With the year moving along at such a fast clip and December just around the corner my book subscriptions are nearing an end. I've only got one more book left to receive from the NYRB Classic Book Club, though I think Melville House's Art of the Novella subscription will keep going until I have them all or simply opt out. Although I have long since fallen behind in my reading (wishful thinking I could actually keep up each month), I think I am going to continue on with both and have added one more (well, am thinking about a year-long subscription, see below) to the list. The books I've read have blue post-it notes peeking out of them, which somehow makes the piles (or the finished books) more impressive than they actually are.
I've only read five of the (soon-to-be) twelve (actually thirteen since you get a freebie book with a year long subscription--and I will get another freebie for renewing) books from NYRB. And I have the sixth book in progress now. From top to bottom are the books in order that I received them (and I have linked to the posts I've written for the books read):
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Cesares (freebie book)
Testing the Current by William McPherson (likely to end up on my favorites list this year)
An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman
Pitch Dark by Renata Adler
The Crisis of the European Mind by Paul Hazard (this one is quite a massive undertaking I think so will be saved for later)
Transit by Anna Seghers
Turtle Diary by Paul Hoban
In Love by Alfred Hayes
the Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart (in progress)
Fighting for Life by S. Josephine Baker (am reading the introduction now and it sits on my night stand in anticipation . . .)
The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf (I read this last year in another edition--does that count--it was one of my favorite books of the year, too, by the way)
The Skin by Curzio Malaparte
?? December's book not yet received
And I have loads of novellas. Two books come each month with this subscription, so I am doubly behind it would seem! My subscription began last December, so from top to bottom (again have linked to the posts when I have written about the books) and in order that they were received:
May Day by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
The Man That Coprrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain
Fanfarlo by Charles Baudelaire
The Enchanted Wanderer by Nikolai Leskov
The Devil by Leo Tolstoy
The Horla by Guy de Maupassant
The Alienist by Machado de Assis
The Distracted Preacher by Thomas Hardy
Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
Lady Susan by Jane Austen
How the Two Ivans Quarrelled by Nikolai Gogol
Alexander's Bridge by Will Cather (am reading this one now)
The Eternal Husband by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Michael Kohlaas by Heinrich Von Kleist
The Duel by Heinrich Von Kleist
The Duel by Anton Chekhov (I've read this one before, but I love Chekhov and so will be rereading it)
The Duel by Alexander Kuprin
The Coxon Fund by Henry James
The Duel by Joseph Conrad
The Duel by Giacomo Casanova (I just finished this one and have yet to write about it)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
And this month's selections:
The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley
The Poor Clare by Elizabeth Gaskell (yay another woman writer--too few of them it would seem--I think I am going to rest this one next by the way!)
Have you heard of Readux Books? When I first read about this new publisher I couldn't resist and now have the first set of their books. They publish very short works of literature in translation four times a year. The publisher is based in Berlin and three of the first four titles are translated from German (the fourth from Swedish). As I am planning on incorporating them into my reading for German Literature Month, just a peek here for now and then more about them later this week. As you can see, however, they are teeny books--small formats with between 30-60 pages. They look quite interesting so I am curious to see what sorts of writing this publisher brings into (or back into) print.
I love getting bookish surprises in the mail and am even toying with adding a subscription to Peirene Press's books. But I'm still contemplating that one. The only downside (as if there could be a downside to getting good books delivered to your doorstep!) is that I always have loads of reading plans of my own, so it is a hard balance incorporating these books into my own plans and then those pesky library books that seem to appear out of nowhere (ahem) on the holdshelf each week!