2024 has been a busy year, with the "completion" of The Nod/Wells Timelines, the release of my first two audiobooks, and the announcement of "8" and its associated "story singles" but there's even more to come! Give me a follow so you don't miss anything!
Big Barrel is off to the dumpster to get some grub. Jakub Żulczyk draws a picture of decline in Many Years of Hardships, translated by John and Małgorzata Markoff.
Book 20: My Father's House, by Joseph O'Connor.
Based on true events, this is the story of a courageous group of people led by Monseigneur Hugh O'Flaherty in Vatican City who risked their lives helping thousands of Jews and Allied POWs get out of Nazi-occupied Rome.
Gripping story, well written.
It's a great day for a fun new podcast! Join Ronald McGillvray & yours truly as we discuss books by Gareth L. Powell, James Herbert, and Joe Scipione, plus Thanksgiving (the movie,) Helldivers 2, and so much more in this one-of-a-kind authorcast!
Jenny Erpenbeck opens #Spring 2024 with Sloughing Off One Skin, a haunting #ShortStory that explores truth and identity, translated by Michael Hofmann.
@bookstodon Jakub Żulczyk creates a small epic, as Big Barrel goes in search of grub in Many Years of Hardships, translated by John and Małgorzata Markoff.
@bookstodon Over on the @fictionable#blog Caroline Lucas argues that in the face of division, we must tell "compelling, inspiring stories about what we can and must achieve together".
@bookstodon And on the @fictionable#podcast Jenny Erpenbeck talks about why writers are so suspicious of documents, the trouble with endings and the problem of arbitrary borders.
#Spring 2024 is here, with Jenny Erpenbeck – translated by Michael Hofmann – following a paper trail while Jakub Żulczyk, translated by John and Małgorzata Markoff, constructs a small epic. Grahame Williams examines a life without a plan and Lauren Caroline Smith tests her faith. Rose Rahtz reads the signs and Caroline Lucas makes the case for compelling and inspiring stories.
So here's a little taste of the marvellous #ShortStories from Jenny Erpenbeck, Jakub Żulczyk, Grahame Williams, Lauren Caroline Smith and Rose Rahtz for #Spring 2024.
The Greek philosopher who was perhaps the first weather forecaster
"His book On Signs, written in the fourth century BC, was the first attempt to gather weather lore into a single volume. Aristotle created a theory of weather in his book Meteorology, but his successor attempted to give guidance on practical weather prediction, making him perhaps the first published weather forecaster."
The #TBR tin has spoken.
Next read for fiction:
Great tales of detection has 19 short stories selected and introduced by Dorothy L. Sayers. This collection was originally published in 1936, but it's still easy to find this more "recent" edition from Everyman.
Sayers edited several short stories collections and besides the interesting stories, she also wrote insightful introductions about the history and development of the genre.
I'll be using an Oxford related bookmark.
Next read for non-fiction:
Howdunit is a collection of essays about the genre and the work of detective, crime, thrillers authors. The articles are all from the past and present members of The Detection Club, organised and edited by Martin Edwards.
Bookmark from the Portuguese edition of The Floating Admiral, also a The Detection Club work.
"In dreams, he could perceive the vast spider’s web of souls, the wool ball of existences interleaved in time, and he could follow a single life as one might pull on a thread, jump from one moment to another and, from the infinite heavens, even observe the forces that cause the stars to move, immense dark flows like streams of nothingness." -- from 'The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild' by Mathias Énard, trans. by Frank Wynne
As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West – review
"In As Gods Among Men, Guido Alfani examines the history of the rich in the West from the Middle Ages to modern times, including paths to wealth, societal perceptions and their resilience against shocks."
As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West – review
"In As Gods Among Men, Guido Alfani examines the history of the rich in the West from the Middle Ages to modern times, including paths to wealth, societal perceptions and their resilience against shocks."
As a boy, the cartoonist Peter Kuper dreamed of studying bugs. He explains how he managed to combine his passion for drawing and his fascination with insects.
"Around year 2000 BCE, the Sumerian language, in which the poems are written, died out as a native language, becoming instead a language of scholarship and religious rituals, much like Latin in Europe and Sanskrit in India. And so, it had to be taught in schools, and the copying of Sumerian poems—including those attributed to Enheduana—was a key part of the school curriculum in ancient Babylonian cities like Nippur and Ur."
"As I set out to write a book on honey bee biology, I kept Humboldt as an aspirational model. Rather than write the typical biology text that reflected an excavation of levels of biological organization like taxonomy, biogeography, physiology, anatomy, etc., I built chapters around themes relating to honey bee impacts, behavior, and ecology."
And now Chris Kraus's Where #Art Belongs has me in that spot of yearning for creative collectives that emerge out of the absolutely right coincidental conditions and bust out all the best stuff because they function outside of institutional bounds, qualifications, and ambitions. I'm going to find such a community one day, damn it...
Everything in this story is leading somewhere amazing. It's emotional, beautiful, touching, surprising and so incredibly moving. Sniffed, snuffled and out and out cried my way through the last part of this book.
@kcfromaustcrime@bookstodon Finally got hold of this beautifully written multi-levelled love story. Like her other two brilliant novels of #historicalFiction, she shows she has done the research and thinking and internalized the stories and feelings of the time and place as well as the relentless control and persecution of the feminine and the 'other'. This 3rd novel is personal for Kent. Highly recommend it.