№ 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

Reading journal: Virginia Woolf on books

Virginia Woolf sharing my own thoughts on books:

What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in & found the table laden with books. I looked in & sniffed them all. I could not resist carrying this one* off & broaching it. I think I could happily live here & read forever.

She wrote these delightful words in her diary at Monk's House, Thursday 24 August 1933 (vol. 4, see № 29).

*The Confessions of Arsene Houssaye

image by me, appeared on Instagram 04/02/22

№ 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

Virginia Woolf – ‘darling dangerous woman‘

Last year I fell for this cover of Mrs Dalloway you can see in the picture. So much so that I ordered a used copy that looked like new, which never arrived. To make up for it, I decided to buy a new copy for myself as a Christmas present, but I couldn't bring myself to gift wrap it, even though I had already read the book. Instead, Virginia Woolf's novel became my second lockdown book, with Iris Murdoch's Letters.

It so happens that Murdoch mentions Woolf in a letter she writes on Christmas Eve in 1941:

The trouble is, I have been reading Virginia Woolf, the darling dangerous woman, and am in a state of extremely nervous self-consciousness. The most selfish of all states to be in.

‘Darling dangerous woman‘ – love this description.

Each time I reread Woolf it comes more apparent to me how talented she was. The details in her writing, the way she observes people and their behaviour, are extraordinary. I enjoy reading her diaries and often reach for the volumes on my shelves. In her diary, 19 June 1923, Woolf has this to say about the writing of Mrs Dalloway (its working title was The Hours):

But now what do I feel about my writing?—this book, that is, The Hours, if thats its name? One must write from deep feeling, said Dostoevsky. And do I? Or do I fabricate with words, loving them as I do? No I think not. In this book I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life & death, sanity & insanity; I want to criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense— But here I may be posing.

Yesterday I shared the pic on Instagram with a similar caption but I wanted to keep these quotes on the blog as well. We are still in lockdown which is supposed to end on the 17th of December. Yesterday, other Austrian states lifted most restrictions but this latest wave was severer in Upper Austria and we knew that our lockdown would last longer.

image mine, appeared on Instagram 12/12/21

№ 25 reading list: women only

Happy New Year! I would like to start the year with a new reading list, consisting of books by women only. As you probably know, Elizabeth Hardwick is a great favourite; her essay collection Seduction and Betrayal features female writers and women in literature. It so happens that Joan Didion, who has a book on the list, writes the introduction to the collection, which includes an essay about the Bloomsbury group and Virginia Woolf, who is also on the list.

№ 25 reading list:

1  Seduction and Betrayal  · Elizabeth Hardwick
2  Ninth Street Women  · Mary Gabriel
3  Approaching Eye Level  · Vivian Gornick
4  Intimations: Six Essays  · Zadie Smith
5  On Beauty  · Zadie Smith
6  The Waves  · Virginia Woolf [rereading]
7  Slouching Towards Bethlehem  · Joan Didion [rereading]

I have to confess that the list has been so long in the blog's draft that I have already read five of the seven books. I'm not far into the Mary Gabriel one - its snappy full title is Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art - but can already recommend it. Gail Levin's biography of Lee Krasner was on my № 24 reading list. I can also recommend that one but if I had to choose between the two I would pick Ninth Street Women. Even though Gabriel doesn't go into details about the artists' childhoods, I find her book more enjoyable to read. It's also better designed and images of artworks are in colour. Levin's book about Krasner is obviously well researched but the text is sometimes too academic for my taste which restricts its flow. In my copy, a William Morrow paperback, the paper is of poorer quality and the images of Krasner's artwork are in black and white only.

Lee Krasner, The Seasons, 1957

images mine, the 2nd appeared on Instagram 05/11/20 | Lee Krasner artwork, Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Whitney Museum of American Art via Haus der Kunst

Virginia Woolf Editions

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. 

Do you recognise this first sentence of Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's classic novel? The book was first published on 14 May 1925 by Hogarth Press, which she and her husband Leonard Woolf set up. Her sister, artist Vanessa Bell, designed the dust jacket. My next blog post was supposed to be a reading journal entry but I couldn't get these six old paperback editions out of my head after spotting them on Instagram yesterday - Mrs Dalloway Day. Here we have the covers of Mrs Dalloway, Three Guineas, and Orlando, which I have added to my wish list. If only they were hardcovers.

Mrs Dalloway; Three Guineas; Orlando
By Virginia Woolf
Paperback, 224; 192; 352 pages
Mariner Books

Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read

If you ask me, this is one of the best 2019 covers. Minimalist, yet catchy (the background is lighter than depicted above). Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read was published by TLS Books, a new imprint launched last year. TLS stands for the Times Literary Supplement, a weekly literary review that first came out in 1902. Virginia Woolf wrote for the TLS and here we have fourteen critical essays written from 1916 to 1935. The book appeared on my latest reading list and was a pleasure to read.

Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read
Hardback, 256 pages, illustrated
ISBN: 9780008355722
TLS Books

Genius and Ink appeared on my № 22 reading list / Instagram, 17/12/2019

It so happens that Virginia Woolf was born on this day in 1882, in her childhood home at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, London. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915.

№ 22 reading list: Christmas 2019

Here it is, the reading list I have been promising for some time. It's almost two in one, as I meant to post one in October and one before Christmas. Life just got rather hectic. At some point on this term when trying to balance school and family life I thought of lines in Joan Didion's book, The Year of Magical Thinking, which became my mantra: 'In time of trouble, I had been trained since childhood, read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information was control.' Once I looked them up, I knew I had to reread it yet again. Didion's book about grief and everything life can throw at you was my reward during study breaks. Didion grounded me. She kept me studying. Information was control. I need to thank two publishers for books on the list: Eland Books for So It Goes and Fitzcarraldo Editions for I Remain in Darkness. Both are translations that I will be reviewing in the New Year.

№ 22 reading list:
1  Year of the Monkey  by Patti Smith
2  So It Goes  by Nicolas Bouvier
3  I Remain in Darkness  by Annie Ernaux
4  Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read
5  Life with Picasso  by Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake
6  Look Homeward, Angel  by Thomas Wolfe
7  Essays in Disguise  by Wilfrid Sheed
8  Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction  by Jonathan Culler
9  The Year of Magical Thinking  by Joan Didion [rereading]

Translated by: 2) So It Goes: Robyn Marsack; 3) I Remain in Darkness: Tanya Leslie.

These past months, when I have found time, I have been reading some of the books on the list and have already finished Life with Picasso and I Remain in Darkness. It was time to include Wilfrid Sheed on a reading list. A long time ago I bought a used copy of this essay collection, after hearing John Williams at the New York Times Book Review praise it on their podcast. Every other week the staff talks about the books they are reading in their spare time and Williams's taste in books comes close to mine, and I usually agree with his views.

This year I'm breaking tradition and not rereading a classic over the holidays. I will, however, be reading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women into the New Year, a tradition I started in Scotland. Last Friday I listened to editor David Remnick's interview with Greta Gerwig on The New Yorker Radio Hour and now I cannot wait to see her film adaptation.

№ 21 reading list: essays by Zambra

Well, it's time for the summer's first reading list. In keeping with tradition, it has an essay collection, Not to Read by Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra (No Leer in Spanish). In the opening essay he, as a kid, admits to watching Madame Bovary (1949) for an exam instead of finishing the book. Next to a red F his teacher wrote: 'Vincente Minnelli!!' These short essays are the book lovers' treat. I meant to include a novel I had started reading, The Friend by Sigrid Nunez which won the 2018 National Book Award. I found it interesting, especially the literary references (the narrator is a writer), but then I got bored of the writing style and I didn't finish it. It's therapeutic to reread something good after a disappointing read; I chose The Seagull by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov.

№ 21 reading list:
1  Not to Read  by Alejandro Zambra
2  The Collected Stories of Grace Paley 
3  Milkman  by Anna Burns
4  Disgrace  by J. M. Coetzee
5  The Voyage Out  by Virginia Woolf
6  Journal of Katherine Mansfield  ed. by John Middleton Murry
7  The Seagull  by Anton Chekhov

Translated by: 1) Not to Read: Megan McDowell; 7) The Seagull: Laurence Senelick

Those who follow my blog know that Virginia Woolf is one of my favourites. The Bremen University Library has old editions of all her works by Hogarth Press, which she founded with her husband Leonard. They are attractively green hardbacks and initially, I borrowed The Voyage Out, her first novel, just to leaf through it. It's not my favourite book by Woolf but I couldn't resist the temptation and decided to read it again.

Sometimes, I have to admit, I do miss my old way of blogging, when I collected images of interiors in folders and couldn't wait to share them. As you may have noticed, I sometimes use images of paintings in my blog posts, but this time I decided to add two spaces in the Chelsea home of artist Sarah Graham, featured in House & Garden UK. These artistic corners - that glimpse of the coffee table and the bookshelf by with window - spoke to my inner interior enthusiast. Elegant and tasteful.

Chelsea home of artist Sarah Graham. House & Garden UK

images by me | credit: House & Garden UK · Greg Funnell

№ 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