When I returned to blogging last August, everyone was busy reviewing their books of summer and it looked like a lot of fun. So when I saw Annabel posted the buttons for the challenge today I felt very happy to be able to take part this time around. It landed at a good time, too. My mother’s funeral was on Monday and it all went off well but I’m sort of kicking around recovering and not getting on with much. So looking through my book piles was good entertainment. If I manage to read half of the books I’ve listed here, I’ll be content.
There are actually 21 books on this list but it’s the fault of WordPress’ picture gallery thingy which I find extremely difficult to manage. Three books in a row seemed to fit neatly and not come out too enormous. So, 21 it had to be.
Fiction
The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt. I love Hustvedt and will put this one towards an ongoing reading project on portrayals of meaningful rest in literature.
Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Condé. I’d like to have a mini Condé project, too, given that she died last year. I’ve read Moi, Tituba Sorcière a couple of times and would happily read it again, but I might supplement instead with Desirada. My French copy of this is full of underlinings and margin notes but I have no memory whatsoever of the book. Must have read it during the worst of CFS. Anyway, I’ve loved everything Condé has written and would like to think more deeply about her work.
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich. I’m intending to team this up with the Willa Cather for two perspectives on beloved priests nearing the end of their lives.
Absolution by Alice McDermott. I got this the moment it came out last year and still haven’t managed to listen to it. This is about American ex-pat wives in Vietnam during the war, revolving around the uncomfortable friendship between two women and the ambiguous nature of their savior complexes.
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout. This will be a restful slice of joy.
Interesting Women by Andrea Lee. I read hardly any short stories but these really caught my eye. A collection about women confronting ‘identity, love, deception and discovery’ I’m told.
Crime
Nightingale and Co by Charlotte Printz. And translated by our Marina Sofia. Carla has inherited the Nightingale Detective Agency which she runs from Berlin, and here we are in 1961 with two new cases for her to crack. This sounds a lot of fun.
Appointment with Yesterday by Celia Fremlin. I haven’t read Fremlin in years but I remember really enjoying her when I did.
Shot with Crimson by Nicola Upson. Probably my favorite crime fiction series at the moment, and this one concerns a murder mystery that takes place on the set of Hitchcock’s Rebecca.
Classics
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Extraordinarily, I haven’t read ever read this one. Given it’s her anniversary year, I really felt it was time.
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. I adore Cather and I have yet to read this, her masterpiece.
The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola. My least secure choice on the list. I would like to read it, but it might get swapped out for Chekhov’s short stories or Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a novel I first read as a teenager.
Essays
The Vast Extent by Lavinia Greenlaw. Loved her first book of essays and looking forward to this, in which she asks the question, ‘How do we make sense of what we see?’
On Women by Susan Sontag. Been years since I read any Sontag. I’d like to pair this with Nunez’s memoir of her.
Unfinished Business by Vivian Gornick. Another author I love but haven’t read in ages. This collection celebrates books that Gornick has returned to again and again.
Memoir
No Name in the Street by James Baldwin. I have several possible Baldwins to read, and I’d like to squeeze in Colm Toibin’s critical appreciation of him too, if I can.
Once Upon a Time in the East by Xiaolu Gu. I’ve just begun My Battle of Hastings, which turns out to be the third of a trilogy. I don’t particularly mind reading out of order, so will hope to get to this first volume over the summer.
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan. I love the slippery. complex nature of this piece of creative non-fiction, blending memoir and history and auto-fiction.
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. I didn’t manage to hear all of the abridged version on Radio 4, and then it came up as an Audible daily deal. It seems utterly charming.
The Last Supper by Rachel Cusk. I like Cusk’s nonfiction more than her fiction, and have been wanting to read this for several months now.
Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag by Sigrid Nunez. Nunez apparently began dating Sontag’s son, and then moved into their apartment with them. That sounds like a pretty cool basis for a memoir to me.
What will you be reading?
