Reading history - 2019

From one list to another, a quick, albeit a little late,run down of books I managed to read last year, apologies I'll not list translators or publishers, but obviously many thanks to them for their endeavours, happy reading in 2020.


Arthur Rimbaud - Illuminations
Andre Gide - Urien's Voyage
Walter Kempowski - Homeland
Joseph Roth - Flight Without End
Frederic Dard - Bird In A Cage
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room
Roland Topor - Head to Toe Portrait of Suzanne
Guy de Maupassant - Pierre and Jean
Lucy M. Boston - The Sea Egg
Hans Koningsberger - A Walk With Love and Death
Tomas Transtromer - The Half Finished Heaven
Yu Miri - Tokyo Ueno Station
Yukiko Motoya - Picnic In the Storm
Claire Keegan - Foster
Edgardo Franzosini - The Animal Gazer
Edouard Louis - Who Killed My Father?
Sadeq Hedayat - The Blind Owl
Yukio Mishima - Star
Henri-Pierre Roche - Jules et Jim
Eric Vuillard - The Order of the Day
Rilke and Betz - Rilke In Paris
Boris Pasternak - The Last Summer
Patrick Modiano - The Sleep of Memory
George Simenon - The Hand
Elio Vittorini - Conversations in Sicily
Merce Rodoreda - Death In Spring
Yukio Mishima - Life For Sale
George Simenon - The Glass Cage
Yoko Ogawa - The Memory Police
Arthur Rimbaud - A Season In Hell
Sarah Moss - Ghost Wall
Andre Gide - The Counterfeiters
Jean de la Ville de Mirmont - The Sundays of Jean Dezert
Kentaro Miura -  Berserk vol -1, 2, 3
Andre Naffis-Sahely - The Promised Land
Kenzaburo Oe - J and Seventeen

readings in 2016

Another year ticks passed, an apt moment to jot down last year's reading history, this list doesn't include books already posted on, obvious resolutions apply, to read more ! -


1.Portrait of A Man - Georges Perec - MacLehose Press
2.Syrian Notebooks - Jonathan Littell - Verso
3.Ancient Tillage - Raduan Nassar - Penguin Classics
4.Rendezvous In Venice - Phillippe Beaussant - Pushkin Press
5.The Man Who Fell To Earth - Walter Tevis - Penguin Classics
6.Fat City - Leonard Gardner - NYRB Classics
7.The Trumpets of Jericho - Unica Zurn - Wakefield Press
8.A Cup of Rage - Raduan Nassar - Penguin Classics
9.But You Did Not Come Back - Marceline Loridan-Ivens - Faber and Faber
10.The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark - Penguin Classics
11.A Dream of Wessex - Christopher Priest - Faber
12.Journey Into the Past - Stefan Zweig - Pushkin Press
13.The Man In The High Castle - Philip K. Dick - Penguin Classics
14.High Rise - J.G Ballard - Fourth Estate
15.Madonna In a Fur Coat - Sabahattin Ali - Penguin Classics
16.Solaris - Stanislaw Lem - Faber and Faber
17.The Image of A Drawn Sword - Jocelyn Brooke - King Penguin - now Faber
18.Quiet Days in Clichy - Henry Miller - Penguin Classics
19.Radish - Mo Yan - Penguin Specials
20.The Café of Lost Youth - Patrick Modiano - MacLehose Press
21.Beast - Paul Kingsnorth - Faber and Faber
22.The Black Notebook - Patrick Modiano - MacLehose Press
23.Nutshell - Ian McEwan - Jonathan Cape
24.Confabulations - John Berger - Penguin
25.Dark Tales - Shirley Jackson - Penguin Classics
26.Echoland - Per Petterson - Harvill Secker
27.The Evenings - Gerard Reve - Pushkin Press 

readings in 2015

Obviously an apt moment to jot down my readings in 2015 which has probably been the lowest number of titles read in a while, and lamentably low on the poetry count, perhaps 2016 will see an increase in readings and hopefully more posts forthcoming, all remains to say is a thank you for reading in 2015 and also for your interest if you happen to continue reading my blog in 2016, thank you and all the best to you for the new year.


Agua Viva - Clarice Lispector
Devil's Yard - Ivo Andric
The Vegetarian - Han Kang
The Terrors of Ice and Darkness - Christoph Ransmayr
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Whale That Fell in Love With a Submarine - Nosaka Akiyuki
The Search Warrant - Patrick Modiano
A Childhood - Jona Oberski
The Small Pleasures of Life - Phillippe Delerm
In the Beginning Was the Sea - Tomas Gonzalez
The Atom Station - Halldor Laxness
Inside The Head of Bruno Schulz - Maxim Biller
The Worldwide Machine - Paolo Volpino
The Festival of Ignorance - Milan Kundera
The Meursault Investigations - Kamel Daoud
Black Rain - Ibuse Masuji
The Devil In The Hills - Cesare Pavese
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers - Max Porter
Honeymoon - Patrick Modiano
The Children's Room - Louis Rene des Forets
Badenheim 1939 - Aharon Appelfeld
Of Walking In Ice - Werner Herzog
The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati
Human Acts - Han Kang
So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighbourhood - Patrick Modiano
A Whole Life - Robert Seethaler



A big thank you to the translators who've translated the above!.

Reading history from the past year

Recently noticed that it's been a little over a year since updating a list of books read outside of Japanese translations, so here's a list of what I've been reading -


Patrick Suskind - The Pigeon
D.B.C Pierre - Vernon God Little
Diego Marani - New Finnish Grammar
Gabriel Josipovici - Everything Passes
Paul Leppin - Severin's Journey into the Dark
Vladimir Odoevsky - Two Days in the Life of the Terrestrial Globe
Ferdinand von Schirach - The Collini Case
Andre Brink - The Blue Door
Jerzy Andrzejewski - The Appeal
Jorge Luis Borges - Seven Nights
Mary Butts - Armed With Madness
Gert Ledig - Payback
Denton Welch - A Voice Through A Cloud
W.G Sebald and Jan Peter Tripp - Unrecounted
Bruno Schulz - Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Andrey Platonov - The Foundation Pit
Tao Lin - Eeeee Eee Eeee
Pierre Michon - Small Lives
Rene Crevel - Babylon
Georges Bataille - Story of the Eye
Andre Malraux - The Walnut Trees of Altenburg
Ted Hughes - The Hawk in the Rain
J.D Salinger - For Esme - With Love and Squalor
Marghanita Laski - The Victorian Chaise Longue
Denton Welch - In Youth is Pleasure
Sandor Marai - Esther's Inheritance
Maruerite Yourcenar - Alexis
Geroge Simenon - The Little Man From Archangel
Charles Simic - Selected Poems
Cicely Hamilton - William - An Englishman
Ernst Junger - Eumeswil
John Williams - Stoner
Jeremias Gotthelf - The Black Spider
Marguerite Dumas - Writing
John Cheever - Falconer
Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel
Henri Barbusse - Under Fire
Herbert Read - The Green Child
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Erico Verissimo - Night
Igor Vishnevetsy - Leningrad
Sylvia Plath - The Colossus
Andre Gide - Strait is the Gate
Odon von Horvath - Youth Without God
David Edmonds and John Eidinow - Wittgenstein's Poker
Greg Baxter - Munich Airport
Clarice Lispector - The Passion According to G.H
Alexander Lernet-Holenia - I Was Jack Mortimer 
Antal Szerb - The Third Tower
Clarice Lispector - Near to the Wild Heart
Thornton Wilder - The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Italo Calvino - Under the Jaguar Sun
Clarice Lispector - Hour of the Star
Pierre Drieu la Rochelle - The Comedy of Charleroi and Other Stories
Italo Svevo - As a Man Grows Older
Jean Cocteau - The Difficulty of Being
Jean Genet - Funeral Rites
Paolo Volponi - The Worldwide Machine
Colette - The Ripening Seed

I guess this year's discovered author for me has been Clarice Lispector, I've a copy of Agua Viva on the way, and then perhaps afterwards I'm going to turn to her recent biography by Benjamin Moser. Recently I've I think my reading has changed in pattern, I feel that I'll get hooked by an author and then feel that I have to read their available works, perhaps this started after reading Lispector, but after reading Genet again recently I'll turn to his other novels, although I read Miracle of a Rose years ago I feel it's time to check out his other novels, with regards to Japanese authors, Soseki and Abe Kobo are two authors that I feel that I still need to catch up with their works. Another French novelist that I'd like to turn to is Jean-Louis Curtis, whose The Forest Of The Night, translated by Nora Wydenbruk, I'm aiming to read soon, which apparently is available to read online.