Not a great year in reading for me and I am all to blame, a self-inflicted wound owing to distraction and commitments related to the translation (I also taught a class at Wesleyan, which requires me to re-read a lot of books from the course text list and thus neglect any non-course books I may have been reading).
But I do like to log the year in reading and so here are a few books that sparked my imagination in significant ways:
John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs
The experience of reading John and Paul was so seismic that I wonder if perhaps I've been excluding a genre that I would otherwise love, namely biographies.
It’s been a while since I devoured a book the way I read this book. As I wrote in my journal, "I’ve been staying up until 11 p.m. reading it – not looking at Facebook, not fooling around with the laptop. Just reading as much of the book as I can manage – running to it whenever I have a moment free."
Am I reading the wrong books? So should I be reading more biographies? Or books about rock icons I love?! (Quick! Someone send me a biography of Bono and/or U2)
I think childhood -- and childhood obsessions -- could be the key here. When I read about the Beatles, it's as though I am reading about someone I knew – as if someone wrote a biography of St. Anthony’s High School or the streets of Florence or my mother. I followed the Beatles so closely as a young girl that I suppose that's why. As I wrote on Goodreads, it was part and parcel of my girlhood obsession with the Beatles to explore in minute detail the inner workings of the Lennon-McCarthy songwriting partnership, and thanks to this wonderful dual biography of the two Beatles, I can do just that. For anyone who's ever had any kind of Beatle worship, this book is essential. And what an interesting concept! Exploring this relationship as a one-of-a-kind partnership that eschews easy definition.
I read another book that fascinated me while also being revolting:
Nobody's Girl by Virginia Giuffre
I both recommend and don't recommend this book by one of the best-known victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Would you like to confront pure evil? On the other hand, I made a point of purchasing the hardback so that my purchase could be counted in the hopes there are many, many sales. Sales = interest. Sales = this topic is important.
Per my routine, I also read a book by French novelist Patrick Modiano (which I was even able to review for the Boston Globe) and I re-read A Christmas Carol, something I've been doing every year at Christmas for about a decade (it's worth reading each year a line with which Marley chastises Scrooge: "Mankind was my business! The common welfare was my business...")
And I read another book that satisfies my nascent need to know everything about Nazi-occupied Europe: The Propagandist. I wrote about it for the 'What We're Reading' rubric published by The Common literary magazine (back in March). It's a fascinating though also revolting book about a French family that was pro-Hitler during World War II and most notably long afterwards as well! I believe it caused a bit of a stir when it was published in France.
I also began reading (not read, in the past tense) (see distraction above, also insistence on reading multiple books at once) Eichmann in Jerusalem, the seminal account by Hannah Arendt of Adolf Eichmann's infamous trial for war crimes. There are a few books in the world that are so fundamental for understanding human behavior that you can glean quite a bit by reading half or failing to finish, and this is one such book. What I read about Eichmann's attitude, his ordinariness, his spoken testimony at the trial, the fact that he lived for quite a few years (dare I say happily?) in Argentina before being captured, all of this furnishes me with new horrifying information about the semi-recent historical event that engrosses me the most. (But I plan to finish it this year).
Similarly, I began reading a book I'd long been searching for: Lettera da Francoforte by "my" author, Edith Bruck (translation: Letter from Frankfurt; not available in English). I found it at Il Libraccio in Florence -- a review copy, I believe, since on the front it says "inedito," ('unpublished'). It's the story of a Holocaust victim who tries to apply to a compensation program run by the German government. No, I do not know how autobiographical this work is but I'm going to see if I can find out. Did Edith ever apply to this fund? Is this fund real? I've come to know a little bit about the Claims Conference, which distributes compensation to victims of the Holocaust but I don't believe it is run by Germany.
In any event, having translated one book and many poems by her, I'm basically always reading or re-reading work by Edith Bruck. And another aspect of my yearly reading routine: I re-read Natalia Ginzburg, and this year, as I noted in a recent post, I read some new books by Ginzburg (new to me, of course, since she died in 1991) and I also revisited this work as part of my Italian trip prep:
Tutti i nostri ieri (All of Our Yesterdays in English)
(I love Natalia Ginzburg so I hate to say it but this one was a bit of a slog for me initially. I'd actually planned to read it or I should say re-read it -- because it was a college text -- a few years ago but abandoned it. I'm glad I stuck with it because I want to know Ginzburg's work intimately, even if it lacks some of the magic of her other books where the whimsy of the characters is so winning and the longing so palpable).
New work that I read and highly recommend from the Ginzburg oeuvre:
As I wrote previously, this book is for the Ginzburg completist (English translation: It's Hard to Talk About Yourself). Why? Well, it's a transcript of a series of televised interviews with Ginzburg that go over all of her major works, and include appearances by important literary critics. And in the process, she revisits not only her work but some of the most tragic moments of her life, including the death of her husband, Leone Ginzburg, at the hands of the Fascists. More of my thoughts on this book here.
Other books I read (for the first time):
A Month in Siena
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (file under 'books I read after my father died'; this was one of the second-tier popular classic books that he loved about hard-edged characters)
One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World (instantly became part of the canon of Holocaust narrative); you can find other recommendations for books by women about the Holocaust here (to be clear, this book was written by Michael Frank but in such close coordination with Stella Levi that I added it to the list); I think of this as one of my personal "beats" now that I've begun to translate Edith's work.
A Girl's Story, by French Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux (oddly enough, one of two French Nobel Laureates on this list -- see Modiano ^^)
The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing by Roy Peter Clark (I highly recommend this book for anyone who aspires to write)
Department of Re-reading
I re-read books a lot, especially when I'm teaching. And in the Fall, I taught a hybrid nonfiction and fiction writing course, which is why I re-read Dubliners -- relying on my high school edition and a phenomenal illustrated, annotated edition my father gave me that was edited by John Wyse Jackson and Bernard McGinley (by pure coincidence, I recently uncovered a photo from my graduation day where I posed with Brother Jeff, who taught the English course that first introduced me to Dubliners. I still hear the name 'Gabriel Conroy' in Brother Jeff's voice in my head).
To use a Joycean word, I was swooning as I re-read, "The Dead." I think I probably should re-read it each year. It feels like a visit to the confessional. And most notably, I re-read it because I taught the text for the first time! Like I said, it was part of a course that combined nonfiction and fiction writing, which I taught for the first time at Wesleyan.
And a poem I revisited again and again (see the news): "The Second Coming" by Yeats. In particular, lines from the first stanza:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer
What I'd like to read in 2026: Something else by Dickens (I have Pickwick Papers, which is highly recommended), Vita immaginaria by Ginzburg (which I bought in Italy last summer), books about translation (including This Little Art) and another overlooked classic (overlooked by me, just to be clear). What I'd like to finish in 2026: Tagebuch by Liana Millu (which I bought directly from the publisher Giuntina in Florence, a lovely little detour during the trip); Eichmann in Jerusalem and How To Talk So Kids Will Listen And Listen So Kids Will Talk.
What did you read? What do you recommend? Did you read the book about John and Paul?!
Last but not least, I have a new category to add to this annual roundup: books that Leo read!
Leo read this year:
Invisible Cities
Slaughterhouse Five
Me Talk Pretty One Day
The Outsiders
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for reading the blog!