Reading journal: Mendelsohn and Gornick

My holiday break has started and these days I carry with me an agreeable stack of books. Not far though, we are in a Coronavirus lockdown in Austria. Some were on my last reading list and I‘m still reading them, others are new ones that will appear on my next two lists. On Monday I received Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate by author, critic and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn. I meant to put it under the tree this year, as a Christmas present to myself, but I started reading it during a coffee break and couldn‘t put it down. It's short and contains three essays, an interesting mix of biographical writing, history and literary criticism, in essence about the writers Erich Auerbach, François Fénelon and W. G. Sebald. If you like books about books this one might appeal to you.

Another book in my stack is an essay collection by Vivian Gornick, Approaching Eye Level. It's my first by her; not the last. It goes down well with coffee and biscotti, as I predicted in my last blog entry.

In the Reading journal entries I have talked about books from a specific reading list but some time ago I felt the need to make changes, to make the journal more random and current. I also needed a category to archive my literary bookmarks. I mentioned once that it was never the idea to comment on all the books on my reading lists. I’m a picky reader and am seldom disappointed with the books on my lists. Sometimes when I truly enjoy a book, all I want to say is I loved this book and nothing else. That, however, hardly calls for a blog entry, using Instagram or Twitter is better.

Bookmarks & journal notes

Books I recently bought:
✔  Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon
✔  The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald

... added to my wish list:
✔  The Krull House by Georges Simenon

... prioritised on my TBR:
✔  fiction: Oresteia: Agamemnon. Libation-Bearers. Eumenides by Aeschylus
✔  non-fiction: Trieste by Jan Morris

Bookish joy:
✔  The moment when Margaret Busby, chair of the 2020 Booker Prize judges, announced Shuggie Bain had won and its author Douglas Stuart gave an emotional acceptance speech. When Stuart won I literally screamed out loud for joy, even though I still hadn't read his debut novel. I was rooting for him but was afraid that a white male author wouldn't win.

Podcasts I can recommend:
▶  Back to Shuggie Bain: Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, recently talked to its author Douglas Stuart on their podcast, The Book Club.
▶  And here Leith talks to Natalie Haynes about women in the Greek myths.
▶  In conversation with Eleanor Wachtel of Writers & Company, Martin Amis talks about literary life, loves and losses. A very honest and sincere Amis.
▶  I rejoiced when I saw that Stig Abell, the former editor of the TLS, has a new podcast called Stig Abell's Guide to Reading. (The TLS podcast is not the same without him.) The new podcast accompanies his recently published book Things I Learned on the 6.28: A Guide to Daily Reading. These two episodes are my favourites so far: Modern Literary Fiction with Kit de Waal and English Classics with Sam Leith, the aforementioned editor.

images by me, appeared on Instagram 14/12/20; 12/12/20; 23/11/20

№ 14 reading list: non-fiction in spring

A fool's errand to the University Library is the reason for my sharing the № 14 reading list later than intended. I went there to borrow the books by Martin Amis and Joan Didion - I wanted to photograph the entire stack of books - but I forgot the paper one needs to collect the library card. I still haven't had time to go back but thought it best to share the list before I finish reading the other books on it, all non-fiction. Every now and then I leaf through the notebook containing the books I want to read (I'm constantly adding more titles) and try to prioritise; Amis's The War Against Cliché is one of those books and I wanted to reread Didion's The White Album. Some may ask why waste time rereading books when there are so many unread. Well, I believe some books demand rereading. I haven't read everything by Didion, but let's say it's on my list. The publishing house Diogenes provided the German book on the list and for that I would like to thank them. It's a delightful read, with stories related to bookshops (see further below).

№ 14 reading list:
1  The Prime of Life  by Simone de Beauvoir
2  Letters to Friends, Family & Editors  by Franz Kafka
3  The White Album  by Joan Didion
4  The War Against Cliché  by Martin Amis
5  Der schönste Ort der Welt: Von Menschen in Buchhandlungen  [German]
6  Þúsund kossar  by Jón Gnarr [Icelandic, 'Thousand Kisses']
7  Orðið á götunni  by Margrét Bjarnadóttir [Icelandic]

To embrace my inner bibliophile, and to improve my German, I was grateful to receive a book from the Diogenes Verlag to add to the list: Der schönste Ort der Welt: Von Menschen in Buchhandlungen. In English the title reads: 'The Most Beautiful Place in the World: From People in Bookshops'. It contains twenty bookshop stories collected by Martha Schoknecht, narrated by authors Mark Twain, Penelope Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Patricia Highsmith, and Ingrid Noll, to name a few. For those of you who have read, and hopefully loved, Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road (for more, see my blog entry), I was delighted to find in the book some of the letters she wrote to and received from the Marks & Co. booksellers in London. She is just as wonderful and funny in German.

As someone who admits to often judging a book by its cover, I have to comment on the book design. Whenever I enter a bookshop here in Germany I cannot help but swoon over the white paperbacks published by Diogenes. The cover of this book is especially beautiful: a vibrant and colourful painting, Union Square Bookstore, by artist Patti Mollica.

Bookshop stories, Der schönste Ort der Welt, published by Diogenes

A note on the Icelandic books: The first is Jóga's memoir, who is a well-known massager in Iceland and, among other things, ran a popular and unique clothing boutique in Reykjavik. As a young woman, she was seriously injured in a car accident in the US, followed by a legal battle that changed her life drastically. The book is written by her husband Jón Gnarr, a famous actor and comedian; from 2010-2014 he was the Mayor of Reykjavik. The second book is quite an interesting piece of work by Margrét Bjarnadóttir (who happens to be the sister of a dear friend, who gave me the two books). During the period May 2009 to December 2013, she collected phrases that she overheard on the street, at cafés, etc. Each page has one entry. Usually, it's just a short sentence or a question, and this makes it such a fun read and philosophical.