Documenting my reading journey. I love all things books and literature but especially translated fiction and classics. Any book recommendations please drop them my way!
I love The Lord of the Rings (and Tolkien's other works), it was the most influential book in my life - and I don't really like The Hobbit, either. I think it's an endearing, but ultimately pretty cringe attempt at writing for children by somebody who is clearly not familiar with that kind of register. 😅 I recently bought Raderzkymarsch on the recommendation of Austrian author Eva Menasse, whom I respect very much. Very curious about it, but seems like an autumn/winter book to me.
I read my first Doris Lessing in 2023, too (The Grass Is Singing), and it was one of my best books of the year, too. I wasn't particularly interested in The Golden Notbook before, but what you said about it sounded intriguing, so I just bought a used copy. 😀
@evastrange Ooh, I hope you enjoy it!! I really want to get to The Grass is Singing next, so very glad to hear good things- I'm hoping I will come across a nice secondhand copy in a used bookshop soon! 😁
Thanks for the mention! Don’t rush MD, you’ll appreciate the writing if you don’t feel pressured to finish the book! Also I added Sabbath’s Theater to the TBR, that looks really good 😊
oh LOVE that Well of Loneliness cover! I really didn't know what to expect from it but actually ended up loving it. Definitely is a bit sad but actually not as extreme as I'd thought!
@redheadreading I actually just started reading the Well of Loneliness and loving it so far- I thought I was in for a very traumatic time, so this is excellent news!! 😁
Thanks for the video! Just read Things Fall Apart, Achebe. + reading the Yeats poem alongside the novel. I really struggle with finishing books so glad to see your list of 28 haha
I re-read "If This is a Man" after watching the film The Zone of Interest. I'd read Amis' book years ago and didn't know about the film until recently. I don't remember if it was in If this is a Man or another one of his books where Levi talks about remembering a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film on his way to the concentration camp. Dante's The Divine Comedy was also ever present on his mind. A beautiful book.
@LibroParadiso-ep4zt I loved the Zone of Interest but didn't realise it was based on Amis's book until afterwards. Levi is an author that I want to read absolutely everything by. I've never quite made it to Dante, but I'll get there eventually I'm sure 😅
Very solid selection of books. I had also loved A Suitable Boy when I read it and recommend Seth's An Equal Music and Two Lives, out of his books. The latter is almost like a memoir of his uncle and aunt's lives written by him. And I hope Giovanni 's Room is still on your list, it is outstanding!
@georgiam4576 ooh, okay I will definitely check out Seth's other books. Yes, Giovanni's Room is still very much on my list. Just need to make a point of actually getting to it 😁
@pocketfullofponder yes, such an amazing book! I will make an honourable mentions video soon- was so hard to narrow my list down and feels unfair to some of the books I missed out 😅
@Slothreadersclub Thanks! Alba de Cespedes has been on my radar for a while, but I've never quite got round to her! Do you think Forbidden Notebook is the best place to start? 😊
I hope you enjoy Glorious Exploits when you get to it. I think it’s quite a special book! I’ve thought about it ever since. Thanks for the shout out. Was lovely catching up with the highs and lows of your reading year so far.
That was a very interesting video and made me rethink some of my own reading in terms of series. Like you, I'm not enamoured with the Lucy Barton series (other than the first, I also read Oh, William, which was better) but really recommend Strout's Olive Kitteridge and Olive, again, both of which are written as interconnected short stories (and I don't love short stories). I hope you feel better soon, I'm a new subscriber and really enjoy your content.
Actually really enjoyed hearing you talk about these series! I don’t have a lot of friends who read things other than fantasy/romance/sci-fi so I don’t get a lot of recommendations outside of these genres
I keep seeing copies of the recent Halldor Laxness reisues in book shops and I'm always draw to how beautiful and different the covers are, but when I read the descriptions they never quite appeal to me. I really enjoyed your thoughts on Rachel Cusk. I bought her book Second Place last year but I haven't read it yet (it kept getting bumped down my TBR until I kind of forgot I had it.) If you ever record a full review of Second Place I'd love to see it. Once again an excellent video and a really interesting selection of books. This is an amazing volume of reading to get through in a single month! 😁
@ATPennington ha ha, yes I've had quite the prolific reading month! Would definitely recommend Second Place- I'll try and share my full thoughts at some point 🙈 Laxness's writing style just didn't gel for me but I really want to like him so will perhaps pick up another book by him in the future!
I have a complicated relationship with Jamaica Kincaid as a reader. I recently met her and it didn't change my opinion much -- based on the reviews that I have heard, it seems like her fiction might be more enjoyable than her nonfiction. ("Among Flowers" is my least favorite book of the year and one of my most hated books, ever.)
@mildrumpus oh no, that's a shame! I've not heard great things about Among the Flowers, so will definitely avoid that one 😅 Having only read one book by her, I'm not sure where the best place to start is. Lucy is very short, so may be a good introduction to her fiction 🤞
Have Martyr on my TBR so it was really good to get your thoughts. I read The Trees back in May. I really enjoyed it as well but felt that the last 10% probably let it down. I’ve just read Sylvia Plath for the first time, I read The Bell Jar in June and really enjoyed it. I’m not usually much of a poetry reader but I might pick those poems up 😁
@TheBookThing I hope you enjoy Martyr! It was a really interesting read and I've not read anything really touching on those themes before. Yeah, I think Plath is quite an accessible poet if you don't read much poetry like me! There's also loads of analysis of her work online, so I looked up some of these poems to get a bit more context.
Hi Sarah! Great to meet you 😊 I am in the same boat, not many of those around me love to read quite as much as me so it’s a tricky one. I am also new to booktube. Can’t wait to see more of your content 😊
Great video! That Penguin edition of Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter looks amazing. I'd have bought that if I saw. Love the cover. So many books to look out for here. 😊
Good day from Texas. Conversations in the Cathedral is an early Llosa novel and one of his most challenging due to the use of time in the narrative. Llosa is one of the last living writers of that great generation which included Garcia Marquez, Jose Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, and so many other Latin American authors. Llosa as a youth was deeply affected by French writers like Alexander Dumas and Gustave Flaubert. He wanted to be a writer early one but his father thinking nothing good would come of it sent him to military school to "clean up" those ideas. It had the reverse affect leading Llosa to write his first novel, The Time of the Hero, based on his terrible experience there. The rest is literary history. In the 90's Carlos Fuentes, one of my favorite authors, wrote "The Buried Mirror" to correspond with a documentary that aired on public television here. It's a broad history of Europe and particularly Spain's influence on Mexico and South America. What Fuentes is so good at doing is his ability to understand and discuss the old and new world in an engaging manner, giving perspective to the complexities inherent in each. Recommend it.
@LibroParadiso-ep4zt that's really interesting background information. Thanks for sharing! I may try some of Llosa's later works then. And you've definitely sold me on Carlos Fuentes- he sounds like a really interesting author so will try out some of his stuff!
@@Sarahsreadingjournal There are many English language interviews with Fuentes (and Lllosa) on youtube. His more famous books are "The Death of Artemio Cruz" and the novella "Aura." The latter is a good place to begin, I think. His literary essays are illuminating, too. He was good friends with Milan Kundera, William Styron, and many film celebrities. He had residences around the world, including one in London. He had a brief and tempestuous affair with American actress Jane Seberg made famous in Godard's "Breathless." Fuentes wrote a fictional account of their relationship in "Diana, the Goddess who Hunts Alone." Fuentes introduced me to many authors who remain favorites to this day like Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo, Juan Goytisolo, and Julio Cortazar.
@@Sarahsreadingjournal I found the first episode of The Buried Mirror on youtube, if you are interested. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tQP0P95MfqU.html
@LibroParadiso-ep4zt oh cool, thanks for the recommendations! Will definitely check him out. I own a couple of Julio Cortazar books, so will get to him shortly 🤞
@@Sarahsreadingjournal Julio Cortazar is fantastic. His stories are uncanny and sinister at times. In time I'll make a video about his work. He translated Poe's work. I have one volume only, the other has proven elusive.
I liked seeing your book choices. But the massive difference in the low volume of your speaking sections and then the loud volume of your B-roll background music bits made this video kind of uncomfortable to listen to.
I feel so hard the feeling of liking reading about stuff like existentialism and the actual people involved, but not enjoying reading some of their actual work 😆 I get that a lot with modernism too! I accidentally started reading Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's memoirs with In The House of the Interpreter so this is a great reminder that I need to get my hands on the first one and carry on 😅
Yeah, I guess existentialism's not meant to be fun to read but I found Nausea so bleak 😅 Totally agree with modernism too. I would definitely recommend going back and reading the first in Thiongo's memoir series. I preferred it to In the House of the Interpreter. I'm so bad for reading the first book in the series and then completely forgetting about it ha ha!
Never feel guilty buying books ;-) I WISH we had more secondhand bookstores here. The ones we have only have books in Danish and I prefer reading books in english 🤷♂ Thank you for sharing your bookhaul.
Ah, that's a shame. I am very lucky to live close-ish to good secondhand bookshops! I'm trying to buy a manageable number of books so that I actually read them- it's a tricky balance!! 😅
I havn't read any of those Penguin collections, but I do have a few short story collections from countries I havn't read from yet. (that I'm aware of) -Red Wolf Red Wolf by W.P. Kinsella (Yigoslavia) -Flights by Olga Tokarczak (Poland) -Yolk by Josip Novkovich (Croatia)
I'm I the only one getting a mirror image? I'm guessing not, but no one else is commenting, and it seems it would be any easy fix. It's off-putting to struggle to read the title of books, as sometimes I don't quite catch the audible.
Great TBR. I read The Trees last month and really enjoyed it. I’m going to commit sacrilege now. The Hobbit is just ok. It’s phenomenally important from the perspective of the history of the genre, Tolkien basically kicked off the fantasy genre with this book (him and CS Lewis). But the affection for it is based on its importance to the genre and a lot of nostalgia. I kinda think that if you didn’t read it in your formative years it’s not going to blow your mind now. You’ll probably like it. But it’s not life changing. Unless you’re nine and you just look more mature for your age. And if that is the case you probably should ask your parents before you read The Trees. 😂
Glad to hear good things about The Trees! That's good to know about The Hobbit- will see how I get on. I'm a bit sad that I didn't read more of the classic fantasy books when I was younger. I feel like the magic may be lost on me as an adult!
@@Sarahsreadingjournal not necessarily, I came to fantasy late and have really enjoyed a lot without the nostalgia. If you don’t mind being frustrated by an unfinished trilogy, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is fantastic. My brother and I even recommended it to my dad who hasn’t read any fantasy since begrudgingly reading the Chronicles of Narnia to us when we were young, and even he enjoyed it.
obviously, i love seeing lispector on this list :) be warned that near to the wild is still not super super straightforward, but it is more linear. i'll be curious to see if you get on with it! this is a great list!
It's so refreshing to find a mix of genres on the bookish corner of RU-vid! I hardly ever comment but I had to say I've subscribed and followed on Storygraph as your reading taste seems very similar to mine :)
Wonderful idea for a video. I enjoy reading seasonally, and your recommendations sound delightful. I confess I’ve never read Jane Austen, but I’m planning to read her 6 major novels this year-what reading order do you recommend?
Well done with the DNF's! I have a strong personal rule about not finishing books I don't like. So many people feel forced to finish the books they start.
Welcome to booktube! Glad to see you here. You mention japanese litterature. Do you have any recommendations there? If you want a good, and easy-to-get-into fantasy book, i would suggest Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson. It's a light-hearted romp about a girl who falls in love with a boy, and he then gets kidnapped, and she decides to go and save him :-) It's really fun and imaginative.
That sounds interesting! I've never read any Brandon Sanderson, but I've heard good things. If you're looking for more classic Japanese authors I would recommend Junichiro Tanizaki (I really loved the Makioka Sisters), Yuko Tsushima or Kenzaburo Oe
