Both January and September are inspiring times for me, the idea of fresh starts and new reading projects. And December was the perfect lead-in, as I managed to avoid the usual year-end reading scramble, because so many of 2017’s reading projects were multi-year plans: Mavis Gallant’s stories, Louise Erdrich’s
In which there is talk of the slim stories which have travelled with me within the city, while bulkier volumes stayed home. Charles Dickens' Bleak House and John Ajvide Lindqvist's Harbor (Translated by Marlaine Delargy) are awkward travelling companions. As are some of the skinnies in my current stack,
In “Madeline’s Birthday”, the sadness slips to the background, like it does in an Elizabeth Taylor story, with a hint of darkness besides. Madeline is a guest in the Tracy family’s summer home, and her seventeenth birthday affects every resident. Readers briefly inhabit the perspective of most inhabitants (even
Last year was a terrific reading year. The variety, the intensity, the pacing: all so satisfying. My read-o-lutions for 2018 are much as they were for last year: keep on reading on. Perhaps a little more emphasis on illustrations and translations would be good.
Every year, GoodReads does a nice job of summarizing my reading (I wish they hadn't been bought out by Amazon). This year comes up with 281 books or 68,124 pages. (How do I do it? I neglect many other potentially meaningful aspects of life.) The numbers alone might seem
