December 2012 Reads

Completing the string here.  Read 55 books this month, only a few of them re-reads (most of those being epic poetry on the Matter of France/Roland/Orlando).  It's a bit late, so onto the list of December reads:

447  Ian Cameron Esslemont, Blood and Bone (already reviewed)

448  Steven Erikson, The Crippled God (re-read; already reviewed)

449  John Brandon, A Million Heavens (decent, but not very good, read)

450  Tim Powers, Hide Me Among the Graves (lesser sequel to his very good The Stress of Her Regard)

451  Jeffrey Ford, Crackpot Palace (collection; very good; made some of my year-end lists/honorable mentions)

452  Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories (already reviewed)

453  Mark Jarman, Bone Fires (poetry; very good)

454  Tim Pratt, Antinquities and Tangibles and Other Stories (collection; good; received this e-book due to contributing to his Kickstarter earlier this year)

455  Katie Ward, Girl Reading (very good debut)

456  Nir Yaniv, The Love Machine & Other Contraptions (very good translated story collection)

457  William Faulkner, Novels 1936-1940 (already reviewed all parts except for The Hamlet, review forthcoming for it)

458  Zadie Smith, NW (very good; made year-end list)

459  William Faulkner, Uncollected Stories (may review more of the individual stories later)

460  Goran Petrović, An Atlas Described by the Sky (review forthcoming)

461  Sherman Alexie, Blasphemy (outstanding story collection; made year-end lists)

462  Amos Tutuola, Don't Pay Bad for Bad (collection; review forthcoming)

463  Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne (re-read; non-fiction; very good)

464  Anonymous, La Chanson de Roland (French; poetry; outstanding)

465  Anonymous, The Song of Roland (re-read; poetry; outstanding)

466  Bertrand de Bar-Sur-Aube, The Song of Girart of Vienne (re-read; poetry; very good)

467  Anonymous, L'Entrée d'Espagne, Part I (French; poetry; good)

468  Anonymous, L'Entrée d'Espagne, Part II (French; poetry; good)

469  Luigi Pulci, Morgante (Italian; poetry; excellent)

470  Luigi Pulci, Morgante (re-read; poetry; excellent)

471  Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato (Italian; poetry; outstanding)

472  Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato (re-read; poetry; outstanding)

473  Lydia Netzer, Shine Shine Shine (good but somewhat flawed debut novel)

474  Peter Heller, The Dog Stars (very good debut novel; made year-end list)

475  Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (re-read; YA; very good)

476  Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (YA; liked this even better than the first volume; made year-end list)

477  Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (it has squirrels, therefore it shall be mandatory reading when the squirrels take over)

478  Kelly Barnhill, Iron Hearted Violet (very good; made year-end list)

479  Petê Rissatti, Réquiem: sonhos proibidos (Portuguese; very good; made year-end list)

480  Luiz Bras, Sozinho no deserto extremo (Portuguese; very good; made year-end list)

481  Luís de Camões, Os Lusíadas (Portuguese; poetry; outstanding)

482  Luís de Camões, Obras completas de Luís de Camões, Tomo II (Portuguese; poetry; excellent)

483  Jesse Bullington, The Folly of the World (very good; honorable mention on a year-end list)

484  Nick Tosches, Me and the Devil (very good; made year-end list)

485  K.J. Bishop, That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote (review forthcoming; made two year-end lists)

486  Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, Part I (re-read; poetry; one of my all-time favorites)

487  Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (Italian; poetry; one of my all-time favorites)

488  Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, Part II (re-read; poetry; one of my all-time favorites)

489  Adonis, Selected Poems (excellent)

490  Jeff VanderMeer, The Book of Lost Places (I think this is Jeff's second book ever published; good, but shows promise of his later, more mature work)

491  Sergio Chejfec, My Two Worlds (very good)

492  Eddie Campbell, Alec:  How to Be an Artist (graphic novel; very good tale told in second person future voice of the history of graphic novels)

493  Leena Krohn, Tainaron (review forthcoming)

494  Anonymous, La Spagna (Italian; poetry; very good)

495  Simón Bellido and Josué Ramos, Planes B, volumen I (anthology; Spanish; good but uneven)

496  Ian Sales, Adrift on the Sea of Ruins (despite not being interested much in space/astronaut fictions after Challenger, this was a good, short read)

497  Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground (re-read; very good)

498  Samuel Delany, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (already reviewed)

499  Felix Gilman, The Rise of Ransom City (very good; honorable mention on year-end list)

500  Haracio Castellanos Moya, El arma en el hombre (Spanish; very good)

501  Alejo Carpentier, El acoso (Spanish; very good)


Now to see how many fewer books I read in 2013.  After two years of reading 500+ books (and 3 out of 4 years), I might just ease off reading this year and only read a few dozen at most.  We'll see...

November 2012 Reads

Read a few less books in November compared to October, but 45 still is not a bad number.  A good number of these, around a third, have already been reviewed (most were National Book Award finalists in various categories) and a few more will be reviewed in the near future.  Only 5 were re-reads (2 of which were reviewed).  Several poetry collections read.  Books were read, with varying levels of comprehension in the following languages:  English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Serbian, and Romanian (the last being surprisingly difficult for a Romance language; I understood more Serbian than I did Romanian, even taking word root familiarity into account).  Disappointing (part, but not all of it is due to the mixture of award finalists and foreign language works on hand) only about 20% of the books read were by women. 

Anyways, here's the list.  Feel free to comment or to ask questions.

402  Adam McOmber, The White Forest (may review later this month)

403  Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers:  Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (non-fiction; already reviewed)

404  Luís Filipe Silva (ed.), Os Anos de Ouro da Pulp Fiction Portuguesa:  Os Melhores Contos do Sec. XX (Portuguese; already reviewed)

405  Anthony Shadid, House of Stone:  A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (non-fiction; already reviewed)

406  Tim Seibles, Fast Animal (poetry; already reviewed)

407  Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain:  The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1945-1956 (non-fiction; already reviewed)

408  Domingo Martinez, The Boy Kings of Texas (non-fiction; already reviewed)

409  Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson:  The Passage of Power (non-fiction; already reviewed)

410  Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns (already reviewed)

411  Kuzhali Manickavel, Insects are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings (short fiction; very good)

412  Alberto Moravia, Boredom (very good)

413  Nick Mamatas, Bullettime (may review later this month)

414  Milorad Pavić, For Ever and a Day (excellent)

415  Mo Yan, The Republic of Wine (may review in near future)

416  Guido Cavalcanti, Poesie di Guido Cavalcanti (Italian; poetry; very good)

417  Jose de Echegaray, O locura o santidad (drama; Spanish; good)

418  Haley Tanner, Vaclav & Lena (already reviewed)

419  Adam Wilson, Flatscreen (may review later this month)

420  Clair Vaye Watkins, Battleborn (collection; already reviewed)

421  Justin Torres, We the Animals (re-read; already reviewed)

422  Cesare Pavese, Los cuentos (Spanish translation; collection; good to very good)

423  Various, Forty Stories (free e-book collection, uneven but most were good, with a few being very good stories)

424  Angélica Gorodischer, Kalpa Imperial (Spanish; re-read; already reviewed)

425  Andrzej Sapkowski, Lux perpetua (German translation; good to very good, what I could understand at least)

426  Stuart Nadler, The Book of Life (collection; re-read; review forthcoming)

427  Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox (decent, but not all that great)

428  Pierre Louÿs, Aphrodite:  mœurs antiques (French; good)

429  Milorad Pavić, Sedam smrtnih grehova (re-read; Serbian; very good)

430  Milorad Pavić, Siete pecados capitales (re-read; Spanish translation; very good)

431  J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy (already reviewed)

432  Javier Marías, Negra espalda del tiempo (Spanish; may review in near future)

433  Grazia Deledda, Carne al vento (Italian; may review in near future)

434  Carl Spitteler, Imago (Spanish translation; may review in near future)

435  Bruno Schulz, L'epoca geniale e altri racconti (short fiction; Italian; review later this month)

436  Ivan Aleksoevich Bunin, The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (collection; may review in near future)

437  F.L. Fowler, Fifty Shades of Chicken (cookbook; already reviewed)

438  Jacinto Benavente, Los intereses creados (drama; Spanish; may review in near future)

439  Juan Pablo Villalobos, Fiesta en la madriguera (Spanish; good)

440  Kevin Barry, City of Bohane (review later this month perhaps)

441  Karolina Waclawiak, How to Get Into the Twin Palms (review later this month)

442  Jorge Ibargüengotia, La mujer que no (collection; Spanish; very good)

443  Salvatore Quasimodo, The Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo (poetry; bilingual Italian-English; very good)

444  André Chénier, Poésies Choisies (poetry; French; very good)

445  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (German; first time reading it in this language, but curious to see if it'd be intelligible in German.  It was...barely)

446  George Coṣbuc, Poezii (poetry; Romanian; only understood the gist of it, barely)


Don't know if I could read enough during the holiday slow period in order to squeeze in 500 for the year, but I should have somewhere around 110-130 reviews posted here for 2012 reads by year's end.  Expect a couple at least by Monday evening.

October 2012 Reads

One of the busiest reading months so far this year, with 57 books read/re-read.  Several were re-reads of the Steven Erikson/Ian Cameron Esslemont Malazan Re-Read Project I've been doing (still have three commentaries/reviews to write, as well as finishing the re-read of The Crippled God).  Then there was the re-read/reading of all of the Spanish translations of Andrzej Sapkowski's works that I own (review of The Warriors of God/Los guerreros de Dios to come in the near future), as well as the World Fantasy Award novel finalists and several finalists in various categories of the National Book Awards.  So there's about a quarter of the read books in languages other than English, a mixture of literary and speculative fictions, and fewer books by women authors than I would like.  But enough of the breakdowns, here are the titles read in October 2012:

345  Steven Erikson, Reaper's Gale (re-read; already reviewed)

346  Ian Cameron Esslemont, Return of the Crimson Guard (re-read; already reviewed)

347  Steven Erikson, Blood Follows (re-read; review forthcoming)

348  Steven Erikson, The Lees of Laughter's End (re-read; review forthcoming)

349  Steven Erikson, The Healthy Dead (re-read; review forthcoming)

350  Steven Erikson, Crack'd Pot Trail (re-read; review forthcoming)

351  Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (review forthcoming)

352  C. Alberto Bessa, Poética efêmera:  Poemas Reunidos (Portuguese; poetry; very good)

353  Carlos Nejar, Árvore do Mundo (Portuguese; poetry; good)

354  Mario de Andrade, Macunaíma (Portuguese; good)

355  Ian McEwan, Atonement (very good)

356  Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (review forthcoming)

357  Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds (re-read; already reviewed)

358  Ian Cameron Esslemont, Stonewielder (re-read; already reviewed)

359  Will Self, Umbrella (review forthcoming)

360  Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (review forthcoming)

361  Padgett Powell, You & Me (review forthcoming)

362  Steven Erikson, Dust of Dreams (re-read; already reviewed)

363  Alan Shapiro, Night of the Republic (poetry; review forthcoming)

364  Andrzej Sapkowski, El último deseo (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

365  Andrzej Sapkowski, La espada del destino (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

366  Andrzej Sapkowski, La sangre de los elfos (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

367  Andrzej Sapkowski, El tiempo de odio (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

368  Andrzej Sapkowski, Bautismo de fuego (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

369  Andrzej Sapkowski, La torre de la golondrina (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

370  Andrzej Sapkowski, La dama del lago:  volumen 1 (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

371  Andrzej Sapkowski, La dama del lago:  volumen 2 (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

372  Andrzej Sapkowski, Camino sin retorno (re-read; Spanish; review forthcoming)

373  Andrzej Sapkowski, Narrenturm (re-read; Spanish; already reviewed)

374  Andrzej Sapkowski, Los guerreros de Dios (Spanish; review forthcoming)

375  Steven Erikson, The Wurms of Blearmouth (review forthcoming)

376  Karin Tidbeck, Jagannath:  Stories (review forthcoming)

377  Cynthia Huntington, Heavenly Bodies (poetry; review forthcoming)

378  David Ferry, Bewilderment:  New Poems and Translations (poetry; already reviewed)

379  Patricia McCormick, Never Fall Down (YA; review forthcoming)

380  Carrie Arcos, Out of Reach (YA; review forthcoming)

381  The Twelve Apostles, The Didache (religious)

382  Stephen King, 11/22/63 (already reviewed)

383  Susan Wheeler, Meme (poetry; already reviewed)

384  Eliot Schrefer, Endangered (YA; review forthcoming)

385  Brontops Baruq, O grito do sol sobre a cabeça (Portuguese; review forthcoming)

386  Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds (review forthcoming)

387  William Alexander, Goblin Secrets (YA; review forthcoming)

388  Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King (review forthcoming)

389  Brandon Sanderson, The Emperor's Soul (review forthcoming)

390  Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again (re-read; one of my all-time favorite novels)

391  David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (re-read; thoughts covered in passing in movie review)

392  Lavie Tidhar, Osama (re-read; already reviewed)

393  G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen (review forthcoming)

394  Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son (review forthcoming)

395  Louise Erdrich, The Round House (review forthcoming)

396  Ferenc Molnár and Joseph O'Brien, The Devil (good)

397  Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and in Shadow (review forthcoming)

398  Stephen W. Sears (ed.), et al., The Civil War:  The Second Year Told by Those Who Lived It (excellent gathering of primary sources from January 1862-January 1863)

399  Thomas Wolfe, The Hills Beyond (very good collection of membra disjecta)

400  Jennifer duBois, A Partial History of Lost Causes (review forthcoming)

401  Steve Sheinkin, Bomb:  The Race to Build – and Steal – the World's Most Dangerous Weapon (YA; review forthcoming)


Needless to say, there are a lot of "review forthcomings" listed above.  Good thing I plan on writing 30 new reviews (as well as reposting some Faulkner reviews from earlier this year over at Gogol's Overcoat – where will also appear my National Book Award finalist reviews this month) this month, with hopefully 1 (if not 2 or even 3) appearing virtually every day of November.  You may feel spoiled/cursed now.

Which one(s) of these have you read/want to know more about?

September 2012 Reads

Had a bit more inclination to read in September than I did during the summer months, as I finished 43 books and had a few others in-progress.  Interesting mix of re-reads, non-English works, YA, and even some wretched 1980s D&D fantasy.  As is normal for me, only a few words on those works I haven't reviewed already:

302  W.H. Hudson, The Purple Land (good)

303  Qian Zhonghsu, Humans, Beasts, Ghosts (excellent; might write more on this in the future)

304  Laura Esquivel, Malinche (very good)

305  Dung Kai-cheung, Atlas:  The Archaeology of an Imaginary City (will write more after a re-read in the near future; reminds me favorably of Calvino's Imaginary Cities and Jan Morris' Hav)

306  Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Time of the Twins (dreck)

307  Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, War of the Twins (crap)

308  Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Test of the Twins (putrid shit)

309  Omar Khayyám, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (re-read; poetry; classic)

310  Dean Francis Alfar, How to Traverse Terra Incognita (story collection; excellent; one of the better 2012 collections I've read so far)

311  Luigi Pirandello, Racconti fantastici (Italian; short story collection; very good; more to be said in the near future, perhaps)

312  Luigi Pirandello, The Oil Jar and Other Stories (story stories; very good; see above)

313  Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth (YA; re-read; excellent)

314  Junot Díaz, This is How You Lose Her (short story collection; more to be written after I (hopefully) attend his October 13 address at Nashville's Southern Festival of Books)

315  Umberto Eco, Dire Quasi la Stessa Cosa:  Esperienze di Traduzione (Italian; non-fiction; outstanding bit on translation)

316  Umberto Eco, Experiences in Translation (non-fiction; contains elements in common with the Italian book, but is not a straight translation; excellent)

317  Umberto Eco, Mouse or Rat?:  Translation as Negotiation (non-fiction; shares other things in common with the Italian book, but is organized differently; excellent)

318  Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting (YA; good)

319  Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Egypt Game (YA; decent)

320  Jerry Spinelli, Maniac McGee (YA; average)

321  Etgar Keret, The Bus Drive Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories (short story collection; very good translation from the Hebrew original)

322  Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (re-read; very good)

323  Jai Sen and M. Reza Aribuwana, Island of Glass and Ashes (graphic novel; very good continuing storyline in this third volume based on Malaysian mythology)

324  Henrik Pontoppidan, The Apothecary's Daughters (dated work; decent, but not what I'd consider Nobel-caliber)

325  Friedrich Heinrich Karl Freiherr de la Motte-Fouqué, Undine (very good)

326  Stefan Żeromski, The Faithful River (very good, underrated work)

327  Ivo Andrić, The Damned Yard and Other Stories (excellent)

328  Alina Diaconú, ¿Qué nos pasa, Nicolás? (Spanish; excellent)

329  Manuel Vicent, La novia de Matisse (Spanish; very good)

330  Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon (re-read; already reviewed)

331  Steven Erikson, Forge of Darkness (review in near future)

332  Molly Crabapple, The Art of Molly Crabapple, Volume I:  Week in Hell (art book; very good)

333  Mario Benedetti, Acordes Cotidianos (Spanish; illustrated poetry collection; excellent)

334  Pío Baroja, La dama de Urtubi (Spanish; very good)

335  Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates (re-read; already reviewed)

336  Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice (re-read; already reviewed)

337  Steven Erikson, House of Chains (re-read; already reviewed)

338  Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows (re-read; YA; already reviewed)

339  Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (Booker Prize finalist; review in near future)

340  Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides (re-read; already reviewed)

341  Ian Cameron Esslemont, Night of Knives (re-read; already reviewed)

342  Christian Kiefer, The Infinite Tides (might write formal review later; very good debut novel)

343  Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Booker Prize finalist; review in near future)

344  Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters (re-read; already reviewed)


October should be another interesting month.  I have the next two weeks off from part-time work, so I should finish the Malazan books later this week.  I will then begin reviewing the six books shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize, plus I may do a re-read/finish reviewing Andrzej Sapkowski's books that I own in Spanish translation.  Also, expect a few other odds and ends and things of a squirrelly nature.

August 2012 Reads

Finished 41 books in August (with several others in various stages of being read/re-read).  There was more variety this month, perhaps due to the dueling challenges set before me (I think Dunja's was the more enjoyable by far).  Read/re-read more YA and adventure novels and while I still have reviews to write for many of those, I felt a bit reinvigorated as a reader getting in touch with some childhood favorites and seeing them through somewhat new eyes.  Here are very brief thoughts on the books read:

261  Leonardo Sciascia, The Wine-Dark Sea (very good; moved me at times)

262  Leopoldo Brizuela, Una misma noche (2012 Premio Alfaguara winner; Spanish; very good)

263  Astrid Lingdren, The Brothers Lionheart (re-read; already reviewed)

264  Karl May, Winnetou:  The Apache Knight (already reviewed)

265  Karl May, Winnetou:  Die Bücher I-IV (German; already reviewed)

266  Emilio Salgari, Sandokan alla riscossa (Italian; already reviewed)

267  Emilio Salgari, Il corsaro nero (Italian; already reviewed)

268  Emilio Salgari, The Black Corsair (already reviewed)

269  Henryk Sienkiewicz, In Desert and Wilderness (already reviewed)

270  Rudyard Kipling, Captains Corageous (review forthcoming)

271  Beverly Cleary, Ramona and Her Father (re-read; childhood favorite still outstanding)

272  Judy Blume, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (re-read; another great childhood favorite)

273  Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood (review forthcoming)

274  Richar Zacks, The Pirate Coast (history; very good narrative history of the First Barbary War and William Eaton's role)

275  Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, A Feast of Ice and Fire (cookbook; easy-to-follow recipes, with pictures of virtually all the recipes)

276  Alan Lightman, Good Benito (very good)

277  Alice Vieira, Viagem à Roda do Meu Nome (Portuguese; already reviewed)

278  L. Annette Binder, Rise (outstanding debut collection; almost certainly will appear at some point on my year-end lists, if I do such this December)

279  Victoria Hoyt, Save the Pearls Part One:  Revealing Eden (already reviewed)

280  Isaac Bashevis Singer, When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw & Other Stories (review forthcoming)

281  Rudyard Kipling, Kim (review forthcoming)

282  Danilo Kiš, Psalm 44 (short, but devastating novel to read; very good)

283  Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche (review forthcoming)

284  Palmer Cox, The Brownies:  Their Book (review forthcoming)

285  Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (took me the first 1/3 to get used to the rhythm of her rapidly switching PoVs, but it builds to a crescendo as she approaches the trial of Anne Boleyn; very good)

286  Ferenc Molnár, I ragazzi della via Pal (Italian; review forthcoming)

287  Christopher Buehlman, Those Across the River (meh about this being a World Fantasy Award finalist, but it's not worse than mediocre)

288  Beverly Cleary, Ramona and Her Mother (re-read; Cleary is one of my all-time favorite juvenile/children's writers)

289  Beverly Cleary, The Mouse and the Motorcycle (re-read; see above comment)

290  Lavie Tidhar (ed.), The Apex Book of World SF 2 (very good anthology; might have more to say later)

291  Thomas Rockwell, How to Eat Fried Worms (re-read; very good story; kinda wished I had sent this to Dunja for reading ;))

292  Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves, Interworld (YA SF tends to be mediocre at best for me; this was at best mediocre)

293  Danilo Kiš, Early Sorrows (Kiš's stories come too close to breaking my reader's heart in a variety of ways.  But I forgive him for doing it, as this was an outstanding read)

294  Fainna Solasko (translator), Kutkha the Raven (review forthcoming)

295  Carlos Fuentes, Agua quemada (very good)

296  Shirin Dubbin, Keeper of the Way (already commented on it)

297  Shirin Dubbin, Chaos Target (see above)

298  Marcel Schwob, Vies Imaginaires (French; very good)

299  Alan Garner, The Owl Service (very good, but I want to re-read it before reviewing it)

300  Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock (re-read; this Wolfe is one of my all-time favorites; first half of one of the more personally meaningful two-volume works I've ever read)

301  Nick Mamatas, Sensation (very good)


Thoughts on these?

More books added to the YA/Adventure reviewing challenge

Later today, I plan on writing a dual review of Kipling's Captains Courageous and Kim, which would complete the list of YA/Adventure novels that Dunja originally challenged me to read/review.  Since then, however, more books have been added to the list and it is my hope that in the following couple of weeks or so, that these too will be read and reviewed.

Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood (already read); Scaramouche (in-progress)

Danilo Kiš, Early Sorrows

Isaac Bashevis Singer, When Shiemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories

Palmer Cox, The Brownies:  Their Book


In addition, two Portuguese friends of mine on Twitter got me curious enough about Alice Vieira's Viagem à Roda do Meu Nome that I added it to the list and hopefully will have this children's novel finished later this weekend.

And at some point, I will (re)read and review Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth and Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows (even if the last might choke me up again, like it did when I first had to read to me in class at 9 and then when I read it soon afterward).

If you can think of other classic children's/YA/Adventure novels that I should investigate here, feel free to suggest in the comments.

July 2012 Reads

Read 33 books in July, 13 of them being re-reads.  Twelve were either non-English editions or bilingual, with another four being English translations.  More books written by men than women this month, due in part to the re-reads/foreign editions.  Only three books are likely to be shelved in SF/F/H categories, but several others share a close literary kinship with speculative fictions.  Five books, three of them re-reads, are YA/children's lit.  Another three are of a religious/metaphysical bent, and two books made me rethink matters of life, love, and laughter.  But enough talking, here are the titles:

228  Steven Erikson, The Devil Delivered and Other Tales (non-Malazan stories; better written than most of his fantasies)

229  Nnedi Okorafor, Long Juju Man (re-read; YA; enjoyable)

230  Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit (re-read; an old favorite; children's lit)

231  Goran Petrović, Atlas descrito por el cielo (re-read; Spanish; very good)

232  Goran Petrović, Diferencias (re-read; Spanish; short story collection; excellent)

233  Goran Petrović, Opsada Crkve Sv. Spasa (Serbian; outstanding)

234  Goran Petrović, Le Siège de L'église Saint-Sauveur (French translation of the above)

235  Goran Petrović, Sitničarnica "kod srećne ruke" (re-read; Serbian; excellent)

236  Goran Petrović, La Mano de la Buena Fortuna (re-read; Spanish translation of the above)

237  Ernesto Cardenal, Poesía Completa:  Tomo 1 (re-read; Spanish; poetry; outstanding)

238  Branko Miljković, Vatra i Ništa/Fire and Nothing (bilingual Serbian and English; poetry; excellent)

239  Antonio Machado, Compos de Castilla (Spanish; poetry; very good)

240  Augusto Monterroso, La oveja negra y demás fábulas (Spanish; story collection; very good)

241  John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan:  An American Life (non-fiction; well-deserved winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize for Biography)

242  William Faulkner, Knight's Gambit (good, but not his best work; story collection)

243  Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of the River (very good)

244  Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles (better than what some SF critics have made it out to be; very good debut novel)

245  Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear (perhaps I'll elaborate more later about my meh reaction to this second volume)

246  Carlos Fuentes, Inquieta Compañía (re-read; Spanish; story collection; very good)

247  Moacyr Scliar, Kafka's Leopards (re-read; excellent)

248  Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Visit (play; good but uneven for me; need to see it performed to judge better)

249  Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing (excellent)

250  Thomas Ligotti, Noctuary (short story collection; excellent)

251  Joseph Brodsky, Watermark (I will write an essay about this in the near future)

252  Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams (same as above)

253  Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (re-read; children's lit; already reviewed)

254  Kenneth R. Overberg, Into the Abyss of Suffering:  A Catholic View (non-fiction; not rating it)

255  Leonardo Sciascia, Il mare colore del vino:  Tre racconti (Italian; excerpt from a longer story collection; outstanding)

256  Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking (children's lit; already reviewed)

257  Fulton J. Sheen, Way to Inner Peace (non-fiction; not rating it)

258  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (non-fiction; some food for thought for later)

259  Ogdred Weary, The Curious Sofa (re-read; illustrated; diverting)

260  Scott O'Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins (YA; review forthcoming)

Books that I'm currently in the process of reading

Although most, if not all, of these books will not be finished by the time July ends, I thought some might be interested in seeing just how I (or rather, the squirrels that read for me) approach reading.  I rather am a lineal, one book-at-a-time reader.  I sometimes just read snippets, set the book aside (especially if it's a non-fiction or poetry collection), and return to it at some later date.  Sometimes, months pass before I finish a book.  With that in mind, with no ranking by percentage complete or chronology, here is what is in progress:

Karl May, Winnetou (just finished the first chapter of the second book of four in the series; German)

Karl May, Winnetou:  The Apache Knight (English abridgement that is a horrid butchering of the storylines)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (English translation of an influential Jesuit/naturalist philosopher)

Milorad Pavić, For Ever and a Day (novel laid out as a dinner menu; translated from Serbian)

L. Annette Binder, Rise (just-released debut collection from an award-winning writer; I chose her "Halo" for consideration for the defunct BAF 4)

Richard Zacks, The Pirate Coast (slightly off-beat history of the First Barbary War and William Eaton's mad adventure that inspired the "the shores of Tripoli" line in the US Marine hymn.

Allen Ginsberg, Selected Poems:  1947-1995 (contains his greatest hits and then some; re-read)

Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat (bilingual French/English edition; re-read)

Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (French; re-read)

Heinrich Heine, Gedichte (German poetry collection of his major poems)

Friedrich Hölswelin, Gedichte (another German poetry collection of the greatest hits)

Umberto Eco, Mouse or Rat?:  Translation as Negotiation (re-read of this non-fiction piece on translations)

Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, A Feast of Ice & Fire:  The Official Companion Cookbook (a ASOIAF-themed cookbook that has some interesting recipes)

Joseph Brodsky, Collected Poems in English (another poetry collection, this time by a Nobel Prize-winning poet)

Emilio Salgari, Sandokan alla Riscossa (Italian adventure novel from the early 20th century)

Cal Morgan (ed.), Forty Stories (free e-book anthology several talented writers that I have mentioned here or on Twitter in the past)


Sixteen in-progress books (not counting the 2-3 that I may start/revisit later today or tomorrow).  Not too bad.  Any of these you've read before/want to see reviewed in the future?  And for those curious about books that I've finished reading in July, the count stands at 30 at the moment.

June 2012 Reads

And now, to list all the books I've read through 182 days of 2012:

203  Carlos Fuentes, La gran novela latinoamerica (non-fiction; Spanish; outstanding overview of Latin American literature over the past five centuries.  Only quibble was short shrift was given to the Macondo writers compared to the Crack group)

204  Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico (non-fiction; Latin; first time reading the Gallic Commentaries in Latin.  Surprised how much Latin I've retained over the past 20 years)

205  George R.R. Martin and Daniel Abraham, A Game of Thrones, vol. I (graphic novel adaptation; well-done in places, but some of the artwork was meh for me)

206  Toni Morrison, Home (there's something under the surface of her just-released short novel about a Korean vet returning home that makes me want to re-read this; uneven in places)

207  Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor (excellent)

208  Robert Jordan, Chuck Dixon and Andie Tong, The Eye of the World:  The Graphic Novel Volume Two (graphic novel adaptation that was mediocre in all departments.  Images here)

209  Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (first Border Trilogy novel; outstanding)

210  Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing (second in the trilogy; excellent)

211  Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain (third in the trilogy; excellent)

212  Various, The Essential Latin Language Collection (Latin; collection of 13 writings composed in Latin, from histories to Newton's geometric proofs to hymns and poetry; a classic trove)

213  Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of the River (excellent)

214  Hari Kunzru, Gods Without Men (very good but uneven novel)

215  Antonio Machado, Antología poética (Spanish; re-read; poetry; excellent)

216  Mario Benedetti, Inventario II (Spanish; re-read; poetry; very good)

217  Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rimas y Leyendas (Spanish; re-read; poetry and short fiction; poetry was outstanding, the fiction merely very good)

218  {REDACTED} - something I enjoyed very much, however.  You can guess who I read and what all you want, but I will never confirm or deny it.

219  Angélica Gorodischer, Opus Dos (Spanish; story collection; good-to-very good)

220  Josip Novakovich, Shopping for a Better Country (excellent series of essays from a Croatian-American writer)

221  Michael Cisco, Celebrant (it's Michael Cisco, it's weird, it's mesmerizing, I'll have to re-read it before reviewing it at some point in the future)

222  Matthea Harvey and Amy Jean Porter, Of Lamb (re-read; excellent)

223  László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside (re-read; comments on Gogol's Overcoat)

224  Angélica Gorodischer (ed.), Mujeres de Palabra (non-fiction; Spanish; very good introduction to Latin American feminist writers/poets)

225  Angélica Gorodischer, Casta luna electrónica (Spanish; story collection; very good)

226  Woislav M. Petrovitch, Hero Tales and Legends of the Serbians (good yet antiquated – it was published in 1913, I believe – rendering into English of Serb folklore)

227  Modris Ekšteins, Walking Since Daybreak (non-fiction; I may write a piece on this history of Latvia during the 20th century/personal memoir later; very moving and excellent history from one of my favorite historians)


One of my shortest reading months in over a year.  Feel free to weigh in on books read or on questions regarding titles listed.

May 2012 Reads

Because there were only 30 days in June that I could procrastinate posting this...

39 books read, but 9 of those were read during the return trip from Kansas City May 5 or just after returning home.  As the temperatures climbing, my desire to read dropped (that and I wasn't reading e-books much due to switching to walking instead of riding the exercise bike at the gym for 30-40 minutes 4x/week).  When I post the June figures, that number has continued to dip, minus a rally the past three days that pushed me to 25 for that month.

Anyways, the list, with very brief comments:

164  Enrique Vila-Matas, Paris no se acaba nunca (Spanish; very good)

165  Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station (very good)

166  Howard Monnett, Action Before Westport, 1864 (non-fiction; picked up at a Kansas City Civil War battlefield museum; very informative about a battle I knew nothing about – it was the largest Civil War battle west of the Mississippi River – before the trip)

167  Mario Vargas Llosa, La civilización del espectáculo (okay, but disappointing, considering the author; non-fiction)

168  Imre Kertész, Fatelessness (excellent fiction from a Nobel literature laureate)

169  Bjornstjerne Bjornson, The Bridal March (so-so effort from another Nobel laureate)

170  Nalo Hopkinson, Chaos (very good YA novel)

171  Gwyneth Jones, The Universe of Things (good-to-very-good story collection)

172  Jain Sen and Rizky Wasito Edi, Garlands of Moonlight (graphic novel based on Malaysian legends; very good)

173  Jai Sen and Eric Bryden, The Ghost of Silver Cliff (graphic novel; good, but not as good as the first volume)

174  Isaak Dinesan, Out of Africa (non-fiction; despite some questionable commentary on the Kenyans, an interesting memoir)

175  Isaak Dinesan, Seven Gothic Tales (hit-or-miss for me; didn't help I was reading this while awaiting news if my brother and sister-in-law were having a boy or girl; it was a girl, by the way)

176  Mario Benedetti, La Tregua (Spanish; good)

177  Erri de Luca, Montedidio (Italian; a very moving tale)

178  Erri de Luca, God's Mountain (the English translation)

179  Machado de Assis, Mémorias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (one of Brazil's finest 19th century writers; Portuguese; very good)

180  Davis Soares, Batalha (Portuguese; I want to comment more on this animal fable later, but this short novel only confirms that he is one of the best writers in the world today, at least in my inflated opinion ;)

181  Nathan Englander, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (story collection; I chose it as a mid-year Best of 2012 candidate)

182  Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl (very good debut effort from a very talented writer)

183  Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching (Oyeyemi's third novel just confirms my high opinion of her; excellent)

184  Machado de Assis, Papéis Avulsos (Portuguese; very good)

185  Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (very moving tale; very good)

186  Cory Doctorow, The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (non-fiction; well-presented overview of Doctorow's thoughts on technology, writing, and civil liberties)

187  Cynthia Robinson, The Will of Venus (average)

188  Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jesse Lamb (already reviewed)

189  Colette, La Maison de Claudine (French; very good)

190  Sigrid Undset, Jenny (decent but dated novel from another Nobel laureate)

191  Selma Lagerlöf, Jerusalem (this Nobel literature laureate's novel felt much "fresher" than most pre-1940 efforts; very good)

192  Banana Yoshimoto, N.P. (I have yet to have read a Yoshimoto novel that didn't grasp my attention; very good)

193  Tupelo Hassman, Girlchild (one of the best debuts I've read this year; discussed more in my mid-year Best of 2012 post)

194  Joyce Carol Oates, Mudwoman (the confused, abrupt ending almost destroyed what until then had been a very solid novel)

195  Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document (Spiotta is an outstanding talent and this was an outstanding novel that was a finalist several years ago for the National Book Award in Fiction)

196  Monica Ali, Brick Lane (Ali's debut novel, which earned her mention in Granta's list of Young British Writers.  Deserving of high praise)

197  Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother (non-fiction; moving, devastating, but a read I think most should do in the very near future.  Kincaid laid it all out here in this semi-autobiographical account of a dead brother)

198  Monica Ali, Alentejo Blue (good, but not as good as her debut)

199  N.K. Jemisin, The Killing Moon (mediocre)

200  Kathy Acker, Literal Madness (I need to re-read this before having a firmer opinion, but this was some trippy/weirdness on display)

201  Charles M. Shultz, Screća je...toplo kučence (re-read; Serbian; translation of one of my favorite childhood books, Happiness is a Warm Puppy; moved me even in translation, most of which I understood without need of a dictionary!)

202  Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (non-fiction;  excellent essays on the perniciousness of tourism on a Caribbean society, among other topics of discussion)


The June list will be up later today or tomorrow.  That one, like I said above, is shorter at only 25.  Feel free to weigh in on books listed here that you've read or if you have questions about any title listed.

April 2012 Reads

Read 51 books in April, most of them first-time reads for me.  More non-fiction, due in part to reading some Civil War/Southeastern Amerindian books early in the month (including a day trip to the Shiloh battle site).  Not many genre fictions, but that's been the case for the past few years now.

113 Mario Vargas Llosa, Los jefes/Los cachorros (re-read; Spanish; will attempt to review at some point on Gogol's Overcoat)

114  Stephen Sears, et al., The Civil War:  The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It (excellent Library of America edition that collects primary source documents from late 1860 to the beginning of 1862)

115  Larry J. Daniel, The Civil War Series:  The Battle of Shiloh (informative chapbook on the Shiloh site, read during my visit there)

116  Ronald N. Satz, Tennessee's Indian Peoples:  From White Contact to Removal, 1540-1840 (good, but somewhat dated, look at the "Civilized Tribes" that lived in Tennessee prior to the Trail of Tears)

117  Matthew Stover, Caine's Law (had planned to write a review, but for now, let's just say its the best of his four Caine novels)

118  Petter J.J. van Thiel, The Genius of Rembrandt:  his Life and Work (decent but too short biography of the Dutch painter)

119  Joe McKinney, Flesh Eaters (winner of this year's Stoker Award for Best Novel, it was a zombie novel.  Most of those do not appeal to me and my enjoyment suffered because of this)

120  José Saramago, Deste Mundo e do Outro (Portuguese; very good)

121  Mercé Rodoreda, Aloma (Catalan; very good)

122  Phil and Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius:  Agatha Awakens (interesting steampunkish graphic novel compilation of the webcomic series, but it wasn't more than just solidly done in my opinion)

123  Keigo Higashino, The Devotion of Suspect X (Edgar Award finalist; good but not great)

124  Machado de Assis, Casa Velha (Portuguese; very good)

125  Brian Evenson, Immobility (plan on writing a review sometime in the near future)

126  Kim Lakin-Smith, Cyber Circus (BSFA Award finalist; decent but weak compared to most of the shortlist)

127  Sherri S. Tepper, The Waters Rising (reviewed last month; ¿Como dice "chupó los cajones de un burro muerte" en inglés?)

128  Ismet Prcić, Shards (won this year's LA Times Book Prize for First Novel; excellent)

129  Elizabeth Hand, Available Dark (worthy successor to her excellent Generation Loss)

130  Jean Echenoz, Lightning (finalist for the Best Translated Book Award; very good)

131  Amal Al-Jubori, Hagar Before the Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation (poetry finalist for the Best Translated Book Award; bilingual English-Arabic edition; outstanding)

132  Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero (devastating in the sense that it moved me while reading it)

133  Mario Vargas Llosa, La ciudad y los perros (re-read; Spanish; will be reviewed at Gogol's Overcoat at some point in the future)

134  William Faulkner, Big Woods (some of these stories have already been reviewed at Gogol's Overcoat)

135  Jan Morris, Hav (omnibus; outstanding modern classic travelogue of an imaginary city/culture)

136  Simon Morden, Equations of Life (won the Philip K. Dick Award this year; this trilogy opener was decent but not all that appealing to me)

137  Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz (Orange Prize finalist; started slow, but its conclusion was very well-executed)

138  Philip Kerr, Field Gray (Edgar Award finalist; spotty but mostly good)

139  Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles (Orange Prize finalist; may review in near future)

140  N.K. Jemisin, The Kingdom of Gods (Nebula Award finalist; uneven but mostly very good)

141  Herta Müller, The Passport (excellent)

142  Nathaniel Philbrick, Why Read Moby Dick? (nice intro-level discussion of why Melville's story has captured the hearts and thoughts of generations of readers)

143  Jac Jemc, My Lovely Wife (this debut novel is one of the better novels I've read this year.  Had hoped to write a formal review, but for now, I can only note that it is an excellent novel that utilizes a deceptively-complex narrative to tell two stories (and an absence) with an economy of words)

144  Drew Magary, The Postmortal (Clarke Award finalist; better than the Bear or Tepper, but not award-worthy.  Some interesting commentary on American socio-cultural clashes is dampened by a dull narrative point of view)

145  Christopher Priest, The Islanders (BSFA Award winner; review shortly)

146  Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies (Orange Prize finalist; good but too uneven to be worthy of award consideration)

147  Donald Antrim, The Hundred Brothers (very good)

148  José Saramago, A Segunda Vida de Francisco Assis (Portuguese; play; very good)

149  Judith Hermann, Alice (Independent Foreign Fiction Award finalist; very good)

150  Wisław Myśliwski, Stone upon Stone (Best Translated Book Award winner; excellent)

151  Diego Marani, New Finnish Grammar (finalist for both the Independent Foreign Fiction Award and the Best Translated Book Award; outstanding)

152  Sheri Holman, Witches on the Road Tonight (Shirley Jackson Award finalist; very good)

153  S.P. Miskowski, Knock Knock (Shirley Jackson Award finalist; excellent)

154  Livia Llewellyn, Engines of Desire:  Tales of Love & Other Horrors (Shirley Jackson Award finalist for Best Anthology; excellent)

155  Giannina Braschi, Yo-Yo Boing! (re-read; Spanglish; outstanding prose-poem dealing with the realities of bilingual life for the puertorriqueños)

156  Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars (poetry; won the Pulitzer Prize this year; outstanding collection)

157  Olympe Bhêly-Quénum, Le Chant du Lac (re-read; French; very good)

158  L. Timmel Duchamp, Never at Home (this anthology contained a story that was a finalist for this year's Tiptree Award; very good)

159  Sjón, From the Mouth of the Whale (finalist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award; excellent)

160  Brian Evenson, Windeye (outstanding just-released collection by one of my favorite weird fiction writers)

161  Angélica Gorodischer, Menta (collection; Spanish; excellent)

162  Giannina Braschi, United States of Banana (this loosely-themed novel, originally written in English, continues some of the thematic explorations Braschi did in her earlier works; very good)

163  Mo Hayder, Gone (Edgar Award winner; very good)


Which ones have you read?  Which ones have you heard mentioned but want to know more about?  Which ones did you dislike and/or do not care to read?

Results of putting forth more efforts to read women writers

I just reached the milestone of 150 books read over the past 113 days.  That has been a typical pace for the past five years, so that's not what's noteworthy.  What is noteworthy was what authors/books I've discovered since I decided that I wanted to try to read more female authors after only 28% of my first 100 books read were by women.  For the past 50, that total increased to 44% (22).  And here's a listing of those twenty-two women writers, with notes by some of them:

1.  Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher (Nobel literature laureate; very good novel)

2.  Melanie Rae Thon, The Voice of the River (loved one of her short stories enough to flag it for BAF 4 consideration; enjoyed this novel)

3.  Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse (very good story collection)

4.  Wisława Szymborska, Here (Nobel literature laureate; excellent poetry collection)

5.  Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles (won 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award in History; outstanding history of the Loyalists)

6.  Giannina Braschi, El imperio de los sueños (one of the more avant-garde Latin American poets/writers of the past 30 years; Spanish; very good trio of novellas)

7.  Leah Bobet, Above (selected one of her short stories for BAF 4 consideration; good but uneven debut YA novel)

8.  Mercé Rodoreda, Aloma (Catalan; I wrote a commentary on her fiction that will appear in the near future on Weird Fiction Review; moving story)

9.  Phil and Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius:  Agatha Awakens (graphic novel; it was well-done in places, but a bit spotty for my taste)

10. Kim Lakin-Smith, Cyber Circus (BSFA Award finalist; decent novel, but the weakest on the shortlist that I had read)

11.  Sherri S. Tepper, The Waters Rising (Clarke Award finalist; weakest novel of that shortlist)

12.  Elizabeth Hand, Available Dark (excellent sequel to her Generation Loss, which was nominated for some awards, if I'm not mistaken)

13.  Amal Al-Jubori, Hagar Before the Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation (finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Fiction Award; poetry; outstanding; to be reviewed later on Gogol's Overcoat)

14.  Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero (gripping fictionalized account of a real prison confession told to one of Egypt's most prominent dissident writers)

15.  Jan Morris, Hav (a modern-day classic that tweaks the approach of a travelogue to create something profound)

16.  Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz (2012 Orange Prize finalist; very good novel that may be reviewed later on Gogol's Overcoat)

17.  Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles (2012 Orange Prize finalist; perhaps my favorite on the shortlist)

18.  N.K. Jemisin, The Kingdom of Gods (2011/2 Nebula Award finalist; very good in places, but the narrative was a bit too uneven for it to be the strongest contender on this year's Nebula shortlist)

19.  Herta Müller, The Passport (Nobel literature laureate; very good short novel)

20.  Jac Jemc, My Lovely Wife (forthcoming debut novel is very, very well-written; review next month on Gogol's Overcoat)

21.  Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies (2012 Orange Prize finalist; good, but weaker than the other two finalists read this month)

22.  Judith Hermann, Alice (2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize finalist; very good collection of related short fictions that revolve around how a single character, Alice, deals with loss and grief).


Best part is knowing that this is the tip of the iceberg and that most of these are the equals to the best fiction read so far this year by male writers.  Are there any recent (2011-2012) releases by female writers that you think might be of interest to me, based on the list above?

March 2012 Reads

Read more in March than I did the previous two months.  Forty-eight books in total.  Only four of these were re-reads.  Thirteen were in Spanish, two others in Portuguese.  Twenty were written or co-written by women.  Only four might be found in the SF/F aisle of a bookstore. 

64  Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmeralda:  Nine Stories (PEN/Faulkner Finalist; very good collection.  This might be reviewed later on Gogol's Overcoat)

65  Dawn Lundy Martin, Discipline (poetry; very good)

66  Jim Harrison, Songs of Unreason (poetry; excellent)

67  Rahul Bhattacharya, The Sly Company of People Who Care (Man Asian Prize finalist; very good)

68  Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child (good, but there were a few spotty narrative areas)

69  Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia (reviewed at Gogol's Overcoat)

70  Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke (Man Asian Prize finalist; very good)

71  Yan Lianke, Dream of Ding Village (Man Asian Prize finalist; reviewed at Gogol's Overcoat)

72  Andrea Hairston, Redwood and Wildfire (will say more about this year's Tiptree Award winner later)

73  Jo Walton, Among Others (Nebula and Hugo finalist; more later)

74  Jahnavi Barua, Rebirth (Man Asian Prize finalist; very good)

75  Lászlo Krasznahorkai, Satantango (very, very good novel)

76  Gonçalo M. Tavares, Joseph Walser's Machine (excellent)

77  Ander Monson, The Available World (poetry; very good)

78  Javier Negrete, La Espada de Fuego (re-read; Spanish; good to very good epic fantasy opener)

79  Juan Gabriel Vásquez, El ruido de las cosas al caer (re-read; Spanish; 2011 Premio Alfaguara winner; very good)

80  Steven Millhausser, We Others:  New and Selected Stories (PEN/Faulkner finalist; outstanding collection)

81  Lars Iyer, Spurious (fairly good story that involves philosophy and fungi)

82  Graciela Montes and Ema Wolf, El turno del escriba (re-read; Spanish; 2005 Premio Alfaguara winner, very good)

83  Alberto Fuguet, Aeropuertos (Spanish; excellent)

84  Gonçalo M. Tavares, Jerusalén (Spanish; outstanding)

85  César Aira, El congreso de literatura (Spanish; outstanding)

86  José Saramago, Claraboia (Portuguese; his long "lost" first novel; good to very good)

87  Ignacio Padilla, Los anacrónicos y otros cuentos (Spanish; good)

88 Various, Testigos del Horror (Spanish; non-fiction; charity anthology of writings about Doctors Without Borders and what the authors witnessed)

89  N.K. Jemisin, The Broken Kingdoms (good, but the first half was weak)

90  Jorge Volpi, Leer la mente (Spanish; non-fiction; very good)

91  Jordi Soler, El Estrangulador (Spanish; very good)

92  Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist (very good)

93  Hernán Rivera Letelier, El fantasista (Spanish; very good)

94  Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace (National Book Critics Circle Award winner; moving, very good)

95  Steve Erickson, These Dreams of You (already discussed in mini-review)

96  Zora Neale Hurston, Novels and Stories (first three novels already reviewed at Gogol's Overcoat)

97  Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (devastating; excellent)

98  Daniil Kharms, The Plummeting Old Woman (good translated story collection)

99  Yasunari Kawabata, The Old Capital (very good)

100 Kelly Barnhill, The Mostly True Story of Jack (good to very good in places)

101 Leopoldo Brizuela, Los que llegamos más lejos (very good)

102 Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher (very good)

103 Melanie Rae Thon, The Voice of the River (good)

104 Mauren F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse (good)

105 Matt Bell, Cataclysm Baby (review within the next week or so)

106 Wisława Szymborska, Here (poetry; excellent)

107 Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles (National Book Critics Circle Award winner; history; outstanding work that could be a landmark in the field of studying the Loyalists from the American Revolution)

108 Alex Shakar, Luminarium (very good)

109 Giannina Braschi, El imperio de los sueños (Spanish; very good)

110 Leah Bobet, Above (average)

111 Gonçalo M. Tavares, Histórias Falsas (Portuguese; very good)

112 Greg Bear, Hull Zero Three (Clarke Award finalist; more later)

Interesting stats and figures about my reading to date this year

I just finished reading my 120th book earlier today (I'll post the March 2012 reads in the next few days).  Since it is a nice, round number, I thought it'd be a good place to see how things divide out between reading print books and e-books.  Some of these numbers were surprising:

Only 51 of the 120 books read were print editions, with the remaining 69 being e-books or PDFs.  In January, 18 out of the 30 books were print, but only 13/33 for February, 14/49 for March, and to date in April 6/8.  There are a couple of factors in play here:  1) Reading several books that are by pre-1923 authors and 2) Having e-editions to read while I use the exercise bike for 30-40 minutes 3-4x/week at the local fitness center.

But there is something even more interesting occurring when I break down the figures total.  To date, I have read 35 books that have been written or co-written by women, but 26 out of those 35 (and 26/69 compared to 9/51) are in e-book/PDF format.  The percentages would have been even higher if I hadn't read 13 books written by just three male writers (6 by Eric Basso for review purposes at Weird Fiction Review, 4 volumes by Lawrence Durrell that eventually will be used in an essay, and three more by Gonçalo M. Tavares.  12/13 of those were print editions, incidentally).  The monthly breakdown for reading female writers goes as follows:  January:  4/30, February:  11/33, March:  20/49, April:  0/8.  The numbers for April will increase as soon as I finish a few reads-in-progress in the next few days.


For foreign language, the breakdown is interesting.  By language:


Spanish:  0/30 (January), 3/33 (February; 2/3 were by women (1 e-book), 1/3 by men (print)), 13/49 (March; 3/13 by women (2/3 e-book), 10/13 by men (8/10 were e-books), 1/8 (April; male; print):  17/120 total

Catalan:  1/30 (January; female; e-book), 0/33 (February), 0/49 (March), 0/8 (April; one about to be complete, though, female, print):  1/120 total

Portuguese:  1/30 (January; male; e-book), 0/33 (February), 2/49 (March; all male; 1 e-book), 1/8 (April; male; e-book):  4/120 total

Italian:  1/30 (January; male; e-book), 0/33 (February), 0/49 (March), 0/8 (April): 1/120 total

French:  1/30 (January; male; e-book), 2/33 (February; male; print); 0/49 (March), 0/8 (April):  3/120 total

Persian (bilingual edition):  2/30 (1 female; all print); 0/33 (February), 0/49 (March), 0/8 (April):  2/120 total

Arabic (bilingual, English 99% exclusively used, however):  1/30 (January; male; print), 0/33 (February), 0/49 (March), 0/8 (April):  1/120 total

Total foreign language/bilingual editions read:  29/120.  Number that were male:  22/120.  Number that were female:  7/120.


A few things I've taken from this:


1)  When reading e-books, I seem more likely to choose to read female writers (and I have several more in the queue to read)

2)  I am not as aware of female writers in other languages as I am in English.  I need to do a better job trying to discover female writers in all languages, but especially in Spanish (I do have several I could re-read, though, but those would be likely only 30-40 out of over 400 titles, which reinforces the point).

3)  When I am more conscious of this (February and March), the numbers balance out more.  April is an anomaly to date, due to reading up on the Civil War in prep for my visit to the Shiloh battle site this past Tuesday, as there are 4 female authors whose works I am currently in the midst of reading.

4)  Looks like I'm shifting toward a 2/3 e-book and 1/3 print edition reading pattern.  I thought it'd be around 60/40 print a few months after I bought my iPad 2, but this may be the way, especially considering a lot of the e-books purchased are for books that I wouldn't want to spend a premium in order to acquire them.  What I do buy in print tends to be volumes from favorite authors, imports, or specialty items.


Any comments/questions to this data presentation?

Here's a little bit of what I've been reading lately

I burned out last week from reviewing.  I had written several reviews for Gogol's Overcoat and Weird Fiction Review over the past month, nearly a review/commentary a day, and I was very exhausted.  I ended up taking a longer break from posting than I had planned (I do need to write two Faulkner Friday posts to make up for the one postponed from last week - I did read the stories, however), but I did find myself revisiting some authors and literary genres that I hadn't devoted much time to over the past couple of years.

A couple of weeks ago, my dad had me do a bit of improv translation when we were working out in the gym and a young Latino told him "¿Como estás?"  Although I could communicate more or less, it was also obvious that my spoken Spanish had deteriorated over the past few years.  To make up for it, I decided that I needed to read/re-read some of the over 400 books/e-books that I have in Spanish.  I began by re-reading the opening to a four-volume epic fantasy by Spanish writer Javier Negrete, La espada de fuego (The Fire Sword).  Negrete is well-regarded in Spanish fandom (he's won several awards, including the Premio Ignotus, their version of the Hugo Awards) and while I prefer his alt-histories (and actual histories; he is a Classics professor as well) and SF to his fantasy series, this was a fairly decent melange of Sword and Sorcery (a genre that appeals to me much more than its oft-bloated epic fantasy cousin), quest fantasy, and I believe I detected some hints of SF underpinnings to his world.  The setting may not be appealing to those who equate graphic sex/violence with "realism," but I found Negrete's writing to be excellent and the characterizations to be better than average.  I will be dipping into the remaining three volumes of his Saga de Tramórea series over the next couple of months.

I also re-read two recent Premio Alfaguara winners:  2005's El turno del escriba (co-written by Argentine writers Graciela Montes and Ema Wolf) and 2011's El ruido de las cosas al caer (by Juan Gabriel Vásquez).  I have read each of the award winners since the prize was re-founded in 1998 and generally speaking, it is one of the more reliable ones for me in terms of enjoying the winning book.  Montes and Wolf's historical fiction dealing with the transmission of knowledge of Marco Polo's voyages is fascinating in how certain elements of Polo's story came to be passed down (likely with some alterations) from the transcription of his conversations while in prison to the rapid dissemination into the major European languages of the late medieval period.  Vásquez's novel is a mystery, yet one that touches upon the socio-cultural climate of late 20th century Colombian history, that develops nicely over its nearly 260 pages.  There is something to be said for a well-written work that is complex without needing several hundred pages to unfold all of its mysteries.

Chilean writer Alberto Fuguet has been a favorite of mine for the past eight years, ever since I learned enough Spanish to read novels without depending upon translations or dictionaries.  One of the founding members of the McOndo movement that was a reaction against magic realism and perceptions regarding what constitutes "Latin American literature," Fuguet's fiction is raw, visceral, and occasionally confessional in tone.  His latest book, 2011's Aeropuertos, is one of his shorter novels (it is a shade under 200 pages).  Told in episodic pieces from 1992 to 2008, it traces the lives of three middle-class Chileans:  a former couple and their son who was conceived during a vacation while both parents were in their teens.  Fuguet explores here the dynamics of a distant, "non-traditional" family in which each member (well, the father and son much more than the mother here, as it is the father-son relationship that interests Fuguet the most) questions the state of things as one grows older without having really settled down and another who seeks to understand this barely-acquainted father who has missed the important milestones of his life.  There are a few, minor longeurs here, namely in a middle chapter that focuses on the father Álvaro's musings on his current life, but the airport meetings at the beginning and end of the book make this one of Fuguet's more powerful stories in a career that has seen him produce several memorable works (I often recommend English-language readers to read The Movies of My Life to get a feel for how Fuguet approaches his protagonists and the themes he likes to explore, especially that of the alienated Chilean youth who struggle to meld Chilean life with American-dominated pop culture influences).

Portuguese writer Gonçalo M. Tavares was praised several years ago by José Saramago has being one of the best Portuguese writers to emerge in the first decade of the 21st century.  His loosely-connected "Kingdom" trilogy has received quite a few acclaims.  I read the first and third "volumes" of this "trilogy" recently in Spanish and English translations (I read the second associated book, Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique, last year and enjoyed it).  Jerusalén (Jerusalem) follows the lives of despondent, lonely men and women as they try to piece together why they have been brought together when some only want to commit suicide to get it over.  Joseph Walser's Machine concerns itself with the disruption of routine in a way that the short, sometimes fractured chapters (which Tavares utilizes in each of the three novels of this "trilogy") accentuate.  I want to re-read each volume before commenting more, but Tavares certainly has made a very positive impression on me.

Hungarian writer Lászlo Krasznahorkai's classic 1985 novel, Satantango, was finally published in English translation earlier this month.  This is an unsettling novel (I wish I could find a copy of the 6+ hour movie made from this 274 page book) in which the lines between reality and madness are blurred.  I may write a full, formal review of this later, but it will require a re-read first to make sure I understand more of what transpires over the final third of the novel.  Certainly one that I would recommend to readers who like psychological and/or weird fictions.

Still trying to process what I read yesterday, when I finished reading Saramago's "lost" first novel, Claraboia.  It was written over 50 years ago and was likely not published at first due to the political situation at the time (it is a very candid look at Portuguese life under the military dictatorship of the time).  I was very surprised to see just how different a conventional narrative structure (normal-length paragraphs and sentences) affected his thematic execution (the impact was not as strong as when he eschewed differentiating between direct and indirect speech in his 1980s-2010 writings).  Argentine writer César Aira's El congreso de literatura (available in English as The Literary Conference) is an odd, comic novel of a half-mad megalomaniac translator/writer (also named César) who dreams of conquering the world (after the aforementioned literary conference he is attending) with a clone army derived from his favorite writer, Carlos Fuentes.  Aira writes incisive tales in novella-length segments (this was 66 pages on my iPad) and here the result is something that works both as a comic work and as a serious look at literary influences.

There are others that I have read over the past week or two, but some will be covered later on other sites (I may write a formal review of Steven Millhauser's PEN/Faulkner-nominated collection, We Others, which is excellent, by the way) or I just don't have much to say about them other than most didn't suck squirrel nuts.  Although a few titles aren't yet available in English, I did try to note the ones that are available in it (plus a few are available in Portuguese, German, French, and other European languages), so hopefully a few of you may end up investigating some of the authors mentioned briefly here.

February 2012 Reads

I seem to be a bit more motivated than usual to post this, so here's what I read last month, less than 24 hours after said leap month ended.  33 books, a slight improvement over January, possibly due to reading while riding the exercise bike as I work to get myself back in the shape I was when I was 22-23, a long 15 years ago.  Only 3 of the 33 were re-reads, 11 were written solely by women (and in another, some female authors contributed), 3 were in Spanish and 2 in French, and in several, squirrels make an appearance.  And now, the list:

31  Forrest Gander, Core Samples from the World (reviewed on Gogol's Overcoat)

32  Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia (to be reviewed shortly on Gogol's Overcoat)

33  Saladin Ahmed, Throne of the Crescent Moon (reviewed here)

34  Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains (to be reviewed shortly on Gogol's Overcoat)

35  Soledad Puértolas, Una enfermedad moral (Spanish; very good)

36  William Faulkner, New Orleans Sketches (reviewed on Gogol's Overcoat)

37  William Faulkner, The Marble Faun and A Green Bough (poetry; to be reviewed later)

38  Jean Ray, Les Contes du Whisky (French; re-read; to be featured later on Weird Fiction Review)

39  Jean Ray, Malpertuis (French; re-read; to be discussed later on Weird Fiction Review)

40  Ian Cameron Esslemont, Orb, Sceptre, Throne (not as good as his previous two novels)

41  Elena Garro, La Casa junto al Río (Spanish; very good)

42  Eric Basso, The Beak Doctor (re-read; to be featured next week on Weird Fiction Review)

43  Teju Cole, Open City (to be reviewed this weekend or next week at Gogol's Overcoat)

44  Antonio Machado, Antonio Machado por niños (Spanish; poetry; very good)

45  Dubravka Ugrešić, Karaoke Culture (review in near future on Gogol's Overcoat)

46  Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (review in near future on Gogol's Overcoat)

47  William Faulkner, Novels 1930-1935 (omnibus of the novels reviewed on Gogol's Overcoat in January and February)

48  Jenny Boully, not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them (may write something here in a few weeks)

49  Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child (review next week on Gogol's Overcoat)

50  Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps:  Ellen Willis on Rock Music (review in near future on Gogol's Overcoat)

51  Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition:  Selected Essays and Reviews (review in near future on Gogol's Overcoat)

52  Cynthia Duncan, Unraveling the Real:  The Fantastic in Spanish-American Ficciones (might use this in a future column)

53  Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (review next week on Gogol's Overcoat)

54  David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?:  Translation and the Meaning of Everything (review in near future on Gogol's Overcoat)

55  Joseph O'Connor, Ghost Light (review in next 2-3 weeks on Gogol's Overcoat)

56  Zoran Živković, The Five Wonders of the Danube (hope to review this in the near future here)

57 Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table (review in next 2-3 weeks on Gogol's Overcoat)

58  Victor Pelevin, The Hall of the Singing Caryatids (good short novel)

59  Anita Desai, The Artist of Disappearance (review next month on Gogol's Overcoat)

60  Jamil Ahmad, The Wandering Falcon (review next month on Gogol's Overcoat)

61  Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake (review in 2-3 weeks on Gogol's Overcoat)

62  Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris N. Brown (eds.), Three Messages and a Warning:  Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (disappointing anthology)

63  Kyung-sook Shin, Please Look After Mom (review in next 2-3 weeks on Gogol's Overcoat)


Yes, more and more of the actual review content will be found on Gogol's Overcoat and, to a smaller degree, on Weird Fiction Review.  If you follow me for my reviews, I suggest bookmarking those sites and checking in 2-3 times a week.  Not much will be published here in 2012 in terms of reviews.

January 2012 reads

I am consciously trying not to read as much this year and while some might think the number of books belies that, it is down significantly compared to a year ago.  I am reviewing more, however, so it's not as if I have stopped talking about books as much as it is that I have a lot of other things to do besides reading these days.  Not happy about certain percentages here, but hopefully they'll balance out in the months to come.  Feel free to interpret this month's list as you may:

1.  Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (re-read; multi-book review later)

2.  E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread (discussed on Gogol's Overcoat)

3.  E.M. Forster, A Room with a View (see above)

4.  Pietro Aretino, Sonetti lussuriosi (Italian; poetry; XXX-rated discussion of lovemaking, including the poet's fondness for engaging in anal sex with women)


5.  Anthero Tarquinio de Quental, Os sonetos completos de Anthero de Quental (Portuguese; poetry; very good)

6.  Graham Greene, The Quiet American (re-read; multi-book review later)

7.  Augusto Monterroso, Cuentos (Spanish; re-read; short fiction; commentary on Weird Fiction Review)

8.  Herta Müller, Tot el que tinc, ho duc al damunt (Catalan translation; very good, but frustrated it wasn't available in English or even the original German for an affordable price)

9.  Sohrab Sepehri, Water's Footfall (bilingual English and Persian; poetry; outstanding)

10. Sully Prudhomme, Les vaines tendresses (French; poetry; dated but good)

11. Lawrence Durrell, Justine (multi-book review later)

12. Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar (see above)

13. Lawrence Durrell, Mountolive (see above)

14. Lawrence Durrell, Clea (see above)

15.  Forugh Farrokhzad, Remembering the Flight:  Twenty Poems by Forugh Farrokhzad (bilingual; poetry; exquisite)

16.  Maurice Maeterlinck, Death (essay; good)

17. Adonis, A Time Between Ashes and Roses (bilingual English and Arabic; poetry; stunning)

18. E.M. Forster, Howard's End (see above)

19. Various, The Upanishads (religious; made me reflect a bit - I don't comment on religious works as I do secular ones)

20. E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (see above)

21. Giosué Carducci, Rime Nuove (Italian; poetry; good but not great)

22. Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet (hope to review in near future)

23. Eric Basso, Accidental Monsters (re-read; poetry; column forthcoming on Weird Fiction Review)

24. Eric Basso, The Catwalk Watch (re-read; poetry; see above)

25. Eric Basso, The Smoking Mirror (re-read; poetry; see above)

26. Eric Basso, Catafalques (re-read; poetry; see above)

27. Eric Basso, Ghost Light (re-read; poetry; see above)

28. Eric Basso, Earthworks (re-read; poetry; see above)

29. Mercè Rodoreda, Death in Spring (re-read; column pending posting on Weird Fiction Review)

30. Mercè Rodoreda, Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda (re-read; short fiction; see above)

Titles that are on my e-book readers awaiting to be read in full

For those rare few that care to know what I have on Kindle for iPad and iBooks to read, here's the list of titles unread or partially read that I've purchased:

John Langan, House of Windows

Kelly Barnhill, The Mostly True Story of Jack

Benjamin Percy, Refresh, Refresh:  Stories

David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?:  Translation and the Meaning of Everything

Ellen Willis, et al., Out of the Vinyl Deep: Ellen Willis on Rock Music

Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition:  Selected Essays and Reviews

Alberto Moravia, Boredom

Yasunari Kawabata, The Old Capital

Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher

Imre Kertesz, Fatelessness

Maureen McHugh, After the Apocalypse

Ivan Bunin, The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories

Sigrid Undset, Jenny

Wladyslaw Reymont, Komediantka

Henryk Sienkiewicz, With Fire and Sword

Paul Heyse, Das Mädchen von Treppi

Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Der Pilger Kamanita

José Echegaray, O Locura o Santidad

Giosuè Carducci, Odi Barbare

Selma Lagerlöf, Jerusalem

Selma Lagerlöf, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

Carlo Ginzburg, Threads and Traces:  True False Fictive

José Maria Eça de Queirós, A Relíquia

José Maria Eça de Queirós, Contos
 
Luiz Vaz de Camões, Os Lusiadas

Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme conquistata


iBooks

Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstacy of Influence

Dubravka Ugrešić, Karaoke Culture

Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia

Teju Cole, Open City

Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

Grazia Deledda, Canne al vento

Isak Dinesan, Seven Gothic Tales

Isak Dinesan, Out of Africa

Jacinto Benavente, Los intereses creados

Vera Nazarian, Lords of Rainbow

Henrik Pontoppidan, The Apothecary's Daughters


Plenty of good reading ahead for me in addition to several print editions.  Which ones have you read/want to read and what did you think of them/want to know more about?

A nearly violence-free month of reading

A little over a month ago, I wrote a piece about what I saw as the problematic issue of graphic violence in certain fictions.  In it, I said this:

But despite the round-and-round nature of the often-derailed discussion, I think the core issue (or "core" to me at least, but then again, I was the one who initiated that discussion there) is the problematic issue of graphic violence in fiction.  I am not a pacifist; sometimes violence is a regrettably necessary last resort to aggressive violence.  But I have experienced enough over my professional career (which at times has involved me working directly with or teaching teens that have suffered emotional, physical, and mental traumas, including sexual abuse) to abhor graphic violence for the sake of "authenticity" in fiction (read "violence for violence's sake).

It is strange to read comments arguing that violence has to be included in order for something to be "real;" especially odd when the works in question are epic fantasies.  Yes, yes, I can hear almost the thoughts of those who are thinking, "Hey!  But if the setting is a violent world, shouldn't one reasonably expect there to be violence?"  This of course presumes that violence is somehow necessary in order for the story to be told, something that often is not the case (I doubt Patricia McKillip's The Riddle-Master trilogy would be improved with gore, explicit swearing, and a rape or three thrown in to show how "dark," "grim," and "gritty" the setting is).

But let's humor that train of thought that says in a violent world, violence must be shown.  How explicit should it be?  Should there be an unrelenting amount of violence described in detail, down to the downy ass hairs of those being raped in every possible orifice?  Most people would probably say no, that there are limits to the effectiveness of depicting such violent acts.  Yet "too much" is a blurred line. 

These are, of course, opinions I still hold over a month later.  Yet I thought it'd be interesting to look at what I've finished so far in January 2011 and what I am reading to see what acts of violence, if any, were depicted and the level of graphicness.  Here's what I noticed so far:

1.  Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory.  There is an intensity to this tale set in southern Mexico in the 1930s during a period of anti-clerical repression that makes this tale seem more violent than what is depicted (there are very few deaths and none that are shown "on screen" here), yet the action seems to benefit from this not being spelled out.

2.  William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying.  Family chronicle that is a memorable read, yet no acts of violence occur here.

3.  Zora Neale Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine.  Tale of an African-American minister in the early 20th century sinking under the weight of parishioner expectations and his infidelity.  No violence outside of spousal abuse very early in the novel, which the boy stops his mother's paramour from harming her.

4.  E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread.  Going to be writing about his works at length this month, so I'll content myself with noting no violence in this novel.

5.  E.M. Forster, A Room With a View.  See above.

6.  Pietro Aretino, Sonetti lussuriosi.  Renaissance sonnets devoted to lust, particularly the poet's preference to have anal sex with women.  No violence, however. (Italian)

7.  Anthero Tarquino de Quental, Os sonetos completos de Anthero de Quental.  More sonnets, but no anal sex depicted.  No violence, neither. (Portuguese)

8.  Graham Greene, The Quiet American.  Despite the backdrop of Vietnam in the mid-1950s as the French are pulling out and the Americans moving in, the tale has much more to do with intrigue, romantic and political alike, than anything truly violent.

9.  Augusto Monterroso, Cuentos.  His stories read more like fables.  Some acts of violence hinted at, but nothing described in detail. (Spanish)

10. Herta Müller, Tot el que tinc, ho duc al damunt.  Her 2009 novel about Romanian Germans being rounded up by the Soviets in the last year of the Soviet Union.  Devastating, with some acts of violence toward some of the characters, but nothing truly graphic. (read in Catalan translation, as it was the only one available in e-book form)

11.  Sohrab Sepehri, Water's Footfall.  Bilingual (Persian and English) mystic poem.  Nothing violent.

12.  Sully Prudhomme, Les vaines tendresses.  Late 19th century poetry.  No violence. (French)

13.  Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.  A few depictions of marital abuse, but nothing that is portrayed in explicit detail.

14.  Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandra Quartet.  Intrigue, but no real violence depicted.

15.  William Faulkner, Sanctuary.  The most violent story I've read this month.  A "fade to black" rape scene and a couple of murders that take place, with brief descriptions of the shootings.  Mob lynching at the end.

16.  Maurice Maeterlinck, Death.  Essay on death.   Nothing violent.

17.  Forugh Farrokhzad, Remembering the Flight:  Twenty Poems by Forugh Farrokhzad.  Passionate 20th century Persian poetry, in a bilingual edition.  No violence.

18.  Adonis, A Time Between Ashes and Roses.  Mid-to-late 20th century Arabic poetry published in a bilingual edition.  No violence outside of allusions to protests and wars.

19.  E.M. Forster, Howards End.  See above.

20.  Various, The Upanishads.  Ancient Hindu scriptures.  Not violent.

21.  E.M. Forster, A Passage to India.  See above.

22.  (In Progress)  Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet.  Children's words physically afflict parents, but nothing graphic about this.

23.  (In Progress) Tomas Tranströmer, The Great Enigma:  New Collected Poems.  It's poetry.  No violence.

24.  (In Progress) Giosuè Carducci, Rime Nuove.  Late 19th-early 20th century poetry.  No violence. (Italian)

These are mostly reads (with the exception of Faulkner and Hurston) that I only decided to read shortly before I finished reading them; no real premeditation on what I would read.  Seems I'm more in the mood for reading poetry, even odd, amorous poetry about the poet's love of anal sex, than I am about reading anything truly violent, at least in the sense of the action being described in detail.  Just thought that was an interesting sidenote to last month's discussion, so make of it what you will, I suppose.

2012 Plans

This year is likely going to see some experimentation.  I will be a regular over at Weird Fiction Review, contributing around two dozen commentaries on authors appearing in The Weird, starting with Augusto Monterroso in mid-January.  I also will be posting a lot of literary reviews and critical pieces at Gogol's Overcoat, likely starting this Friday (or next, if Paul is still working on the site) with regular Faulkner Fridays.

I do not plan on doing much speculative fiction reading/reviewing this year.  What I do will be posted here, outside of the previously-mentioned commitment to WFR, as the lit commentaries will be reserved for GO.  Posting may drop off some, as I will be writing 2-5 review pieces a week for several weeks at the other two places (and any print publications to which I may submit reviews).  I doubt I'll replicate 2011's 517 books read (I may be lucky if I pass 250, considering my current plans).  But I may have some fun, despite the possible curtailment of posting here.

One thing I'm toying with (don't know the location) is doing either a weekly or biweekly Monday feature on selected short fiction that I read from my subscriptions to The New Yorker, Conjunctions, and McSweeney's.  If I do this, it'll depend on my time and energy levels.

Also am considering dedicating the month of February to reading/commenting on the memoirs/writings of Grant, Sherman, Lincoln, and soldiers of the Civil War, as I've bought several Library of America editions of these works after some of us were talking about it on Twitter a couple of weeks ago.  If there's mutual interest, it could become a conversational series rather than strict reviews.  If this happens, it likely will be posted at GO instead of here (minus summary posts and links).

Could do a series later in the year on Nabokov, Twain, or others, but again, the location of those posts will be up in doubt.  There's a lot I want to do in 2012, but much of it may not happen here or will only be mirrored here after a delay.  But then again, plans do change and I could cover more speculative fiction than I currently envision.  However, chances are high that posting might become more infrequent in the coming months and that those who like what I do may have to follow a couple of sites to see me explore other facets of my reading/criticism.