"Well, there’s so much to read, and I’m so far behind." Wallace Stegner
The night light in the blue-tinged glass on the mantleshelf burned behind a book, which cast a shadow across half the bedroom. The quiet glow spreading over the bedside table and the chaise lounge, bathed the wide folds of the velvet curtains, and flooded the mirror on the rosewood cupboard between the two windows with … Continue reading A Love Story | Émile Zola
She returned to the island on Friday, August 16, on the three o'clock ferry. She was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, plain flat shoes without socks, carrying a satin parasol and a handbag, and her only luggage was a beach bag. Some things should just be left alone. Despite some hints and flashes of the … Continue reading Until August | Gabriel García Márquez
Photo by Jack Finnigan on Unsplash Vera Anatolyevna Pavlova was born in 1963 in Moscow. She now lives in Toronto, Ontario with her husband Steven Seymour. She has published 23 collections of poetry, including If There is Something to Desire: One Hundred Poems (Knopf, 2010). I discovered her poems thanks to mentions by both Maria Tumarkin and Wislawa Szymborska. Four … Continue reading Four Poems | Vera Pavlova trans. Steven Seymour
It is never easy to move to a new country, but in truth I was happy to be away from New York. That city had become disorientating to me, after my father's death and my mother's sudden retreat to Singapore. For the first time, I understood how much my parents had anchored me to this … Continue reading Intimacies | Katie Kitamura
The old house stood on a residential street, some distance from the train station. The enormous park it backed onto surrounded it at all times with a wild scent of greenery, and after rain the air stood as thick as if the entire neighborhood had turned into a jungle, making it hard to breathe. The … Continue reading The Premonition | Banana Yoshimoto
Nini was the son of one of my father's cousins and he had been with us ever since he was a little boy. After the death of his parents he went first to live with his grandfather, but the old man used to beat him with a broomstick and he was always running away to … Continue reading The Road to the City | Natalia Ginzburg #NovNov23
'I've lost my soul, Mary! Help me, my little Madonna!' Black and more black. This must be death. The two novellas I've read this month so far have been sad little numbers about illness. The first was cancer (Cheri by Jo Ann Beard) and now this autofiction foray into mental health, depression and psychiatric wards. … Continue reading Everything Calls for Salvation | Daniele Mencarelli #NovNov
When Saya sends a text to tell me she has a new boyfriend, I instantly write back: What's he like? But all she replies is: He's a doctor. Modern Japanese literature really is a world unto its own. From the dense, supernatural, magic realism fantasy that Murakami writes to the (often) saccharin sweet, story-with-message that … Continue reading What You Are Looking For is in the Library | Michiko Aoyama
Photo by Fumiaki Hayashi on Unsplash As many of you know, I am participating in a chapter-a-day readalong of Middlemarch at the moment. And for the first time in quite some time, I have a poetry prompt inspired by my reading. It's also perfectly timed for Poetry Month in Australia. In chapter six of Middlemarch it is discovered … Continue reading Sweet-apple | Sappho #EliotReadalong
It was in 1927 or 1928. I have no memory for dates, and I am not one of those people who carefully keep written records of everything they do: a not uncommon activity in our profession, and one that has proved quite useful to some, even occasionally profitable. Maigret may not remember the dates exactly, … Continue reading Maigret’s Memoirs | Georges Simenon
Books first published: 1996 | 2000 | 2008 | 2001 | 2016 There are beings who are overwhelmd by the reality of others, their way of speaking, of crossing their legs, of lighting a cigarette. They become mired in the presence of others. After Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022, five … Continue reading A Girl’s Story | Annie Ernaux #ReadtheNobels
She looked up from her book. How irritating all these old refrains on noncommunication were! If we really want to communicate, we manage to do so more or less successfully. Not with everyone, of course, but with two or three people. Trying to find the provenance of Misunderstanding in Moscow has been a challenge. My … Continue reading Misunderstanding in Moscow | Simone de Beauvoir
As his dying wish, Borges requested the epitaph 'He took the sword and laid the naked metal between them.' He asked this of Maria Kodama, his beautiful, younger wife and literary secretary, who had married Borges two months before he died, at the age of eighty-seven. He chose Geneva as the place of his passing: … Continue reading Greek Lessons | Han Kang
Gervaise had waited up for Lantier until two in the morning. Then, shivering all over from sitting half undressed in the cold air from the window, she'd slumped across the bed, feeling feverish, her cheeks wet with tears. Brian Nelson | 2021 Gervaise had waited and watched for Lantier until two in the morning. Then … Continue reading The Assommoir | Émile Zola #Zoladdiction
The International Booker Prize is my aspirational longlist. I would like to read more diversely and more books in translation, and lists like this are a great place to find inspiration. Most years though, I'm lucky to acquire and read one of the books from the list. This year it is A System So Magnificent … Continue reading International Booker Longlist 2023
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