Reading Envy 245: Looking Back at the Russian Novel

At the end of March, a handful of us gathered to discuss what we had read for the Russian novel quarter of Reading Envy Russia. We also discuss the works we abandoned, some dips into Ukrainian literature, and talked more about what makes a novel quintessentially Russian. Thanks to all who joined in during this chat, in Goodreads, and in social media!

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Reading Envy 245: Looking Back at the Russian Novel 

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Books discussed:

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them by Elif Batuman
The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, translated by Paul Foote
The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin, translated by Lisa C. Hayden
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva, translated by Carol Apollonio
The Hall of the Singing Caryatids by Victor Pelevin, translated by Andrew Bromfield
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, translated by Lisa C. Hayden
I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart
Brisbane by Eugene Vodolazkin, translated by Marian Schwarz
The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets, translated by Eugene Ostahevsky
Life Went on Anyway: Stories by Oleg Sentsov, translated by Uilleam Blacker


Other mentions:

Ted Chiang
Ken Liu
Hanya Yanagihara
"Men Who Explain Lolita to Me" by Rebecca Solnit on LitHub
"Dead Soul" by Masha Gessen in Vanity Fair
St. Michael's bells ringing in 2013

Related episodes:

Episode 237 - Reading Goals 2022
Episode 241 - Feral Pigeons with Laurie
Episode 243 - Russian Novel Speed Date 

Stalk us online:

Reading Envy Readers on Goodreads (home of Reading Envy Russia)
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. You can see the full collection for Reading Envy Russia 2022 on Bookshop.org.

Review: Voices in the Evening

Voices in the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg, translated by D.M, Low
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those novels where you have to get into the routine of it, to read between the lines, to really understand everything going on. It takes place in a small Italian town after World War II, with everyone dealing with losing family members, wondering who to trust, and still needing to move forward. I liked the examination of happiness in relationships vs societal expectations as well. Ginzburg comes from an Italian Jewish family and her husband was tortured to death by Nazis before the end of the war, so surely those experiences were formative to this post-war novel, even though it's not about those events per se.

This came in from my New Directions Classics Club subscription, but I picked it off my shelf to read for Western Europe and the Read the World 21 challenge in Instagram.

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 228: Full of Secrets with Audrey Morris

Audrey Morris, one of the people I chat with most in Instagram about books and baking, joins me to talk books. She also shares about some award lists that have her looking forward to the next few months.

Download or listen via this link:
Reading Envy 228: Full of Secrets

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Books discussed:

 

 

Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska, translated by Christina E. Kramer
In the Lateness of the World by Carolyn Forché
The Woman from Uruguay by Pedro Mairal, translated by Jennifer Croft
That Time of Year by Marie Ndiaye, translated by Jordan Stump

Other mentions:

Barkskins by Annie Proulx
Readalong information
The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Wretchedness by Andrzej Tichy
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Dishoom by Shamil Thakrar
The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West
In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova
Consent by Annabel Lyon
Summer Brother by Jaap Robben
Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastasic
What You Have Heard is True by Carolyn Forché
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal
Census by Jesse Ball
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Varghese
Beyond Babylon by Igiaba Scego
Adua by Igiaba Scego
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Sorrow by Claribel Alegria
Homesick by Jennifer Croft
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Related episodes: 

Episode 088 - Author Head Space with Sara Moore
Episode 112 - Reset Button with Eleanor Thoele
Episode 195 - Muchness with Nadine
Episode 207 - Innocent and Ruthless with Tricia Deegan
Episode 212 - Subtly Fascinating with Vinny

Stalk me online:

Audrey is @dreesreads on Instagram
Audrey at Goodreads
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy


All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. I link to Amazon when a book is not listed with Bookshop.

Review: An Inventory of Losses

An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Knowing what to say about this book will be a struggle. It is long listed for the Booker International Prize, which was confusing at first as I thought it was non-fiction. The author takes a list of places or things that are lost to us, researches it, and writes a one sentence overview followed by a fictional account that pulls the reader inside the place or time. (In the book, the sections are divided by black paper, and the preceding black page has an image also in black that hints of the content to come. The author is known for her book design, so this is one to look at in print. You may also know her, as I did, from Atlas of Remote Islands.)

I found myself drifting off, skimming. The topics were not always the most interesting, and to me the fictionalization (which might have a more proper term) was indulgent. Dree-in-Goodreads and I discussed how the style would shift - her fiction uses too many adjectives and is unnecessarily verbose, while when she is writing in a non-fiction style, it is clean and more direct. Is this a side effect of the language of German, or does this reflect a shift she intended? I was deeply invested in her preamble, where she discussed the long list of things that were lost in various ways while she wrote this book. It went downhill from there, with brief peaks of interest for the religious texts of Mani and the Palace of the Republic, both of which I was interested in from a topical standpoint, although the "story" in the Mani section was not very successful. It just took me back to the year I was obsessed with Gnosticism.

The book is an odd bird. It seems more suited to something like the Goldsmiths Prize, which is all about experimental literature. It did not carry the heft of a novel, nor was it intended to, and this puts it in strange company for the Booker International Prize.

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 218: Reading Gaps with Kendra

Jenny and Kendra catch up on books they've read and liked recently. Kendra also shares how the Reading Women Podcast has changed in the last two years, what her Read Appalachia project is all about, and how she organizes her books (it's unusual!)

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 218: Reading Gaps

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Books discussed: 

 

Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani
Gilgamesh by Joan London
F*ckface: And Other Stories by Leah Hampton
We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day by Ivana Bodrozic, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac
Even as we Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

Other mentions:

Read Appalachia
The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels
Southernmost by Silas House
"Dear America" books
The Stella Prize
Tracker by Alexis Wright (link goes to Google since Bookshop didn't have it yet)
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
"Lost in a (Mis)Gendered Appalachia" by Leah Hampton, in Guernica
The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanet Khan
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
National Gingerbread House Competition at the Omni Grove Park Inn
University of Kentucky - Fireside Industries
Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky Poet Laureate
Randall Kenan
The International Booker Prize
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison
Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets edited by Bianca Lynne Spriggs et al
An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky, translated by Jackie Smith

Related episodes:

Episode 102 - The Reading Women Reading Envy Crossover Episode
Episode 195 - Muchness with Nadine
Episode 199 - Awkward Melancholy with Karen
Episode 212 - Subtly Fascinating with Vinny
Episode 213 - Funicular Reads with Bianca

Stalk us online:

Reading Women Podcast
Kendra on Instagram,  Twitter, Goodreads, and YouTube
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. I link to Amazon when a book is not listed with Bookshop.

Review: My Heart

My Heart by Semezdin Mehmedinović
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My Heart is a work of autobiographical fiction told in three sections - one about his heart attack, one in the form of an illustrated travel diary to his son, and one to his wife as she battles an illness. Themes include aging, PTSD from living through the siege in Sarajevo, displacement, memory, etc. It reminds me most of To Be a Man by Nicole Kraus and the Deborah Levy/ Rachel Cusk style of writing, and yes it's interesting to me that the authors he reminds me of are all female.

This is my first experience with this author but I understand him to be well loved across the former Yugoslavia. I will count the book for Bosnia in my Europe2021 project although all of it takes place after and away from there. It has clearly had an impact on all of them, especially in his son, who seems to have blocked memories of the war - "When I remind you of an event from the war, your memory becomes unreliable and vague. You suppress the war into oblivion."

"Books are lonelier than people."

There is a random section about the makadam (in his language), then he riffs on John Loudon McAdam, who just happens to be one of my ancestors, somewhat bizarre to encounter him here.

"Over the course of the last twenty years that I've lived here [in the USA], I've been able to monitor the way America has been closing up, screening itself from the outside world. It used not to be like this. When people heard a foreign language on the subway, at the airport, or like this, in a restaurant, it would arouse their curiosity, not aversion, certainly not fear. Twenty years is a long time, people pass on and worlds change. Foreigners are no longer welcome here."

This has recently been translated into English by Celia Hawkesworth and came out from Catapult on Tuesday, March 9th; the publisher was lovely to send me the book for my perusal.

View all my reviews

Review: Earthlings

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read the last ten percent of this book with my hands over my eyes - it just gets weirder and weirder. It starts with a 9 year old girl who is berated by her family, assaulted by a teacher, and she seeks comfort with her cousin, believing they are probably both aliens. As an adult she finds a spouse who will commit to an unusual relationship but things come to a head when the families start insisting they comply with social expectations.

The author is intentional about subverting expectations for women, in her own life and in her writing.

Translated into English by Ginny Tapley Takemori, I read this because it is on the Tournament of Books long but not shortlist, and counts for January in Japan.

View all my reviews

Review: Untold Night and Day

Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Just finish it," I chided myself. "It's only 160 pages, come on!" And thus I persisted.

Halfway through, last night, I drifted off into upright couch sitting deep sleep, where I had four intense nightmarish dreams in a row, and apparently moaned throughout (not in a good way.)

And I DO blame this book, which I can't make any sense of. I can't tell what's real or what's not. I can't understand how what seems imagined or historical in one scene is real in another. I don't understand how the characters seem to switch places and identities and also move between real and imagined (they also seem lost and confused.) I don't understand what is meant to be a deep connection to The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, a short novel of similar tone I read earlier this year and also didn't understand.

The translator Deborah Smith has obviously gone deep with this author and this feverish style; apparently the author is considered an outsider in Korean lit as well. I might point you first to her translator note, which is the last few pages, before reading the novel. I give the translation efforts 5 stars.

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 207: Innocent and Ruthless with Tricia Deegan

Jenny records across the sea to talk to artist and English teacher Tricia Deegan. If you hear any words that seem stretched out, blame the internet under the ocean! I did what I could in the editing but there are a few unavoidable blips. Nothing too bad, so please enjoy this new guest to the show.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 207: Innocent and Ruthless

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Books discussed:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Farewell, Ghosts by Nadia Terranova; translated by Ann Goldstein
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
Travels with a Tangerine by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Other mentions:

Leila Slimani
Maupassant
Delpine De Vigan
The Years by Annie Ernaux
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Elena Ferrante
Grimm's Fairy Tales
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Darwin
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (William Blake)
The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
Native Son by Richard Wright
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Becoming by Michelle Obama
These Truths by Jill LePore
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi
Stamped! Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X Kendi and Jason Reynolds
A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
Kim JiYoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, translated by Jamie Chang
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab

Related episodes:

Episode 071 - Bad Priest, Good Priest, No Priest with Scott
Episode 098 - Just a Bunch of Stuff that Happened with Bryan Bibb

Stalk us online:

Tricia is @trishadeegan on Instagram
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors.

Review: Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ever since The Vegetarian became a massive hit (for good reason,) I have read a string of novels by female writers from Korea translated into English that capture elements of the lived experience of women navigating a society that is still very male-centric. Sometimes they do this through fantasy and the weird, or in this case, with documented research accompanied by endnotes for each chapter.

The sources include data points of sexism in the workplace, of female-exclusive hiring practices, pay disparities and more, like this:

"In 2014... one in five married women in Korea quit their job because of marriage, pregnancy, childbirth and childcare, or the education of their young children."

This seems didactic, no? Until you read the article on the BBC website about the outcry to the book (and movie made from it) since the book was published in Korea in 2016. It is accused of being "highly subjective" and making "sexist generalisations against men." The author's use of facts to back up her everywoman's story provides its own defense. And maybe she felt it would have more staying power in fictionalized form (certainly it was read by many people and became a best seller) - still for my own personal tastes, this is another example of characters and plot employed solely to teach or convince the reader something, and I was left wanting more (while still supporting the ideas.)

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 199: Awkward Melacholy with Karen

Karen returns to chat books, and we talk about how we met the Reading Envy Summer Reading challenge, the awkward melancholy of books we are drawn to in dark times, and the translated standalone graphic memoirs that seem to call to each of us.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 199: Awkward Melancholy

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New! Listen through Google Podcasts


Books discussed:

     

Broken Harbour by Tana French
Transit by Rachel Cusk
5,000 Kilometers Per Second by Manuele Flor
Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life by Ulli Lust, translated by Kim Thompson
Luisa: Now & Then by Carole Maurel
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison

Other mentions:

Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French
Outline series by Rachel Cusk
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Last Policeman trilogy by Ben H. Winters
Broadchurch (tv show)
Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
Fantagraphics in Hoopla
Shine, Pamela! Shine! by Kate Atkinson
Just Like You by Nick Hornby
The Searcher by Tana French
The Survivors by Jane Harper
Siete Casas Vacias by Samantha Schweblin
Little Eyes by Samantha Schweblin
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
The Margot Affair by Sanaë Lemoine
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

 
Related episodes:

Episode 004 - Home, Frightening and Banned with guest Karen Acosta
Episode 015 - The Time for Exclaiming Over Costumes with Jean and Karen
Episode 051 - Dreaming in Books with Karen Acosta
Episode 066 - When Time Stops with Karen Acosta
Episode 101 - A Different Kind of Time Travel with Karen Acosta
Episode 114 - Raised by Wolves with Karen Acosta
Episode 146 - Complicated, Crazy, and Loud with Karen  
Episode 151 - The Stories They Tell with Karen
Episode 161 - Women in Translation Month Recommendations with Lauren
Episode 166 - On Brand with Karen
 

Stalk us online:
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

Books Read August 2020: 194-228

 August was a busy reading month, especially because of Women in Translation Month (originally created by Meytal Radzinski.) I'll probably post separately about the reads I did for that month as I find myself reading *just a few more* in September. Not only did I read a heck of a lot of women in translation, one of my favorite novelists came out with a new book this month too. And my reading class had a book club. And my book club had a book club. Lots to read.

Here are my five-star reads for the month:

 

194. A Small Key Can Open a Large Door by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
195. Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (library eBook; my review)
196. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
197. Fair Play by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (library eBook; my review)
198. Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
199. Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (review copy; my review)
200. Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Kindle eBook; my review)
201. What's Left of Me is Yours by  Stephanie Scott ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from Edelweiss; my review)
202. Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett; narrated by Jamye Meri Grant ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Hoopla audiobook; my review)
203. The Memory Police by  Yoko Ogawa; translated by Stephen Snyder ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (library eBook; my review)
204. Hold Me Tight by  Jason Schneiderman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher; my review)
205. Junebat by John Elizabeth Stintzi ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher; my review)
206. What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (physical galley from publisher; my review)
207. Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher; my review)
208. How to Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) by Barbara Kingsolver ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from NetGalley; my review)
209. Clea by Lawrence Durrell ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
210. The Fixed Stars by  Molly Wizenberg, narrated by Erin Mallon ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Hoopla audiobook; my review)
211. The Piano Student by  Lea Singer, translated by Elisabeth Lauffer ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher in Edelweiss; my review)
212. The Switch by Beth O'Leary ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher in Edelweiss; my review)
213. Chef by Jaspreet Singh ⭐️⭐️⭐️  (personal copy; my review)
214. Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami; translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
215. Grown Ups by Emma Jane Unsworth ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher in NetGalley; my review)
216. Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life by Ulli Lust; translated by Kim Thompson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Hoopla eBook; my review)
217. The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld; translated by Michele Hutchison ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher; my review)
218. Transit by Rachel Cusk ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
219. Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher in NetGalley; my review)
220. The Inheritance by Sahar Khalifeh; translated by Aida Bamia ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
221. Swimmers in Winter by Faye Guenther ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (print galley from publisher; my review)
222. Home by Various, translated by Various ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
223. Exquisite Mariposa by Fiona Alison Duncan; narrated by Natasha Soudek ⭐️⭐️ (Hoopla audiobook; my review)
224. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (library eBook; my review)
225. A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
226. Sex and Lies by Leila Slimani; translated by Sophie Lewis ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher; my review)
227. Spellbound by Bishakh Kumar Som ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️  (eARC from publisher; my review)
228. The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke, translated by Jamie Bulloch ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy Kindle eBook; my review)

Books Read: 35

5-star reads:13

Audiobook:3

eBook:17

Print:15

Library: 7

Personal: 11 (subscription: 1)

Review:17

Comics: 2

Memoir: 4

Non-fiction: 5

Poetry: 4

Sci-fi/fantasy: 3

Translated:11

Around the World: 18

Booker or International Booker: 3

Middle East 2020: 5

Read the World:1

Sword and Laser: 1

Tournament of Books: 1

Women in Translation Month: 1 at very end of July, 8.5 in August

Review: Breasts and Eggs

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, published in Japan in 2008 and published translated into English in May 2020, is a good reminder of the danger of a single story. A profile of the article in The Guardian five days ago quotes the author as saying, "Japan’s literary universe is still odd, cute and a bit mysterious...But we’re not like that at all. I don’t want to write books that perpetuate that image. I want to write about real people.”

The real people in this book are women - single women - dealing with the realities of a society that is so often blind to what it takes to survive on your own, particularly as you age. As you might imagine from the title, the female body, childbirth, motherhood, and mother-daughter relationships are all major themes. Their lives aren't quirky or flashy, just normal working lives.

The author comes from this kind of background. The other element I'm interested in from my reading is the Osaka dialect which she tried to communicate in writing (which is difficult in logographic kanji, hopefully I'm referring to it properly.) The translators have written about this challenge and my book club should have fun discussing it tomorrow, but I think it comes across best when the characters have been drinking.

This is another book for Women in Translation Month and I think the translation is thoughtful, however I found it ironic that both translators would be male for this very female-centric book. It makes me wonder if there is anything they missed - the author feels it is problematic when men impose legislation without including women without being able to share their experiences - in the same vein why not use a female translator? That really stood out.

I feel I enjoyed reading about and around this book more than the book itself, but I can see what she is trying to do and look forward to what she does next.

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 198: Mood Reading with Robin Gustafson

Jenny hosts a new guest in the Reading Envy Pub and we chat mood reading, new releases, the line between gothic and horror, and more. Robin talks about a book club she's been in that's older than a typical college student, and because we are both academic librarians facing reopening in a pandemic, we talk a little baseball. If you aren't interested or just can't with COVID-19 in your podcasts, skip from 2:15-7:00.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 198: Mood Reading

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
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New! Listen through Google Podcasts


Books discussed:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Fair Play by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adriane Tomine
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri

Other mentions:

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck
The Book Cougars
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Beverly Cleary
Judy Blume
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
Mexican Gothic playlist
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
The Fire Never Goes Out by Noelle Stevenson
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life by Ulli Lust
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
El Deafo by Cece Bell
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Slade House by David Mitchell
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
City of Thorns by Ben Rawlence
Video of Klovharun
TOVE (film trailer, 2020)
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Letters from Tove by Tove Jansson
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels
The Mussel Feast by Brigit Vanderbeke
Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash

 
Related episodes:

Episode 185 - The Loyal Swineherd (Odyssey readalong)
Episode 194 - Squirreling Books Away with Andrew
Episode 197 - Surly Magnificence with Lauren
 

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Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy