Tuesday, January 9, 2024

The Books Listed in Granta - Purely for Plec

 Hotel Splendid - Marie Redonnet

The Golden Fruits - Nathalie Sarruate

A Lover’s Discourse - Roland Barthe

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning - René Girard

Plus two Czech books. Untranslated.

Veronika Korjagina’s  -  Nepřišel čas (The Time Hasn’t Come) made a huge impression on me, as did Marek Torčík’s - Rozložíš paměť (Memory Burn),

“I hope they get translated someday.”

Green Equinox - Elizabeth Mavor

Prophet - Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché

Wish I Was Here - M. John Harrison

Thunderstone - Nancy Campbell

My Child, The Algorithm – Hannah Silva

Songs for Olympia - Tomoé Hill (which sounds like pretentious wank so I will probably like it.)

Fabulae: How it Begins – Isabella Streffen

The Jay, the Beech, the Limpetshell: Finding Wild Things With My Kids – Richard Smyth (I hate this just for its twee title. I’m sure it is fine but…)

Cannery Row, John Steinbeck

Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry

Strangers at the Port, Lauren Aimee Curtis

Bad Diaspora Poems, Momtaza Mehri – One I’ve actually read. It’s very good.

Cousins, Aurora Venturini – translated by Kit Maude

Bright Lights, Big City – Jay McInerney

The Notebook - Ágota Kristóf

The Illiterate - Ágota Kristóf  - translated by Nina Bogin

A Month in Siena – Hisham Matar

The Memoir – Hisham Matar

Tenderness – Alison Macleod

Keat’s Odes - Anahid Nersessian

PWA: Looking AIDS in the Face, Oscar Moore

This Ragged Grace – Octavia Moore

Penance – Eliza Clark

Down The Drain – Julia Fox

Teatro Grottesco – Thomas Ligotti (writer doesn’t tell us if this is translated or in the original Italian.)

The Inconsolables – Michael Wehunt

The Ark Sakura - Kōbō Abe

Secret Rendezvous - Kōbō Abe

I can’t work out Leo Robson’s choices except he talks about Adam Mars-Jones and Milan Kundara reads, which includes Laughable Loves, Lantern Lecture and Caret.

Kick the Latch – Kathryn Scanlan

Immortal Thoughts: Late Style in the Time of Plague – Christopher Neve

Arrangements in Blue – Amy Key

Local Fires – Joshua Jones

Brother Poems – Will Harris

Brutes – Dizz Tate

August Blue – Deborah Levy

Eastmouth and Other Stories – Alison Moore

“…and everything I can find by M. John Harrison.”

In Ascension – Martin MacInnes

Ultra-Processed People - Dr Chris van Tulleken

A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving (Love this book. Sorry.)

A Dance To the Music of Time – Anthony Powell (it’s a twelve book series. I’m reading it this year. Finally.)

Cain - José Saramago

In The Ditch - Buchi Emecheta

White Teeth – Zadie Smith

Franny and Zooey – J D Salinger

Ordinary Notes – Christina Sharpe (Read this. Liked it a lot. I suspect not everyone’s cup of tea.)

The Lights – Ben Lerner

Suppose a Sentence – Brian Dillon

The Journal: 1837-1961 – Henry David Thoreau

Life After Life – Kate Atkinson

Notes Made While Falling – Jenn Ashworth

The Office of Historical Corrections – Danielle Evans

Real Life – Brandon Taylor

Pity – Andrew McMillan

The Blue Light - Hussein Barghouthi – translated by Fady Joudah

The Delivery - Margarita García Robayo – translated by Megan McDowall (Charco Press! Hurrah!!)

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi – Geoff Dyer (Audiobook)

Experience – Martin Amis

The Father – Sharon Olds (I love Sharon Olds)

Ararat - Louise Glück

Home Before Dark – Susan Cheever

Letters Between A Father and A Son – V. S. Naipaul

A Man’s Place – Anne Ernaux

Clever Girl – Tessa Hadley

Interesting Times – Eric Hobsbawm (Read this. It’s his autobiography. Rather good. If you like that sort of thing.)

A Calculus of Power – Peter Gowan

Humanism and Terror – Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Die Fackel in Ohr – Elias Canetti (This was chosen by a German -  Anton Jäger – so…I’ve left it in.)

Land and Sea – Carl Schmitt

Margery Kempe – Robert Glück (One for Kiran there.)

My Friends  - Hisham Matar

Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara – Vona Groarke

Haruko/Love Poems – June Jordan

Death in Irish Prehistory – Gabriel Cooney

On Trampolining – Rebecca Perry – “…a short lyric essay.”

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue – Samuel R. Delany

The Wall – Marlen Haushofer

Second-Hand Time – Svetlana Alexievich

The Ladies Paradise – Emile Zola

The Pillow Book - Sei Shōnagon

Legacy of Ashes – Tim Weiner

Family Life – Akhil Sharma

The Marriage Question -  Claire Carlisle

The Blue Book – Amitava Kumar

Nightbitch – Rachel Yodar

Client Centred Therapy – Carl Rogers

Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann

Shorter Views – Samuel R. Delany

Understanding Comics – Scott McCloud

Out of Place – Edward Said

The Stone House – Yara Hawari

Memory for Forgetfulness – Mahmoud Darwish

The  Hundred Years War on Palestine – Rashid Khalidi

“The poems of Najwan Darwish”

Notes from the Henhouse – Elspeth Barker

Lord Jim at Home – Dinah Brooke

Great Granny Webster – Caroline Blackwood

The Fate of Mary Rose – Caroline Blackwood

Good Night Sweet Ladies - Caroline Blackwood

Turtle Diary, No Love Lost – Rachel Ingalls

The Cost of Living – Deborah Levy

Simple Passion – Anne Ernaux

Lives of the Wives – Camila Ciuraru

Death of a Bookseller – Alice Slater

Vehicle – Jen Calleja

How High? That High – Diane Williams

The Middle of the Journey – Lionel Trilling

Embers -  Sándor Márai

The Purloined Clinic – Janet Malcolm

The Silent Woman – Janet Malcolm

In the Freud Archive – Janet Malcolm

The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa - Stephen Buoro

Where We Come From: Rap, Home & Hope in Modern Britain - Aniefiok Ekpoudom (Forthcoming)

Sonnets for Albert – Anthony Joseph – Read this! It’s an excellent poetry collection.

The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing

Long Live the Post Horn! – Vigdis Hjorth

Dud Avacado – Elaine Dundy

The Old Man and Me – Elaine Dundy

Daisy Miller – Henry James

The Artificial Girl – Irmgard Keun

Do The Windows Open? – Julie Hecht

A Lost Lady – Willa Cather

Blackouts – Justin Torres

Arrangements in Blue – Amy Key

Pulling the Chariot Out of the Sun – Shane McCrae

How To Say Babylon – Safiya Sinclair

Bread and Circuses – Airea D. Matthews

How To Communicate – John Lee Clark

The Tiny Journalist – Naomi Shahib Nye

Things You Might Find Hidden in my Ear – Mosah Abu Toha

To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness – Robin Coste Lewis

Bluest Nude – Amy Codjoe

Pig – Sam Sax

Up Late – Nick Laird

They Call It Love: The Politics of Emotional Life – Alva Gotby

Black on Both Sides: A Radical History of Trans Identity – C. Riley Snorton

So Much for Life – Mark Hyatt

Exhausted on the Cross – Najwan Darwish – translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid