Welcome to another round of “What I’ve Been Reading Lately” when I enjoy linking up with other readers. My focus these past summer months was the reading challenge at work. Luckily, in August I had two 5-hour flights for uninterrupted reading which helped with completing that challenge. All of the books this month checked off a box (or more) for that challenge. I tried as much as I could to choose books that crossed over with other reading challenges, but with less success than I had hoped. I did complete all the prompts, though not with unique books.
August was Women in Translation Month so I made sure to support that initiative again this year. Since I read books by women in translation all year, I try to find new original languages and points of view to read in August. This August I read a novel translated from the Catalan with multiple unusual narrators which was a nice change of pace.
For September and the next months, I am refocusing on my Nordic Reading Challenge and the Read Around the World and Diversity Across Genres challenges as well as participating in the Norwegian #sakprosaseptember challenge where we read nonfiction (sakprosa means nonfiction) books that correspond to various prompts (with English translation).
What have you been reading lately?
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953) 📖
I found this 1984 edition on my shelf at my parents’ home. I believe I read it back then, but I didn’t have any recollection of details from the book. It was like reading a new-to-me book. I definitely enjoyed (re)reading the book because references and comparisons are often still made to it. Another interesting aspect of reading it is that Ray Bradbury lived in our neighborhood for years until his death in 2012. When his house was later sold and torn down, the new owners installed a gate with words from his writing to honor his legacy which I frequently pass by. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Summer Reading Challenge: A classic AND a book about books, bookstores, or book clubs
- Read My Own Shelf
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry (2021) 📖
I really enjoyed Emily Henry’s Beach Read (Reading Lately, July 2023), but unfortunately, I was underwhelmed by this one. I loved the idea of Poppy and Alex’s friendship and the travels around the world they did together on a yearly basis, but I think there were too many trips going on. The main trip is the road trip to Palm Springs after 2 years of being separated after something “big” happened on their last trip. While the Palm Springs trip is happening, the story jumps back in time to previous trips leading up to the one that disrupted their friendship. And I felt the resolution to their relationship dragged a bit. (And too bad their planned trip to Norway didn’t work out!) ⭐️⭐️⭐
- Summer Reading Challenge: A road trip book
When I sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà (2019) 📖
Translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem (2022)
There wasn’t just one unusual narrator in this book but several, and together they told an immersive story of life in a present-day village in the Pyrenees mountains of Catalonia in northeastern Spain. The story unfolds through a series of interconnected narratives, each providing a very different perspective on the village’s collective experience. Starting with storm clouds and continuing with witches, mushrooms, a deer, mountains, and of course some human narrators and even a pet dog, the reader is immersed in this village’s life. I was surprised by how engaged I was in this book. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Summer Reading Challenge: A book with an unusual narrator AND a book by a woman in translation
- Book Voyage: Read Around the World: Europe (Spain)
- #WomenInTranslationMonth
Fourth Wing (The Empyrean #1) by Rebecca Yarros (2023) 🎧📖
This was a fun read, especially since so many others around me had recently read it or were reading it at the same time. I never would have thought I’d read and be so engaged in a high fantasy novel about “the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders”, but the trials and tribulations of the strong and independent Violet who never imagined herself there, her fellow cadets, and the commanding officers kept me turning the page. A note, if you are sensitive to the F-word, this book is not for you. Book #2 is on my TBR for when I need another read for pure entertainment. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Summer Reading Challenge: Romantasy AND a big book AND a book “everyone” has read
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson (2022) 📖🎧
This is the story of two estranged siblings who reunite in California after their mother’s death. She had left them a voice recording to listen to together along with a black cake to eat together when “the time is right.” Their mother, born on an unnamed Caribbean island to a Black local woman and a Chinese immigrant man, shocks the siblings with the news that they have a half sister and she shares the story of her life growing up on the island and being forced to leave, of which they had no knowledge. Her story takes us from the island to the UK and USA, and interspersed with her story are those of the three siblings. There’s a lot going on here – many characters, many points of view, many issues – all of which kept me totally engaged in the story. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Summer Reading Challenge: A book written by a BIPOC author AND a debut book
- Book Voyage: Read Around the World: North America (Caribbean Island)
- Read My Own Shelf: unread BOTM selection
An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good (Elderly Lady #1) by Helene Tursten (2013)
Translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy (2018) 📖
This collection of short stories features Maud, an 88-year old woman who lives alone and, due to a technicality in the contract from way back then, rent-free in her family’s spacious apartment in Gothenburg, Sweden. She is still agile and totally with it, unless she finds it beneficial to pretend she isn’t. When someone or something is causing a problem and threatening her lifestyle, she has no problem resorting to murder. It’s supposed to be a “funny, irreverent story collection” but it didn’t quite land with me.
- Summer Reading Challenge: A short story collection AND a book by a woman in translation
- Nordic Literature Reading Challenge: Sweden / Free Choice
- #WomenInTranslationMonth
Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhhà Lại (2011) 📖
This is a middle grade novel-in-verse about 10-year-old Hà who is forced to flee Saigon, Vietnam, with her mother and brothers when the city falls in 1975. It is based in part on the author’s own childhood. After travel on board a navy ship and time at refugee camps in Guam and Florida, they ended up in Alabama, a world so challenging and different from anything she had known. She struggled with the language, bullies, friends, and everything she missed from Vietnam. Family and friendly people did make it easier over time. It was a completely absorbing read and gave interesting insight into a refugee experience — all in verse which was impressive! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Summer Reading Challenge: A book from a past school reader list
- #DiversityAcrossGenres: Asian (API) / Historical Fiction
What have you been reading lately?
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“Kim Leine’s great epic, ‘Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden’, is the story of the Danish priest Morten Falck who travels to Greenland at the end of the 1700s. Through this unfolds the tale of Danish colonisation as a completely crazy and meaningless project. The Danish officials try to keep hold of power and customs but are plagued by homesickness and resignation. Grief and anger smoulders amongst the Greenlanders, and some of them seize Christianity and the European ideas of freedom as an inspiration for rebellion against colonial power. But as well as being a critical, historical novel that reminds us of Denmark’s problematic past as a colonial power, the book is also a depiction of dirt as mankind’s basic element.”
“Her [Sofi Oksanen’s] third novel, Purge, is about the Soviet occupation of Estonia and its consequences. Unfortunately, it is also very much of current interest with its stories about human trafficking around the Baltic. The book’s two time levels are 1992 – one year after Estonia won its independence – and the 1940s – when tens of thousands of Estonians were deported to Siberia and agriculture was collectivised. On a summer morning in 1992, old Aliide Truu finds an exhausted and confused young woman in her vegetable garden. This Zara has been tricked away from her home in Vladivostok to work as a sex worker in Berlin. On the way to Tallinn where she was supposed to start selling her body to Finnish sex tourists, she manages to escape.”
“The Blue Fox is a novel about an Icelandic pastor and a fox hunt. Sjón makes use of the Icelandic folktale to tell his story. One of the principal characters is the pastor Baldur Skuggason. He has an evil, dark side to his character. Another key figure is the strange offspring of a cat and a fox following the story – Sjón’s style has elements of a very unique Icelandic sense of humour. The Blue Fox is a short novel with a few sections. Some pages only consist of a single written line, surrounded by large white surfaces calling to mind the Icelandic expanse. This concreteness can be said to balance on the line between prose and poetry. ‘Skugga-Baldur’ is also a contemporary novel which brings up some of today’s ethical questions. Are the weak, deformed babies with developmental disorders welcome in a world where they could have been discarded already prior to birth?”
“The Ice Palace is a novel with two 11-year-old girls as the protagonists: extrovert Siss and quiet, introvert Unn. The day after a meeting of the girls at which Unn revealed that she is carrying a dark secret, Unn travels to the ice palace. This is a huge ice formation which builds up at a waterfall in winter-time. As it turns out to be made up of several ice rooms, she walks into the palace. Unn is enthralled by the beauty of the rooms, but in the seventh room she loses her way and cannot find her way out. She freezes to death with Siss’s name on her lips. The novel concludes with the story of Siss’s life and her reaction to Unn’s death. Siss now becomes the quiet and lonely one. She goes into an inner ice palace until she is finally redeemed and can move on into adulthood with a profound insight.”
“Blackwater is a detective novel set in the town of Svartvattnet in Norrland. It depicts a woman from Stockholm, who moves in with her boyfriend in the town to work as a teacher in a commune. However, events revolve around a double homicide that remains unsolved and the consequences of this trauma for the people in the town. Kerstin Ekman’s story invites many reading styles; it can be read as a Bildungsroman, as a critical analysis of gender roles, as a mythical story with symbolic elements, but, of course, also simply as a thrilling detective novel.”
