Just a little bookish chitchat for this rainy weekend. I don't mind the rain, especially rain is much nicer than the alternative of sleet and icy stuff, so it seems a step in the right direction of Spring!
Thanks to the Stella Prize I have come across an Australian magazine called Seizure, which I am pretty sure I won't be able to find here locally, but they have a novella prize called Viva la Novella. One of their previous winners happens to be on the Stella shortlist and happened to come across my desk at work so I nabbed it. The book/novella is The Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe, which won the novella prize last year. The story "tells of an Indonesian girl whose life is changed irrevocably when she moves from a small fishing village to work in the house of a Dutch merchant. There she finds both hardship and tenderness as her traditional past and colonial present collide."
I would love to find more of the Stella titles, or any Australian books really, but they can be hard to come by here and expensive to order. Occasionally I can find them on The Book Depository or as ebooks on Amazon. But if anyone knows of a source that is not terribly expensive (postage!), please do share.
You know I love a good book list (either of my own making or one I find somewhere else), but sometimes I think they just add pressure on my own reading as those lists always come with the little nudge "the ten best (fill in the blank) books you should be reading right now". It's that "right now" that gets me into all sorts of trouble, since my own reading pile is already out of control!
That said, here are 15 Irish Crime Writers You Should Be Reading Right Now. I've added several names to my own wishlist and ordered one of the books. Oh dear.
Jami Attenberg's most recent novel (that I started and then had to return unfinished to the library) might be adapted to TV. I think I'd like to watch that.
Maybe it is the voyeur in me, but I always like reading about what the LitHub staffers are doing in their free time (a good way to find ever more book and movie suggestions).
I have not yet tried any of the Serial Box's podcasts (am very absorbed at the moment in Audible's original true crime series West Cork--it is free until May 9 by the way!), but I am very interested in their forthcoming A Most Dangerous Woman, which is described as "an exciting Victorian-era murder mystery, populated by characters from Wilkie Collins's beloved The Woman in White). The Collins novel is one of my all-time favorites, so I am a little trepidatious about listening in. Maybe I will just buy the first episode and see if it hooks me?
Speaking of Classics--I have been totally neglectful of Edith Wharton and all of a sudden I am feeling the desire to return to Undine's world. Maybe it is the rainy weather, but I want to cozy-back-up to the book (and then thinking of the next one . . . maybe it is time to return to those Forsytes by John Galsworthy).
I need to apply a few of these tips to my nevergoingtofinishASuitableBoy problem! (I think I have tried and failed at least three times now, but I am still optimistic I may finish someday).
I guess you know what I'll be doing this weekend! Hope you spend some time with a good book, too.