Sunday catch up

One of the things I wanted to do this year more is a sort of chatty catch-up post of life, sometimes about books but also about life in General. It is that time a couple of weeks after the new year we all feel slow down after the excess of the Christmas period. We had a very quiet Christmas this year; Amanda had lost her job in the run-up to Christmas which rather put a spanner in our plans it is our first Christmas in a new house but we had a smaller Christmas and it was lovely. We had time together. So, like many guys my age I was shocked when at work we weight ourselves, this time last year we had all in our work team tried to lose weight and I had since last year put 10kg on,so I am pleased to say in the last two weeks I have lost 4 kgs of that but it was a wake-up call I had planned to make a few diet changes in the new year I am a carb eater iI love potatoes (with an Irish heritage going back 500 years it may be genetic at least that is what my dad says) . So I am cutting back swimming again and going to the gym and hope to build habits by slowly building them rather than making huge changes all at once. So we have not been far this year, just around Chesterfield. But we do have a flourishing record fair every. month and that was on earlier today. One of my great loves of recent years is buying Vinyl I upgrade my record player a few years ago to a Sony one that had great reviews. I went today but had a small budget, but I managed to find a stand with a lot of new albums that were only ten pounds. I love a bargain. so I found three albums

 

I firstly found the latest album by Shearwater that came out last year. I have been a fan of this band that is an off shot , well it was at the start I think it may be a separate band no of the band Okkervil River to showcase there quieter more acoustic songs. I first really got into them with there album Rook, they members of the bands are birdwatching fans hence a lot of birds on there covers and album and band title in Shearwater. So I  loved finding this one.

Then I found this collection of early songs and pieces from Beirut, a band I am aware of. I have a couple of the albums on CD, so this maybe will get me more into the band. They use a lot of world music rhythms in their music and often crop up in film soundtracks.

Then a real gem of a find a collection of b-sides and rarities from the one and only Bright Eyes. I first got into them with the album Lifted over 20 years ago. Conor Oberst is just a great songwriter and should be better known. I loved Lifted the first album. So not bad for 30 pounds three albums ok two off them are collections of songs rather than albums but will give me a few weeks of listening. I also had got just after chirstmas with some money I got for Christmas another favourite.

It is another of the records that had been rereleased of Tom Waits mid-career records. I have them all on CD, but I just want to get a few of them on Vinyl, and this is one of them. I loved Frank Wild Years is a song cycle about a man called Frank, a drinker like most of Toms’s characters. It is a stop-gap til we get a new album from him. Finger crisis it may be this year!

So that has been this weekend I have also been out with Amanda in the car. She is learning to drive it and I am helping her between lessons which is new being in the passenger seat but she is doing well she has had a dozen or so lessons and is doing better than I was at that stage, I hope she will pass it will give her such freedom like it did myself when I passed. We have been busy still working through The Crown. We have three series to watch and have left them in 1977 when we last saw it; I remember seeing the Queen as she came through Hazel Grove in 1977, and I used to have a commemorative coin from School for the Silver Jubilee. We are enjoying the series Amanda is enjoying learning about the time as she didn’t know as much history of the royals as I did. So that is a quick glimpse to my every day Life I back to work in the morning and will be back with a review on Tuesday and hope to have another catch up in a few weeks when I may have more to chat about and hopefully be a little lighter still.

 

A quick Hi on Easter Sunday

I hope to be back later this week as I had trouble with deliveries to the new house if I had been told this was going be an issue I may had got things delivered elsewhere so I am busy reading a couple of books for this week 1940’s club from Simon and Karen have been doing different years twice a year for the last couple of years. I hope to get a couple of the books I had ordered to read. But what did arrive and I had put together today made my Desk set up which will be the first time in all the year I have been blogging at winstonsdad I have an actual desk to write on instead of on my knee. it is similar to my desk at work as I am so tall it is easier to have a sit to stand desk which can go a little higher and i have a two monitor set up and a keyboard and mouse which is similar to my work set up. and a chair from Ikea. So just a couple of bookcase and the room will be finished and I will be back to normal blogging hopefully.

Saturday We become a teen 13 years blogging

I was notified yesterday that it was my blog anniversary I started Winstonsdad 13 years ago. I had been reconnecting with books and over a previous couple of years, I had been reading more and more and was drawn to world lit. I had been on Twitter for a year which had connected with book bloggers. I got my first laptop around 15 years ago has not been into computers until then. So I  decided as someone that left school without maybe seeing my full potential and had drifted for years. Until I reconnected with reading I had read lots of books, maybe till my late teens. But then I had perhaps read a book a  month until I rediscovered a passion for books. As this grew I found that I had always loved European fiction since living and working in Germany in my early twenties. I had a number of books from around the world I had been buying. That was the Kernel of what is here. I got drawn into reading Translated fiction more and the idea of the blog was 52 books from around the world well 13 years later and 1100 plus books later the blog has become teen and actually I am in a purple patch of blogging I have over the last 13 years seen the blog go up and down much as my life has in the previous few 13 years. Anyway, let’s see what the teen years of Winstonsdad hold. The journey carries on I set sail on the sea of world lit. The plan is to carry on as I am I hope to eventually work a simple guide to world lit a simple book from me an open guide to encourage readers to try and discover and start their own journey around the world. So as I am currently in Brazil with the latest from Charco Press. One of the great joys in the time I have blogged is how many people now read translated fiction and how many wonderful small press have sprung up. The booker international seems to have sparked a wider audience for the listed books !! I love how it has grown and hope it carries on as is great to have lots more books to choose from. Thanks for all the comments and changes over the last 13 years here is to the coming years and let’s hope we just get more and more books in translation to discover and promote.

That was the month that was Feburary 2022

1. Geography of an Adultery by Agnes Riva
2. The End of Eddy bt Edouard Louis
3. Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet
4. The Voice imatator by Thomas Bernhard
5. Marzhan ,mon Amour by Katja Oskamp
6. One in Me I never Loved by Carla GuelfenBein
7. Necropolis by Boris Pahor

I am on too 16 books reviewed on the blog which is just under my target of 100 reviews for the year I have currently read 26 book this year so am on target to read over a 100 books. I started my reading this month in France with three french novels two about aultery one real and told with a sparce use of emotions a more clinical nature to the affair in Riva’s Geography of an Adultery. Then in Jealousy we saw what could have been imagined affair in Robbe-Grillet novel that sees a husband glimpse on his wife and fill in the gaps. Then my other french book saw a hard childhood described from a son that is different to his family. Then we have Thomas Bernhard his flash fiction culled from news headlines remind me of ALexander Kluge somewhat, Then In Berlin we meet a podiatrist a writer retrains and sees a community through there feet. Then a divorce and an affair from two different eras are told in One I never loved. Then we ended the month with a powerful description of s[lovenian writer Boris Pahor and his time in c=various concentration camps as a prisoner then as a  medical orderly.My reading has slowed this month as it usually does I always race through books in the new year and then hit the wall. I have written a lot more words than this time last year as my reviews are slowly growing. How has your month been ?

Book of the month-

Necropolis is a powerful telling of the horrors of the Holocaust from the perspective of being a slovenian and the various camps he went to during the war. As I said it is a book everyone should read.

Non book event this month

It has been a very quiet month for me I am off work at the moment  so have been at home a lot we have had our usual walk in the peaks and trips to Bakewell and town for coffees. I have listen to a lot of comfort music mostly shoegazing which is a genre I love and bands like the cure and REM the sort of musical equivalent of comfort reading there is something reassuring in these bands also I drift away with the likes of Slowdive and My bloody valentine. I  also went for comfort tv things like new tricks also been indulging in youtube videos I like book tube but also vanlife, cottage core, productivity and  pen and stationary vlogs it is a rabbit hole that I hadn’t watch a lot til this last few months. Do you have comfort music ?

Next month-

Well it is Man booker  longlist time in March. I have read a few books  I think may be there that I have to review yet as I usually do in the weeks before. As we have 10 days to wait and see what will make this years list it is always a highlight of my year the longlist coming out and seeing what the Judges have chosen there is so many books out there it will be a hard call to chose just 12 or 13 books from the selection that is out there  I imagine. I am doing the shadow Jury  again. Which I will be doing again this year it is always a highlight for me as a reader and last year the chance to chat with everyone on line was amazing. As  for  the  blog Til the list is out it will be a mix of what I am reading  at moment and what \I have read including Grey bees by Andrei Kurkov which has been on my tbr since I was sent it last year and now seems the right time to read it I am also in the middle of The morning star I also would love to get a couple of Arab books in this month as it has been a while since I have reviewed any. I had tried to stop reading multiple books but I needed to read grey bees so made an exemption. from the 10th it will be what ever I haven’t read of the longlist and can get when the list is released I know in recent years there have been books not available when the list comes out which is annoying especially when I can’t get them. I hope to review a few more books this month. What are your plans for next month ?

 

Merry Christmas From Me Stu

Edited in Prisma app with Gothic

Well, it is Christmas 2021, I am working this afternoon and Boxing day morning I have worked most of the last 20 years at Christmas So I am use to adjusting what we do so we will be having our big meal Boxing day night. Today I finished a great Norweigan modern classic today which Iw ill be reviewing in the next few days. I hope all of you are all having a bookish Christmas I am looking forward to the new year and trying to bring you all more books in Translation in 2022. What have you been up to this Christmas ?

A very Merry Christmas from ME Stu !!!

That was the month that was July 2021

1. Ramifications by Daniel Saldaña París
2. Working Woman by Elvira Navarro
3. Death at Intervals by Jose Saramago
4. None so Blind by J A Gonzalez Sainz

This month I wasn’t on form a real reading slump so I only managed four reviews all month we started in Mexico with a young man looking back at the loss of his mother as he is sick in the same bed as his parents slept in. Then a flatshare happens or is it two women or one woman imaging a flatmate as her editing job shrinks down. Then Death takes a break from her job and all through everyone is happy at first the consequences of no deaths soon sinks in and a cellist then avoids the call of death Then a man moves to the basque region and sees his family drawn into the Basque problems in the 80s a quiet man’s life turns. So I managed three countries not any new publisher.

Book of the month

I hadn’t read Saramago for a decade and this reminded me what a talented writer he was and how he had lots of recurrent themes in his works such as religion, the Salazar regime, and dystopian worlds. It won’t be this long next time too I  read him.

Non-book events

I watched the Shane Meadows film Dead man’s shoes which I have watched a few times as a revenge thriller mostly set in Matlock as a brother returns to take revenge on the druggy gang that killed his disabled brother killing them one by one. It has him talking with his brother reliving what happened to him I like Meadows’s work as they are mostly set in place I know around Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. In the opposite to that was watching Terry Gillian’s dystopic film Brazil with Jonathan Pryce as a man caught up in a kafkaesque world of things going wrong after a mistake means the wrong man is arrested. But on the whole, It has been a quiet month otherwise really fairly hot for most of it.  we tidied our garden but have a bit more to do but now have a few days off to do some more work in it. This also saw the seventh anniversary of losing Winston, not a week goes by that I don’t miss him.

The month ahead well with the lack of reviews for the last month I have extended Spanish lit month and intend to review a few more books for there I have two already read ready for review and then I will also try a couple for Woman in translation month a couple will cross with Spanish lit month then I have review copies piling up. that I need to get to. So a busy month I hope. What plans have you for the next month?

April 2021 that was the month that was !!

1. The Employees by Olga Ravn
2. The war of the Poor by Eric Vuillard
3. In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova
4. Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
5. The Perfect Nine by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
6. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
7. I Live in the Slums by Can Xue

I read all the books this month were on the Booker Longlist which came out at the end of March. So I went from Denmark with a sci-fi novel that questions humanity and what it is to be human through a series of interviews then a french novella about a german religious reformer The A Russian family and the artistic movements are remembered when aunts flat is cleared and a set of family memories pout out. Then a story of a women’s death is told from then and rediscovered in the now as just a footnote in history. Then tribal history is recalled in a novel in verse from a great writer in later work. The dark short stories that sometimes are very close to the bone from a Latin American writer that is a rising star. The collection of short stories that capture the ebb and flow of modern china and the migrant. The month saw one new publish Lolli editions no new countries. I had hoped to review more but time caught up with me a lot this month.

Book of the month

For one month only as these are on the longlist and we are discussing the list I will leave this let’s say there are two books from one publisher on the list and they would maybe be near the top.

Non book events

I have just caught the oscar-winning film Nomadland which I had been waiting all month to watch. A film that captured a sort of modern Steinbeck trip across the country like the grapes of wrath for a modern age The record shop opened this month so I have brought a number of new records some old favorite a Fall album a brilliant corners album. Then new records from BC Camplight and Katy J Pearson that I have heard championed on Mark Rileys radio show. THen A Marianne faithful spoken word poetry album and a retro of the works of the electro pop band Yello an interesting mix and a fair few CDs which is maybe why I have read a bit less As I had been listening to more music this month. We ventured out to the peaks a few times and I returned to swimming after a break due to lockdown. We have just had our first zoom meeting for the shadow booker which saw us join in from Australia, the US, India, and Here in the Uk but the great thing is to put a voice to people

Next month

I have a mountain of review books also just got a couple of Czech novels that have caught my eye so one of them will appear I’m sure we will be sorting the Booker shadow shortlist.

How was your month reading-wise?

 

That was the month that was Feb 2021

1. Under the Glacier by Halldor Laxness
2. Game of the Gods by Paolo Maurensig
3. Our Circus Presents..  by Lucian Dan Teodorovici
4. waiting by Goretti Kyomuhendo
5. Why we love women by Mircea Cărtărescu
6. The imagined land by Eduardo Berti
7. Tower by Bae Myung-Hoon
8. The pear tree by Nana Ekvtimishvilli
9. A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti
10. The No World Concerto by A G Porta
11. The art of Losing by Alice Zeniter

SO far I have reviewed 24 books this year. 11 in Feb where the journey started with a novel from Iceland about a church go stray and the man sent to see what had happened. Then a story of a man from a humble background that became a great chess player. Then a group of men and women that are trying to take their lives in the most elaborate way a blackly comic work from Bulgaria. I went to Uganda and a young girl recounting the war from her family’s point of view was also the first work from Uganda I have covered. Then the great Romanian writer Micrea  Cărtărescu on some of his loves and women he has known. Then an imagine china from the  Argentinean writer Eduardo Berti. We then have Korean sci-fi but is also social commentary in the tower a state in a supersize tower block. Then we go to Georgia and a school for learning disabilities that is falling apart and has abuse at its heart seen from a pupil that has taken a young boy under her wing. Then a book that has a v=collection of stories revolving around Bach Goldberg variations another from Argentina and then we had a Spanish writer that had been friends and written with Roberto Bolano his only work in English two intertwined lives but who is writing about who? Then a truly epic saga of three generations of an Algerian family that comes to France and returns when the granddaughter returns and shows her family snapshots of friends and family that have aged fifty years before their eyes. So I went to ten countries with Uganda being a new country to the blog a rare event these days. There was also a couple of new publishers the feminist press and Plymouth university press. I also made the decision to score my reviews on an a to e scale moving forward.

Book of the month

I loved Luis Sagasti first book he is a writer that seems to make the reader think beyond the stories he wrote but also draws you into them these all revolved around music the Bach Goldberg variations but also a bizarre tongue in cheek story of a giant organ being built that causes an avalanche. I did have to check up that story was only fiction, lets hope we get more from this writer.

Non-book-related events

Well, the lockdown has us all not doing a lot. Amanda and I have been catching up on the second series of Stranger things which we had fallen behind in watching. I still love all the 80s references and the nod to the films of the time in the show itself. I watched a short film by Guy Maddin the Canadian director is an underrated filmmaker. Apart from that, not a lot else to report. Rather same as with last month I am now on three nights so won’t return with a review to Thursday.

Month ahead

Well, I still haven’t read a book from Arabic this year so I will try to do that otherwise it will be mainly books to fill in the gaps of what I hadn’t  that could be on the Man Booker International longlist which comes out at the end of this month. Any thought on what would make the longlist? What were your highlights last month?

That was the month that was January 2021

1. The Catholic school by Edoardo Albinati
2. At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop
3. A luminous Republic by Andres Barba
4. Shipwrecks by Akira Yoshimura
5. Robinson by Aram Pachyan
6. Holiday Heart by Margarita Garcia Robayo
7. Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
8. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
9. Kokoschka doll by Alfonso Cruz
10. The last days of Ellis Island by  Gaëlle Joss
11. 30th April 1945 by Alexander Kluge
12. The sand child by Tahar Ben Jelloun
13. With an unopened umbrella in the pouring rain by Ludovic Bruckstein

Well, I managed 13 reviews this month, and from 12 countries unfortunately there were no new countries,  no new publishers, but it’s been a while since I reviewed a book from Virago. The journey this month starts with the epic Italian story of a school and some killing then we went to the trenches and some African troops. A small child tells the tales of his medieval Japanese fishing village.  Then some strange children appear in the jungle. Then Modern Armenia is highlighted in a collection of short stories. Then we had the tale of a couple’s American dream falling apart. A day in the life of a pre-war Japan. Then the letters between a New Yorker and an old English bookseller. A series of vignettes take us to wartime Germany and the aftermath. The last week on Ellis Island sees the last guard reflecting on his time on the Island. The day Hitler shot himself is seen in 360 degrees from every angle. Then a girl is forced to grow up a boy to save the family money and lastly we see Sighet in Romania with tales of the Jews that lived there.

Book of the month

We have two winners here –

Firstly the tales of Sighet so touch me in this collection of short stories from a writer that has luckily been saved from oblivion and brought to us thanks to his son’s efforts to get his father’s voice heard.

Then 30th April 1945 is just so rich the multiple layer Kluge forms with his vignettes around the day Hitler shot himself. Kluge is a writer that likes to take a wide angle on his fiction the bigger picture.

Non-book related items

With us in Lockdown I haven’t brought a lot of records this month but spent most time listen back to old Uncut and Mojo cd I have got both these magazines for well twenty years so I have a lot of their CDs and have spent a couple of hours reading and listening to them most afternoons off work. Especially their Americana CDs. I am now on the last of my three nights tonight for this month at work.

Next month

I have already read a couple of books read ready so we shall be in Iceland and with a chess master to start with this month’s reading I hope to add a couple of Arab works this month. Then I will see where I wander knowing me it has been a while since I read a book from a new country so I think that may need to add somewhere new next month what are your plans for the coming month?

Winstonsdad goes to Bi-weekly reviews

I have struggled as Mentioned before with reviews this last year so I have decided to be a lot more organized than I ever have been as I am struggling to review books it goes in blocks then nothing I have tried to just do the reviews ad hoc but this year. I have lost my usual rhythm so I decided the best thing as I managed to write two reviews a few times in one day. So I feel I will be doing a review on Mondays and Thurs moving forward if I get a chance to add reviews I will and this means if I get a spare evening I can do some other posts around books that I used to do years ago. I will be posting this Thursday. I usually have Thursday off work strange thing is this week I am working but am working this week but will have a post ready for the long-running #translationthurs hashtag I started years ago. Well on to no book things The one thing I have gained during this covid madness is a love for Nostalgia tv it’s one of the beauties of the modern age with Apps and nostalgia tv channels we have a lot of old tv shows back. SO recent watches have been V the series, The original and rebooted Battlestar Galactica now don’t worry I will be turning into a sci-fi book blog no just love a bit of 80s/90s love even my taste in music has been listening to old vinyl I been buying on Thursdays at our local flea market and our monthly record fair and the record store days means I have a lot of new records from this era to listen too. I also hope to be on Twitter a bit more than I have been this year. What have you been doing new due to Covid. We all need to keep safe and well this winter. The pic is a local statue of one of Chesterfield’s famous residents Stephenson of Train fame just seemed his measuring stick was apt for this post. Also struggling with the new WordPress format so different from the previous one which I had used for the time I have blogged anyone else not keen on this new format at mo?