Details

I picked up this book while I was reading Detransition, Baby as I felt I needed something to counter-balance it. In truth, I am not sure what I needed as I also started reading The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture... I felt hesitant of the Tractor book as I am always slightly suspicious of too many and too emphatic accolades but my doubts dispersed on page 2: ‘”Thirty-six. She’s thirty-six and I’m eighty-four. So what?” (He pronounces it ‘vat’.)’ The story of an aging father and a Visa-focused Ukrainian (or Russian, it remains unclear) divorced bombshell of a mother is humorous although I found it tragic at times as the father got physically attacked and abused. I had to distance myself from those events and remind myself that the story is a hyperbole in every sense and that is why his daughters stand on the sidelines watching...

Details

I became aware of the book through the Women’s prize for fiction longlist as it was hailed as the first-ever nominated book by a transgender author. Then it came back on my radar after the Wild Women Writing Club accused the prize of allowing a ‘male person’ to infiltrate it... I thought, wait a minute, I need to buy that book. It took a few weeks to arrive as many people shared the same thought – it was nice to find myself a part of a wider community.

I could not get my head around the plot as summed up in the various articles I read prior to opening the book and so I was intrigued to see whether I’d be, after all, able to grasp it. I blame the summaries as it makes perfect sense, even though, it is an exceptional story for someone who has been mainly surrounded by cis-gender people. It definitely exposed limitations of my knowledge and my experience. The story delves deep into the humanity, intricacies, challenges, struggles and victories of transgender people. The detail is rich, minute and generous – I felt like a guest invited to observe an intimate ritual with no holds barred.

Details

I have fallen in love with Marilynne Robinson through Gilead. The story and the writing just penetrated me and settled in my inner organs as some sort of a holy spirit. It felt like a balm enveloping me from the inside. Maybe Robinson would call this Grace, her omnipresent theme that every story and character is plunged in. My experience and reaction was such that I tried to save up the other books from this now tetralogy as I wanted to make sure I always have one available unread since I did not know whether any more would be forthcoming. And so it happened that I read Gilead and Home and had Lila on the shelf for years and then Jack came out...

Details

As a child, I was fascinated by the Greek mythology (the children’s version of it), I used to know all the stories by heart. After reading Irving Stone’s The Greek Treasure about Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of the actual city of Troy I wanted to be an archaeologist. Visiting Hisarlik is still on my list and I remember the dizzying feeling looking at the golden mask of Agamemnon in Athens’ museum gave me when I was 12 (although that was also partly due to the stifling heat of the place).

Details

It has been almost a month since I finished reading Shuggie Bain. I followed the last year’s Booker Prize Shortlist and attended a few online interviews and readings with the shortlisted authors. In the first wave I bought Brandon Taylor’s Real Life and enjoyed it, then followed Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body and Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King (both, as yet, unread). I hesitated with Shuggie and only decided to buy it after it had won. I did find the premise interesting but, for some reason, not interesting enough. So, when I started reading it and struggled to engage with the story I was not too surprised.

Eighty pages in and I was telling everyone that I do not see the point. And then it hit... I am not sure what exactly was the turning point, I would not say either Shuggie or Agnes are easy characters to warm up to – Agnes’ alcoholism introduces a Jekyll & Hyde dichotomy while the emphasis on Shuggie’s ‘otherness’ creates an intrinsic separation. At the same time, they share an inescapable likeness - the importance of appearances, insistence on dressing well, their protective aloofness and their painful looking after each other. They are cut out of the same cloth, they even share a self-harming urge to cajole Shug back or at least prevent him from cutting the ties completely.

Details

Two terrible realities of the western world recent histories yet each offering unexpected hope where one is unable to envisage one.

Came the Stranger is a study of human weakness and its distillation into hatred. It is set in Czechoslovakia a few years before the start of the World War II. Being born in Czechoslovakia and having the knowledge of the historical facts made me experience the novel as a heavy, dark and suffocating cloud hanging over the story and its protagonists. The impending dread is unavoidable and unstoppable and yet I wished for it to be dispelled, I wished for zur Mühlen to rewrite history.

 

Recommended

   

The Guardian: On the brink of a Booker: 2020's shortlisted authors on the stories behind their novels

As the winner of the Booker Prize 2020 is to be announced on Thursday 19 November, let us have a closer look at the finalists. I have only read one of the shortlisted books but I have another one waiting on my shelf and two more that I would like to purchase. Watching The Guardian Live Booker Prize shortlist readings (embedded in the article) I found myself quietly and distantly smiling throughout the evening spent with writers, yet again.

'It had been on my shelf for years': Guardian readers share their lockdown reads

Now that the weekly "Tips, Links and Suggestions" column has ended, I will keep looking for fellow-readers' recommendations as I often find them enticing. The first ones I came across were of the "classics" in multiple sense of the word.

"Tips, links and suggestions" by The Guardian readers, week of 26 October 2020

This was my favourite weekly column for inspiration about what to read next. I enjoy the mix of the latest bestsellers and obscure works from centuries ago, as well as, original comments by the readers.

Where to start if you want to get into black young adult fiction by Leah Cowan

I know very little, read nothing, about Young Adult fiction since I have been looking down on it for some reason. I think it is the genre name that confuses me. I have not been aware of it until I moved to the US four years ago and, thinking about it, I am sure it has its purpose but for me the only age division in books was children's and the rest. I am sure by now it is also being used on the Czech and Slovak book market but it was not something I came across growing up.

Thanks to Where to start if you want to get into black young adult fiction by Leah Cowan I will certainly be looking up some of the books mentioned. I believe the narratives of quest and overcoming obstacles might be just what we all need right now.

"Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing" Report

First, I came across an article in The Guardian: “'I stuck my foot in the door': what it is like to be black in UK publishing”  and that led me to the report on diversity in publishing called “Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing”

The report then made me wonder about the books by non-white authors I have read and whether and/or to what extent they are conforming to the white, middle-class readers’ supposed perception of what a non-white author should be writing about.

 

Bestsellers

 

UK

  1. Richard Osman: The Thursday Murder Club
  2. Joe Wicks: Joe’s Family Food
  3. E. L. James: Freed

Week ending 18 June (Direct from trade sales)

USA

  1. James Patterson, Bill Clinton: The President’s Daughter
  2. Elin Hildebrand: Golden Girl
  3. Dav Pilkey: Dog Man: Mothering Heights

Through 12 June (Publishers Weekly)

Ireland

  1. Trisha Lewis: Trisha’s 21-Day-Reset
  2. Sinéad O’Connor: Rememberings
  3. Jane Casey: The Killing Kind

Week ending 12 June (Based on Nielsen BookScan for Irish Consumer Market)

France

  1. Dubu Chugong: Solo leveling
  2. Zep: Titeuf; la grande aventure
  3. Riad Sattouf: Les cahiers d’esther; histoires de mes 15 ans

Week ending 13 June (Based on Edistat)

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