Waiting for Snow (Pamuk) and Elizabeth Bowen

After searching my brain for the book I want to read next, I remembered I had never read the paperback copy of Snow that I bought in 2007. I happily dragged it downstairs (I drag everything while on crutches), opened it, and could have wept. The typeface is so faint and the font so small, I can't possibly endure what it would take to read the 400+ pages. I tried and tried but realized that I'd be missing the gestalt of the whole of each page. Disappointment! So I went online and ordered a used copy of the orginal Knopf hardcover. A wait of about two weeks, I wager.


So I studied German a lot today and I read some more dazzling Heinrich Boll short stories (in English). But I need a novel to fill the gap. And then, just minutes ago, I glimpsed Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day in a pile at the foot of the opposite end of the couch. I bought it a year ago and never got to it. So I'm off, back to the London Blitz by someone who survived it. Thank goodness. Phew. Being without a book these days makes me desperate!

Paul Auster & Sunset Park

I dug into Sunset Park this morning and am more than a third of the way through. I LOVE IT! How many times have I become immersed in a Paul Auster novel and am suddenly deluged with what I call "my crazy writer fantasies" when I am consumed by the yearning to write a novel like Paul Auster. His prose is so straightforward, seemingly so uncomplex, yet beautiful and profound, and then he slips into voicing a truism that hits me so hard, all because it's a truth I have acknowledged to myself and no one else. No one else knows that I've thought this way, but there goes an Auster character saying it. It makes for a powerful reading experience.

I bought Sunset Park when it came out in November 2010, and it surprises me I haven't read it until now.

I dug up a wonderful interview with Auster about Sunset Park. I chose it above all the other interviews I dug up because Auster seems to be loving answering the questions in this one. I was quite charmed by it. Do take a look if you are an Auster fan.

Mary Wilkins Freeman--Short Story Monday

Thanks to John Munford of The Bookmine Set, I'm still reading short stories on Monday. Actually, I read a number yesterday and today. My favorite of the lot is "Across the Bridge" by Heinrich Boll, translated by Leila Vennewitz, and is the first story in the collection Children are Civilians Too. (That's the English title.) The story creates a stark contrast of crossing the Rhine by train before the war and after. I was so awe-struck by this story. It gave me chills.

Another story I read today is "The Revolt of 'Mother.'" by the New England writer Mary Wilkins Freeman, which was published sometime in the late 1890s, I believe. Freeman was quite popular in her day--writing numerous stories and a number of novels. Like her contemporary and friend Sarah Orne Jewett, Freeman's reputation suffered during most of the 20th century, primarily because predominantly male-dominated American literary experts pigeon-holed Freeman's and Jewett's work as "New England regionalism" or as "local colorists." Yes, women who wrote stories about life in rural New England seemed to defy categorization, so as "regionalists" they were marginalized following the years of their popularity.

Freeman, like Jewett, receives more attention today, especially from women scholars who have tried to resurrect marginalized American women authors.

"The Revolt of 'Mother'" is one of Freeman's best-known stories and was very well- known in her time. It's the story of a middle-aged farm woman who decides for her family that no, her husband's prized new barn will NOT be a barn but will serve as the first decent living space of their married lives, a decision that is a testament to the resiliency and strength of farm women. The historical reality is that most farm women were full partners with their husbands, so it is no overwhelming surprise for anyone, least of all her husband, when, without any fanfare, she ups and moves all the family's household belongings into the new barn.

Supposedly Freeman was very upset when the public pointed to this story as her treatise for women's rights. To her, it was nothing of the sort, and to have the story reduced to a contentious political cause must have been unnerving, especially because she was a social conservative. To her, it was the story of an unusually strong woman and that was that.

Reading Frustrations & Siegfried Lenz

Early this morning I realized that my broken-leg confinement would be nearly unbearable without plenty of books to read.

This weekend I've been zooming through The Leopard, of course. At 400 pages, with 100 pages left to go, the case appears as though it's nearly solved, and, at this point, I'm very disappointed in Jo Nesbo's choice of the killer. Without giving anything away, I must say that I'm frustrated that loose ends are starting to be tied up around this individual. This character's motivation is so weak and unconvincing. Things don't seem to fit--nothing is satisfactory to me about this result, YET I must remember that I still have 117 pages left to read. So perhaps there's hope for me and The Leopard? When a crime thriller is 517 pages long, and I reach page 400, I feel I have a lot invested in the outcome. It's as if I'm saying to the author, "You better make good on this or else!"

I think this "frustration thing" I've been experiencing with The Leopard is 100 percent related to my frustration with life at the moment.


I'm reading a short story by the German author Siegfried Lenz. Like Gunter Grass and Heinrich Boll, Lenz was a member of the Gruppe 47. I should say I'm trying to read it because I'm stumbling over it in German. "The Listener, or the Description of a Route with a Hidden Motive" was first published in 2000 and is the first story in a wonderful little collection entitled Short Stories in German, which is a volume in the "parallel text" series published by Penguin. On the left-hand side of the page is the original German text and on the right is the translated English version. Another thing I like about this small collection is that all the stories were published in the 1990s-2002.

The Leopard!

Oh, I am enjoying my romp through The Leopard by Jo Nesbo, the Norwegian crime writer. I'm nearly a third through and savoring every morsel. I read Nesbo's The Snowman on the Nook this summer, and I think I'm appreciating The Leopard even more. Maybe my preference is because I'm so desperate for entertainment, and partly because I'm reading it in a lovely Knopf deckle-edge hardcover edition. In any case, I'm a third of the way through and it's going much too quickly.

Getting the previous Harry Hole novels is not an entirely straightforward affair. Some are available on Nook and Kindle and as mass-market paperbacks, never having been published here in hardcover. I will have to do some investigating.

To my mind, Nesbo's crime thrillers are truly a cut above the crowd of the supposed best and brightest crime writers' novels.

War Diary by Ingeborg Bachmann

The Austrian poet and author Ingeborg Bachmann's War Diary has been translated into English by Mike Mitchell, edited by Hans Holler, and published by Seagull Books (2011), with assistance from the Goethe-Institut branch of India, of all places. It is a handsome little book. A stunning black-and-white etching and aquatint make the cover. The diary, written when Bachmann was only eighteen, details her experiences and observations of the final year of World War II and the first year of the British occupation.

For background about the diary and an excerpt, please check out this Seagull Books blog post.
Bachmann died prematurely, at the age of 46 in 1973, several weeks after a fire in her bedroom. I'm filled with sadness whenever I learn of writers who die before their time.

I finished Saturday yesterday and am so glad to have read it. I think it is definitely one of McEwan's best. I wish I could say more but, for some reason, the pain I've had taxes my verbiage to the point where there is nothing left.

Saturday by Ian McEwan, and Thoughts about Atonement

I am enjoying the cerebral qualities of the neurosurgeon Henry Perowne's mind in Saturday, although I admit I became bogged down following his thoughts as he makes his way through the crowds to the fishmonger's. This part of the novel coincided with some unwelcome distractions at home, which ground my reading to a halt lasting for several days. Back again, I hope. So hopefully, Henry will finally get his fish and shellfish for the evening meal...

I have also read McEwan's On Chesil Beach and Atonement, both of which I found to be top-notch, for different reasons. I was disappointed that the word atonement was chosen for the title. I'm afraid I considered it a flaw, still do, perhaps because by using this title, I thought the author?? publicist?? publisher?? was shoving forth its theme. I can't believe McEwan would do that. If he named it Atonement, perhaps it was done in irony, and wouldn't that be complicated to pull apart? I'm not certain, but I may have hit on a topic that could generate discussion among ardent readers of the novel.

Short Story Monday: Heinrich Böll

The Short Story and Its Writer, published in 1991 by St. Martins, is an enormous compendium of outstanding classic short stories as well as lesser-known stories by classic writers from all over the world.

For this week, my first foray into Short Story Monday, an event originally created by the Canadian book blogger John Munford of The Bookmine Set, I selected the short but powerful "Like a Bad Dream" by Heinrich Böll. The main character is a middle-class business contractor. He's bid on a job that he's desperate to get when he discovers that a Herr Kumen may hold the key to his winning it. The man's wife arranges a perfect dinner for the Kumens, but the contractor fails to broach the subject during the visit. After the Kumens have left, his wife takes over, and from this point on, a cascading series of odd late-night bribes and counter-bribes leave the contractor feeling baffled and soulless. He keeps gazing into his wife's eyes but realizes again and again he has no desire to kiss her. The next day he wins the bid, he should be happy, but he's feeling out of place, out of time--a profound dislocation.

Based on my research today, Böll was frustrated by German society in the entire postwar era--the rush to build businesses and wealth while not only denying the war and the country's fascist past, but also the centuries of culture preceding Nazism.

I have ordered a 900+ page volume of Böll's complete short stories, which has been published by Melville House.

Reading in Snow

Snow has been falling since noontime. At first lightly, now more moderately. It's a wet snow, so it's clinging to the bare branches of the hardwoods and to the green boughs of the conifers. I am viewing all this from the couch, Sasha asleep by my side.

Warning: Stong Opinion Coming! How do you feel?
I'm galloping through A Fountain Filled with Blood by Julia Spencer-Fleming. I agree it's not as stellar a read as In a Bleak Midwinter. What a stunning debut novel that was! (Sorry to be repeating myself.) How could a second novel surpass it?

I like the fact that the second novel is more firmly grounded in Washington County, New York, with a greater number of actual place names than in the first novel. Lots of southern Warren County place names as well. I love it when settings are authentic. I must say I strongly object to an author setting the novel in a real location, only to then go on and invent the names of every town, hill, lake, river, and bar within that area! Of course, change the names of shops and restaurants, but give us a real sense of place!

I've also been amusing myself by continuing to venture more deeply into Ian Frazier's Travels in Siberia, which is nearly 550 pages long. Lots of stories from his own journeys, lots of history, and eventually, he promises to reveal his lengthy explorations of many former gulags. That's what I'm waiting for. Why am I reading this book? I know for certain that I will never step foot in Siberia, though I am very interested in it geographically, historically, and ecologically. Hence, a book that promises to deliver all this information to me is very welcome.

Short Story Monday? I'm hopping onto this weekly adventure because I enjoy short stories immensely, but not in large doses, nor by the same author all at once. I need to search for a story for this Monday. I am told that John Munford of The Bookmine Set established Short Story Monday, but I could not find evidence of it when I visited his blog today. However, Lakeside Musing is continuing the challenge, as is ImageNations, so I'll refer you there. I will continue to search for others.