If only *achoo*

Posted by: imani on: March 26, 2007

• In: Books | Fiction | Literature | Non-fiction
• 7 Comments

There is nothing but fluff for you on this rainy Monday afternoon. My brain’s still on sick leave; all it could handle over the weekend was half of a LRB issue and two movies. (The Science of Sleep (yay!) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (barf).)

I spotted this at Stefanie’s, she of the So Many Books: If I my reading ticket was clear, not a bookmark in a single book, what book–books–would I immediately start reading? Every one of them would have to be already owned.

list of books I would read right now if I weren’t presently preoccupied with four plus the usual assorted journals begging for attention

 

1. Paulina 1880 by Pierre Jean Jouve – I am quite curious about it primarily because all the information I casually searched for on the author was about his poetry rather than this novel. And I have a very big thing for french literature (from the mid 20th century and before anyway)
2. The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar – I made the mistake of picking Shriek as my first major fantasy read of the year. It’s now my first “stall” of the year; and it had put me off the fantasy genre in general, leaving the Hopkinson and this Millar neglected and sulky. Luckily Ysabel has improved so I may have gotten over my “fantasy block”.
3. Literature and Knowledge by Dorothy Walsh – I’m really dying to read this but I only allow myself one non-fiction book at any one time. Experience has shown that once I go over that, all but one is inevitably abandoned. But I may cheat with this one because it’s pretty small. (Can’t be much over 200 pages.)
4. Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany by Lyndal Roper – The entire concept sounds deliciously interesting but alas the non-fiction rules apply.
5. Collected Fictions by Borges translated by Hurley – By its nature it’s a book that I’ll read in fits and starts. I usually read a few stories and then put it back in its resting place.
6. The Echo Maker by Richard Powers – I want to know if there’s anything to fuss about
7. Paris Review No. 41 – It has Nabokov!
8. Paris Review Issue No. 34 – It has Simone de Beauvoir!
9. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf – I’d like to give this another go. I can’t remember what dissuaded me from finishing the first go-’round.
10. Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Akutagawa – I’d like to read the title story before I watch the film adaptation directed by Kurosawa

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