The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

This is another port over from the old forum, but I want to keep track here. Feel free to list and discuss your own reading goals, whether they are small or large, prize-centered, genre-centered, translation-centered, childrens-book-centered, or whatnot!

I'm not much for making reading goals, and I'm much less for actually keeping them! I don't like to feel beholden to the person I once was -- what did he know! But I do think I need some direction in 2016, and so I'm putting together ten reading goals. There are a few books that, for a decade, I've been wanting to read but have been putting off for stupid reasons. And there are some authors I have wanted to delve into but I'm waiting for that rainy, lazy day to dig in . . . which is not going to happen. If you've got some, I'd love to hear them! If not, I understand! I'll probably be kicking myself for doing this come February (update from March 18: not kicking myself yet; really enjoying this!).

Here are my specific goals, to be completed while doing my typical reading this year.

1. I'm finally going to read Middlemarch this year. I started this book in 2006 and got through the first 100 pages quickly. And then my wife and I moved across country to New Jersey. In that move, I lost track and have not gone back, though I've wanted to. I just keep telling myself soon . . .

Status: Done!

2. Read at least 25 stories by William Trevor. For Christmas this year, my wife got me the beautiful two-volume giftset The Collected Stories of William Trevor. I want to start it and keep moving through it. If I don't, I will put it off for tomorrow over and over again. Trevor has become one of my favorites, and it's time to tackle him chronologically as I'm doing with Alice Munro.

Status: 1. "A Meeting in Middle Age"; 2. "Access to the Children"

3. Read at least 25 stories by I.B. Singer. I just got the three-volume LOA set of I.B. Singer's short fiction, and while I've read quite a bit of his work over the years it has long been a goal to approach him from a more disciplined angle.

Status: 1. "Gimpel the Fool"; 2. "The Gentleman from Cracow"

4. Read a book -- any book -- by Barbara Pym. I have a feeling I'm going to really like Pym's work, but I don't know, since I've never even read one.

Status: Reading Some Tame Gazelle

5. Read three books by J.M. Coetzee. I've read most of Coetzee's work, and I've got all of his books on the shelf just waiting for me to dig in again.

Status: 1. In the Heart of the Country

6. Read three books by Penelope Fitzgerald. I love Fitzgerald, and there all of her books sit on the shelf, next to the Coeztee's, and it's time I fulfilled my goal to read all of her work.

Status: 1. At Freddie's

7. Read six novels by Muriel Spark. All of her books are sitting on the shelf above my Coetzee and Fitzgerald, and I've read many with the goal to read all of them, so basically ditto the two goals above but with Spark's name instead.

Status: 1. The Abbess of Crewe; 2. Aiding and Abetting

8. Read four novels by American women writers who were writing before 1980. Several of my favorite books are by Welty, Wharton, O'Connor, McCullers, and Cather. It's time I got back to them and read more, and I hope I discover a few others.

Status: 1. The Ballad of the Sad Café, by Carson McCullers

9. Read six other books from my old-time TBR pile, which includes 100s of books acquired more than five years ago. I've culled dozens of times and gotten rid of 100s of books over the years that I once was certain I'd read. The many I've kept are still with me because that certainty is, against all odds, still there. I need to read at least six of them. I need to do another cull of the rest.

Status: not started

10. Read Seiobo There Below, a book by an author I love and that is rightfully intimidating.

Status: Started!

I will undoubtedly fail at a few of these, but I think it would be great if I succeeded. That's just 25 books and 50 short stories, which is far from insurmountable. The problem is all of the stuff that comes in and all of the whims of the year. But the purpose of these goals is to keep me thinking about what I've been neglecting due to new books and whims. Wish me luck!

Reading Seiobo a whole chapter at a time helps. I took a lot of notes after each section. Many of the chapters aren't that long. They just require highly concentrated attention. (Which, with small children, may be easier said than done.)

Definitely easier at 3:00 a.m. than any other time of day! Thanks for the advice. You've honed in on one of the hardest things for me: figuring out how to read books in more than two minute increments. Your advice is appreciated, and perhaps I will start Seibo this weekend.

I like all your goals, Trevor, especially the William Trevor one, as I, too, have that two-volume set given to me for Christmas when it first came out (in 2009?) and have yet crack it open!

This year I'm focussed entirely on reading Australian literature. I thought it would be a tough "challenge" but honestly, three months in, and I'm loving it, probably because the work is so diverse. It's also curbing my habit of splurging on books I never read because now, whenever I go into a shop, I tell myself I can only buy stuff by Australians and, well, not many British book shops stock Aussie novels! ;-)

One of my reading goals for 2016 is to read some of those books that I've been meaning to read for ages. To get the time to do this I would have to lay off the GR reads....I then broke this straight away by joining the Powell's Dance Group.

I've made a vague commitment to do a sort of social history tour of Britain though this may not happen.

That social history tour of Britain sounds fascinating, Jonathan -- if you do start, I'd love it if you posted your route!

Kim, I'm glad your goal, like mine, is proving to be a delight rather than a chore, and I've enjoyed following along on your blog!

Jonathan wrote: "One of my reading goals for 2016 is to read some of those books that I've been meaning to read for ages. To get the time to do this I would have to lay off the GR reads....I then broke this straigh..."

great plan

My plans is to read 100 plus books as I have last few years, other than that maybe a few older books but this seems to be harder all the time. Oh and if I get my hands on it Bottoms dream

Stu, I am jealous! I'm having a hard time accepting what a slow reader I am.

My main goal for this year is to work my way through my TBR pile. There are books and authors I've been meaning to get to, so most of my goals revolve around that.

1. - Read at least (2) books by Juan Jose Saer. I've always loved Faulkner's Yawknapatawpha County books and from what I understand Saer does something similar with the same characters returning again and again in his books.
Status: Not started

2. - I also want to read more Chinese writers. I don't know why, but I seem to have a really hard time with the writers I've read so far and I'm hoping it's because I haven't had enough exposure. I'm setting a goal of (3) books.
Status: in the middle of The Miner by Natsume Soseki.

3. - More non-fiction and history. Lately I haven't found the time for those books and I miss them. I'd like to get in about (10) books.
Status: 1

4. - 50% women writers. My Goodreads Reading Goal is 52 books this year, so 26 need to be by women.
Status: 5

Trevor, I'm so glad you moved the forum to Goodreads. I'm terribly lazy and this is so much more convenient! :-)

Tara, it's good to hear this is more convenient for some people.
I was concerned it would put off some of the old regulars.
And I'm still getting used to reduced compartmentalisation. (I liked the compartmentalisation, even if, at some other times, I wished people from different places would talk to one another more.)

My goals fluctuate, either because of life getting in the way of the books, or the times when goal-orientated reading starts to feel like work and I need a break.

Stujallen wrote: other than that maybe a few older books but this seems to be harder all the time.
I've not even read 20 ARCs and already I'm starting to feel like this. And because most of those are requested they seem more of an obligation than receiving stuff on spec, as bloggers do. I was actually relieved to get turned down for one the other day as it meant less book "work" within the next 2-3 weeks, for titles due to be released around the end of April & start of May. (Assuming I wouldn't get a couple that had been waiting for ages, I'd applied for more, but then got the ones I thought I wouldn't.)

One goal I think I've managed, not reading but related: sort out the Wordpress tangle that had for years stopped me commenting on a lot of blogs.
(I had an old blog I was never sure I wanted to use for this. When I tried to use another email address to comment, it kept coming back as registered to a Wordpress account and telling me to log in - but then when I did that, and tried to retrieve the password, it would say it wasn't registered. That address wasn't on the old blog either.) In practical terms this problem didn't have to be complicated, but I could never decide what to do.
Anyway, I just registered a different ID. Although I haven't used it yet. If I ever do want to merge the accounts, it sounds like it's possible to port the content over.

Good stuff! Perhaps this thread will inspire me to keep up my own reading goals. Trevor's post reminds me I should read more J.M. Coetzee and William Trevor, which I will.

But I'm too impulsive and moody (like everyone?) to stick to a reading plan and accomplish it by the end of year. But I still like to have an outline of the stuff I plan to read. Last year I promised myself more Russians. Status: failed miserably. I didn't even try. Nothing besides Chekhov's stories.

My reading year '16 has begun from March onward as life got in the way of books for the first two months. Haven't read anything truly eventful as yet but I hope things would pick up pace. Here's a blueprint of my bookish preoccupation this year:

1. As with last year I want to read more (primarily but not exclusively) Eastern classics in translation, in verse or prose, from a range of rich literary traditions, such as from Indic languages, Persian, Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Slavic languages etc from or before 19th C - but the older the better. For Indic literatures I am relying on Murty Classical Library of India and Clay Sanskrit Library, but of course I will read material published outside of those projects as well. I also have some excellent Indic titles published by Penguin India. For Arabic I will be checking with Library of Arabic Literature. No promises which authors/books and how many. I'd rather keep it open-ended.

Status:

-Leg Over Leg: Volume One by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (Lebanese, Arabic, 19th C)
-The Glance: Songs of Soul-Meeting by Rumi (Persian, 13th C)
-When God Is a Customer: Telugu Courtesan Songs (India, Telugu, 15th to 18th C)
-Poems on Life and Love in Ancient India: Hala's Sattasai (India, Prakrit, 3rd to 5th C)
-The Appeasement of Radhika by Muddupalani (India, Telugu, 18th C)
-A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees (Japan, 13th/14th C)
-The Nightingales are Drunk by Hafez (Persia, 14th C)
-The Diwan of Zeb-Un-Nissa (India, Persian, 17th C)
-Selected poems of Sheikh Ghulam Hamdani Mushafi (India, Urdu, 18th/19th C)
- Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus (ancient Greek, 6th/5th BC)
- The Selected Poems of Yehuda Halevi (Andalusia, Hebrew 11th/12th C)
- Trimalchio's Feast by Petronius [from The Satyricon] (Latin, 1st C)

2. From among what is called The Three Percent, I plan to read more translations from Latin America. esp one book each by Bolaño, Márquez, Llosa, Fuentes, Isabelle Allende), as well as from countries that fell victim to what Milan Kundera called

Status:

2.1 - Latin America:
-Love in the Time of Cholera By Gabrial Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
-The Feast Of The Goat By Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
-A Cup of Rage by Raduan Nassar (Brazil)
-Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera (Mexico)
-No One Writes to the Colonel by Marquez
-Purgatory: A Bilingual Edition by Raúl Zurita (Chile, poems)
-The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (Chile)
-A Little Lumpen Novelita by Roberto Bolaño (Chile)
-The Literary Conference by César Aira (Argentina)

2.2 - The Other Europe:
-Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal (Czech)
-The Second Book by Muharem Bazdulj (Bosnian)
-Dreams and Stones by Magdalena Tulli (Polish)
-Tales of Galicia by Andrzej Stasiuk (Polish)
-A Ballad for Metka Krašovec by Tomaž Šalamun (Slovenia, poems)

3. Two books by the winner of the inaugural MBI, the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare, whose The Palace of Dreams I thoroughly enjoyed. It's been compared with 1984 but its mix of the real and the surreal makes it quite different from 1984.

Status:

-Broken April

4. More modern Japanese lit. One book each by Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima, Osamu Dazai, Natsume Sōseki etc.

Status:

-The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata

5. At least five modern novels from the Indian subcontinent or writers with such background, in original English or in translation. Salman Rushdie I have been meaning to read for years. I think the time has come to read his Booker winner.

Status:

-Basti by Intizar Hussain (Pakistan, Urdu; re-read this to check out the English translation)
-What will You Give for This Beauty? by Ali Akbar Natiq (Pak, Urdu, in English trans)

6. A couple of solid Russian classics. Pleeeasee? This might be carried over to the next year.

Status:

-Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy.

It will be great if I can safely claim 50% of the above by year's end!

Thanks for sharing your goals and enthusiasm, Jibran. I keep adding to my "goals" as the year goes along, but so far I'm doing okay with my goals that I wrote down here -- need to adjust slightly to stay on track! I was just thinking this morning: . . . I really need to start Middlemarch!

Good luck with all of this, and I hope that there are places here where you can share your progress or diversions with us!

wow, these are all such interesting goals.

Year by year I'm reading a lot more literature in translation, or in the original language when I can, but that's a trend more than a goal.

I do have a vague goal of reading books from former colonies where English is an official language but the author chooses to write in a non-colonial language instead. In particular I'd like to learn more about Indian authors writing in Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, since English is such a dominant language in the Indian educated class, and since writing in English allows an author a worldwide audience without translation.

I haven't really started on this goal. It's still totally "goal" and zero "completed goal." One problem with having such a weird goal is that I have to wait for someone to translate these into English to be able to read them which may not be a big priority for the author or for publishers. If anyone has suggestions of authors in India and elsewhere who have deliberately chosen to write in the voice of "home" and have been translated afterward, I'd love to hear them.

poingu wrote: " If anyone has suggestions of authors in India and elsewhere who have deliberately chosen to write in the voice of "home" and have been translated afterward."

Michael O from The Complete Review frequently makes the observation that there is a massive dearth of just the literature you seek, so it isn't easy to find. I suspect his website, or indeed his new book The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction would be a good place to start.

Jibran wrote: A couple of solid Russian classics. Pleeeasee?"

Russian classics is my soft spot! I would recommend anything by Nikolai Gogol and of course, The Master and Margarita, in case you haven't read it yet.

poingu wrote: "I do have a vague goal of reading books from former colonies where English is an official language but the author chooses to write in a non-colonial language instead. In particular I'd like to learn more about Indian authors writing in Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, "

Most literature produced at any time in the Subcontinent is written in the native (or non-colonial) languages so there's a loooot to survey. But there is a sizable shift in new writing; the internet generation is working more and more in English because it just makes more financial sense. English has worldwide market and if you touch upon "burning issues" of "great" sociopolitical import, you will most likely be shortlisted to Booker as well, and may win it for something like The White Tiger.

There is little enthusiasm for translated works, despite the recognition of Indian English fiction internationally. Perhaps English books fill the quota for the average reader. Or maybe it is thought that works in original English are more accessible than the translations. Be that as it may, books that have been translated from the Indian languages haven't quite made a name among The Three Percent crowd. To give a few examples from Urdu/Hindi tradition:

I mentioned Qurratulain Hyder in the post above. She translated a few of her novels into English herself like Nabokov. Wonderful writer but hardly known. You may want to read her River of Fire: Aag Ka Darya.

The Co-Wife and Other Stories by Munshi Premchand

Manto: Selected Stories

Collected Stories of Naiyer Masud has recently come out. (Short stories are huge in Indic literatures. Many writers have made their names by writing exclusively or mostly in short form, like Borges and Chekhov. We don't have a dislike for shorts the kind I regularly see on GR from people who only like to read full-length novels)

Basti by Intizar Husain (Pakistani not Indian, but deals with the familiar themes migration, dislocation, loss and the re-imagining of a new being by going back to myth)

I don't know much about modern South Indian fiction in translation (Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil etc) so can't say much. But if the Booker winner A God of Small Things (1997) was written in a native language, it would have been in Malayalam - and no one would have known about it!

Likewise in the Maghreb countries etc where French had held sway, most lit is produced in Arabic with only a few, especially diaspora, writers working directly in the colonial language. Arabic seems to have fared a little better than the Indic languages when it comes to translations. But countries in West and Central Africa have been made to switch almost completely to French so no luck there.

I'm also thinking of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o who gave up English to write in his native Giyuku.

@ Trevor, thank you. I'm sure most of my readings will be outside the goals I have set me, which is always the case, and which I think is good lest it starts to feel like work! Will keep it updated hopefully. I am also thinking it would be good to have a sub-section for classical lit in translation for works that don't normally get read/reviewed, if enough people are interested.

@ Caterina: thank you for the recs. I plan to read Bulgakov's novel soon :)

P.S. Oh and I will appreciate recs for Czech, Hungarian and other Central/Eastern Europe lit.

Great post, Jibran.

Browsing the 'fiction in translation' section on Sainsburys ebooks (a UK only store) recently, I noticed a surprising amount of titles from the Indian subcontinent, including:
two Penguin classics novellas by Ashokamitran
Thunderstorm: Dalit Stories
two books by Naiyer Masud
Karan Ghelo: Last Rajput King of Gujarat
Chander & Sudha
Suleiman Charitra
Aiwa Maru
Falling Walls
Panty (which has had loads of publicity in some places online because it's being published by Tilted Axis, a small press set up by Deborah Smith, translator of The Vegetarian who is very active on Twitter. It's actually just a reprint of an existing translation which was already published by Penguin India.)
The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver
Angaaray
3 by Krishna Baldev Vaid
The Time Regulation Institute
If anyone wants to do even more scrolling: http://www.sainsburysentertainment.co... (not sure how it would react to non UK IPs.)

Good list, Anto. There are loads of translations from dozens of Indic languages if we comb the listings of Indian-based publishers, which challenges the general view that there's a dearth. However, most translations are geared towards the local market. They sell well locally but I think the international sales are so paltry that publishers don't bother with producing and promoting international editions. Just a guess.

Sure, not everything that gets translated is great or has international appeal, but there are quite a few A-class works that deserve to be known a little better. Penguin India and Oxford Uni Press (Indian and Pakistani franchises) have both done a great job of producing so many contemporary and classics in translation. I'd compile a list sometimes and post it somewhere appropriate.

Just want to point out that The Unbearable Dreamworld...is Chinese, The Time Regulation Institute is Turkish and Suleiman Charitra is 16th century Sanskrit.

Wow, thank you so much for all these suggestions, Jibran and Antonomasia. These should keep me busy for a while. Thanks Paul for suggesting the Complete Review guide. I've ordered the paperback which seemed like a steal to me when I read about what to expect from it. I imagine Orthofer will be an amazing wise guide and I've loved his website for years.

I'm not sure if this is fair but it feels to me that the choice to write in English sometimes leads an author to write, maybe subconsciously, toward the target market of US readers, and then expository writing of the "let me explain my exotic culture to you" can start to happen.

I'm intrigued by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's choice to reject English, and Coetzee's relationship w. Afrikaans, and with the different choices Algerian writers have made in the last decades.

Meant to put this author in the list above but missed him out: Perumal Murugan

Jibran wrote: Oh and I will appreciate recs for Czech, Hungarian and other Central/Eastern Europe lit.
Not sure I'll find many you haven't already seen doing the rounds on GR. Also conscious that availability could be frustrating, and that I might be recommending stuff that's hard to get hold of, so I'll start with a handful that should be okay to obtain, even if they're not the best known.

Tales of Galicia, a Polish novella, is a legit free download on Scribd put up by the publisher: https://www.scribd.com/user/11547870/...
(most of the others are excerpts, this one a few rows down, is the whole thing)
This Estonian classic: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... is a free download from the publisher (the URL in that listing goes straight to the pdf)

A Russian friend recommended this short story which I haven't read yet: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Best_R... (old translation out of copyright)

Hungary
László Krasznahorkai
Miklós Bánffy
Embers (a book which was quite popular a few years ago, lots of cheap secondhand copies here but no ebooks yet - opinions are mixed on this one, but am convinced via a friend that I'll love it)
Tibor Fischer is a writer from a Hungarian background who writes in English & was shortlisted for the Booker in the 90s. Not all of his novels are about Hungary, widely available cheap & second hand here.
Antal Szerb is good for lighter reading
Gyula Krúdy is one of the most respected older Hungarian authors. If you like arthouse cinema, there is a film of his Szindbad which is very pretty.

The big czech writer to go to - apart from Kundera - would be Bohumil Hrabal.

(I'm feeling pretty tired, would it be okay to also just direct you to my shelves - I have "central eastern europe" as a general one, plus shelves for most of the bigger countries and "baltic states" and "balkans" as regions. And also my list votes - there are a couple of relevant lists I've compiled, but a lot more made by other people I voted on.)

Jibran wrote: "P.S. Oh and I will appreciate recs for Czech, Hungarian and other Central/Eastern Europe lit."

Check out the books in the sadly defunct "Writings from an Unbound Europe" series that Northwestern University Press was running for years. It was focused exclusively on books from central/eastern Europe.

For Hungary I'd add Dezső Kosztolányi e.g. Skylark and Anna Édes

Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy which I discovered via the BTBA.

And of course anything and everything by the wonderful wonderful Imre Kertész who was sadly laid to rest today.

I absolutely second Paul's recommendations for Dezső Kosztolányi and Imre Kertész (I haven't read Metropole). Kertész was an author that first got me interested in literature in translation, in fact.

I'd also highly recommend Gyula Krúdy and László Krasznahorkai, noted in Anto's post above. Krúdy's The Adventures of Sindbad is such a wonderfully lush book, filled with beauty and sadness. I still need to read Sunflower and Anna Édes. Krasnahorkai's are tantalizing looks at doom and have their own unique beauty. I have the goal, noted above, to finally read his Seiobo There Below, and I'm happy to say I packed it with me today!

By the way, please let me know which of these authors (or any others) you'd be interested in adding to the author chat. I'm happy to take recommendations for there. I love making those threads.

Antonomasia wrote: "Antal Szerb is good for lighter reading"

I have most of his books, but I've never read them. I didn't know he had a reputation for being "lighter," though I know that doesn't mean "bad." I think I'll add Szerb to the author chat folder, as I'd like to dig in and explore his work soonish.

Thank you so much everyone. These books make a great list. I haven't read much from Central/East so this will keep me busy for a while :)

@Anto: Thanks for taking the time to point out the free copies. Much appreciated. I'll probably start from one of those. Bohumil Hrabal and László Krasznahorkai among others had been on my mind from checking the lists on here but it's good to have a few solid names narrowed down for focus which I'd have otherwise missed. I have found and ordered a couple of titles from the former and one by the latter. Will check out your bookshelves for more ideas!

I also have a couple of Ivo Andrić's books waiting, so I'll also read The Bridge on the Drina over the summer mangoes.

The Estonian classic is a multi-volume epic in the original language. I'm wondering if the 652-page PDF is a translation of Vol 1 (but its page numbers do not correspond its Estonian Vol 1 as listed on GR, 495 pp). Or perhaps it's an abridged trans?

@ Trevor: The Europe Unbound series over there at NU looks great. I will try and see if I can get a few of those. It's a shame it was discontinued!

@ John: I looked up Dezső Kosztolányi and Ferenc Karinthy but no luck in getting them as of now. I will put them on my TBR for future reference. Thanks for rec-ing, sir.

The Estonian classic is a multi-volume epic in the original language. I'm wondering if the 652-page PDF is a translation of Vol 1 (but its page numbers do not correspond its Estonian Vol 1 as listed on GR, 495 pp). Or perhaps it's an abridged trans?
It's volume 1 only. I think the page numbering is mostly just because of the format - but I think Alan, who's on here, might have read both versions and would know more about that.

I'll also read The Bridge on the Drina over the summer mangoes.
Lovely!

My only reading goal so far has been to read primarily women writers. And it's going well so far! Of the 11 books I've read so far, plus the one I'm reading now, I've read 9 books by women to 3 by men. So 75% is good. Last year was only 14/44 so I'm feeling good about this start.

Antonomasia wrote: "The Estonian classic is a multi-volume epic in the original language. I'm wondering if the 652-page PDF is a translation of Vol 1 (but its page numbers do not correspond its Estonian Vol 1 as liste..."

Apologies for the delay in response. I just caught up on this thread now. The English translation Andres and Pearu at 652 pages pdf is the equivalent of the Estonian print editions of Tõde ja õigus I (Truth and Justice Volume I) of about 500 pages which are more densely printed at maybe 300+ words per page vs. 250 words per page in the English.

English translation of Estonian usually require slightly more words as the 14 noun cases (28 if you count the plural versions) in Estonian are conveyed by only a few suffix letters added to the noun, but in English they require extra words. e.g. "maja" is "house" in Estonian, "majas" is "inside the house".

Really interesting. Thanks Alan!

Midyear progress check. I've updated my post#14

Typing out my goals has helped me keep track of whether I'm keeping up with them or not. I'd say it doesn't look too bleak so far.

Anna Karenina is turning out to be a lot more interesting and enjoyable than I had expected. Too much familiarity with the book and its major plot twists (including that dud of a film) had become a hindrance to my reading it. But I now realise the injustice I was doing to Tolstoy and to myself.

And still waiting for something POV-altering from the (Eastern) classics, with one exception. But the fault is mine: I've been avoiding the tomes and reading shorter/secondary works instead. I need to remedy this.

Which was the one exception?

Antonomasia wrote: "Which was the one exception?"

Leg Over Leg. It's nearly a thousand pages and I still haven't finished it.

Jibran wrote: "Good stuff! Perhaps this thread will inspire me to keep up my own reading goals. Trevor's post reminds me I should read more J.M. Coetzee and William Trevor, which I will.

But I'm too impulsive an..."

Jibran - did you like Broken April? I find Kadare very fascinating and have read 5 of his books - The Palace of Dreams being one of my favourites.

Trevor wrote: "Antonomasia wrote: "Antal Szerb is good for lighter reading"

I have most of his books, but I've never read them. I didn't know he had a reputation for being "lighter," though I know that doesn't m..."

I love his Journey by Moonlight! And have bought most of his other books in the lovely Pushkin Press editions :-) I also liked Love in a Bottle and Other Stories.

Louise wrote: "I love his Journey by Moonlight! And have bought most of his other books in the lovely Pushkin Press editions :-) I also liked Love in a Bottle and Other Stories. "

Thanks for reopening that discussion - I wasn't aware that the stories had been published in English, but I think I have read all of Szerb's other stuff. I think "lighter" is fair comment in the context of Oliver VII and the Pendragon Legend, but from what I remember (and it is now quite a long time since I read it) Journey by Moonlight was deeper. I'd also like to add Magda Szabó to the rather male list of Hungarian writers worth reading, though so far only The Door and Iza's Ballad are readily available in English.

Mainly I want to read 140+ novels/novellas/audiobooks, and read some of the older books I have at home - so I've joined the Mount TBR challenge for 48 books that I aquired before 2016.

As a Dane I read translated literature most of the time anyway, so I feel I have a pretty good variety there.

Last year I reached 1000 unread physical books in my house - but new books, audiobooks and shiny library books with a due date keep skipping the line!

I'm also reading 16 new authors, 16 poetry /short story collections

Louise wrote: "Jibran - did you like Broken April? I find Kadare very fascinating and have read 5 of his books - The Palace of Dreams being one of my favourites. "

The Palace of Dreams was great. Broken April is worth a read. Fascinating story set in the Albanian High Plateau shut off from the outside world where people still follow an age old tribal code whose most frightening aspects such as laws on blood feuds, honour killing, and exacting revenge are followed to the letter. It was closer to home because Albanian Kanun and Afghanistan's Pashtunwaali share striking resemblance in their working despite having come into being in very different cultural systems.

Edit: those two are the only novels I have read. Which book do you suggest I should read next? I am looking at The General of the Dead Army and Elegy for Kosovo: Stories.

I also liked Agamemnon's Daughter: A Novella and Stories a lot, but I haven't read those too yet. Elegy for Kosovo sounds very interesting :-)

Louise wrote: "I also liked Agamemnon's Daughter: A Novella and Stories a lot, but I haven't read those too yet. Elegy for Kosovo sounds very interesting :-)"
I've read The General of the Dead Army, The Siege and The File on H - these were all very different to each other, and all interesting in different ways. He is something of an acquired taste, and is probably not helped by most of the English editions being translations of translations.

I've read the Kadare books in Danish - directly translated from French or Albanian (some of them I believe he had first published in French due to censorship?) - that seemed to work well.

Louise wrote: "I've read the Kadare books in Danish - directly translated from French or Albanian (some of them I believe he had first published in French due to censorship?) - that seemed to work well." The ones I read were translations from the French translations into English - I'm not saying that the translations were bad, just that two layers of translation is bound to lose more than one. I suspect that translators who speak Albanian are rather hard to find.

agreed :-)

Hugh wrote: "He is something of an acquired taste, and is probably not helped by most of the English editions being translations of translations. "

I have also noticed the difference in voice and diction between the two I have read. This might be Kadare's own variation as a writer but I attributed part of it to the two-tired translation. The one is translated from the French of original Albanian but my copy of Broken April does not mention an intermediary language and seems to have been translated directly from the Albanian.

@Louise: thanks, I will check out Agamemnon's Daughter.