew I had to reread it.

№ 27 reading list:

1  Philip Roth: The Biography  · Blake Bailey
2  In Memory of Memory  · Maria Stepanova
3  Not a Novel: Collected Writings and Reflections  · Jenny Erpenbeck
4  The Radetzky March  · Joseph Roth
5  Heldenplatz  · Thomas Bernhard [German]
6  Himnaríki og helvíti  · Jón Kalman Stefánsson [Icelandic]
7  The Years  · Annie Ernaux [rereading]

Translated by: 2) In Memory of Memory: Sasha Dugdale; 3) Not a Novel: Kurt Beals;

4) The Radetzky March: Joachim Neugroschel; 7) The Years: Alison L. Strayer

If you follow books news you must have read about the fate of the much-anticipated biography of Philip Roth. Following sexual assault claims against its author Bailey, the publisher, W. W Norton & Company, first halted the shipping of the book and eventually pulled it (Bailey, who has not been convicted in a court of law, has already found a new publisher). I pre-ordered the book long before this happened and believe I would have ordered it anyway, as I'm fully capable of separating the art from the artist. The book is well researched and written (Roth handpicked Bailey to write it) but I do admit that my mind sometimes goes Why do I need to know this? when I come across details of Roth's sexual encounters.

Not a Novel was my first by Erpenbeck, who is one of the major contemporary novelists in Germany. It's an English translation of her non-fiction, but not a complete one: it only contains a fragment of the original, Kein Roman, which is twice as long. I enjoyed the reading but parts felt slightly repetitive and after finishing I was left with this sense of a gap. I don't believe this shorter English edition does justice to the original and once my German improves I will definitely read the latter.

The cover of Philip Roth: The Biography by the now-infamous Blake Bailey

Five years have passed since I shared my first reading list. As I select the books carefully, there have been few disappointments. On my last list was a short essay collection by Vivian Gornick that I cannot recommend: Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader. The introduction appealed to me, and probably raised my expectations, but as I read on it became clear that Gornick and I are very different readers. She is character-oriented and seems very occupied with failed fictional relationships. Her approach tested my patience. A certain paradox revealed itself to me: Gornick is an active feminist but the tone of voice in these essays didn't give me the sense of a strong woman. There was one piece I liked, about the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, who is still on my TBR (list of to-be-reads). On that list are still a few Gornicks but honestly, I now feel little desire to prioritise them.

The COVID-19 lockdown in Austria has finally been lifted after constant extensions since last autumn. We still have to wear FFP2 masks and there are some restrictions, e.g. a negative test or a vaccination certificate is needed to enter cafés and restaurants. I got my first vaccination dose recently and get the second one in a few weeks and will then be able to get my latte fix whenever I want. That's all I ask for. Until then life continues to be rather lockdowny - I may have coined a word.

images mine, the 2nd and 3rd appeared on Instagram 22/04/21 and 15/06/21

№ 26 reading list: Beauvoir, Handke and Lowell

First, the book lover's confession: I have this tendency to go through periods where I read too many books at once, which is probably a form of addiction. Perhaps such periods depict restlessness and escapism, and blaming the pandemic has come in handy. Since last autumn there has been a lockdown in Austria, but with spring arriving - the vaccine too, hopefully - it's time for spring cleaning, to reduce the piles of books. It's going well. I have already read most of the books on the new reading list, which I intended to share in February, but I have been saving one: the 3rd volume of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography. I conditioned myself to complete certain books before meeting up with her again, this time in post-war France. The volume spans the period 1945 to 1963, when Beauvoir wrote, among others, her feminist work The Second Sex and the novel The Mandarins.

№ 26 reading list:

1  Suppose a Sentence  · Brian Dillon
2  Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader  · Vivian Gornick
3  Force of Circumstance  · Simone de Beauvoir
4  Wunschloses Unglück  · Peter Handke [German]
5  Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder  · Bertolt Brecht [German]
6  The Rings of Saturn  · W.G. Sebald
7  Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate  · Daniel Mendelsohn
8  Life Studies  · Robert Lowell
9  Letters Summer 1926  · Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva and Rainer

Maria Rilke

Translated by: 3) Force of Circumstance: Richard Howard

As I once promised, I have included on the list Brecht's masterpiece Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, which translates Mother Courage and Her Children (one of many editions available in English). Recently, I was browsing in an Icelandic digital archive, which gives access to articles in newspapers and periodicals, when I came across a theatre critique from 1965. At Christmas that year, Brecht's play was performed at The National Theatre of Iceland and the critic was far from impressed. If you can read Icelandic you will learn that it was mainly the director's fault.

Featuring the Austrian writer Peter Handke on a reading list without saying a few words about him is unthinkable. He received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature, which by many within literary circles was considered a controversial decision. Handke's career starts in the sixties but suddenly in the nineties, he becomes controversial when his writings about the wars in former Yugoslavia start appearing. Without hesitation he criticised the media coverage of what was taking place in the Balkans, the language applied to describe events. A turning point was an article by Handke that appeared in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in 1996, a travelogue about Serbia with a "provocative headline" written by the editors (Icelandic source).

It certainly didn't help Handke's cause when he visited Slobodan Milosevic in prison when the former president was being tried by The International Criminal Court in The Hague. And to make matters worse he attended and spoke at his funeral in Serbia in 2006. However, many argue that nothing in Handke's writings justifies the attacks against him, which allows one to conclude that those who have been the loudest have, in fact, not read his works.

Left: Austrian writer and Nobel laureate Peter Handke;
right: American poet Robert Lowell

Handke's book on the reading list, Wunschloses Unglück, was published in 1972. It's a short, well-written, semi-autobiographical book, prompted by his mother's suicide. Its English title is A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. I recently bought a German edition of Handke's book Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell, published by NYRB) which I will soon include on a reading list. If you speak Icelandic you may be interested in three links I shared in this same entry on my Icelandic blog. They include interesting discussions about Handke and his works on RÚV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

It is worth mentioning that Handke, in collaboration with the German director Wim Wenders, wrote the screenplay for the 1987 film Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), including the poem Lied vom Kindsein, which Bruno Ganz recites at its start.

My reading lists do not often feature poetry, but at Christmas a friend in Iceland gave me a Faber & Faber edition of Life Studies by Robert Lowell. It was first published in 1959 and contains confessional poems, e.g. Skunk Hour (dedicated to poet Elizabeth Bishop) and Waking in the Blue, and the prose memoir 91 Revere Street. This groundbreaking collection won Lowell the National Book Award for Poetry. I see myself reading it again and again.

top image by me | writers: 01: Peter Handke by A. Mahmoud via The Nobel Prize | 02: Robert Lowell via Put This On