Author: Michael @ Knowledge Lost

Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks

Posted December 11, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Humour, Non-Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Round Ireland with a Fridge (Goodreads)
, 1997
Pages: 248
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

What happens when you make a stupid bet while drunk at a bar? If you are anything like Tony Hawks, you actually try to win the bet. With £100 at stake, Tony Hawks decides to hitchhike around Ireland with a fridge (even though buying the fridge cost him £130). Round Ireland with a Fridge is a travel memoir about the adventures Tony Hawks had with his fridge.

First of all, it is important to point out that Tony Hawks is a British comedian and is not to be confused with the skateboarder. While he is best known for his travel memoirs, Hawks first claim to fame was as the lead of the comedy band Morris Minor and the Majors, which had a hit with a Beastie Boys parody in 1988. He is also a voice actor, most notable for voicing a vending machine and a suitcase in Red Dwarf.

This book starts off with Tony Hawks talking about how he doesn’t spend much time drinking or going to bars. Then for the entire novel he drinks in bars as he hitchhikes around Ireland. Putting aside this huge contradiction this book is actually very entertaining and manages to captivate the audience for its 246 pages. Travelling from Dublin to Donegal, from Sligo through Mayo, Galway, Clare, Kerry, Cork, Wexford, Wicklow–and back again to Dublin this a story of the people he meets along the way.

The fridge actually become more of an asset that Tony Hawks originally expected, helping him get rides, free accommodation and even pick up woman. Even the fridge had its own adventures; it was christened by a nun and even went surfing. While this may seem like a gimmick you will find some interesting philosophical thoughts on people and life as Tony Hawks reflects on all the experiences he had with his fridge.

I had a lot of fun with this book and I am so glad to have read it. There were so many laugh out loud moments (I especially enjoyed Hawks views on marathons) and still offered plenty to think about. As a travel memoir I expected something like Bill Bryson and while the comedy is there I think there was more opportunity to teach people about Ireland and its culture. Highly recommend this book and I plan to seek out Playing the Moldovans at Tennis so I can dip back into Tony Hawks writing again.

Why I Read by Wendy Lesser

Posted December 10, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Non-Fiction / 2 Comments

Title: Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books (Goodreads)
Author: Wendy Lesser
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014
Pages: 240
Genres: Non-Fiction
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Wendy Lesser is the founding editor for the American literary magazine The Threepenny Review; she is lucky enough to spend her days with books. She is a bibliophile with a lifetime of reading experience to offer as well as an eclectic taste. Why I Read is a collection of essays that explores Lesser’s thoughts and ideas on literature in through the lens of different topics like character and plot.

This sounds like the type of book I should love and it ticked all the right boxes for what I look for in a book about books; eclectic taste, part memoir and offering some literary criticism. However I felt a huge disconnection with this book and I spend a lot of time just trying to pin-point what wasn’t working. Clearly Wendy Lesser is passionate about books and is well read, though I felt like that passion didn’t translation into her writing. This felt more like academic writing, so all emotion felt removed from Why I Read, but this is the type of book that needs that emotion and passion.

I enjoyed the fact that Wendy Lesser jumped from Henry James or Fyodor Dostoevsky, to Jim Thompson, Ross MacDonald, Patricia Highsmith and other crime novelists. It was fascinating to see crime novels used as examples in literary criticism, I was happy to see examples of science fiction, and fantasy also included rather than sticking to just literary fiction or classics. It is a real shame that the writing was so flat; the concepts and ideas were great and with some polishing this could have made for a wonderful book.

I am disappointed that this book never grabbed me and the writing held the book back. There are plenty of interesting ideas and literary criticism worth exploring but the dull nature really made that difficult. I sounds like Wendy Lesser is passionate about books and would have a lot ideas worth listening to if only that passion was visible in the writing.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Posted December 9, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Horror, Science Fiction / 5 Comments

Title: Annihilation (Goodreads)
Author: Jeff VanderMeer
Series: Southern Reach Trilogy #1
Published: FSG Originals, 2014
Pages: 195
Genres: Horror, Science Fiction
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

A section of America has been cut off from the rest of the continent; this has been dubbed Area X. While no one has been too sure what caused Area X to be cut off, a clandestine government agency called the Southern Reach keeps sending expeditions to this new ecosystem, to study the last vestiges of an untouched environment. Eleven expeditions have gone to this abandoned and unspoilt stretch of US coastline, eleven catastrophic failures. Four women known only by their disciplines: surveyor, anthropologist, psychologist and biologist are preparing for the twelfth expedition; will they find the answers to explain Area X, this enigmatic and frightening ecosystem?

Annihilation is the first book in the much talked about Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer; a short 200 page novel that packs a huge punch. The reader is thrown into this world and soon finds themselves with many questions; however the answers will only lead to more questions and so you will find yourself in a spiral of tension and excitement. Think Cormac McCarthy meets James Smythe; you have this thrilling and complex novel that sees four women and their impending doom.

I am hesitant in talking about this book too much because everything is shrouded in mystery and deception. I don’t want to give too much away but I can say that Annihilation, on the surface, is a thrilling science-fiction novel. However as you dive deeper into the plot you will soon discover that this is full metafictional and psychoanalytical allegory that leads to a whole new type of exploration for those interested in critical reading. This is so annoying because I want to talk about this book but I don’t want to give anything away.

I have had similar issues reviewing The Explorer by James Smythe, I want to say so much more about this book but I want people to discover it for themselves. I am desperate to read Authority, followed by Acceptance but I know that reviewing them is going to be even more difficult (much like The Echo). Do yourself a favour, go out and pick up a copy of Annihilation if you haven’t done so already, but trust me when I say you will need the other two books in the Southern Reach Trilogy.

Not Drowning, Reading by Andrew Relph

Posted December 7, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Non-Fiction / 4 Comments

Title: Not Drowning, Reading (Goodreads)
Author: Andrew Relph
Published: Fremantle Press, 2012
Pages: 184
Genres: Non-Fiction
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

As a child Andrew Relph had a reading disability, but he never let that stop him. He realised the value and importance of reading and writing and worked harder to learn these skills. Now a psychoanalyst and professional conversationalist, Relph’s book Not Drowning, Reading explores his relationship with books and how they fit into his life experiences.

The title Not Drowning, Reading is a fascinating one and also comes with an interesting backstory. It references a time the author almost drowned but also is a perfect metaphor for how Relph felt during his school years struggling with a reading disability. A feeling of struggling to keep his head above water and not get lost in the depths of the educational waters seems to give me an idea of the battle he was having internally. It is interesting to think that he went from an internal battle into a career helping others with psychological struggles.

Divided into essays on his life, Andrew Relph explores the impact literature has had on his life with continual references to his career as a psychoanalyst. Considering I have an interest in psychoanalysing literature, this was a fascinating read for me and gave me plenty to think about. Relph shares his love for authors like Martin Amis, Saul Bellow, William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and to my disappointment D.H. Lawrence. In fact his thesis was centred on Lawrence and the psychoanalysis.

For those people who don’t know, I consider Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence as one of the worst books I have ever read. I will admit that I just didn’t get the appeal and have never returned to Lawrence again. There are plenty of reviewers I respect and trust that love the works of D. H. Lawrence and while I hate to admit this, I feel like I need help in understanding the appeal. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was read when I first started out as a reader and there would be a lot I missed but I also suspect that it wasn’t the best starting point for me as a reader.

Now I have had a rant about D.H. Lawrence, I should return to Not Drowning, Reading by Andrew Relph. This memoir is a very deep look at his life and literature through the lens of psychoanalysis; this reminds me I need to learn about these literary theories but for others it might come across as a little dense. I was completely immersed and fascinated by what Andrew Relph had to say but I am well aware that compared to other memoirs about literature this might be too heavy on theory for some readers.

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

Posted December 6, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Humour, Non-Fiction / 4 Comments

Title: Yes Please (Goodreads)
, 2014
Pages: 400
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

For those who don’t know Amy Poehler, then let me clear this part up first. Poehler is a comedian/actor who studied improv before working for Saturday Night Live from 2001 to 2008. In 2009 a spin-off from the American version of The Office was created and Poehler took the lead role in this show called Parks and Recreation. The character Leslie Knope is a perky, mid-level bureaucrat with big hopes and dreams in the small fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. Parks and Rec follows this government department in a single-camera, mockumentary style as they try to jump through all the hoops to do something as simple as fill in the construction pit in an abandoned lot and create a park. The seventh and final season of Parks and Recreation is set to begin during the mid-season of the 2014–15 season.

Amy Poehler is not the first Parks and Rec star to release a memoir; Nick Offerman’s (who plays Ron Swanson) book Paddle Your Own Canoe finds him musing about life, manliness, wood work and how to best grill meat. However Poehler’s book was marketed as companion to Saturday Night Live co-star and friend Tina Fey’s Bossypants, rather than Offerman’s memoir. This is possibly due to the huge success of Fey’s memoir and the fact the two often work as a comedy duo.

I picked up Paddle Your Own Canoe as an audiobook because I liked the idea of Ron Swanson narrating and I decided to do the same with Yes Please. Amy Poehler made the audiobook a unique event, with guest stars and banter that I don’t expect appeared in the book. This allowed the listeners to enjoy a different experience to that of reading the book which I know has some pictures to look through instead. I have stopped listening to fiction in audio form because of personal preferences, which has allowed for more podcasts and non-fiction audiobooks. I feel like non-fiction and memoirs seem to work really well as audiobooks; I am not sure why but it just works really well.

What I found interesting about Yes Please was the memoir style; this wasn’t told in a linear format, rather a collection of essays that went back and forward depending on the topic. I really liked this style it allowed more focus on particular topics and allowed Amy Poehler to explore things in her own way. I was also impressed with how strong and confident she comes across in the book; when it came to talking about her divorce with Will Arnett she just simply stated it wasn’t a topic she wanted to go into and then moved on. I think people expect all the juicy and dark details on someone’s life in a memoir and I liked how she just brushed it off, proclaiming “This isn’t a topic I wish to share”. She does share some darker moments but for the most part she wants to come across as a positive and happy person.

Amy Poehler has a strong and passionate attitude towards life and in the end Yes Please really wants people to know that it is okay to be yourself. There were tender moments throughout the book and if you are a fan of Parks and Recreation, you might tear up when she shares her love towards every star within the show. She also spends a lot of time talking about her improv days and trying to make it into show business, reminding people persistence and passion is needed; if you love what you do, then why do anything else.

I really enjoyed reading Yes Please, maybe not as much as Paddle Your Own Canoe but it was still interesting to learn about someone’s life. While some may think that Amy Poehler has let the reader down by refusing to share some parts of her life, I think it really showed integrity. Just because she is an actor doesn’t mean her life is an open book. Parks and Rec fans should pick up this book, but also anyone interested in reading a memoir about someone passionate about life and their job will find Yes Please a great book.

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Posted December 5, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Poetry / 0 Comments

Title: Ariel (Goodreads)
Author: Sylvia Plath
Published: Faber & Faber, 1965
Pages: 81
Genres: Poetry
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

It feels like Sylvia Plath’s life overshadowed her literary value; her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar was like a confessional and people tend to read it for all the juicy bits. Ariel is a collection of poems published posthumously, just a few years after her suicide. It is true that we have Plath to think for advancing the confessional poetry form and exploring topics previously taboo like suicide, mental illness and domestic abuse.

I would like to thank Meg Wolitzer’s book Belzhar for pushing me into reading more of Sylvia Plath. The book explores a struggling student that was sent to a private school that put her in a special English class. This class spent the semester journaling and reading Plath, most importantly The Bell Jar but also Ariel. That book made me want to re-read The Bell Jar which I loved but instead decided it was time to give her poetry a go.

However I am very aware that I don’t know how to review poetry let alone a whole collection, so this is more about my experience with this book. I feel like I am becoming a better reader but if you ask me to read out loud I am going to struggle. So I decided this is an issue I needed to work on and I read Ariel to my wife (she read some of it to me as well). This may seem like a romantic and intimate thing to do with your partner but Plath has a way of killing any sexy moods.

I loved the experience but I am struck with a sense that Sylvia Plath might have been a poor choice to begin with. She has a very strong sense of imagery and plays a lot with metaphors; some of which I picked up on but there was some stuff that went over my head. Poetry is meant to be read out aloud and I thought this would help with my understanding as well as develop my skills. However I found it extremely difficult to work out punctuation in these poems. Some sentences span over a few stanzas but my natural impulse was to pause after ever line.

Having said that, this was a wonderful experience and while the poems are often dark and depressing I am glad I shared this moment with my wife. Ariel kind of reminds me of those people on the internet that overshare about their lives and you can’t help but be glued to what they write even if it annoys you. Sometimes I think, that is too much information but Sylvia Plath seems to get to the heart of that raw emotion.

Sylvia Plath was an incredibly intelligent and complex woman; I can’t help being fascinated by her. I want to learn more about her life, and understand the emotion behind her writing. Take for example her poem “Daddy”; there is this anger toward her father as well as some holocaust imagery that I just want to understand. I am going to have to find a biography on Plath’s life because I think this places a big part in her writing. Can anyone recommend me a good biography?

Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Posted December 4, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Classic / 2 Comments

Title: Tragedy of Macbeth (Goodreads)
, 1606
Pages: 249
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I probably don’t need to go into too much detail about the plot of Macbeth as most people are aware of what it is about. The Tragedy of Macbeth is obviously a tragedy the legendary playwright William Shakespeare, and is often considered his darkest play. Set in Scotland, the play explores the destructive psychological and political effects that form when evil is used as a method of gaining power. It is generally believed that this was written between the Elizabethan Era and the Jacobean Era, around about 1599 to 1606.

The Elizabethan Era was generally regarded as a ‘golden age’ for England. Colonialism was strong, England has dominating the seas (defeating the Spanish Armada) and there was great commercial wealth to be found in the ‘New World’. However the Jacobean Era was different; James VI of Scotland inherited the throne in 1603 and things seemed to change drastically. The ‘Gunpowder Plot’ of 1605 failed to assassinate the king and the plotters were executed. This possibly led to the King commissioning a new translation of the bible; the ‘King James Version’ was first published in 1611.

The reason I talk about these two eras is that there seems to be a connection to Macbeth. Set in Scotland, Macbeth seems to reflect the atmosphere of the Jacobean Era and there has been speculation to the play alluding to the Gunpowder Plot. However to try to draw direct correlations between Macbeth and the political situations of the time would require a lot of speculation. I just added this information into this review because there are connections that I feel would be relevant or interesting to readers of this play.

I was lucky enough to have experienced Macbeth as a play being performed before ever reading it for my university course. There is something about the performance that was essential to critically reading the text; I already understood the plot, the tone and the overall emotions behind the words and this allowed me to grasp a lot more out of the play. One thing that I picked up in reading Macbeth that I seemed to have missed was the importance of gender roles within the play.

Let’s look at one example which appears in Act 1 scene 7. Within the scene Macbeth is having second thoughts about killing the king and taking the crown. Lady Macbeth scolds Macbeth and manipulates him to go through with his original plan. How does she do this? Simply by calling him a coward and telling him he is not a man. She even suggested that she is more of a man and stated she would kill her own child; taking that child from her breast and smash its head against a wall.

There are other themes that are prominent within Macbeth, but the idea of masculinity verses femininity seems to stick with me the most. This idea that claiming you are more of a man than someone else is a common occurrence but the way Shakespeare presented this graphic manipulation really stuck with me. Obviously feminist literary studies would have a field day with this play. I have been picking more and more issues to do with feminism within literature, but I would rather be looking at Marxism or psychoanalyst; why does this keep happening?

Macbeth is this wonderfully dark play that has a lot to offer; I can see why Shakespeare remains a legend. I am not really sure how to review a play like this; there is so much to talk about with plot and theme, however I would rather people discover that for themselves. I do feel like this review turned into something that would resemble a Jackson Pollock with random thoughts flicked onto a page but I wanted to get some of my thoughts down.

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

Posted December 3, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary / 6 Comments

Title: Wonder Boys (Goodreads)
Author: Michael Chabon
Published: Harper Perennial, 1995
Pages: 384
Genres: Contemporary
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Grady Tripp is a writer of a few novels; following the success of his award winning novel The Land Downstairs he has set out to write his follow up. Seven years later his manuscript for Wonder Boys was over 2600 pages long and nowhere closer to being finished. In his personal life things were messed up, his wife has walked out on him, and his mistress Sara has revealed she was pregnant. Wonder Boys (1995) is Michael Chabon’s second novel following the success of his debut book The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988).

Michael Chabon spent five years writing a book called Fountain City following The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Fountain City ballooned into a 1500 page novel about an architect building the perfect baseball stadium in Florida. Chabon stated that he “never felt like [he] was conceptually on steady ground.” Without telling his agent or publisher he abandoned the book and started Wonder Boys which steamed from the melodrama involved around Fountain City. The main character, Grady Tripp is apparently based on one of Chabon’s professors from University of Pittsburgh who had a 3000 pages manuscript which eventually was published in 2001.

This being my third novel by Michael Chabon, I was struck by how different this book was to the other two. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union play with intertextuality and genre blending but Wonder Boys didn’t have this at all. Sure there were some similarities, the frequent use of metaphors and recurring themes (particularly with Jewish identity) were still present but it felt very different. Wonder Boys felt raw and emotional, and now understanding the fate of Fountain City I can see the birth of this book.

Chabon plays on the ideas of how we view the stereotypical struggling writer; a person surrounded in melodrama. Wonder Boys is set over the course of one weekend in which Grady’s third wife has left him and his mistress has told him he will be a father. To make things worse, his mistress is the chancellor of the university he works at and her husband in the head of the English department, which makes him his boss. The drama continues to unfold as his agent has arrived in town in the hopes to get a peek at his new novel, which is far from finished. However that is not the half of Grady’s problems and this novel is overly dramatic to give the reader a chance to re-examine the ideas they have of a struggling writer; not all of them are Grady Tripp or Hank Moody (Californication).

Michael Chabon wanted to play with the idea of drama as a reflection of the internal struggle that is experienced with a novel that just isn’t working. Everything is over the top, much like the 1600 page novel that needs to be trimmed down and turned into a more accessible novel. However everything that Grady tries to do to make his life a little less complicated just makes everything worse. This metaphor plays out throughout the entire novel and I had to wonder if it is better to abandon the novel and start again or continue trying to fix it (this plays out near the end of this book but I won’t give spoilers). The fact this book is full of anxiety and raw emotions only serves to enhance the experience and the metaphor.

Wonder Boys was also turned into a movie starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Katie Holmes and Robert Downey, Jr. I haven’t seen the movie yet but I can see what it working on a very fundamental level but I am not sure how it would translate. The movie does seem to have a cult classic status so maybe it translated onto the screen perfectly.

Yet again I find myself being impressed with the works of Michael Chabon and a little sad that is takes me so long to read another novel of his. I have Telegraph Avenue on my TBR bookcase waiting for me but it is a bit of a tome. I have so many big books I would love to read but they still scare me, I really need to work on this problem. Wonder Boys is a wonderful and emotional journey and a great place to start if you have never read Michael Chabon before.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Posted December 2, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary / 3 Comments

Title: The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Goodreads)
, 2006
Pages: 325
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Renée Michel is a concierge for an upscale apartment building that is inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée is an intelligent autodidact that hides herself from the residents of this elegant apartment, trying to confirm every stereotype they might have towards a concierge. However a precocious girl named Paloma suspects there is something more about Renée. When a wealthy Japanese business man moves into the building, he sees right through the concierge’s façade and tries to befriend her for some intellectual conversations.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a highly successful novel by Muriel Barbery who obtained her agrégation in philosophy before becoming a professor for the Université de Bourgogne. The publication I read was a Europia edition that was translated by novelist and Literary translator Alison Anderson. L’Élégance du hérisson was translated into more than forty languages and has also been adapted into the 2009 movie The Hedgehog (Le hérisson) staring Josiane Balasko, Garance Le Guillermic and Togo Igawa.

This novel is full of allusions towards works of literature, music, films, and paintings, which is one of the reasons I loved this book. While it might come across as pretentious and somewhat cynical The Elegance of the Hedgehog plays a lot with the ideas of stereotypes, class-consciousness and acceptance. A philosophical novel that explores ideas of how we present ourselves to the world and if we should pretend to be someone different, if that is what others expect from you.

There are plenty of philosophical ideas running through this novel that presents different ideologies, Muriel Barbery has stated that literature is an effective way to explore philosophy. Having sat through plenty of long and boring philosophy classes she wanted a way to explore the ideas in a more effective and interesting way. I suspect people can get lost in the pretentious nature of this book but also the ending; however I think it was a fitting ending for the novel.

I found The Elegance of the Hedgehog to be a beautiful, if not recherché little novel and I enjoyed every moment of it. I wanted to turn back to page one and start again; I think there is plenty within this book to offer its readers. If you pay close attention to the book you might also notice that most of the book was told in a first person, present day nature that makes for a fresh look at the story that I didn’t notice till near the end. I know I should have paid more attention but this is one of the main reasons I wanted to re-read the book.

Lovers of philosophy and literature would love this book but also anyone interested in Marxism. I know I didn’t talk much about the class struggle within the book but that is because I have much to learn in this area. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is an intelligent novel, full of references to literature, witty and smart humour with a satirical nature. The way this French novel translates into an elegant English novel is a testimony to Alison Anderson’s ability but she had a great piece of literature to work with. I would highly recommend this novel to everyone but maybe that isn’t a good idea, I think you have to be in the right frame of mind or mood to truly enjoy this book.

What I Think About When I’m Not Blogging – Novermber 2014 Wrap-up

Posted November 30, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Monthly Reading, What I Think About When I'm Not Blogging / 8 Comments

It is hard to believe that 2014 is almost over; I went into this year with a goal to read more non-fiction and now I think I am addicted. I joined Nonfiction November firstly because I wanted to keep my momentum and it looked like fun. However I didn’t really participate much in the memes; I did write a great (well I think it was) essay on my non-fiction reading history. I did however finish a few non-fiction books, four memoirs and two books around literary criticism. I am still scrabbling to catch up on book reviews and I have been posting every day to catch up, so most of these books are still waiting to be posted.

Sticking with the non-fiction theme, I started off the month reading Excavation: A Memoir by Wendy C. Ortiz and I owe this book choice to my addiction to the Literary Disco podcast. It was a little out of my wheelhouse but I really enjoyed it and what better to succeed a book about sexual abuse than listening to Amy Poehler’s book Yes Please. This was a funny, yet amazing book and the audiobook was just perfect. This also helped increase my collection of Parks and Rec memoirs. I happened to also read another humorous memoir when I learnt about how Tony Hawks went Around Ireland with a Fridge. The final memoir was Not Drowning, Reading by Andrew Relph which is heavy on the literary criticism and lead to me reading Why I Read by Wendy Lesser and What Is Literature? by Jean-Paul Sartre.

The reading of Sartre may seem pretentious enough to give me enough literary credibility to last the month; it also leads to the second theme in my reading for November. I wanted to participate in German Literature Month this month and I had every intention to read more German translations but the only one I managed to read was Look Who’s Back by Timur Vermes. I did however read a great French novel (The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery) and the Russian science fiction classic Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. I had aimed to re-reading Perfume by Patrick Süskind but the library’s copy was too damaged, also if I had time I planned on picking up some more Kafka.

The library has been a huge source of books lately and I am constantly having two or three books checked out at the one time. This might not be good for my TBR bookcase and all the books I still need to read around my house but it has been great for reading on a whim as well as saving me money. Out of the fifteen books I have read this month, five of them were from the library and mostly my non-fiction/translation picks. Last year I went on a book buying ban that didn’t work but it was the start of my obsession with the library and lets face it, it is always good to support them.

I did read some other books this month including Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer and Merciless Gods by Christos Tsiolkas. However the real highlight of November was reading poetry to my wife, it was very romantic. I picked up Ariel by Sylvia Plath from the library after reading Belzhar and read a few poems to my wife every night before bed, it was such a great experience but Plath wasn’t the easiest to read aloud (more on this in my upcoming review).

I am really enjoying these essay style blogging but I have discovered I have so much to learn. While writing I have noticed I am very minimalist and I could almost turn each paragraph into a list of books that I have read. Practise does make perfect and I know what I need to focus on for upcoming essays but I have no idea how I am going to do that. These journal style personal essays are addictive and I plan on exploring them further; I think my next one will revolve around writing. One day when I am looking back on these essays, I am hoping to see how much I have improved and this writing will be laughable. Until then I am going to continue writing and writing, so look for more posts in the What I Think About When I’m Not Blogging series…if you are interested.