Just a few miscellaneous items today. I had planned on writing about Eline Vere but it's been a long work week and I just couldn't quite concentrate last night on writing a proper book post (and as I loved the book it deserves a more focused attention than I could give it). So here's just a little catch up post on what books I'll be reading this month for my Dutch Literature reading project. It's been a wonderful summer project and I have done better than I expected and now we are into August, so I hope to finish these books this month and maybe squeeze just one more shorter novel in (though maybe that is being more ambitious than I have time for . . .).
I've read four books so far (all have been translated from Dutch). I was hoping I might manage ten over the course of three months, and if my reading spills over to September or even through the rest of the year I won't mind a bit. I find I am liking the books I am reading very much and many of the books in my original reading pile still tempt me!
So, from top to bottom:
Inevitable by Louis Couperus was published after Eline Vere. It's a story of a divorced woman who travels to Italy on her own hoping to begin her life over. She seems to find Rome disappointing and is very restless with the way she lives. Just when she begins a new relationship with a Dutch painter he ex-husband will come back into the picture. I'm not sure what I think of Cornélie. She's so unhappy, so languid. I don't feel unsympathetic towards her, but I am not warming up quite as much to her as I did Eline. Still, as you can see from where my bookmark sits, it's still early days. And don't get me wrong--I very much like the book but only feel a little more outside the story than I did with Couperus's other book.
I am very much liking Hella Haasse's The Tea Lords and was hoping to fit it into my reading. She has written so many books it was hard deciding which to choose, though many of her novels are historical fiction (and not necessarily set in The Netherlands). If I remember correctly this novel was well received by readers and it was a popular choice just a few years back. It is set in Colonial Java about a young man who travels there to be with his family and begin a coffee plantation. It has a very exotic feel to it. I like Rudolf, who is only in his early 20s at the start of the story, but I get the feeling he is perhaps something of a misfit. I'm very curious to see where his life will take him and what luck he will have in running a plantation. In my reading so far there have only been whispers of a Colonial past in regards to Dutch history, so I am finding this very interesting.
I've just barely started the first Grijpstra and De Gier murder mystery, Outsider in Amsterdam. I feel like I have a very vivid picture in mind of the two detectives after reading the collection of Janwillem van de Wetering's stories about them. I have high hopes for this book which is about a purported suicide of a man found hanging from the ceiling beam in his bedroom. But was it suicide or something darker?
"With its unvarnished depiction of the legacy of Dutch Colonialism ad the darker facets of Amsterdam's free drug culture, this excellent procedural asks the question of whether a murder may ever be justly committed."
I think I will be spending extra time with this book this weekend. If it reads as well as the short stories did, I should be able to breeze through it.
I've already told you a bit about Adrian Mathews The Apothecary's House, which I must admit I have not made much progress on. Not the fault of the book at all, which I am finding very good story-wise, but it has a lot of other books to compete with, and I am always short of reading time. I do love the art angle of the story, however. Maybe I can find a nice chunk of reading time this weekend to dip into all my Dutch stories.
I have left off Geert Mak's book about Amsterdam. It's still on my sidebar and still on my pile of books, but it will most certainly be a carryover book. I know I have mentioned many times how slow I am when it comes to nonfiction. He's a good writing--but oh so many details to soak up. He also spends a lot of time in early Amsterdam history and I felt a little bogged down in the 12th century.
I might add a novella to the line-up--maybe On the Water by H.M. van den Brink or Villa des Roses by Willem Elsschot (though the latter is set in Paris and not in The Netherlands, though the author is Dutch). Or I might pick out a short story to read this weekend by Nescio, too.
Time is slipping away so quickly, but I am still firmly planted in the Dutch literary landscape!
I do have a request--I had hoped to watch one or two Dutch films so any suggestions are welcome. I think I might devote the last week of the month to all things Dutch, so will be thinking of how to go about that.
Happy weekend everyone. You'll find me in a houseboat on an Amsterdam canal perhaps or zipping around with Grijptra and De Gier in their little Volkswagen maybe. Probably to the sultry forests of Indonesia, too. I hope your reading takes you somewhere exotic as well!