December 2014 Reads

Read a lot in December, 71 books in all.  One of my most prolific reading months.  Managed to achieve my main reading goals this year, although it took some effort when it came to reading works in Portugese.  Typing this on my iPad, so any formatting errors can be attributed to that.  Here's the list:

337  Ron Rash, Something Rich and Strange (already reviewed)

338  Dorthy Tse, Snow and Shadow (already reviewed)

339  Jennifer Marie Brissett, Elysium (already reviewed)

340  Elena Poniatowska, La piel del cielo (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

341  S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh (already reviewed)

342  Nuruddin Farah, Hiding in Plain Sight (already reviewed)

343  Tomás Eloy Martínez, El vuelo de la reina (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

344  José Saramago, O Homem Duplicado (Portuguese; very good)

345  J.R.R. Tolkien, El retorno del rey (Spanish; already reviewed)

346  J.R.R. Tolkien, Povratak kralja (Serbo-Croatian; already reviewed)

347  J.R.R. Tolkien, Le seigneur des anneaux (French; already reviewed)

348  J.R.R. Tolkien,  Il signore deli anelli (Italian; already reviewed)

349  J.R.R. Tolkien, O Senhor dos Anéis (Portuguese; already reviewed)

350  Moacyr Scliar, Guerra no Bom Fim (re-read; Portuguese; very good)

351  Clarice Lispector, A hora da estrela (re-read; Portuguese; very good)

352  Clarice Lispector, Laços de Família (re-read; Portuguese; very good)

353  Italo Calvino, Perché leggere I classici (Italian; non-fiction; excellent)

354  Nina Allan, The Race (already reviewed)

355  Santiago Roncagliolo, Abril rojo (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

356  Margaret Killjoy, A Country of Ghosts (already reviewed)

357  Leopoldo Brizuela, Una misma noche (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

358  Adriana Lisboa, O coração as veces parca de bater (Portuguese; very good)

359  Leonardo Sciascia, Una storia semplice (Italian; very good)

360  Leonardo Sciascia, Il mare colore del vino (re-read; Italian; very good)

361  Leonardo Sciascia, Il giorno della civetta (Italian; good)

362  Erri de Luca, Montedidio (re-read; Italian; excellent)

363  Dacia Maraini, L'età del malessere (Italian; very good)

364  José Saramago, A segunda vida de Francisco Assis (re-read; Portuguese; good)

365  Hilary Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (already reviewed)

366  Christopher Beha, Arts & Entertainment (already reviewed)

367  Mariano Villarreal (ed.), Terra Nova 3 (Spanish; already reviewed)

368  Jay Lake, Last Plane to Heaven (already reviewed)

369  Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs (already reviewed)

370  Denis Johnson, The Laughing Monsters (already reviewed)

371  Pagu, Parque Industrial (Portuguese; good)

372  Rachel de Queiroz, O Quinze (Portuguese; good)

373  José Saramago, Claraboia (re-read; Portuguese; very good)

374  Nancy Rose, The Secret Life of Squirrels (the squirrels say this is THE book you better read or else!)

375  Lydie Salvayre, Pas pleurer (French; Prix Goncourt winner; already reviewed)

376  Clarice Lispector, Aprendendo a viver (Portuguese; very good)

377  Dacia Maraini, Bagheria (Italian; very good)

378  Elsa Morante, Aracoeli (Italian; very good)

379  Elsa Morante, Racconti dimenticati (Italian; very good)

380  Anna Maria Ortese, Il mare non bagna Napoli (Italian; good)

381  Dacia Maraini, Buio (re-read; Italian; Premio Strega winner; very good)

382  Victor Hugo, Les Misérables III (French; may review in near future)

383  Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare (re-read; Italian; Premio Strega winner; very good)

384  Mario de Andrade, Macunaíma (Portuguese; very good)

385  Oswald de Andrade, Serafin ponte grande (Portuguese; good)

386  Annie Ernaux, L'événement (re-read; French; excellent)

387  Xavier Velasco, Diablo Guardián (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

388  Luis Leante, Mira si yo te querré (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

389  Antonio Orlando Rodríguez, Chiquita (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

390 Andrés Neuman, El viajero del siglo (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; review shortly)

391  C. Alberto Bessa, Poética efêmera:  Poemas Reunidos (re-read; Portuguese; good)

392  Annie Ernaux, Une femme (re-read; French; very good)

393  Marguerite Duras, L'Amant (re-read; French; very good)

394  Marie de France, Lais de Marie de France (bilingual Old and Modern French; very good)

395  Álvaro Pacheco, Seleção de Poemas (Portuguese; very good)

396  Sergio Ramírez, Margarita, está linda la mar (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

397  Eliseo Alberto, Caracol Beach (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

398  Rachel de Queiroz, Memorial de Maria Moura (Portuguese; good)

399  Luís de Camões, Selected Sonnets (re-read; bilingual English and Portuguese; poetry; excellent)

400  Carlos Nejar, Arvore do mundo (Portuguese; very good)

401  Jorge Amado, Dona Flor e seus dois maridos (Portuguese; good)

402  Madeleine Chapsal, Trous de mémoire (French; non-fiction; good)

403  Moacyr Scliar, O exército de um homem só (re-read; Portuguese; good)

404  Giacomo Leopardi, Canti (re-read; Italian; poetry; very good)

405  Margaret Mazzantini, Non ti muovere (re-read; Italian; Premio Strega winner; good)

406  Maryse Condé, Moi, Tituba sorcière... (French; very good)

407  Jeff VanderMeer, Aceptación (Spanish; already reviewed the English original)


Final 2014 Reading Goals/Tallies:


Spanish:  60/50 (surpassed goal by 10 books; 13 read this month)

French:  52/50 (surpassed goal by 2 books; 9 read this month)

Italian:  52/50 (surpassed goal by 2 books; 15 read this month)

Portuguese:  52/50 (surpassed goal by 2 books; 20 read this month)

Women writers:  144/407 (surpassed 35% goal by .38%; 28/71 read this month, or 39.4%)

It was great to be able to average a book a week in each of the four languages listed above (in addition, I finished eight books in Serbian/Croatian (I consider them to be dialects of the same literary language) and one each in Polish, Latin, and Romanian (each of these read with another translation, although I can read Latin more or less without extensive use of the dictionary).  This makes the total non-English-language count 227/407, or 55.77% of my total reads for 2014.  First time since 2006 that the majority of my yearly reads were in a language other than English.

And that wraps it up for 2014 and its reads.  I'm fairly certain 2015 will be different, not least because I'm not going to try to replicate the 50x4 language reading challenge again.  Maybe the squirrels will, or maybe they just want me to learn their native language better?

November 2014 Reads

A bit better this month, with 37 books completed.  Slow but steady progress on most, if not all, of my reading goals.

300 Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming (YA, poetry, 2014 National Book Award winner, already reviewed)

301  Will Self, Shark (already reviewed)

302  Ismail Kadare, Twilight of the Eastern Gods (already reviewed)

303  Paul Theroux, Mr. Bones (short fiction collection; review forthcoming)

304  Frankétienne, Ready to Burst (already reviewed)

305  Marilynne Robinson, Lila (2014 National Book Award finalist; review forthcoming)

306  Cristovão Tezza, Ensaio da Paixão (Portuguese; good)

307  Robert Darnton, Censors at Work:  How States Shaped Literature (history; already reviewed)

308  Blake Butler, 300,000,000 (already reviewed)

309  Michael Pitre, Fives and Twenty-Fives (review forthcoming)

310  Keith Donohue, The Boy Who Drew Monsters (review forthcoming)

311  Joseph O'Neill, The Dog (2014 Booker Prize longlist; review forthcoming)

312  Ben Lerner, 10:04 (review forthcoming)

313  Davis Soares and André Coelho, Sepulturas dos Pais (Portuguese; graphic novel; already reviewed)

314  José Maria Eça de Queirós, O Mandarim (re-read; Portuguese; good)

315  Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves (review forthcoming)

316  Julia Elliot, The Wilds (short fiction collection; review forthcoming)

317  Lucius Shepard, Beautiful Blood (already reviewed)

318  Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe (Italian; very good)

319  Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (re-read; very good)

320  Phil Klay, Redeployment (2014 National Book Award winner; short fiction collection; already reviewed)

321  Adam Roberts, Sibilant Fricative (non-fiction; reviews; review forthcoming)

322  J.R.R. Tolkien, Las Dos Torres (Spanish; already reviewed)

323  J.R.R. Tolkien, Dve Kule (Serbo-Croatian; already reviewed)

324  Marie Nimier, La Reine du silence (French; very good)

325  Brian Francis Slattery, The Family Hightower (review forthcoming)

326  Lin Enger, The High Divide (review forthcoming)

327  Johanna Sinisalo, The Blood of Angels (already reviewed)

328  Josh Weil, The Great Glass Sea (already reviewed)

329  Neil Clarke (ed.), Upgraded:  A Cyborg Anthology (review forthcoming)

330  Stefano Benni, Saltatempo (Italian; good)

331  Marilène Clement, La nuit de l'Alléluia (French; very good)

332  Jane Smiley, Some Luck (2014 National Book Award longlist; review forthcoming)

333  J.M. McDermott, Maze (already reviewed)

334  Jac Jemc, A Different Bed Every Time (short fiction collection; review forthcoming)

335  David Nicholls, Us (2014 Booker Prize finalist; review forthcoming)

336  Italo Calvino, Le cosmicomiche (Italian; very good)


Updated Yearly Goals:

Spanish:  47/50 (ahead of pace by 1; 1 read this month)

Portuguese:  32/50 (behind pace by 14; 3 read this month)

French:  43/50 (behind pace by 3; 2 read this month)

Italian:  37/50 (behind pace by 9; 3 read this month)

Women writers:  116/336 (behind 35% pace by .48%; 7 read this month)

October 2014 Reads

Relatively slow reading month, with only 20 books finished.  Just slightly off the pace in a few of the year goals, but I anticipate catching up with most, if not all, of them in November.

280  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (re-read; already reviewed)

281  J.R.R. Tolkien, El Silmarillion (Spanish; already reviewed)

282  J.R.R. Tolkien, Silmarilion (Serbian; already reviewed)

283  Victor Hugo, Les Misérables I (French; review in near future)

284  Antoine Volodine, Terminus radieux (French; already reviewed)

285  Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (already reviewed)

286  Patrick Modiano, Rue des boutiques obscures (French; very good)

287  Véronique Bizot, Âme qui vive (French; review forthcoming)

288  J.R.R. Tolkien, La comunidad del anillo (Spanish; already reviewed)

289  J.R.R. Tolkien, Družina prstena (Serbo-Croatian; already reviewed)

290  Jeff VanderMeer, Anihilare (Romanian; already reviewed)

291  Victor Hugo, Les Misérables II (French; review forthcoming)

292  José Saramago, Cadernos de Lanzarote IV (Portuguese; re-read; non-fiction; very good)

293  Fernando Pessoa, Quadras (Portuguese; re-read; poetry; very good)

294  David Cronenberg, Consumed (review forthcoming)

295  Fábio Fernandes and Romeu Martins (eds.), Vaporpunk:  novos documentos de una pitoresca época steampunk (Portuguese; anthology; review forthcoming)

296  Antonya Nelson,  Funny Once (short story collection; review forthcoming)

297  Jenny Erpenbeck, The End of Days (already reviewed)

298  Michael Faber, The Book of Strange New Things (review forthcoming)

299  Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem (review forthcoming)



Updated Yearly Goals:


Spanish:  46/50 (ahead of goal by 4; 2 read this month)

Portuguese:  29/50 (behind pace by 13; 3 read this month)

French:  41/50 (behind pace by 1; 5 read this month)

Italian:  34/50 (behind pace by 8; 0 read this month)

Women writers:  108/299 (ahead of 35% goal by 1.1%; 4 read this month)

Wondering what 2014 releases I've missed out on reading so far

I'm going to be adding to my 2014 Releases/Reviews post this weekend, as I hope to get over 90% of the listed books reviewed (and 100% read) by Christmas, so I can have a good year-end Best of 2014 series of commentaries on the best of these books.  But doubtless I've missed whole swathes of literary genres, many of which almost certainly have produced some excellent books.

Care to suggest works that might be considered among the year's best that I do not have listed in my post?  I do plan on buying some more books next month after I finish catching up on bill payments related to my recent time off work due to a lower back injury.

September 2014 Reads

Due in part to my back injury keeping me out of work for most of the month, I had more time available for reading.  Finished 51 books this month, my highest for the year so far.  Managed to finish above the 1 book/day pace for the first time since January and I moved closer to achieving most, if not all, of my 2014 reading goals.  Here are the books I read (and in a few cases, re-read) for the month of September:

229  Niccolò Ammaniti, Come Dio Comanda (Italian; Premio Strega winner; very good)

230  Jeff VanderMeer, Acceptance (already reviewed)

231  ANtonio Pennacchi, Canale Mussolini (Italian; Premio Strega winner; good)

232  Neel Mukherjee, The Lives of Others (Booker Prize finalist; already reviewed)

233  José Saramago, O Evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo (Portuguese; might review in future)

234  Marc Elder, Le Peuple de la Mer (French; Prix Goncourt winner; good)

235  J.R.R. Tolkien, El hobbit (Spanish; very good)

236  J.R.R. Tolkien, Hobbitus Ille (Latin; already reviewed)

237  J.R.R. Tolkien, Lo Hobbit (Italian; very good)

238  Jonathan Littell, Les Bienveillantes (French; already reviewed the English translation)

239  Francesco Piccolo, Il desidero di essere come tutti (Premio Strega winner; very good)

240  José Saramago, Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira (Portuguese; might review in future)

241  Jesus Torbado, Las corrupciones (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

242  Howard Jacobson, J (Booker Prize finalist; review forthcoming)

243  David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks (Booker longlist; review forthcoming)

244  Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (Bailys Women's Prize for Fiction winner; already reviewed)

245  Angélica Gorodischer, Prodigios (Spanish; very good)

246  Grozdana Olujic, Wild Seed (re-read; very good)

247  Louise Glück, Faithful and Virtuous Night (poetry; National Book Award longlist; already reviewed)

248  Clarice Lispector, Uma aprendizagem (Portuguese; very good)

249  Jeff VanderMeer, Autoridad (Spanish; already reviewed the English original)

250  Kate Zambreno, Green Girl (excellent)

251  Nathalie Kuperman, La Loi Sauvage (French; Prix Medicis longlist; review forthcoming)

252  Valérie Zinatti, Jacob, Jacob (French; Prix Medicis longlist; review forthcoming)

253  Christine Montalbetti, Plus rien que les vagues et le vent (French; Prix Medicis longlist; review forthcoming)

254  David Soares, Batalha (re-read; Portuguese; already reviewed)

255  Justin Taylor, Flings (short story collection; review forthcoming)

256  Dylan Landis, Rainey Royal (review forthcoming)

257  Ludmila Ulitskaya, Sónechka (Spanish; very good)

258  Italo Calvino, Il castello dei destini incrociati (Italian; very good)

259  Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies (re-read; very good)

260  Spencer Reece, The Road to Emmaus (poetry; National Book Award longlist; review forthcoming)

261  Linda Bierds, Roget's Illusion (poetry; National Book Award longlist; review forthcoming)

262  John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van (National Book Award longlist; review forthcoming)

263  Kelly Barnhill, The Witch's Boy (YA; already reviewed)

264  Elizabeth McCracken, Thunderstruck & Other Stories (short story collection; National Book Award longlist; review forthcoming)

265  Gail Giles, GIrls Like Us (YA; National Book Award longlist; review forthcoming)

266  Donald R. Hickey (ed.), The War of 1812:  Writings from America's Second War of Independence (non-fiction; history; Library of America edition; excellent)

267  J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring:  The Late Silmarillion Part One (re-read; very good)

268  Hedwige Jeanmart, Blanès (French; Prix Medicis longlist; already reviewed)

269  Pierre Demarty, En face (French; Prix Medicis longlist; review forthcoming)

270  Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington (eds.), Phantasm Japan (anthology; already reviewed)

271  Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impssible Knife of Memory (YA; National Book Award longlist; review forthcoming)

272  Henry David Thoreau, Walden (re-read; non-fiction; might review shortly)

273  Ali Smith, How to be Both (Booker Prize finalist; review forthcoming)

274  Claudie Hunzinger, La langue des oiseaux (French; Prix Medicis longlist; review forthcoming)

275  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin (re-read; review forthcoming)

276  J.R.R. Tolkien, Los Hijos de Húrin (Spanish; review forthcoming)

277  J.R.R. Tolkien, Deca Hurinova (Serbian; review forthcoming)

278  Angélica Gorodischer, Palito de naranjo (Spanish; review forthcoming)

279  Margaret Atwood, Stone Mattress (short story collection; review forthcoming)


Updated Yearly Goals:


Spanish:  44/50 (ahead of pace by 7; 7 read this month)

Portuguese:  26/50 (behind pace by 11; 4 read this month)

French:  36/50 (behind pace by 1; 8 read this month)

Italian:  34/50 (behind pace by 3; 5 read this month)

Women writers:  104/279 (ahead of 35% pace by 2.27%; 22/51 read this month, or 43.1%)

August 2014 reads

August was a much busier reading month for me, due in part to being laid up for much of the second half of the month with a work-related back injury.  I finished 39 books in August, most of them first-time reads.  Also reviewed the majority of the books read then as well, with again around twenty reviews written during the month.  Here are the updated totals, including my 2014 reading goals progress:

190 Siri Hustvedt, The Blazing World (Booker-longlisted title; already reviewed)

191  Cara Hoffman, Be Safe I Love You (already reviewed)

192  Nadifa Mohamed, The Orchard of Lost Souls (already reviewed)

193  Lorrie Moore, Bark (short story collection; already reviewed)

194  Frances Hardinge, Cuckoo Song (YA; already reviewed)

195  Ian Cameron Esslemont, Assail (already reviewed)

196  Joanna Rakoff, My Salinger Year (memoirs; already reviewed)

197  Mary Szybist, Incarnadine (re-read; poetry; excellent)

198  Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor (already reviewed)

199  Corrine Duyvis, Otherbound (YA; already reviewed)

200  Muriel Barbery, L'Élégance du hérisson (French; excellent)

201  Mary Rickert, The Memory Garden (already reviewed)

202  William T. Vollmann, Last Stories and Other Stories (short story collection; already reviewed)

203  Jeff VanderMeer, Aniquilação (Portuguese; already reviewed)

204  Terry Goodkind, Severed Souls (already reviewed)

205  Richard Powers, Orfeo (Booker-longlisted title; already reviewed)

206  Paul Kingsnorth, The Wake (Booker-longlisted title; already reviewed)

207  Dave Hutchinson, Europe in Autumn (review forthcoming)

208  Rachel Pollack, The Child Eater (already reviewed)

209  Felix Gilman, The Revolutions (already reviewed)

210  Richard Thomas, The New Black:  A Neo-Noir Anthology (anthology; review forthcoming)

211  Niall Williams, History of the Rain (Booker-longlisted title; already reviewed)

212  Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (re-read; Booker-longlisted title; already reviewed)

213  Richard Flanagan, A Narrow Road to the Deep North (Booker-longlisted title; already reviewed)

214  Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (essays; already reviewed)

215  Kameron Hurley, The Mirror Empire (already reviewed)

216  Ludmila Ulitskaya, Daniel Stein, Interpreter (already reviewed)

217  Bryan Lee O'Malley, Seconds (graphic novel; already reviewed)

218  Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (review forthcoming)

219  Elsa Morante, History (already reviewed)

220  Richard House, The Kills (2013 Booker-longlisted title; review forthcoming)

221  Louise Labé, Œuvres complètes (poetry; French; very good)

222  Soumya Amnar Khodja, Rien ne me manque (French; very good)

223  Stanislao Nievo, Le isole del Paradiso (Italian; Premio Strega winner; very good)

224  Laurent Gaudé, Le soleil des Scorta (French; Prix Goncourt winner; excellent)

225  Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo (Italian; Premio Strega winner; good)

226  Brontops Baruq, O grito do sol sobre a cabeça (re-read; Portuguese; very good)

227  Elsa Morante, L'isola di Arturo (re-read; Italian; Premio Strega winner; already reviewed)

228  Elsa Morante, Arturo's Island (re-read; already reviewed)


Updated Yearly Goals:


Spanish:  37/50 (ahead of pace by 4; 0 read this month)

Portuguese:  22/50 (behind pace by 11; 2 read this month)

French:  28/50 (behind pace by 5; 4 read this month)

Italian:  29/50 (behind pace by 4; 3 read this month)

Women writers:  82/228 (ahead of 35% pace by .9%; 53.8% for month, or 21/39 read this month)

Looking at my 2014 reading/reviewing goals, 2/3 into the year

Today marks the 242nd day of 2014.  There are 123 days remaining in the year, so roughly 2/3 have already passed.  Thought I would post an update on my 2014 reading/reviewing goals, note some changes, and lament one or two that have already failed.  Here is a link to my original January 2 post on the topic.

1.  Read (or re-read) at least 50 books each in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French.

As of right now (totals will change when I finish reading a few by midnight on the 31st):

Spanish:  37/50 - ahead of pace by 4
Portuguese: 21/50 - behind pace by 12 (might finish 1-2 by tomorrow night)
French:  28/50 - behind pace by 5
Italian:  27/50 - behind pace by 6 (should finish 2 by tomorrow night, however)

Since I'm planning on reading a lot more non-English literature in September and October, these totals will shift significantly.  Portuguese is the only one in real danger of not being reached, but even there I have almost 60 print volumes and over 30 e-book editions.

2.  Have 35% or more of my reading/re-readings this year be of works (co)-authored or (co)-edited by women. 

Currently at 80/224 2014 reads, or 35.7%.  Just above pace.  Have two more books by women that I want to finish by tomorrow, so percentage may rise slightly.

3.  To (re)-read and review each of the Premio Alfaguara winners, including those of the 1965-1972 incarnation.

I have only 8 out of 25 books left to review, so this is still very doable.  Planning on reviewing more in September and October.

4.  During the months leading up to the 2014 World Cup, reprise my 2010 "World Cup" series of posts by writing a combination of reviews of prominent writers from participating countries or summaries of national literature.

I wrote Group previews, but no real reviews of nationally-prominent writers of these 32 nations during that time.  Partial fail.

5.  Do an in-depth series of articles/reviews on a Southern writer.

Haven't started this yet, but likely to start reviewing Eudora Welty's novels in the coming month or two, along with a few more Faulkner reviews if I have the time.  Thomas Wolfe, however, will likely be shunted to next year.

Newer Goals:

1.  Write at least one post a day in 2014.  

So far, so good.

2.  Write 150 reviews in 2014.

I've written 103 so far, so slightly above pace.

3.  Read/review all the books listed in the 2014 Upcoming Releases post from January.

I've reviewed all but 20 of the books already released and am quickly closing the gap, writing at least 4-5 reviews/week for the past three months.  Already have over 80 2014 releases read/reviewed.

4.  Average at least a book a day read, as I've done since 2008.

Behind pace by 18 right now, but should catch up in the coming weeks.  Be off work due to injury certainly has given me more time to read, plus I like to read more when it's cooler.


If you came up with reading goals, tell me how you're doing.  Curiosity and all that.

July 2014 Reads

Averaged exactly one book a day for the month of July, as I completed 31 books.  Most of these, unlike other months, were in English, as I concentrated on reviewing as many 2014 releases as I could manage.  20 of the 31 have already been reviewed, a few others were reviewed when I first read them in one language or another, and 4 will be reviewed in the coming weeks.  Not a bad reading/reviewing percentage, I suppose.

159  Dinaw Mengestu, All Our Names (already reviewed)

160  Adam Wilson, What's Important is Feeling (already reviewed)

161  Evie Wyld, All the Birds, Singing (already reviewed)

162  D. Foy, Made to Break (already reviewed)

163  Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (eds.), The Time Traveler's Almanac (already reviewed)

164  Andrzej Sapkowski, Il battesimo del fuoco (Italian; already reviewed the Spanish translation)

165  Andrzej Sapkowski, Baptism of Fire (already reviewed the Spanish translation)

166  Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You (already reviewed)

167  Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (already reviewed)

168  Edan Lepucki, California (already reviewed)

169  Edmundo Paz Soldán, Iris (Spanish; already reviewed)

170  Tom Rachman, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers (already reviewed)

171  Anna Hope, Wake (already reviewed)

172  Cristovão Tezza, O Professor (Portuguese; already reviewed)

173  Andrés Neuman, Talking to Ourselves (already reviewed)

174  Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land (review will be posted on August 4)

175  Shane Jones, The Crystal Eaters (already reviewed)

176  Jorge Luis Borges, Ficções (Portuguese; already reviewed Spanish original)

177  Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't (already reviewed)

178  Ben Hatke, Julia's House for Last Creatures (young children's book; very good; gave copy away for my niece to read when she's 2-3 years older)

179  Can Xue, The Last Lover (already reviewed)

180  Scott Cheshire, High as the Horses' Bridles (already reviewed)

181  Adam Sternbergh, Shovel Ready

182  Simon Ings, Wolves (already reviewed)

183  Joyce Carol Oates, Carthage (review in the next week)

184  Seamus Heaney, Beowulf (poetry; translated fiction; very good)

185  Frederick Rebsamen, Beowulf (poetry; translated fiction; best of the three verse translations I read)

186  R.M. Liuzza, Beowulf (poetry; translated fiction; very good)

187  J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf:  A Translation and Commentary (already reviewed)

188  Catherine Lacey, Nobody is Ever Missing (review in the next week or so)

189  Paula Bomer, Inside Madeleine (short story collection; review forthcoming)



Updated Yearly Goals:


Spanish:  37/50 (ahead of pace by 8; 1 read this month)

Portuguese:  20/50 (behind pace by 9; 2 read this month)

French:  24/50 (behind pace by 5; 0 read this month)

Italian:  26/50 (behind pace by 3; 1 read this month)

Women writers:  61/189 (behind pace by 2%; 33% for the month, or 10/31 read this month)

June 2014 Reads

June was a slower reading month for me, perhaps in part because I spent most of the month engaging in the "40 in 40" review project.  I managed to complete that by mid-July, but as a result, I only read 24 books in June.  14 of the 24 books have already been reviewed, with another one to be reviewed later this month.  At the halfway point of the year, was close or exceeded my yearly goals for the four foreign languages I targeted for more reading this year.  Now for the list:

135  Antonio Scurati, Il padre infedele (Italian; Premio Strega finalist; very good)

136  Giorgio Pressburger, Nel regno oscuro (Italian; very good)

137  Herta Müller, La bèstia del cor (Catalan translation; good)

138  Carmen Lyra, Cuentos de mi Tía Panchita (Spanish; short story collection; good)

139  Jorge Franco, El mundo de afuera (Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

140  Cristina Henríquez, The Book of Unknown Americans (already reviewed)

141  Kyung-sook Shin, I'll Be Right There (already reviewed)

142  Kofi Awoonor, The Promise of Hope (Poetry; already reviewed)

143  Laura Restrepo, Delirio (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

144  Hernán Rivera Letelier, El arte de la resurrección (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

145  Teju Cole, Every Day is for the Thief (already reviewed)

146  David James Poissant, The Heaven of Animals (short story collection; already reviewed)

147  Lily King, Euphoria (review forthcoming)

148  Porochista Khakpour, The Last Illusion (already reviewed)

149  Roxane Gay, An Untamed State (already reviewed)

150  Sean Ennis, Chase Us (short story collection; already reviewed)

151  Thomas Ligotti, The Spectral Link (short story collection; already reviewed)

152  Jérôme Ferrari, Le sermon sur la chute de Rome (French; Prix Goncourt winner; very good)

153  François Weyergons, Trois jours chez ma mère (French; Prix Goncourt winner; very good)

154  Giorgio Pressburger, Storia umana e inumana (Italian; Premio Strega semifinalist; decent but not as good as the first volume of this series, mentioned above)

155  Pierre Lemaitre, Au revoir là-haut (French; Prix Goncourt winner; very good)

156  Jâcques-Pierre Amette, La Maîtresse de Brecht (French; Prix Goncourt winner; very good)

157  Smith Henderson, Fourth of July Creek (already reviewed)

158  Rabih Alameddine, An Unncessary Woman (already reviewed)


Updated Yearly Goals:


Spanish:  36/50 (ahead of pace by 11; 4 read this month)

Portuguese:  18/50 (behind pace by 7; 0 read this month)

French:  24/50 (behind pace by 1; 4 read this month)

Italian:  25/50 (on pace; 3 read this month)

Women writers:  51/158 (behind pace by 3%; 8 read this month, or 33% for the month)

A summer reading/reviewing challenge I'm undertaking

Now that I am only working one job, for the summer at least, and have just begun an online Elementary French course, it's got to be the perfect time for undertaking a time-specific reading/reviewing challenge, right?

Starting this weekend and lasting until mid-July, I want to review at least 40 works, many of which will be 2014 releases.  I have a backlog of reviews to write from this 2014 releases post I wrote back in January (and regularly update as upcoming releases come to my attention), plus there will be some books and/or poems that I will cover for the World Cup of Fiction posts during June-July.  I have about 2-4 hours of "free time" and I think that, if motivated, I could achieve this goal and help make others aware of interesting stories and poetry from around the globe.

And if I don't succeed?  Well, the squirrels have been watching me closely recently and I fear it might get ugly...

May 2014 Reads

Had a much better reading month in May, finishing 45 books.  40 out of 45 were first-time reads and the majority were read in a language other than English (although in some cases, there are English translations available).  Making progress toward meeting my 50x4 reading challenge, as I read several books in Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese.  Other challenges are progressing as well, although for one I'm currently behind pace by a half-dozen books or so (but with expectations for catching up in June).  Now for the list:

90  Danilo Kiš, Rani jadi (Serbian; short fiction collection; excellent)

91  Danilo Kiš, Early Sorrows (re-read; short fiction collection; excellent)

92  Jeff VanderMeer, Authority (already reviewed)

93  Marie NDiaye, Three Strong Women (2014 IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize finalist; very good)

94  Rose Fox and Daniel José Older, Long Hidden:  Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (might write more about this later; anthology)

95  Rodrigo Rey Rosa, La orilla africana (Spanish; very good)

96  Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia; Les Nuits d'octobre; Pandora; Promenades et souvenirs (French; very good)

97  Daša Drndić, Sonnenschein (Croatian; very good)

98  Daša Drndić, Trieste (very good)

99  Anne Carson, Red Doc> (prose poetry; very good)

100  Hilda Hilst, With My Dog Eyes (very good)

101  David Grossman, Falling Out of Time (poetry; review forthcoming)

102  Rivka Galchen, American Innovations (short fiction collection; review forthcoming)

103  Rene Denfeld, The Enchanted (review forthcoming)

104  Max Brooks, The Harlem Hellfighters (graphic novel; non-fiction; review forthcoming)

105  Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance (already reviewed)

106  Andrzej Sapkowski, Víbora (Spanish; already reviewed)

107  Andrzej Sapkowski, Żmija (Polish; already reviewed)

108  Andrzej Sapkowski, La Tarde Dorada (Spanish; good)

109  Carlos Labbé, Nativad y Matanza (Spanish; review forthcoming)

110  Carlos Labbé, Nativad and Matanza (review forthcoming)

111  Marco Magini, Come fossi solo (Italian; 2014 Premio Strega finalist; very good)

112  Javier Negrete, La higa del Nilo (Spanish; very good)

113  Emma Donoghue, Frog Music (review forthcoming)

114  Jeff VanderMeer, Aniquilación (Spanish; already reviewed the English original)

115  Donatella di Pietrantonio, Bella Mia (Italian; 2014 Premio Strega finalist; good)

116  Jean Echenoz, Je M'en Vais (French; Prix Goncourt winner; excellent)

117  Elisa Ruotolo, Ovunque, proteggici (Italian; 2014 Premio Strega finalist; good)

118  Jean Echenoz, 14 (French; very good)

119  Atiq Rahimi, Syngué sabour:  Pierre de patience (French; Prix Goncourt winner; very good)

120  Gilles Leroy, Alabama Song (French; Prix Goncourt winner; very good)

121  Pascal Quignard, Les Ombres errantes (French; Prix Goncourt winner; excellent)

122  Luiz Bras, Sozinho no deserto extremo (re-read; Portuguese; very good)

123  Juan Gabriel Vásquez, El ruido de las cosas al caer (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; review forthcoming)

124  Umberto Eco, Come si fa una tesi di laurea (Italian; non-fiction; very good)

125  Niccolò Ammaniti, Ti prendo e ti porto via (Italian; good)

126  Patrice Nganang, Tempo de chien (French; very good)

127  José Luiz Passos, O sonâmbulo amador (2013 Portugal Telecom Literary Prize winner; Portuguese; very good)

128  Erico Verissimo, Ana Terra (Portuguese; decent)

129  Alice Vieira, Viagem à roda do meu nome (re-read; Portuguese; YA; already reviewed)

130  Estelle Faye, Porcelaine (French; 2014 Gran Prix de l'imaginaire finalist; very good)

131  Valter Hugo Mãe, o filho do mil homens (Portuguese; very good)

132  Ana Luisa Amaral, Inversos:  poesía 1990-2010 (Portuguese; poetry; very good)

133  Francesco Pecoraro, La vita in tempo di pace (Italian; 2014 Premio Strega finalist; very good)

134  Valter Hugo Mãe, o remorso de baltazar serapião (re-read; Portuguese; very good)


Updated Yearly Goals: 

Spanish:  32/50 (ahead of pace by 12; 7 read this month)

Portuguese:  18/50 (behind pace by 2; 7 read this month)

French:  20/50 (roughly on pace; 8 read this month)

Italian:  22/50 (ahead of pace by 2; 6 read this month)

Women writers:  43/134 (behind pace by 3%; 14 read this month, or 31% for the month)

Some interesting stats and figures from my first 100 books read this year

This past weekend, I finished my 100th book for 2014 (as of this writing, I'm currently reading #104).  Since it is easiest to do percentages at this point, I thought I'd list a few interesting reading trends seen via percentage numbers.  These doubtless will change once I reach #200 in a few months, but for the moment, they so some changes in my reading.

Only 31% of the books were read in English/English translation.  26% were in Spanish/Spanish translation, 16% in Italian/Italian translation, 13% in French/French translation, 11% in Portuguese/Portuguese translation, and 3% were read in Serbian (with English translations read in parallel).

35% of the writers/editors were women or women who co-wrote/co-edited a work.  This is exactly on pace with my 2014 reading goal (out of the three read since then, two are written by women).

20% of the books read so far this year were released in the US in 2014.  Of that 20%, 45% were (co)-written/edited by women.

13% of the books read were translations.  Of these translations, 54% were into English from another language; 31% were into Spanish from another language; 15% were into Italian; and 8% were into French from another language.

12% of the books read were poetry collections, with 50% of those being in English/English translation and the rest being in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian.

11% of the books were collections or anthologies.  Single-author collections comprise 82% of the total for this category.

100% of the books read actually were read this year.  This might be the most important stat of them all, at least in terms of how it applies to me myself.  Any other categories that I neglected to do that you would find interesting to see numbers run on them?

My current reading list in light of a recent social media campaign for more diversity in reading

For the past few days, I've noticed during my all-too-brief forays on Twitter a hashtag on my timeline called #weneeddiversebooks.  It certainly is a nice goal to have, but as is frequently the case for such discussions, it is limited in scope.  While I am far from downplaying the importance of reading stories written by and from the viewpoints of peoples of color and of diverse socio-religious backgrounds, the main language of discourse here is still English and due to that oft-cited "three percent" proportion of translated fictions to native English publications in the Anglo-American publishing sphere of influence, wide swaths of global literature in all the commonly-defined genres pass under the radars of those who might otherwise be potential target audiences. 

In thinking about this issue, I recalled another hashtag discussion group, #translationthurs, devoted to covering the diverse works of those translators across the globe to translate excellent fictions and non-fictions from various languages into other languages.  I also noticed today I was mentioned in a tweet about a new project, Women in Translation Month, set for this August.  This especially interests me, concerning my years-long desire to read more from other countries and to discover more women writers from those countries.  If I have the time in three months, I'll try to participate in this, if not on an exclusive-read basis.

Finally, I was curious to see from the books read so far this year how many came from certain countries.  Below is the tally by country (translated works are counted by country of origin and in some cases, decisions on authors' nationalities were made based on setting/story concerns):

Italy - 15

United States - 14

France - 10

Spain - 9

Portugal - 9

Colombia - 6

Argentina - 5

UK - 3

Serbia - 3

Nigeria - 2

Brazil - 2

Greece - 1

Iran - 1

Costa Rica - 1

South Korea - 1

Sierra Leone - 1

Japan - 1

Angola - 1

Germany - 1

Hungary - 1

Chile - 1

Poland - 1


In addition, 29 of these 89 books are by women and 5 are by writers of Jewish or Muslim faith.  It is so tricky in dealing with ethnicity when it comes to Latinos that it could be as low as 8 or as many as 13.  Yes, pretty low in percentage terms, but if I were to re-read several of the Latin American classics/modern novels I already own, I could easily see this number increase significantly.  Still, it is interesting to see that I've already read works this year by writers born in 22 different countries/influenced by their parents' place of birth.  I know there will be more shortly, as there is a Guatemalan writer, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, whose works I plan on reading once La orilla africana arrives in the mail from Spain.

All and all, interesting snapshot.

April 2014 Reads

Things were a bit better reading-wise in April, as I completed 28 (edit:  27, as I accidentally listed a book I re-read from January) books, but I still often went days, even a week or so at one point, between reading more than a handful of pages.  Job shifts (which unfortunately are still taking place, but that's a matter for another time) and extra responsibilities have left me many nights struggling just to write a little bit here before crashing for a new hours.  But with the tardy arrival of warm weather, I feel my energy and my desire to read increasing again, so May may be another story.

Made some progress in my 50x4 language/reading challenge, as roughly 75% of the books read this month were published in languages other than English, with a few others being translations into English.  Still more male than female writers read in those languages, but greater efforts have been made to locate good stories from divers backgrounds.  25% of the reads were re-reads; the rest are first-time reads.  Mixture of poetry and short story collections here, some by fairly well-known writers.  And with all this blathering, time to list the books themselves:

63  Nicole Krauss, The History of Love (good, but tried a bit too hard to make the narrative stretch into something that it couldn't quite support)

64  Mario Rigoni Stern, Storia di Tönle/L'anno della vittoria (Italian; World War I-set collection of two novellas that will be discussed at some future point on World War I Literature, Art, and Cinema)

65  Joca Reiners Terron, Não há nada lá (re-read; Portuguese; very good)

66  Claudio Magris, Microcosmi (Italian; Premio Strega winner; very good)

67  Sibila Aleramo, Una donna (Italian; good)

68  João Negreiros, O Mar que a Gente Faz (re-read; Portuguese; very good)

69  Alessandro Piperno, Inseparabili (Italian; Premio Strega winner; good but slightly uneven for me)

70  Giorgio Montefoschi, La casa del padre (Italian; Premio Strega winner; good)

71  J.R.R. Tolkien, Bilbo's Last Song (Illustrated short poem; slight but good)

72  Karen Russell, Sleep Donation (review in near future; novella)

73  José Ovejero, La invención del amor (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; review forthcoming)

74  Gabriel García Márquez, Yo no vengo a decir un discurso (re-read; Spanish; non-fiction; good collection of short speeches over his lifetime)

75  Ugo Riccarelli, Il dolore perfetto (Italian; Premio Strega winner; very good)

76  Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools (French; poetry; very good)

77  Albert Camus, L'étranger (re-read; French; excellent)

78  Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

79  Vizconde de Lascano Tegui, De la elegancia mientras se duerme (re-read; Spanish; previously reviewed)

80  Susan Stinson, Spider in a Tree (very good take on the weirdness of Jonathan Edwards and the energy of the First Great Awakening)

81  Comte de Lautréamont, Poésies (French; poetry; very good)

82  George Seferis, Collected Poems (translated from Greek; excellent collection from a Nobel Prize-winning poet)

83  Sohrab Seferis, The Oasis of Now (translated from Persian; poetry; 2014 Best Translated Book Awards finalist; very good)

84  Elisa Biagini, L'ospite (Italian; poetry; this collection in translation formed half of the 2014 BTBA-winning poetry collection The Guest in the Wood; very good)

85  Marguerite Duras, Dix heures et demie du soir en été (re-read; French; very good) (forgot I had this back in early January)

85  Luisa González, A ras del suelo (Spanish; short fiction collection; good)

86  José Sobral de Almada Negreiros, A Engomadeira:  Novela Vulgar Lisboeta (Portuguese; novella; good)

87  Marie Ndiaye, Trois femmes puissantes (French; Prix Goncourt winner; will review after I finish the translation - and current IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize nominee Three Strong Women)

88  Françoise Sagan, Des bleus à l'âme (French; good)

89  Gabriel García Márquez, Olhos de Cão Azul (re-read; Portuguese translation; short fiction collection; very good)



Updated Yearly Goals:

Spanish:  25/50 (ahead of pace by 8; 5 read this month)

Portuguese:  11/50 (behind pace by 6; 4 read this month)

French:  12/50 (behind pace by 5; 5 read this month)

Italian:  16/50 (roughly on pace; 7 read this month)

Women writers:  29/90 (behind goal by 3%; 8/27 read this month, or 30% for the month)

A quarter of the year gone by, some reflections on my 2014 reading goals (and a few new ones)

I'm not someone who typically embraces strictures, even positive ones.  I tend to chafe under such guidelines, not only as a means of trying to escape what I have set out to do, but also because I find there to be other things that occur to me later that are perhaps just as important, if only for a moment.  But I do try my best to meet those goals that seem most like bets against myself.  Reading goals certainly qualify as such.  Can I manage to read X amount of something by the year's end?  What if I struggle to find the words when writing a promised review?  What if I run out of things to say or books to read on Topic X?

These thoughts are coming now as I stare at a few books that I should have reviewed weeks, if not 2-3 months, ago:  Manuel Vicent, Pascua y naranjas and Carlos Droguett, Todas esas muertes (Premio Alfaguara winner); a few histories and novels on World War I for my WWI blog; various women writers I want to read to make sure my reading, tilted askew by other projects, isn't too heavily male; the various Italian, Portuguese, and French-language works I want to read in order to meet that 50x4 goal (the Spanish-language portion is already near 50% of that mark); and reviewing each of the 2014 releases that I highlighted in a January post, approaching 30 titles.  All this around working two jobs and prepping to take a college course this summer in order to renew my teaching license.

It's a lot on my plate, yet for the most part, I feel like I'm "getting things done."  Hope to finish at least one more Premio Alfaguara review this weekend, perhaps two, in order to reach 50% of that goal.  Then I'll read some French and Italian-language novels on WWI to further my progress in those two areas.  Perhaps in a couple of weekends, I'll review more 2014 releases that I've already read, so that there will be a lot of reviews to refer to later when trying to decide which 2014 releases were the best come December.  Maybe I'll write that Leonora Carrington review shortly.  Or perhaps a few more by women authors who've intrigued me lately.  Come to think of it, perhaps the purpose of having certain goals is not to restrict oneself to a narrow area but instead to force one to open his/her eyes to the wide-ranging beauties there are out there, both in the literary world and the larger one encompassing it.

March 2014 Reads

March was a slightly better reading month than February, as I completed 23 books despite going almost a week at a time without reading anything.  There were 5 re-reads this month, two of which has already been reviewed and another 1-2 may be reviewed in the near future.  Six books read in March were also reviewed and more may follow.  There were three short fiction collections and four graphic novels read.  One focused on the centrality of squirrels as a metaphor for human existence...or something like that.  Now for the monthly list:

40  Haruki Murakami, Los años de peregrinación del chico sin color (Spanish translation; review later this year after the English translation has been released)

41  Alina Diaconú, ¿Qué nos pasa, Nicolás? (re-read; Spanish; short fiction collection; very good)

42  David Soares and Pedro Serpa, Palmas para o Esquilo (Portuguese; graphic novel; already reviewed)

43  Ben Hatke, Zita the Spacegirl (graphic novel; might write an article on the trilogy later)

44  Dominique Rolin, Lettre à Lise (French; very good)

45  Maurizio Maggiani, Il viaggiatore notturno (Italian; Premio Strega winner, good)

46  Claudio Magris, Danubio (Italian; excellent)

47  Ben Hatke, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl (graphic novel; see above comment)

48  Ben Hatke, The Return of Zita the Spacegirl (graphic novel; see above)

49  Jesse Ball, Silence Once Begun (review in very near future)

50  Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea (short fiction collection; review in near future)

51  Ondjaki, Os Transparentes (Portuguese; Prémio José Saramago winner; very good)

52  Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird (already reviewed)

53  Andrés Neuman, Hablar solos (Spanish; very good)

54  Kyle Minor, Praying Drunk (short fiction collection; already reviewed)

55  Stella Benson, Living Alone (re-read; good)

56  José Saramago, História do cerco de Lisboa (Portuguese; excellent)

57  Okey Ndibe, Foreign Gods, Inc. (already reviewed)

58  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (re-read; non-fiction; already reviewed)

59  Graciela Montes and Ema Wolf, El turno del escriba (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

60  Colette, Chéri (French; very good)

61  Greg King and Sue Woolmans, The Assassination of the Archduke (non-fiction; review forthcoming)

62  Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet (re-read; possible review in near future)


Updated Yearly Goals:

Spanish:  20/50 (ahead of pace by 7; 4 read in March)

Portuguese:  7/50 (behind pace by 6; 3 read in March)

French:  7/50 (behind pace by 6; 2 read in March)

Italian:  9/50 (behind pace by 4; 2 read in March)

Women writers:  21/62 (33.9%; behind 35% goal by 1 book)

Premio Alfaguara winners reviewed:  10/24 (soon to be 25, after the 2014 winner is published by June; 8 reviewed in 2014 alone)

February 2014 Reads

Not much to list here, as February proved to be my worst reading month when it comes to the number of books read.  Only 7 were read in full this past month, mostly because the past three weeks or so have been devoted to working on translating out, either in passages or lists of words to learn, sections from three books:  Vergil, Aeneid (Latin; see my recent series of old translation notes on Book I); Liviu Rebreanu, Pădurea spânzuraților (The Forest of the Hanged; Romanian); and Miroslav Krleža, Hrvatski Bog Mars (The Croatian God Mars; Croatian).  I expect it'll take several more weeks for the Vergil project to complete its first stage (I have 316 more lines of Book I to post, some of which will require me to do new translation work in order to fill in the gaps in my 1994 notes) and a few months at least for the other two, as I alternate between the two, going 1-4 pages/day.

I do read some outside of these, but not much (only today, after beginning it nearly four weeks ago, I finished reading the Spanish translation of Haruki Murakami's most recent novel, set to come out this summer in English as Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage) and I won't be surprised if March ends up being as short as February for completed reads.  That being said, I suspect that in a month or two, I'll be reading the above-listed books much more quickly once I've mastered more of the vocabulary (I've already improved full word-for-word understanding, as opposed to getting the gist of it, by nearly double over the past two weeks) and that I'll be back on track with my yearly goals.  Now for what I did read:

33  Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea (I gave some of my thoughts on the book in a post I wrote critiquing some of Ursula Le Guin's comments on it, but I did think it was a solid to very good book)

34  Marcel Theroux, Strange Bodies (already reviewed)

35  Denise Duhamel, Blowout (poetry; very good)

36  Molly Antopol, The UnAmericans (short fiction collection; excellent)

37  Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation (already reviewed)

38  Ishmael Beah, Radiance of Tomorrow (might review in near future)

39  Gabriel García Márquez, La mala hora (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)


Yearly Goals:

Spanish:  16/50 (ahead of pace; 1 read in February)

Portuguese:  4/50 (behind pace by 4; 0 read in February)

French:  5/50 (behind pace by 3; 0 read in February)

Italian:  7/50 (behind pace by 1; 0 read in February)

Women writers:  13/39 (33%; behind goal by 2%; 2 read this month)

For comparison's sake:  English:  6 read in 2014 to date.  Counting book finished today, 15% of books completed so far in 2014 have been read in English.  Of those 6, 5 were released in the US in 2014.

January 2014 Reads

January has been an interesting reading month.  I hadn't initially planned on doing this, but around the middle of the month, I realized that I hadn't completed any books written in English, so I decided that I would make January an English-free reading month.  I managed to read 32 books, with 12 of them being re-reads.  I read/re-read 8 of the Premio Alfaguara winners and reviewed 5 of them.  I read 4 poetry collections, 3 of them for the first time.  I am off to a good start to my goals in both the 50 books each in 4 languages and reading 35% women, being at or just a fraction of a percent behind the pace.  There is a disproportionate number of "heavy hitters" on this list, with the majority having won major awards in their home countries and/or being international bestsellers.  If only I had the time to write formal reviews of all 32, as these are certainly works worth considering at length...

1  Manuel Vicent, Son de Mar (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

2  Clara Sánchez, Últimas noticias del paraíso (re-read; Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

3  Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Mar (Portuguese; poetry; excellent)

4  Gonçalo M. Tavares, Jerúsalem (Portuguese; excellent)

5  Marguerite Duras, Dix heures et demie du soir en été (French; very good)

6  Maryse Condé, Traversée de la Mangrove (French; excellent)

7  Elsa Morante, La Storia (Italian; excellent)

8  Michele Mari, Tutto il ferro della Torre Eiffel (Italian; excellent)

9  Gonçalo M. Tavares, Jerusalén (re-read; Spanish translation; excellent)

10 Alfonso Grosso, Florido Mayo (Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

11 Daniel Sueiro, Corte de corteza (Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

12 José Saramago, Todos os Nomes (Portuguese; excellent)

13 José Saramago, Todos los nombres (re-read; Spanish translation; excellent)

14 Jacques Prévert, Paroles (French; poetry; poems ranged from very good to outstanding)

15 Ferenc Molnár, I ragazzi della via Pal (re-read; Italian translation; very good)

16 Clarice Lispector, Felicidade Clandestina (Portuguese; short story collection; very good)

17 Gloria Fuertes, Obras incompletas (Spanish; poetry; very good)

18  Goran Petrović, Опсада Цркве Св. Спаса (re-read; Serbian; excellent)

19  Goran Petrović, Le Siège de L'Église Saint-Sauveur (re-read; French translation; excellent)

20  Goran Petrović, El cerco de la iglesia de la Santa Salvación (Spanish translation; excellent)

21  Luís Berenguer, Leña Verde (Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

22  Carlos Droguett, Todas esas muertes (Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; review forthcoming)

23  Manuel Vicent, Pascua y naranjas (Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; review forthcoming)

24  Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares, Los que aman, odian (re-read; Spanish; very good)

25  Gabriel García Márquez, La hojarasca (re-read; Spanish; review forthcoming)

26  Gabriel García Márquez, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (re-read; Spanish; review forthcoming)

27  Héctor Vásquez Azpiri, Fauna (Spanish; Premio Alfaguara winner; already reviewed)

28  Maria Benedetta Cerro, La Congiura degli Opposti (re-read; Italian; poetry; very good)

29  Colette, La Vagabonde (French; very good)

30  Edoardo Nesi, Storia della mia gente (Italian; Premio Strega winner; good)

31  Melania G. Mazzucco, Vita (Italian; Premio Strega winner; very good)

32  Bruno Schultz, L'epoca geniale (re-read; Italian translation; short fiction collection; very good)


2014 Goals to Date: 

Spanish:  15/50 (ahead of pace by 11)

Portuguese:  4/50 (roughly on pace)

French:  5/50 (slightly ahead of pace)

Italian:  7/50 (ahead of pace by 3)

Women writers:  11/32 (34.3%; slightly below 35% goal)

Premio Alfaguara winners reviewed (counting previous years):  7/24


Goals Not Yet Begun:

World Cup of Literature - will begin posts in late spring/early summer

World War I fiction - will begin posts in late spring

Thomas Wolfe (4 novels) - will begin in March or April

Gabriel García Márquez re-reads/reviews - read 2 books, but won't start writing reviews until the weekend

Quick update on 2014 reading goals

Barely half a month of 2014 has passed and already I see I'm going to revise my 2014 reading goals.  Not because what I listed before was too difficult, but because I have had more ideas and reading time/energy than I had expected.

January will apparently be an English-free reading month, at least in terms of completing books.  I have already read 24 books and none of those are in English.  12 Spanish, 4 Portuguese, 4 French, 3 Italian (and just begun #4), and 1 in Serbian.  I have a few others I'd like to read before month's end, so it seems that my original goal of reading at least 50 books each in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian will be on pace or above.  If I have another month or so like January, I might extend the Spanish goal to 100 books read/re-read this year.

Next month, I probably am going to devote time to re-reading/reviewing most, if not all, of Gabriel García Márquez's output.  It surprised me to realize recently that I had never reviewed any of his works here, probably because I read them before I really was active blogging.

Starting in March, I'm going to aim to do a weekly set of posts with a World Cup theme.  I want to introduce readers (and myself, foremost) to some of the prominent writers from each of the 32 countries participating in the football tournament.  Later, I might then do "matches" after I have reviewed the works in hand.

From now until likely April or May, I'm going to continue to post my 1994 prose translation of Vergil's The Aeneid that I did for an intermediate Latin class, as I am really enjoying re-reading the poem in Latin and seeing ways that my old self understood it and how 20 years later I can still "hear" it as I read.

Beginning in June, I'm going to do a series of posts on the centennial of World War I/Great War.  There will be a few histories discussed, along with several poems, novels, and other writings from that time period, as well as writings from subsequent generations.

Also sometime in the summer, I'm going to review the major works of one of my favorite Southern writers, Thomas Wolfe, likely 1-2 books a month during that span.

Looks like my reading/reviews of the Premio Alfaguara winners might be finished sooner rather than later.  Going to write reviews of 4 books from that list later this week/weekend and I might be on pace to finish most of the 25 books (once the 2014 winner is announced in the spring) before autumn.

I know these are a lot of projects, but I'm finding this to be exciting and deeply rewarding rather than a checklist of chores to do.  Sometimes, having a direction and goals to (over)achieve is a great motivating force, at least for me.  Hope some, if not all of these, are of interest to you and that you'll continue to visit this blog in the weeks and months to come.

2014 Reading/Reviewing Goals

Now that 2013 has come and gone like the bad cold I felt like I had all year, time for new and updated goals to reflect the changing of the calendar.  Some of these are alterations of things I considered in December, but others are brand new.  Feel free to comment on them.

1.  Read (or re-read) at least 50 books each in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. 

I'm still working on my reading comprehension of the Western Romance languages, plus I have at least 75 books/e-books in each of these languages (in the case of Spanish, around 600, and for French, just over 300), so there should be plenty of good reading material.

2.  Have 35% or more of my reading/re-readings this year be of works (co)-authored or (co)-edited by women.

Slight expansion of last year's goal of 33%.

3.  To (re)-read and review each of the Premio Alfaguara winners, including those of the 1965-1972 incarnation.

In the past I have reviewed a few of the 1998-present winners (and have read all but some of the pre-1998 winners), but I think it should be a nice challenge to review 1-2 of these books a month for the year.  Progress will be tracked on this old article.

4.  During the months leading up to the 2014 World Cup, reprise my 2010 "World Cup" series of posts by writing a combination of reviews of prominent writers from participating countries or summaries of national literature.

This should be both fun and educational, no?

5.  Do an in-depth series of articles/reviews on a Southern writer.

The last two years, I wrote several posts on William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor (abandoning each by early spring) on a weekly Friday basis, but this year, I think I'll save myself stress by covering the writing of Thomas Wolfe, who wrote four novels and only a few short stories.  These won't be on a weekly basis, but maybe a monthly or even quarterly basis, depending on my time.  Also might cover some of Howard Waldrop's short fiction if time permits.

No set overall reading number goal, although I wouldn't be surprised if I average more than a book a day again.

What are your 2014 reading goals?

Edit:  Not a reading nor a reviewing goal, but I also might devote more energy in 2014 to wailing away against that puerile, creativity-sucking entity that sometimes goes by the moniker of "geekdom."  These days, I find myself waiting eagerly for the next decade or so to pass, in hopes that this rehashing of things that I find troublesome in content and presentation (not to mention the perceived lack of originality in content creation) will have passed the way that feathered hair and leg warmers did in my youth.