What we’re reading next
Besides Proust. Well we can’t ignore all other books while we’re reading him.
My Struggle, vol 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Php855 at National Bookstores.
We’re still trying to figure out how Knausgaard makes the most banal, wala lang incidents from his history so compulsively readable. These books should be filmed with Nikolaj Coster Waldau. Who’s Danish, not Norwegian, but we don’t think there will be complaints.
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride, hardcover Php1049 at NBS.
We know little about this novel, which has been garlanded with awards, but we follow the classics professor Mary Beard’s blog at the Times Literary Supplement and she praised this.
The Dog by Joseph O’Neill, hardcover Php1049 at NBS.
Netherland was one of our favorite books of recent years; we forced it on many friends, who had no complaints. So when we saw O’Neill’s first book since Netherland we snapped it up and started reading it. The prose is beautiful, but we’re really not in the mood for alienation and anomie in Dubai at the moment. Will return to this.
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill, Php955 at NBS.
Cited by many writers we admire as their favorite book from last year.
The First Bad Man by Miranda July, Php615 at NBS.
After reading ten pages grew tired of its unrelenting quirkiness and resolved to give copy to someone with a staid job at a bank or an accounting firm, who might find this cute.
American Innovations by Rivka Galchen, Php1149 at NBS.
If we hadn’t been aware of Galchen’s brilliant novel Atmospheric Disturbances, the cover picture of this story collection might have convinced us to buy it anyway.
George Eliot’s Middlemarch, the Penguin Drop Caps hardcover, Php749 at NBS.
Confession: We’ve never read George Eliot, with the exception of required class reading Silas Marner, which is the reason we were turned off at George Eliot. But Middlemarch is said to be one of the finest novels ever written, and we don’t want to miss out on the experience even if the memory of Silas Marner makes us want to run screaming out the door. We love dour old Thomas Hardy, so how difficult can it be?
All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Php669 at NBS.
Recently we mentioned having broken up with the New York Times Book Review. Well they loved this, so this is a win-win: either we’ll think it’s brilliant, or we’ll loathe it and congratulate ourselves for dumping the NYT Book Review. It’s like hate-watching a TV show.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 5th, 2015 at 23:37
I picked Middlemarch because it’s March. It’s not the soundest reasoning but I’m glad to have followed it. A.S. Byatt praises this novel so much despite not liking Eliot’s shorter works (she was required to read them).