Traveling by Word

I have been posting my bookgroup's annual reading slate here since 2013, the year after I began this blog. Last year it was nearly the only thing that I posted. This year it will be the first of, at least, monthly posts. Or so is my intention.

In all those past posts, I think I have pointed out and praised every attribute of the Foreign Authors Bookgroup, this diverse group of women who are brought together by our love of reading and our interest in the wide world around us. We do not exclusively read foreign authors, but our focus is on foreign lands and cultures. Our November meeting is dedicated to nominating books, either fiction or non-fiction, current or classic, which we will then vote on for the year to come. We now have a limit of two nominations each, and I always aspire to read at least some of those which did not make the list.

I am now on the third book of the year, Magdalena, River of Dreams by Wade Davis, an exploration of the river that runs through Columbia, the land, its people and its history. It's an information-dense book that I doubt you would pick up on a whim, but I'm finding it quite interesting. At this age, I have finally come to accept that there are many places where I will never set foot, Columbia being one of them. Yet here I am, traveling both in time and space down this mighty foreign river, all the while comfortably tucked in bed, thanks to the written word.

Still reading

And still here. How can it be that an entire year has passed since my last blog post? Is time actually speeding up? It certainly seems so, since I can't believe that I am slowing down. At any rate, I have not abandoned this blog, which, according to Blogger stats, still attracts some readers, although I admit that I write it primarily for myself. The fact that it's “published” also motivates me to continue.

 As I have been doing since the first year of this blog, twelve years ago, I'm sharing the books that the members of my long-time Foreign Authors Bookgroup have chosen for the year. The group goes back much farther than that, and there have been some departures as well as newcomers. We have changed from evening to an afternoon meeting time as most of us are no longer constrained by a work schedule. But our criteria remains the same: fiction and non-fiction by foreign authors or about foreign lands and cultures. 

This year we have more non-fiction than usual. Our August book is one which I am reading for the second time. No prior interest in hieroglyphs is necessary to enjoy The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode The Rosetta Stone by Edward Dolnick. It is a thoroughly entertaining book. As the author says “...the saga of the Rosetta Stone is as far as could be from a narrow tale of arcane scholarship in musty libraries.” There are “...stories of archaeological swashbucklers tumbling through ancient tombs; peeks at the first-ever attempts to set down words in writing; excursions into big subjects like the struggle against death and forgetting – and it would be a mistake to forgo those adventures in favor of sticking to hieroglyphs alone.” The wealth of content in the book is presented in such a lively style to make it a real page-turner. I'm looking forward to the bookgroup's discussion next Tuesday.

 

In Appreciation

While other activities I once participated in, such as the Skillman Players theater group, are now but memories, the Foreign Authors Bookgroup continues to be an ongoing, much-appreciated part of my life. And I think that most of the other members feel much the same, which I find both gratifying and surprising, because we are such a disparate group of women in many respects, brought together by our love of reading about world around us. I have enjoyed and learned, and more than that, I have gained new insights into my own character and viewpoints from our monthly discussions.

So when an assignment in a digital art course I am taking was to create an original work of photo artistry based on the theme of admiration for a dear friend, I modified it slightly as appreciation for all my friends in the bookgroup. As the assignment suggested, I did have it printed and have just sent a copy to each person in the group. 

We have already begun our 2023 reading slate with a short but moving Irish novel, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.  Next up is a French novel which I nominated, The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier which won the Prix Goncourt in 2020.  So, come the first Tuesday in February, I will find out the reactions of the group both to my "appreciation" card and to the unusual novel that I selected.  

Here is our complete schedule for the year.  

We continue to read...

Through the never-ending pandemic, through alarming political turmoil, through our varied personal circumstances, we continue to read. Some of us have traveled, others, including myself, have remained at home. A few no longer even live in Dallas. Most are retired or only work part time, and we have very diverse interests and pastimes. Books are what brought us together.

So, year after year, we continue to read, sharing each month a passage to another time and place. This year began in late 19^th century Venice and will end in mid 20^th century rural Ireland, with sojourns across the globe along the way.

Zooming along

 Like so much else in our Covid-inflicted world, our bookgroup has gone online. After ten virtual meetings, we are getting the hang of it. (Like remembering to mute and unmute!) And while we are missing gathering around the long wooden table at La Madeleine, the advantage has been that those of us who have moved to other cities and other states can continue to participate. We can claim to be coast-to-coast now, with members in Maine and Seattle, Washington. In November my sister-in-law from Arizona and a member's daughter in Washington DC were guests as well.

So here is our very varied slate for 2021. January's book, Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon, is a “spy thriller” set after WWII in divided Berlin as the Soviet occupation is tightening its grip. The story keeps you turning pages, but you learn a lot about both the politics and the actual life in the city at that time.

The next book, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, couldn't be more different. I had listened to it as an audiobook last year, but there is so much in this book that it was definitely worth a re-read. I'm looking forward to our discussion in February. As always, I invite you to join us. 

 

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.

 

The many benefits of reading

Recently I received a Penguin Random House email that touted the many benefits of reading. They included improving memory by activating the parts of your brain that create new synapses for memory; making you smarter by enhancing vocabulary, improving articulation, and increasing creativity; making you more empathetic by improving understanding of others' beliefs and views; as well as relieving stress and lowering blood pressure.

But this one made me laugh. Improves Sleep: Incorporating a reading routine into your bedtime ritual tells your body it's time to wind down and get some sleep. Because who hasn't snuggled into bed for a good read and only to blearily wake up some time later with the book flopped askew on a body part. And woe If it happens to be a weighty tome!

  

We do have one weighty tome in this year's bookgroup selections: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. It was my nomination and a novel that I read rapturously back in my younger days, in the 1961 translation by David Magarshack (which I still have in battered paperback form). There are several newer translations, and I intend to read one of those this time. After our encounter with Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert in 2017, it seemed appropriate that we should share and discuss the story of one of the other most famous fictional 19^th century women. 

 

I doubt that Anna will be all that sleep-inducing, but I have been finding my eyelids drooping over next month's book: Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour, a very unconventional novel, to say the least. Yet it is this sort of book that I might not ordinarily read that makes our bookgroup so worthwhile. I'm looking forward to learning more about this novel, this author, this culture, and discussing it with a group of articulate and open-minded women. If you are in the Dallas area and like reading interesting and often challenging books, please come join us.

"Sociable" reading

In a recent New York Times review of The Social Life of Books by Abigail Williams, the reviewer likened the 18^th century practice of books being read aloud to a group to the phenomenon of best sellers which millions read more or less simultaneously, a contemporary example of sociable reading. It seems to me that an even better comparison would be with the reading and sharing of books by a book group or club

According to The Reading Group, a UK-based website, book clubs have shed their fusty image and become trendy as well as ubiquitous, meeting everywhere from libraries and living rooms to online. In addition to helping readers sort through the huge mass of books being published today, a primary reason for their popularity is that participants ...“are finding being a member of a book club to be fun and rewarding, transforming the personal and private experience of reading a book into a shared one of discussion and appreciation.”

Or as another New York Times article on book clubs elaborates: “Reading is a solitary act, an experience of interiority. To read a book is to burst the confines of one’s consciousness and enter another world. What happens when you read a book in the company of others? You enter its world together but see it in your own way; and it’s through sharing those differences of perception that the book group acquires its emotional power.” Yes, indeed.

Further delving online unearthed an interesting 2015 white paper report on book clubs from BookBrowse.com. A lot of the statistics are no surprise; my long-time book group could be the poster child. A majority of members are women, and they tend to be older, empty nesters, often retired, seeking intellectual stimulation and personal connections. Higher education plays a role but income a bit less so. They also are more likely to use their public library. (Ah, we know it's probably us when all the copies of a relatively obscure book are checked-out or on hold.)

That report also defines the ideal book. “Overwhelmingly, book club participants want to read books that expand their horizons—windows that allow them to see into the lives of others or mirrors that let them reflect on aspects of their own lives. Above all else, books need to have plenty to discuss.”

We hope that we have chosen books for 2018 that fit that criteria. So without further ado, here are our selections. I invite you to join us in person if you happen to be in the Dallas area. Or read along with us and send any comments from wherever you may be. 

 

Reading assignments

So many books out there to read! I used to keep my to-read list on index cards, a fat little stack which I still have. Now I can keep lists right on the Dallas Public Library site as well as on Goodreads, where it's so satisfying to be able to transfer a book over to the “Read Shelf.” But, to face facts, I will never get all those books on my various lists read, however great my longevity. However, bookgroup selections generally make it promptly to that Read Shelf each month because I don't want to miss out on participating fully in our lively discussions. The first of our 2017 selections was delightful and the second a page-turner for me.  I look forward to reading the rest. As always, you are welcome to join us, virtually online, or here in Dallas; just email for location.

The world, in English

No matter if English is our only language, we are able to know what the French Emma Bovary and the Russian Anna Karenina thought and said thanks to translators. And although we can easily name the authors who brought those two famous characters to literary life, most of us would be hard-pressed to identify any translators. After all, aren't they mere conduits, turning the authors' foreign words into English ones?

Read David Bellos' fascinating book, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? and you will have a new appreciation for translators and their craft. Subtitled Translation and the Meaning of Everything, it covers an incredible range of topics, from the development of dictionaries to the dragomen interpreters of the Ottoman empire through to the demands of movie subtitling and the intricacies of simultaneous translating. While it's full to the brim with interesting information, it's not at all academic or tedious to read. (The biggest problem is that you will probably be bombarding your nearest and dearest with surprising tidbits you've just read.)

I've lauded it to my fellow book group readers because, obviously, a Foreign Authors Bookgroup has a special interest in translation. Although, as I have mentioned in previous posts, we do not read foreign authors exclusively, but rather, fiction and non-fiction about foreign lands and cultures. This year, three of our selections are translated from another language, which is actually very substantial percentage-wise. A blog on international literature is named Three Percent because, as is stated in the About section “only about 3% of all books published in the United States are works in translation.” Check out all the great resources they offer to acquaint you with those works.

Here's our literary travel itinerary for the year. Come join us, online or in person if you happen to live in the Dallas area. 

 

Ready to read

Last year's eleven books have been read and discussed, and now a new slate awaits.

I appreciate being part of a group of readers who are willing to read out of their comfort zone. Occasionally there are some grumblings about the number of "depressing" books we've chosen over the years.  So why do we choose to read them, these stories about desperate lives, dangerous places?  Interestingly, if you do a Google search for "depressing books" you'll find a host of responses, some arguing for their various benefits, others swearing off of them altogether.  One blogger said she was glad she read "tough" books when she was younger, because they improved her in various ways, but now all she wants is to be entertained.

Well, don't we all like to be entertained?  I like mysteries, which usually involve a violent death, not really a pleasant subject when you think about it, yet definitely entertaining if well written.  But what I want out of my precious reading hours more than entertainment is enrichment. I want to fill my mind with knowledge and understanding of other lands, other cultures, other times.  I want to see them, experience them through narrators and characters different from myself, or sometimes much like myself.  And often that world within the book is one where I would not want to be in actuality, but that may be exactly the point.  Why is this world the way it is, and what do I learn from that? 

I came across a somewhat tongue-in-cheek article in the Telegraph in which the author suggested that dark and depressing novels ought to make people glad about their relatively benign lives.  " Try 400 volts of pure Thomas Hardy and count your blessings that you're not Jude The Obscure."  I think that all of us in my bookgroup would agree with that.  After reading about a slum community in contemporary India in Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a memoir of life in war-torn Vietnam in The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham or the settling of Australia's New South Wales in Kate Grenville's The Secret River, we certainly have a greater appreciation of our own good fortune, as women living here in this time and place.  We also believe that these books are important for opening our eyes to and increasing our empathy for the infinite variety of other lives. 

Do I feel like all the books that we've read have been "worthwhile?"  I must say that there have been some I'd only force my worst enemy to read (except  he or she might like them!), but, once again, the great thing about a book group is that we can discuss things in the books that disturbed us, that we disagreed with, that we disliked.  And someone else's point of view might just give us a different and illuminating perspective on a "difficult" book.

 Of course, who would really like reading if reading were only about books that were "good for you"?  I also found in The Telegraph a list of 100 novels everyone should read, of which I've read about half.  Some, such as My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk and Austerlitz by WG Sebald, were bookgroup selections, but many others – Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki – I read because I wanted to know what was in those renowned books, and I read them enthralled from first page to last.

Some books do take getting into, adjusting to their unusual rhythm, altering your expectations.  And sometimes a book just plain disappoints. Even when that happens I tend to slog through to the end.  (Maybe there's a correlation between that and eating everything on your plate, something I happily did without being forced to.)   As always, I'm looking forward to reading all of these books, even the ones I didn't vote for.  Discovering a good book that I would never have considered on my own is also one of the pluses of being in a book group.  I invite you to come join us on our reading journeys, in person if you happen to live in the Dallas area, or wherever you are in the world online. 

 Here's a look at our selections for the past three years. 

Reading round the world

Last year our bookgroup traveled to Russia, Afghanistan, Liberia, Haiti, England, Egypt and China. Quite a bit of that involved time traveling as well, to the eras of Henry VIII and Cleopatra, to colonial America and France during WWII.  We all look forward to our monthly peregrinations, to discovering little-known corners of the world and participating in the lively discussions that follow.

We began this year with a return to Afghanistan, and next month Burma is our destination.  Here's our literary itinerary for the year, if any of you would care to join us, virtually (we're hoping to have a bookgroup blog online soon) or in person here in Dallas.

   
You can find our 2013 books here and more information about the bookgroup plus our 2012 books here.