Status Updates From Black Water 2: More Tales o...

Finished:
The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Starting:
Eckhardt at a Window by Eric McCormack

He went to bed and slept and dreamt, I may as well make it clear at once that his story did not turn out to be a dream in the last paragraph. The division between sleeping and waking was abrupt although the feeling of both was the same.They were both in the same sphere of horrible absurdity though in the former he was asleep and in the latter almost terribly awake.He tried to be asleep several times
THE TROLL THWhite

"Five sparrows rose aloft and flew away amidst shrieks. Only five half-empty beer bottles, several chewed-on slices of bread and butter, and the fallen mandolin (a still life that left me slightly dismayed) testified that young lives had been in full flower here just a few seconds earlier."
Wolfgang Hildesheimer, 'Why I Changed into a Nightingale'

Finished:
The House-Hunters by Peter Green

Starting:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall Paper

"Mr Dombey, the zombie, took the 8.10 train every morning of the working week. On the way to London he read a newspaper, carefully digesting the spate of words so that its essence might be spewed up again later..."

Geoffrey Drayton, 'Mr Dombey, the Zombie'

Finished:
The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship by Gabriel García Márquez

Starting:
The House-Hunters by Peter Green

Mimi began to watch for the dawn. Their home was across the road from The Manulife Centre. Mimi's first sight of daylight always revealed the high white shape of its terraced storeys. Their own building was of modest height and colour—20 floors of smoky glass and polished brick. The shadow of the Manulife would crawl across the bedroom floor and climb the wall behind her, grey with fatigue and cold.
T Findley, Dreams

What was the matter with Charles? What was he afraid of? And why should I be feeling in the most extraordinary way that life was a crust upon which we all moved perilously? The barman, a placid crust walker, set a new drink down in front of me and said something about the weather. I answered him eagerly, diving into the sunny sanctuary of platitude. It did me good—until Charles came back.
P McDonald, Private—Keep Out

"In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man one morning stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now—pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurable forlorn. After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad to have among my corps of copyists a man of so singuarly sedate an aspect..."
Herman Melville

"No one appreciates the mystery of life more than I do; but when the mystery involves such a doubt of oneself, I find it pleasanter to forget. Naturally, I do not want to believe the story. If I did I should know myself to be some kind of human horror. And the terror of it all lies in the fact that I may never know precisely what kind…"

J.D. Beresford, The Misanthrope

Finished:
"Faithful Peter" by Lion Feuchtwanger ****

Starting:
"The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship" by Gabriel García Márquez

"The window was open so the skinny bird flew in. Flappity-flap with its wings. That's how it goes. It's open, you're in. Closed, you're out and that's your fate. The window was in Harry Cohen's apartment near the East River. On a rod on the wall hung an escaped canary cage, its door wide open, but this skinny bird landed if not smack on Cohen's lamb chop, at least on the table close by."
Bernard Malamud, The Jewbird

"But who gives it? And to whom is it given?...For months he has helped her with the breathing exercises, pressing on her knee as recommended by the book, and he will be present at the delivery. Perhaps it's to him that the birth will be given, in the same sense that one gives a performance..."

Margaret Atwood, 'Giving Birth'

Finished:
Ratanbabu and that Man by Satyajit Ray 3/3/2026 ***1/2
The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul 3/3/2026 ***1/2

Starting:
8. Faithful Peter by Lion Feuchtwanger

Finished:
The Visiting Star by Robert Aickman 2/27/2026 **

Starting:
Ratanbabu and that Man by Satyajit Ray

Finished
Ch'ien-niang by Chen Xuanyou

Starting:
The Visiting Star by Robert Aickman

Finished:
Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Why I Changed into a Nightingale
The Troll by T. H. White
Two Words by Isabel Allende

Starting:
Chen Xuanyou by Ch'ien-niang

Starting When I Changed Into a Nightingale

Starting Mr. Dombey, the Zombie

Finished The Jewbird
Starting Dreams

Starting Giving Birth

on page 528
+63 already read
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591

also finished Philip MacDonald Private - Keep Out!

starting page 521, progress plus 63 pages for The Misanthrope and Bartleby

Starting Major Aranda's Hand

Starting The Dead Fish

Starting The Labrenas

Starting The White Rooster

Notes:
The Miracle of Ash Wednesday Yevgeny Zamyatin 10/7/2025 ***
Heartburn by Hortense Calisher 10/25/2025 **1/2
The Accident by Ann Bridge 10/25/2025 ***
Joyce Marshall The Old Woman 10/26/2025 ***1/2
A Short Trip Home 1927 by F. Scott Fitzgerald 2/4/2026 **1/2
The Brute 1906 by by Joseph Conrad, 2/5/2026 **
Mr Sleepwalker by Ethel Wilson, 2/6/2026 ***
A Self-Possessed Woman by Julian Barnes, 1975, 2/7/2026 ****