Booked up

Not only a new year but a new decade of reading for the Foreign Authors Bookgroup, going on its 26^th year. Our January book, Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, a Man Booker Prize nominee, has been read, much appreciated, and thoroughly discussed.

The next book, The Hired Man, is a slim volume set in a Croatian village where dark wartime secrets are brought into the light by a family of outsiders. The author, Aminatta Forna, is indeed foreign, although not Croatian, having been born in Scotland and raised in Sierra Leone and Great Britain, with periods of her childhood spent in other countries as well. The novel (and the author) has received numerous accolades . After reading about and sampling the book, I decided to nominate it.

Everyone in the bookgroup enjoys Nomination Night so much that we devote an entire meeting to it. It's an opportunity to introduce books that each of us thinks would be interesting, informative, discussable. We hear about books, both widely heralded and obscure, with personal recommendations from readers whom we know. For 2020 there were twenty-five books nominated, so paring that down to eleven was difficult, as always. Some books seem to induce almost everyone to vote for them, while others which I hoped would be chosen, lose out. They go on my personal to-read list.

We have a two-book per person nomination limit, and this year, in order to try to contain all the enthusiasm for the books within a reasonable hour-plus, we also set a time limit for presenting each book. I'm afraid I did rather poorly in presenting my first book, Himself by Jess Kidd. Since it didn't get chosen, let me recommend it here. The setting is a village in County Mayo, Ireland, in the 1970s, where a young man, raised an orphan, comes to uncover the truth about the teen-aged mother he never knew. A charmer, he sets hearts aquivering, but also causes a stir in other respects as he pursues his quest, aided and thwarted by a cast of diverse and eccentric characters, including ghosts of the dead. It's a beguiling novel, interwoven with the supernatural, brimming with folklore and humor, lyrical and poetic. A wonderful read! 

  

Now I'm on to The Hired Man, which I haven't read, as I usually like to nominate books that are new to me. It's taking a chance, but usually there's enough information on a book to be able to tell if it's worthwhile, with opportunities online to sample the writing. The little that I read in The Hired Man was so intriguing that I had to force myself not to go ahead and read it then and there. But I like the book to be fresh in my mind when we come together to discuss it, so I'm just beginning it now.

As always, you are welcome to join us if you are in the Dallas area; just email me for details on where. Or send your comments and participate online with us.