The (S)word in the Autumn Stone: What Are You Reading, Fall 2022?

While we are on the subject of autobiographies of musicians, I'll put in another plug for Debbie Harry's book, Face It. It's very readable and entertaining, and her voice comes across as authentic. I'm still laughing about her David Bowie anecdote.

Some of the SONGS OF INNOCENCE songs and titles do figure in the very early chapters of SURRENDER (the little I've read), because much of that LP is a deliberate, perhaps strained, attempt to sing about early life, Dublin c.1970s.

I'm also a reading walker! it's pretty unsafe tbh but sometimes it's just the thing. it's funny when I'm reading some giant book but I do it anyway.

here's me this year:

The Last Man, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Home: New Arabic Poems (anthology), Two Lines Press
Tales of Hoffman, ETA Hoffman, tr. Hollindale
Real Easy, Marie Rutkowski
Homecoming, Magda Isanos, forgot to note translator
Post Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven, Antoine Volodine, tr. Mahaney
Bardo or Not Bardo, Antoine Volodine, tr. Mahaney
War and Peace, Tolstoy, tr. Briggs
Leeches, David Albahari, tr. Elias-Bursac
Bartleby & Co., Enrique Vila-Matas, tr. Dunne
Obscure Destinies, Willa Cather
Bloodlines, Melissa del Bosque
Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin
Another Country, James Baldwin
The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy-Casares, tr. Simms
The Good Conscience, Carlos Fuentes, tr. not listed anywhere in early paperback ed.!!
The Union Jack, Imre Kertesz, tr. Wilkinson
The Judgment of Richard Richter, Igor Stiks, tr. Elias-Bursac
After the Banquet, Yukio Mishima. tr. Keene
The Islamist Phoenix, Loretta Napoleoni
Ways of Going Home, Alejandro Zambra, tr. Mcdurell
The Art of Flight, Sergio Pitól, tr. George Henson
Detective Story, Imre Kertesz, tr. Wilkinson
A Brief History of Portable Literature, Enrique Vila-Matas, tr. Bunstead & McLean
The Devil's Home on Leave, Derek Raymond
Destroy, She Said, Marguerite Duras, tr. Bray
The Journey, Sergio Pitól, tr. George Henson
Introduction to Emptiness, Guy Newman
The Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, tr. name illegible in my notebook
The Master of Knots, Massimo Carlotto, tr. Woodall

I'll probably finish By Bus, the truly delightful book by Erica Van Horn I'm presently reading, tonight or tomorrow, and then tomorrow I'll fret about whether to read a super short book in one day to get one more in, or start in on something ambitious.

Wonderful year in reading for me. Music and literature, as magnificent and eternally new to me still as they were when I first discovered them as a child.

otm

A Brief History of Portable Literature sounds intriguing. Was it as charmingly entertaining as the blurbs make it sound?

it's good, and sometimes seems more than good, though Bartleby & Co. is richer, I think

thx

War and Peace, Tolstoy, tr. Briggs

The Good Conscience, Carlos Fuentes, tr. not listed anywhere in early paperback ed.!!

The Last Man, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

at the risk of being all morbs

Please use the receptacle provided: What are you reading as 2023 begins?

I usually post a link to the newest WAYR, but I figured there might be some 'clean up' on this needed for the ongoing discussions on this one before 2022 officially ended so I put it off a bit.

Ursula Le Guin -- S/D, etc.

The Whole New Yorker Raymond Carver Thing

for xmas i was given THE FALL OF NÚMENOR (by various tolkiens and others), written up here: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series

I'd like to be able to comment on that, Mark S, but haven't read this stuff properly since THE SILMARILLION when I was ... 13? I feel that I set myself rather an unnecessarily difficult and dreary challenge in that instance. I did read it all. I should have focused more on just properly reading THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

The comic book (c.1990?) of THE HOBBIT is very good.