№ 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

New books | Summer 2018

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

In the past few weeks I have been pondering over these lines by American poet Mary Oliver (from 'The Summer Day', appeared in New and Selected Poems, Vol. One) and still have no answer. Her simple question is thought-provoking, to say the least. I feel as if I haven't quite landed in Germany. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to move back to the Continent - the culture and way of living in this part of Europe suits me better - I just thought by now I would be more settled. I have been looking for a part-time job where I get a chance to improve my spoken German before taking on something more challenging but haven't found anything. A bookshop didn't even reply to my email. How ironic is that? The good news is that our oldest has finished her studies in Scotland. We went on a road trip to pick her up, took a ferry across the Channel from Calais and got to admire the White Cliffs of Dover again.

At this point I have a few drafts lined up but I wanted to end my blog silence with a list of new books. I'm excited about Michael Ondaatje’s novel Warlight, his first in seven years. If you like his work allow me to point out Eleanor Wachtel's recent interview with him for CBC Radio. Her podcast Writers and Company is one of the finest for book lovers.

New books:
· Warlight  by Michael Ondaatje (Vintage). The last book I read by him was Anil's Ghost, and before that, The English Patient. Liked both. You may already have spotted the cover in the blog's sidebar; expect to find it on a reading list in the near future.
· The Beautiful Summer  by Cesare Pavese (Penguin). A coming-of-age story that takes place in Italy in the 1930s. Originally published in 1949.
· The Years  by Annie Ernaux (Fitzcarraldo, translated by Alison L. Strayer). This is the UK edition of her memoir, which has already been published in the US. '[A] masterpiece memoir of French life' reads the title of The Guardian review. I was intrigued and intend to read the book, even though I have never read anything by the author.
· There There  by Tommy Orange (Vintage). One of two debut novels on this list of new books, set in a Native American community in Oakland, California, where the author himself was born and raised. This one is getting a lot of good reviews. Like the cover.

· 100 Books That Changed the World  by Scott Christianson and Colin Salter (Rizzoli). 'A tour of global history by way of history’s most important scrolls, manuscripts, and printed books, from Plato and Homer to the twenty-first century—100 must reads.' A book about books that could be fun to have on the coffee table. This one was published in the spring but I wanted to include it on the list.
· The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis  (Liveright Publishing, translated by Margaret Jull Costa + Robin Patterson). I honestly don't remember having heard of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), the greatest Brazilian writer, until reading Parul Sehgal's review in The New York Times. Hanging my head in shame. If you like short stories you will be happy to learn that the collection is 930 pages.
· A Place for Us  by Fatima Farheen Mirza (Vintage). A debut novel about an Indian Muslim family preparing for the wedding of their daughter. Editorial director Sarah Jessica Parker chose the book for her own imprint, SJP for Hogarth. I'm often wary when celebrities endorse something but I know Parker is a keen reader and she has recommended good books in the past. This Guardian Q&A with the author, a Californian of Indian descent, might interest you.
· The Outsider  by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton). And finally, a crime novel for the King fans out there.

Café Tölke in the Schnoor quarter of Bremen

In the spring I meant to share images from Bremen on the blog but things got in the way. Summer came early and on a warm Sunday I bicycled into the city centre and went for a stroll in the old Schnoor quarter. It was too sunny for photographing but I snapped this photo that captures the mood at Café Tölke, one of the first cafés I tried when we moved here. A small, charming place that specialises in cakes and pies. Once you have found a table and sit there with your coffee and Apfelstrudel you may get the feeling that as long as it stays open the world is going to be okay. That's the atmosphere of some cafés.

images by me, appeared on Instagram 05/03/2018 and 28/05/2018