David Claridad > Recent Status Updates

Left Dubai for Bishkek.

This is the only book I took, and fairly sure there’s no English bookstore here… 😒

Oh, in case it’s not obvious because I read Katie Kitamura’s Audition, I’m reading as many authors named David this year.

Why? No reason, tbh.

The book club book for Thursday. Will I finish or will I just play NYT crosswords all day instead???

Ну ну ну… добро пожаловать, русская история!

Fuck, this is gonna be hilarious, like that scene from his doco of the deranged penguin running miles into the Antarctic interior ‘for certain death’.

A bit of a heffer but found it on discount here in Dubai, for only 24 dirham ($8 AUD or $9 CAD or five quid).

Separately, I still maintain that the film version of DeLillo’s ‘White Noise’ is a masterpiece.

Another re-dip of my high school reading.

I still quote "all animals are equal" etc. when I'm confronted with comprehending the inconsistencies of human existence yet just can't be bothered trying to explain them.

Taking a shuttle bus in the Baltics around this time last year, I got chatting to an older Croat fella who told me he was to speak at a Bosnian literature festival. He told me he had a PhD in Canadian literature because he woke up late to the sign-up and Canadian literature was the only booth still open and ended up reading mostly Alice Munro.

(He also told me how wild it was teaching Croat in pro-Serb Kaliningrad)

The most beautiful girl of my recent years gave this book to me when we said farewells at a Toronto airport.

Will cry, no doubt.

I’m moving to Dubai in less than two weeks and thought I should get up to speed on the history of the Middle East.

So far, the intro has been so good: concise and digestible in its overview of the last 1400 years in the area.

As a person who doesn’t usually revisit a book once it’s read once, it shows my age that I have willingly come back to a novel I was forced to read in high school.

I’m sure the next will be Animal Farm!!

Remarkable so far and perhaps Smith’s funniest yet too.

First ‘literary’ book in a while, but I’ll do it for Smith.

Zadie Smith signed my book just before my 34th birthday. It was something seeing her speak and, when she mentioned she had to do a Scottish accent when recording her own audiobook, I decided that when I met her I would perform my Finnish accent for her.

And I did just that. She laughed and told me she didn’t know what a Finn accent was like.

So far so good. The writing is a bit better than just average but it satisfies an appetite: Soviet history, general geography, a travel bug, an easy read, and something on Central Asia to sink my teeth into.

I’m also creating a list on Google Maps on the places travelled, the sites to see, the history behind them etc., which is rather enjoyable too :)))

I didn’t really care for travelling but somehow I am at 50 countries.

One of my favourite countries is Georgia and it’s the reason why I’m learning Russian. I feel that as I’m tryna settle in Canada for at least the foreseeable, reading a book about travelling all the countries that border Russia will at least satisfy my (absence of a) travel bug.

As soon as Russia opens up, I’m there!