Luke’s Comments (group member since Sep 12, 2019)

Luke’s comments from the NYRB Classics group.

It's been a dog's age since I did this, so here's where I'm at:

1. Last Words from Montmartre - Qiu Miaojin ( review)
2. Memories of the Future - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky ( review)
3. The Kindness of Strangers - Salka Viertel ( review)
4. Sleepless Nights - Elizabeth Hardwick ( review)
5. Alice James: A Biography - Jean Strouse ( review)
6. Stoner - John Williams ( review)
7. The Ten Thousand Things - Maria Dermoût ( review)
8. Amsterdam Stories - Nescio ( review)
9. Pitch Dark - Renata Adler ( review)
10. Chess Story - Stefan Zweig ( review)

Activity on this board reminded me of my own recent acquisitions:

Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette and The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton from my regular book sale
Amsterdam Stories by Nescio from my own local HPB

I'm also currently reading my NYRB edition of Blood on the Forge by William Attaway, which I acquired at the same sale a while back.

Trevor wrote: "It is!

I got a copy of it a day or two ago, and it looks wonderful. The first story really grabbed me. I'll edit the top post to show the contents."

Thanks for that, Trevor. The only short story collection of hers that I've read is 'Julia and the Bazooka', so this might be worth seeking out simply for the large amount of other content it includes.

Oooh. Is this the first time NYRB Classics has adapted a Kavan? I'm excited for this.

I picked this up for a song today. It'll be nice to return to Szabo when possible.

Between now and the last time I updated my top ten, I read 18 more NYRBCs, but the list didn't change much. I suppose I've grown more discerning over the years.

I just acquired a copy of this and am looking forward to slipping it into a strategic reading spot (what with challenges and all). One can never know too much history.

It's been a while since I was active in this group, but this is such a lovely edition of a singularly notable work that it's worth remarking on. The work itself isn't perfect, but it goes so much against the grain of what history remembers of both the times and the contemporaneous writing that it's definitely worth reading. Bonus points for Fay being eminently readable and even admirable at times despite her flaws.

Ginzburg's The Little Virtues is on my shelves waiting to acquired/read. I'll be curious to see if this one proves as intriguing.

Eileen Chang! Yaaaay.

I nominate Alice James by Jean Strouse.

Cynthia wrote: "I second The Summer Book."

Apologies, Cynthia, but I didn't know when I first posted that 'The Summer Book' has already been a group read. In light of that, I'll be changing my nomination to Adler's Pitch Dark.

I'll nominate Jansson's The Summer Book.

Owned NYRB's of mine that I'm looking forward to due to their appearance on various top ten lists:

Jakob von Gunten
The Summer Book
A High Wind in Jamaica
A Month in the Country
Life and Fate
Great Granny Webster

I'm currently reading my tenth NYRB (Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick, lovely so far), so here's what I have for now.

1. Alice James: A Biography - Jean Strouse
2. Stoner by John Edward Williams
3. The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya
4. Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
5. The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermoût
6. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
7. Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
8. An African in Greenland - Tété-Michel Kpomassie
9. The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
10. On the Abolition of All Political Parties - Simone Weil

I have reviews up for all of these.

Edit 6/7/14: Having finished SN, I have it up there at number three.

Edit 9/14/19: Did some reconfiguring now that I'm at 28 read rather than ten.

Praise from Calvino, a preface by Borges, and an introduction by Oyeyemi?! Sign me up.

I'm consigning 'fascinating' to the fact that I don't read very many Chinese works. As someone who grew up whilst surrounded by Asians in the Bay Area, the majority of them Chinese/Taiwanese, I'm making an effort to augment my Eurocentric reading history with works from the country where the majority of my friends' parents came from. Said friends are rarely familiar with the resulting literature, but hey, it's great at getting me out of the usual US focused reading rut.

Trevor wrote: "A question for any: how do you approach such a book? These books that serve as suicide notes are not uncommon, and they are often fascinating, but I think it's delicate. It's art, of course, but no..."

Very carefully. I resonate with this type of work a great deal; whether it goes well or ill depends on how much effort I put into the reading. With that in mind, I shall be approaching this as I did The Bell Jar, a reading which proved very valuable to me.

I'll second both 'Life and Fate' and 'The World of Odysseus' (seeing as how I cast the origin vote for both), and throw in another for 'The Enchanted April'.

So gorgeous. I may have to acquire this edition despite already owning a copy.