What I read in May
My plan to write here often has, not unexpectedly, failed. I can believably blame for this my two week trip to Uruguay and so I will. To get back into it, here's a list of what I've read last month:
Another Day of Life by Ryszard Kapuściński, a Polish correspondent in Angola during the civil war in 1975. This was an enjoyable if demanding book and I'm glad I have a bunch more book to read by him. I got a nice omnibus edition by Spanish publisher Anagrama.
Zealot by Reza Aslan. I don't really know what compelled me to read this. I found it in the flea market at Boxhagener Platz and got it on a whim, as, despite my (healthy, I think) distrust of talk-show bestselling star authors, I do have a thing for books about the roots of Christianity, and particularly about its original cast of characters. This book is fine, if you have read nothing about this before. It does a bizarre thing, though: it has a bunch of notes at the end, but they are not referenced at all in the text. So I ended up reading the notes at the end as a schizophrenic little chapter of disconnected ideas one after the other.
Life With a Star by Jiří Weil. My main mission this time around in Uruguay was to sort the boxes upon boxes of books my father is keeping for me in his house (read: either take them back with me or get rid of them). I couldn't realistically bring all the books back with me in a 23 kilogram suitcase, so I had to pick; during the picking and sorting I found this one, which I owned but hadn't read, and read it during the first few days of my stay. I really liked it. Another beautiful edition, this time from Impedimenta, expert in making beautiful books.
Dorayaki by Durian Sukegawa. Impulse buy, because I wanted to get a book published by Chai Editora. They also look great and I have a thing for this kind of regular, systemic cover design. This particular book was probably the last one to arrive so they had it on display. I didn't really enjoy it, and I knew I wouldn't. I don't really care for Japanese simple-sentence magical-realism.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I found this one abandoned in Madrid-Barajas at the beginning of a 7 hour layover, so I took it and read it. For all my anti-americanness I do have an incurable thing for campus novels, and the beginning of this one really scratched the itch. Too bad it's 300 pages more than it needs to be, too attached to its characters to end it in one of the five, six, seven good opportunities to do so. Fun plane book, that I will give it.
The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin. Le Guin is really one of the best to ever do it. This short novel is not one of her best but even then it's well written and enjoyable. I keep coming back to her because I like Science Fiction and it's very hard to find Science Fiction that is both interesting and well written. Thankfully I haven't yet read everything she put out. I save them for when I try to read newer sci-fi and desperately need a palate cleanser.
For many years now I've been using Goodreads to keep track of these things, but it's clearly time to move on. I see some people recommend Storygraph so maybe I'll try it, although I immediately distrust the vibe when I see books "tagged" with a million little tiktok epithets. What is a "medium paced" book? Stop this nonsense!
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