Drew > Recent Status Updates

So close now. Warsaw, Tristan da Cunha, Akureyri, Toulouse, Onkalo, Olkiluoto, Berlin, Shanghai, Yangshan, Moscow, Ozyorsk, Novaya Zemlya, Cape Verde, Saint Helena, the South Atlantic...
And finally back to Forus and Stavanger...

Reading this late into the night yesterday I realised that it’s in someway an English low land version of Thomas Mann’s the Magic Mountain. But instead of a resort in the Alps, the scene is the English countryside in which we pay witness to the disappeared world of privilege and steadfast conviction that things can and will never change, shortly before that all gets blown up by the first world war.

I think I have developed Stavanger syndrome. I’ve been living inside this book for so long, that I have taken on the ideas and viewpoints of my literary captors.

The end is in sight. Tristan da Cunha has slid out of view. Off to the madhouse!

I have been looking forward to this, curious to experience Flaubert in French!

This book really gets going at around page 750, wow!

And now... the weather. January in Germany really isn't that different from being stranded in the South Atlantic in 1962, it would seem.

Une petite fille rentre de la plage, au crépuscule, avec sa mère. Elle pleure pour rien, parce qu'elle aurait voulu continuer de jouer.
Elle s'éloigne. Elle a déjà tourné le coin de la rue, et nos vies ne sont-elles pas aussi rapides à se dissiper dans le soir que ce chagrin d’enfant?

What a trip. The best books don’t need to tell you what they’re doing in order to do it brilliantly, and this for the most part is a great example of that. Borgesian, bright and zippy, a shaft of bright sunlight in the dank cell of history. Wow.

What happened when Cortez and his crew of desperadoes made it into the heart of Moctezuma's empire? Álvaro Enrigue's novel poses that question - and answers it a a way that combines a surprising looseness of style with exacting descriptions. Off to a great start and looking forward to more of this Mexican magical mystery tour.

What she went through is quite unbelievable but this is very much the opposite of a misery memoir.

I am getting strong Roadside Picnick vibes from the section where Jonathan goes into thy house and comes back out and can’t remember Ebba’s name….