Reading journal: Whitehead, Baldwin & Brecht

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

№ 19 reading list: a debut novel

Look at me, managing to share a reading list in February! I'm particularly excited about one book on the list, The Parisian, a debut novel by young author Isabella Hammad. It's a spring release from publisher Jonathan Cape and let me tell you, the first chapters are promising. Moving on to another Black History Month: since 1976 it has been celebrated in the US in February and I'm showing my support with If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin. The Brits celebrate it in October and Baldwin was also on the reading list I shared then (№ 16). He's a favourite of mine. The film by director Barry Jenkins based on the novel has hardly escaped Baldwin fans. He got an Oscar nomination for the screenplay and Regina King for supporting role. Tomorrow we will know if they won.

№ 19 reading list:
1  The Parisian  by Isabella Hammad
2  Orientalism  by Edward W. Said
3  If Beale Street Could Talk  by James Baldwin
4  The Ghost Writer  by Philip Roth
5  Women and Writing  by Virginia Woolf

London-born Isabella Hammad won the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, for the short story Mr. Can'aan, featured in the literary magazine The Paris Review. April sees the release of her first novel, The Parisian. The lovely people at publisher Jonathan Cape (an imprint of Vintage) sent me a proof copy of this historical fiction. The following description is from the press release: 'As the First World War shatters families, destroys friendships and kills lovers, a young Palestinian dreamer sets out to find himself.' The dreamer is Midhat Kamal, an Arab we meet on the first page: He's aboard a ship taking him from the port of Alexandria to Marseille, where he arrives in October 1914.

Author Zadie Smith highly praises The Parisian in a blurb on the back cover, describing it as 'a sublime reading experience: delicate, restrained, surpassingly intelligent, uncommonly poised and truly beautiful' and further adding:

It is realism in the tradition of Flaubert and Stendhal - everything that happens feels not so much imagined as ordained. That this remarkable historical epic should be the debut of a writer in her twenties seems impossible, yet it's true. Isabella Hammad is an enormous talent and her book is a wonder.

The Parisian
By Isabella Hammad
Jonathan Cape
Hardcover, 576 pages
Buy here


My last reading list was Japanese and naturally these past weeks have been characterised by Japanese culture. Peonies do not bloom until spring/summer, yet I'm going to end with this piece of art by Hokusai and give Japanese literature a rest, for now.

Katsushika Hokusai, Canary and peony, 1834, Guimet Museum, Paris via WikiArt

№ 17 reading list: Author loyalty

In 1971 Joan Didion wrote an essay on Doris Lessing, beginning with the words: 'To read a great deal of Doris Lessing over a short span of time is to feel that the original hound of heaven has commandeered the attic. She holds the mind's other guests in ardent contempt' (The White Album, p. 119). Intriguing. I will keep her words in mind when I read Martha Quest, the first book of five in the Children of Violence series. My new reading list is somewhat based on author loyalty: Lessing's novels The Grass Is Singing and The Golden Notebook were on list № 7 and on my previous one were books by Didion, Johnson and Baldwin.

№ 17 reading list:
1  Martha Quest  by Doris Lessing
2  Two Lives  by William Trevor
3  Housekeeping  by Marilynne Robinson
4  Where I Was From  by Joan Didion *
5  Play It as It Lays  by Joan Didion
6  The Uncommon Reader  by Alan Bennett
7  Jesus' Son  by Denis Johnson
8  Nobody Knows My Name  by James Baldwin
9  Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?  by Raymond Carver **

* From We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, published by Everyman's Library.

** From Collected Stories, published by The Library of America.

For the first time I'm reading works by William Trevor and Raymond Carver, and Play It as It Lays is my first fiction by Didion. My next reading list will consist of Japanese literature. I promised the second Japanese list a long time ago and intend to keep that promise soon.

№ 16 reading list | Black History Month (UK)

Libraries are my happy place. Or so I thought. Last week I was at the library with a notebook, in which I have written down some of the titles I would like to read. As you can imagine, on my way there I was like a little kid going to Disneyland. As I walked up the stairs and entered the floor of the humanities (this is the university library, it's big), I was in a state of bliss, walking between the rows of bookshelves. Browsing books, touching books. Removing books from the reading list I already had in my mind to make space for books that demanded to be on it. Putting books back on the list to perhaps remove them again. Normal library behaviour.

Then something happened, something I was not prepared for: I experienced a moment of panic. For a few seconds, as I stood by the first row of shelves of American fiction, it suddenly dawned on me how many books there were on that floor, on all those shelves: In this lifetime I would never be able to finish my to-read list, which keeps getting longer. I cannot be the only book lover who has experienced this fear. No way. There better be an afterlife, with a library that has all your unread titles just waiting for you. There better be.

№ 16 reading list:
1  Blue Nights  by Joan Didion
2  Go Tell It on the Mountain  by James Baldwin
3  Sing, Unburied, Sing  by Jesmyn Ward
4  The Human Stain  by Philip Roth
5  Stet  by Diana Athill
6  Train Dreams  by Denis Johnson
7  The Bookshop  by Penelope Fitzgerald
8  Do Not Say We Have Nothing  by Madeleine Thien
9  The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick  ed. by D. Pinckney

On Saturday - you may have seen it on Instagram already - I read Didion's memoir Blue Nights in one go. She wrote the book after the death of her daughter Quintana, who was only 39 when she died. (She wrote The Year of Magical Thinking after the death of her husband, author John Gregory Dunne.) I liked Blue Nights. It's not a sob story that makes you reach for the tissue. Didion's style isn't emotionally overloaded. She is just trying to make sense of it all. Trying to find answers to questions that cannot be answered.

October is Black History Month in the UK (February in the US). I'm showing my support with two novels on the list, by James Baldwin and Jesmyn Ward. She won The National Book Award 2017 for Sing, Unburied, Sing. It was her second win; in 2011 she won for Salvage the Bones.

№ 13 reading list | Happy Holidays

Earlier this week, I promised to share a short reading list - this one is № 13 - before the holidays (I snapped the photo a couple of days ago between the gift-wrapping; you should see how much the hyacinths have grown since then!). At this moment, I'm enjoying a coffee break while leafing through the latest issue, January 2018, of The World of Interiors, which our oldest brought me from the UK. Tonight and tomorrow's desserts are ready and soon we will start preparing our Christmas Eve feast. The Nordic tradition is to celebrate Christmas on this day with a fancy meal, following the opening of presents.

№ 13 reading list:
1  The Underground Railroad  by Colson Whitehead
2  Giovanni's Room  by James Baldwin
3  Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan  by Bertolt Brecht [German]
4  Jane Eyre  by Charlotte Brontë

Last summer I bought a copy of Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin and I have been waiting for a more quiet time to read it. If my last blog post escaped you, he has become my new favourite author. Over the holidays, I have made it a habit to reread one classic and this year I chose Jane Eyre. It's been years since I read it and last Christmas I got this beautiful Penguin clothbound edition. It's been staring at me for a year and I swear I can sometimes hear it whisper, Read me!  The other two you may have spotted on Instagram already; Whitehead was part of a book gift from a dear friend in Iceland and the play by Brecht was the first book I bought in German after the move (here is a Bloomsbury edition in English, The Good Person of Szechwan, translated by John Willett). I'm already reading it, but slowly. Very slowly. It's my way to try to reclaim my German vocabulary.

I wish you all Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Reading journal 2017: Baldwin, Bandi, Bellow ...

My Reading journal posts, remember those? I have fallen behind with the blog (which gave me the idea to use my Instagram photos for this category). I'm just going to play my moving-to-Germany card. We are still navigating our new surroundings and getting used to the language. There have been good moments, but also frustrating ones and the occasional setbacks. Oh well, we will get there. Shortly after the move, our oldest returned to Scotland for school and I may have left part of my heart behind at the airport. Not that it was a dramatic scene, it simply hit me that one day the nest will be empty. (I could pull a Faust and make a pact with the devil, exchanging my soul for the kids choosing to go to university in the area when the time comes. The problem is I don't believe in its existence.) At Christmas the family will be reunited; ahead is leisure and good food (during a recent Skype moment I mentioned the presents and two of the kids responded: 'Mom, we don't care about the presents, we just want the food!'). Before the holidays I intend to share a reading list, a short one. Just have to find the time to take a photo.

>№ 8 reading list (5 of 8):

· The Accusation by Bandi. I gave this collection of stories, smuggled out of North Korea, a special mention when sharing the reading list. They still haunt me, especially one called 'City of Specters', which is the second story in the book. Every time North Korea is on the news - that would be every day - I'm reminded of these stories, of the injustice, the hopelessness, and inhuman conditions of its people.

· Another Country by James Baldwin. I knew he would become my new favourite author when I reached this character description on page 18: '[H]e had discovered that he could say it with a saxophone. He had a lot to say.' The moment one starts reading this book one picks up its rhythm. I read somewhere online that it was jazz and thought to myself, Jazz, that's it! The novel is set in the late 1950s, in Greenwich Village, NY. It's not for everyone (if you're a prude don't even think about reading it; I have to add you're missing out on a superb writing style), as it deals with daring themes such as affairs, homosexuality, bisexuality, and interracial relationships. Keep in mind it was published in 1962! I am ashamed to say that this was my first work by Baldwin. I had only read old interviews with him and magazine features citing his works and now I intend to read everything he has written, his fiction and essays.

· Seize the Day by Saul Bellow. My first Bellow, a memorable novella set in NY, which, honestly, didn't quite grab me from the start (I say this with the greatest respect for all his fans: during the reading, Bellow may perhaps have slightly paled by comparison to Baldwin, who had consumed my inner bookworm). It wasn't until after I had finished that the story kept popping up in my mind and I'm eager to read it again.

· The Blue Touch Paper by David Hare. A memoir I enjoyed reading, though some parts were more interesting than others. Often when reading memoirs the childhood part bores me (sometimes it's a lack of honesty on the author's part; sometimes an author paints a too rosy picture), which was not the case with Hare. Before reading the book, I knew nothing about his upbringing and he kept me reading with an entertaining and honest, or so I believe, account. The abundance of politics in the book may not appeal to everyone, but the London theatre scene becomes alive on its pages and the reader gets to share in Hare's triumphs, and failures.

· Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. I didn't finish this one. Not my cup of tea. Here we have a fictional poet, Shade, who has written a long poem before his death. A neighbour and colleague, Kinbote, writes a long commentary on it and very soon the reader realises that Kinbote is way off. I lost my patience with Kinbote's commentary, with his delusion (it had nothing to do with the writing of Nabokov).

[As I have said before, in my 'Reading Journal' posts I don't comment on my rereads or on books already featured on the blog. Please visit separate blog entries for these two from the list: A World Gone Mad: The Diaries of Astrid Lindgren, 1939-45 and the novel Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.]

image by me, appeared on Instagram 29/07/2017

№ 8 reading list: North Korean stories by Bandi

The first day of spring calls for a new reading list, wouldn't you agree? Three publishing houses, Head of Zeus (Apollo), Pushkin Press and Serpent's Tail, provided the first three books on the list and for that I thank them. I will later be reviewing the novel Pachinko and A World Gone Mad, Swedish author Lindgren's WWII diaries (known for her children's books), but today I want to specially mention a unique North Korean story collection, The Accusation by Bandi (pseudonym). The author, unknown to us, still lives in North Korea and risked his life by writing and smuggling his work out of the country (see more below). Here is my № 8 reading list:

1  Pachinko  by Min Jin Lee
2  A World Gone Mad: The Diaries of Astrid Lindgren, 1939-45 
3  The Accusation  by Bandi
4  Seize the Day  by Saul Bellow
5  The Blue Touch Paper  by David Hare
6  Another Country  by James Baldwin
7  Pale Fire  by Vladimir Nabokov
8  The Sea, The Sea  by Iris Murdoch

Seize the Day is my first Saul Bellow read - about time! An Instagram bookworm-friend called it 'an incredible novel' and added 'it's haunted me most of my adult life.' I meant to start with Herzog but it wasn't available at the library. Playwright David Hare is on my list of favourite people. Listening to him talk about writing is a pure pleasure and now I'm finally going to read his memoir. He e.g. wrote the screenplay for the film The Hours (2002), based on the book by Michael Cunningham. Loved the book, loved the film. There is one reread on the list: The Sea, The Sea by Murdoch. I was probably too young when I read it because I don't seem to remember half of it.

Forbidden stories from inside North Korea: The Accusation by Bandi

The Accusation by Bandi contains seven stories about ordinary men and women in North Korea. The author is unknown: Bandi is a pseudonym (means firefly in Korean) and to protect his identity some details have been changed. In a note from the publisher it says they 'believe it to be an important work of North Korean samizdat literature and a unique portrayal of life under a totalitarian dictatorship.' Apart from the news, what we have read so far are works by people who have escaped from the regime. What makes this book unique is that for the first time we have stories written by an author still living there. Instead of a preface and acknowledgements, there are untitled poems by the author, who describes himself thus in one line in the former: 'Fated to shine only in a world of darkness'. The latter has a poem, in which he begs to be read:

Fifty years in this northern land
Living as a machine that speaks
Living as a human under a yoke
Without talent
With a pure indignation
Written not with pen and ink
But with bones drenched with blood and tears
Is this writing of mine

Though they be dry as a desert
And rough as a grassland
Shabby as an invalid
And primitive as stone tools
Reader!
I beg you to read my words.

If only the entire world would read these stories and that one day Bandi would be able to enjoy the royalties as a free man. I haven't finished the book but what I have read so far is heartbreaking. The social and political circumstances in North Korea, the lack of human rights, are known to us, but when reading stories by someone living in these conditions, suddenly, it becomes all too painfully real.

The Accusation
By Bandi
Serpent's Tail
Hardcover, 256 pages
Buy here

Utagawa Hiroshige, A Red Plum Branch against the Summer Moon, c. mid-1840s,
colour woodblock print

My next reading list will be the Japanese one I have mentioned more than once. Therefore, I chose to include this painting by Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige (also Andō Hiroshige, 1797-1858). Blooming trees in spring, mon dieu! Soon I will be sipping my latte on the patio and reading under the pink blossoms of a cherry tree ... a quality moment in the life of a book lover.

images by me | Utagawa Hiroshige art via The Art Institute of Chicago | first three books on the list provided by these publishers: Head of Zeus (Apollo), Pushkin Press and Serpent's Tail