Many thanks for the excellent reading suggestions I received in response to my search for some good contemporary foreign literature that's been translated into English. I've already ordered a couple of titles (with my trusty Amazon gift card that I meant to spend over the Labor Day weekend but never quite got around to). I was happy to see nearly all the titles available and have added many of them to my wishlist. I'll share my goodies when they arrive.
I never get in as much reading over the weekend as I would like, but I did finish Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Though not an especially scary story by today's standards, what impressed me was it's subtlety revealing what happens inside the mind and the sway this haunted house had over the characters. And Shirley Jackson has a wonderful sense of humor, too, which you don't necessarily expect in a story like this, but fit well. I hope to write more about it later. I think for my next RIP read I'm going to give Ross Raisin's Out Backward a try. I stumbled across this one at the library, the author being totally unknown to me. One reviewer called it "a compelling, disturbing and often very funny novel."
During the week is when I get in most of my reading hours and I plan to spend them with several books. I was excited to join Table Talk's Shakespeare reading group--first play to read: Henry V. Alas, I'm already late on my first reading assignment, which was to read the play to begin discussing this past weekend. I'm still working on it, but with a little better management I should be able to work through it this week.
I mentioned that I was going to work my way through Katherine Mansfield's short stories (as a little personal project), but not until I finished reading a collection by Daphne du Maurier (which I am finding to be exceptional by the way). After reading Simon's recent post about her, though, I might just dive right in and start now. The nice thing about short stories is that they aren't a huge time commitment. My plan was simply to read one story a week until I made my way through the lot of them. As a little extracurricular reading, I also have Claire Tomalin's biography and a couple of volumes of Mansfield's collected letters as well as her Journal published by Persephone Books. I've already read her Journal, but I expect it would be a more satisfying read knowing more about her.
I suspect I'll find a little time to work on Elizabeth Jenkin's The Tortoise and the Hare. Jenkins writes with such sophisticated savvy prose that I find myself wanting to slow down as I read it. And I'm nearly finished with Susanna Kearsley's Sophia's Secret, which has become my gym read. I'm nearing the climactic ending, so I find it's easy to lose myself in the action of the story and close out the din of music and machines and people's chatter. I might even be able to squeeze in one or two other books during the week...
What will you be reading this week?