Whatever happened to 20 Books of Summer 2023?

There was a point in the summer when I thought that I might make it, even though I had some enormous books on the list. I started off well, then got bogged down in books I’d promised to read and review for NetGalley. I still haven’t managed to succeed in saving them so they don’t expire, so if the deadline is looming, I have to at least try to finish reading. But the real problem this summer was my time being taken up with Other Things, some pleasant, others decidedly less so. I had already decided summer would just have to be extended into September, and the weather fortunately agreed with me.

However, my attempt was doomed – doomed, I tell you! – due to the simple fact that my husband insisted on spending four weeks visiting family in England and swanning around in Devon and Cornwall. That involved lots of walking on sections of the South West Coast Path (immortalised by Raynor Wynn in The Salt Path), visiting gardens and charity shops, where I was forbidden from buying any books. That didn’t stop me looking, but for whatever reason, I hardly spotted anything I wanted this year. That may have to do with the huge number of books I bought in Cornwall last year. Towards the end of the holiday, my other half relented slightly, so I did end up with five new books, about which I hope to write in a separate post.

This will be the third year I’ve taken part in this reading and blogging challenge, hosted most ably by Cathy at 746Books, running from 1 June to 1 September 2023 (or, in my case, the end of September). Actually posting this summery summary has also taken me to the end of October. Doesn’t time fly?

The best laid plans

My original list was subdivided into three monthly themes (senses/feelings, calendar and water), which came from a reading challenge on BookCrossing.com. Plus some travel books, as it’s summer, a book I’ve borrowed and want to return, then the ARCs. The photo below was of the physical books I planned to read. I’ll comment on each book, listed in the same order I used back in June. The ones I actually read are in red.

My shortlist for #20BooksOfSummer23

Senses/feelings

• The Man Who Spoke Snakish (2007), Andrush Kivirähk, trans. Christopher Mosely. Status: still TBR.
• Dreamland (2021), Rosa Rankin-Gee. Status: read. I really enjoyed this dystopian novel set in my hometown of Margate after the rising sea levels have changed society and the landscape for ever. Apart from the obvious references to places I know, I enjoyed how the author set her novel in a future that is not too far removed from the worst version of the present. This included social injustices and decisions that have blighted the area for years, such as London using Thanet as a dumping ground for disadvantaged families, but also happier memories and the attempts to make the area more appealing. Fate: passed on to my sister.
• Heimwee naar de jungle (The Lost Steps) (1953), Alejo Carpentier, trans. J.G. Rijkmans. Status: still only half-read.
• Invisible Women (2019), Caroline Criado Perez NF. Status: unread. Fate: to be saved until Nonfiction November.
• Dear Fatty (2008), Dawn French NF. Status: read and enjoyed. Dawn French is generous with her praise of friends and family, reticent on the end of her relationship with Lenny Henry, but her description of meeting and falling in love was wonderful. I made few notes and have retained little, though rereading it, I’ve just discovered a book serendipity that I had forgotten and will add in a forthcoming review. Fate: passed on to my sister, who thinks she may already have read it.

Calendar

• Neverwhere (1997), Neil Gaiman. Status: read. Apart from Coraline (underwhelmed) and his joint novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (brilliant!), this was my first adult Gaiman book, on my shelf since the year it was published. It was well worth the wait. Fate: this will be staying in my personal collection. After all, I think it was my husband who actually ordered it. Likelihood of him reading it? Zero. Chances of my son doing so are considerably higher.
• Spring (2019, Ali Smith. Status: unread. A hardback I did not want to take on holiday. Fate: TBR.
• Summer (2020), Ali Smith. Status: unread. Fate: TBR.
• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022), Shehan Karunatilaka. Status: read. Immorality, immortality and betrayal. Gripping, unsettling and multilayered. Certainly not for the squeamish. Hopefully a full review will appear soon. Definitely a worthy winner of the Booker Prize. I also had great fun listening to the author on the Backlisted podcast episode about the Kurt Vonnegut book Galapagos. Fate: returned to the library.
• The Thursday Murder Club (2020), Richard Osman. Status: unread. Fate: TBR.
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010), David Mitchell. Status: unread, again. Fate: To read in December, for the BookCrossing theme ‘first names’.
• Time Shelter (2020), Georgi Gospodinov. Status: unread. Fate: TBR, soon.
• The Enchanted April (1922), Elizabeth von Arnim. Status: read. I have started this several times and then set it aside for a time when I could read it at leisure. I managed this at the beginning of August and was duly rewarded with a delightful reading experience. Less happened than I expected, but that was part of the charm. Fate: passed on to my sister.
• Buiten is het maandag (2003), Bernlef. Status: unread. Fate: TBR.
• A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018), Caryl Phillips. Status: unread. Fate: TBR in October?

Water

• The Hungry Tide (2004), Amitav Ghosh. Status: unread. Fate: TBR.
• The Sea Lady (2006), Margaret Drabble. Status: read. At the end, I did wonder who the titular sea lady was, but this was a wonderful evocation of a seaside childhood, mostly told in the reminiscences of an ageing marine biologist on a train journey to the north-east, where unbeknownst to him, he will be reunited with a woman he first met as a child. Once lovers, they have kept track of each other’s careers ever since. More Margaret Drabble is on the cards! Highly recommended. Fate: passed on to my sister.
• Watermelon (1995), Marian Keyes. Status: unread. Fate: TBR.
• Fingersmith (2002), Sarah Waters 1001. Status: unread. Fate: TBR.
• Waiting for the Waters to Rise (2010), Maryse Condé. Status: unread. Fate: TBR.

Travel

• The Places in Between (2004), Rory Stewart NF. Status: unread. Fate: TBR in November?
• The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment (2019) , Amelia Gentleman. NF. Status: partially read. I started to read this in June, decided to read it on holiday, then had ARCs to read instead. Fate: Finish in Non Fiction November.
• Africa is Not a Country (2022), Dipo Faloyin. Status: unread. Fate: TBR in November.

Borrowed

• Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy (2014), Jeff Vandermeer. Status: read parts 2 and 3 of the trilogy, Authority and Acceptance. Having thoroughly enjoyed and been mystified by the first part last summer, I was really looking forward to reading this and took it on holiday with me. Authority was a real change of pace and left me wishing I understood more. Acceptance had more action and solved some of the mysteries. However, by that point, it was so long since I read part one, Annihilation, that I wasn’t sure who was who anymore, so missed some of the references and found myself flicking back. The end wasn’t as creepy as the beginning, yet was devastating. After reading the first two parts, I couldn’t resist the temptation to watch Alex Garland’s film adaptation, Annihilation, having first ascertained it contained no spoilers. Despite changing everything round entirely and taking huge liberties, with me constantly saying “that’s not what happened in the book”, by the end of the trilogy, I discovered many of the details I hadn’t recognised in the film, did turn up eventually. I would definitely not recommend watching the film before finishing the entire trilogy. In conclusion, I would say the second part of the book was over-long with too much hanging around in bars that didn’t advance the plot. But if you enjoy weird climate fiction/science fiction with creepy and violent elements, it’s definitely worth it. As a bonus, there are some beautiful line drawings at the start of each section. Status: Returned to owner.

Digital ARCs via NetGalley

• Taking Flight: the Evolutionary Story of Life on the Wing (2023), Lev Parikian. Status: read. Lev Parikian is an enthusiastic amateur scientist with a love of observing nature and a Douglas Adams style of humour. Packed with the sort of fascinating facts usually reserved for children’s books, he investigates the power of flight in the natural world, from the usual suspects (birds and insects), to the development of flight in pterosaurs, archaeopteryx and bats. I’m not sure I followed the technical details about the way various insects’ and birds’ wings are attached and move, but I did enjoy factoids such as the fact that some geese can fly upside down, a manoeuvre called whiffling. The book has since been nominated for the 2023 Royal Society Trivedi Science Prize.
• The Octopus in the Parking Garage: A Call for Climate Resilience (2023), Rob Verchick. Status: read. Rob Verchick makes the case for climate resilience rather than hammering on about reducing emissions and large-scale efforts for net zero. Resilience is the ability to absorb adversity, recover and carry on. It often involves growth. He believes there should be more focus on mitigating local effects by building flood defences or the like and ensuring everyone, especially the poorest, lives in safe areas, which may mean abandoning flood plains, etc. He reckons people are more likely to agree to measures that make them feel safer. Sadly I didn’t quite finish it before it expired on NetGalley, so didn’t read his final conclusions. The book gives lots of good examples and also cites some of the thinkers who have inspired the practical solutions. I’m not sure if the increasingly forced octopus metaphors throughput the book are necessary, though it’s fun spotting them. The tone also swings between occasional academic impenetrability and and over-familiar internet speak (“Dunno. […] Something something science.”) On the whole, however, this is a very readable and hopeful look at things that might actually work to keep our planet liveable while the politicians and big business are debating and twiddling their thumbs.
• Mild Vertigo (1997), Mieke Kanai, trans. Polly Barton pub. 21/6 (Fitzcarraldo) 192pp. Status: read. Natsumi is a Japanese housewife who feels irritated by the Sisyphean daily tasks facing her, is slightly nauseated by her husband’s mansplaining and his middle-aged spread, yet is annoyed at the expensive exercise gear taking up space in their apartment. She envies her former classmates who have interesting jobs, yet cannot get round to applying for a job or even taking up a hobby. She spends time talking to her neighbours and observing some of the disturbing behaviour going on. There’s a surprising amount of violence, animal cruelty and dysfunctional behaviour, yet the book is also wry and funny. There’s also a section which is supposedly an article a friend gives her about an art exhibition, which was actually written by Mieke Kanai. There’s an awful lot going on in this novel. I’d really like to read it again. Highly recommended, especially to anyone who has ever spent time as a stay at home mum.
• Tiger Work (2023), Ben Okri, pub. 6/7. Status: read. This is a wide-ranging collection of Nigerian Booker Prize winner Ben Okri’s writing on the climate crisis. This ranges from poetry, serious articles, short stories in various styles, including dystopian, sci-fi and fantastical. The titular poem reminds us that the loss of any species is as terrible as the loss of something popular and obvious like a tiger. We need to find our tiger spirit. I enjoyed the stories most, and I think Okri’s best and most vivid work is when he’s writing about Nigeria. I wasn’t a fan of the poetry, but then I read the lines “Outsider foxes and/Sarcastic wolves” and various other wonderful phrases. I’d say there’s something for everyone here. It’s articulate and thought-provoking, with his trademark magical realism and a varied cast of animals, river goddesses, aliens and even everyday people. The message is clear: we’re ruining our world and we need to show our love for it, not only by protecting the environment in our daily lives, but by taking action and demonstrating against governments and businesses that are destroying the world.

Added to the list

In the course of the summer, I came across a few extra books, as one does.

• Everything, Everything (2015), Nicola Yoon. Status: read. I already had this out of the library, but forgot to add it to my 20 Books of Summer planned reading list. “If my life were a book and you read it backward, nothing would change. Today is the same as yesterday. Tomorrow will be the same as today. In the Book of Maddy, all the chapters are the same. Until Olly.” John Green has competition! If you enjoyed The Fault in Our Stars, then I’m sure you’d love this just as much. The style of writing is wonderfully informal, much of it in flirty emails and text messages. And just like the teenagers in John Green’s smash hit, their conversation is smart and funny, often featuring books; Maddy sums up Lord of the Flies as ‘Boys are savages’. Just like the teenagers in Green’s books, there is a sad secret. Fate: returned to the library.
• A Decent World (2023), Ellen Hawley. Status: read. Digital ARC via NetGalley, chosen for the lovely cover. Margaret Meade: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The narrator’s grandmother Josie lived her life according to this mantra as a Communist and teacher, later establishing a tutoring organisation for schoolchildren. She never sought revolution. Her aim was simply to create the decent world of the title. Now she has died, her granddaughter Summer is left questioning everything. Should she meet up with Jodie’s estranged rich brother? Does she want to return to her complicated unconventional household with its shifting relationships? Will the older members of the family take away the home where she has cared for her grandmother for the past year? Above all, is it still possible to create a decent world? Lots of interesting characters to get your head around, but an intriguing family saga.
• Dark Matter: a Ghost Story (2010), Michelle Paver. Status: read. This is an extremely atmospheric tale of a young man who joins an expedition to the Arctic. He is told that there is a dark presence at their camp. One by one, the men leave, until Jack is the only one left. “Until now, I hadn’t understood the absolute need for light. I hadn’t appreciated that there’s an unbridgeable difference between a stretch of ‘twilight’ every twenty-four hours, and nothing at all. Only an hour or so of twilight is enough to confirm normality. It allows you to say, Yes, here is the land and the sea and the sky. The world still exists. Without that – when all you can see out the window is black – it’s frightening how quickly you begin to doubt. The suspicion flickers at the edge of your mind: maybe there is nothing beyond those windows. Maybe there is only you in this cabin, and beyond it the dark.” I found this novella at the top of the stairs in our accommodation in Cornwall while on holiday. Downstairs alone, it was very creepy reading. Especially when just as I finished the book, there was an almighty crash of thunder outside that scared the living daylights out of me! Fate: returned to shelf.
• The Fortnight in September (1931), R.C. Sherriff. I spotted this in the library just before we went on holiday and couldn’t resist. It’s about a family’s annual trip to the seaside, starting with their preparations at home and the fraught train journey. They do the same thing every year, staying at the same hotel that is becoming ever more run down. It’s humorous yet poignant, with the father clinging to the past, mother dreading it but loath to spoil the others’ pleasure, eldest son worrying about how to tell his father he doesn’t want to follow in his footsteps. Daughter makes a friend who takes her to meet some young men on the promenade and the youngest son is still a carefree child, but notices all is not well. Even the landlady has something momentous to reveal. This is the real banality of everyday family life, well-observed, with the quirks of human nature to liven it up. There is no hint that, in just a few short years, these young men will be called up to fight in the Second World War. Fate: returned to library.
• The Yacoubian Building (2002), Alaa Al Aswany. Set in a Cairo building that contains people from all walks of life and income levels. There are offices, apartments, businessmen, mistresses (handy for cheating husbands), rich and the poor people living in shacks on the roof. This slim novel gives you insight into the male-female dynamic in Egypt, how some women exert power, and how corruption can make or ruin lives. This is definitely a rich novel that requires concentration and rewards reading in reasonably long stretches. The list of characters helps but it’s quite a challenge to keep track of who’s who as the book flits from person to person, location to location, often with no warning. There is also a useful glossary at the back. It sounds complicated and it is, but well worth it. Read for my book club. Fate: e-boek on Kobo.

Did I read 20 books?

Sadly, no. Counting the second and third parts of the Southern Reach trilogy as two separate books, and The Windrush Betrayal as half-read, I make that 17 1/2 books. But that’s a pretty good total and I read some fantastic books, so I’m happy with that. Thank you, Cathy, for hosting. It’s a great way to decide what to read and I sincerely hope it will be back to challenge me next year.

#20BooksOfSummer23 book challenge by Cathy at 746books

Explosion in a Cathedral (1962) by Alejo Carpentier; John Sturrock (translator)

Esteban’s “favourite painting was a huge canvas by an unknown Neapolitan master which confounded all the laws of plastic art by representing the apocalyptic immobilisation of a catastrophe. It was called ‘Explosion in a Cathedral’, this vision of a great colonnade shattering into fragments in midair—pausing a moment, as its lines broke, floating so as to fall better—before it dashed its tons of stone down on to the terrified people beneath.”

This painting is symbolic for everything that shatters during the events of Carpentier’s novel. It begins in Cuba on the eve of the French Revolution, which will have an explosive effect not only in France itself, but on its Caribbean colonies and the islands which trade with them. But for the family at the centre of this novel, the first shattering events are closer to home: the death of their father, the arrival of a mentor and a devastating hurricane.

When their father dies, the teenagers Carlos and Sofia are left in charge of the house and their sickly cousin Esteban. They shut the house up for the first year of mourning, ordering new furniture, then building labyrinths and mountains of unpacked packing cases. They avoid all contact with the outside world, leaving the Executor of their father’s estate to run their father’s import business and warehouses. They sleep during the day and, during their nighttime waking hours, they do entirely as they please, dropping all standards of decorum. Carlos uses mattresses to soundproof a room so that he can practice on his flute, as music is not socially acceptable during the first year of mourning. Everything continues in this way until they are rudely interrupted by a stranger hammering on their door: Victor Hugues. He has come to meet their father for business, but turns his attention to them once hears their father has died. He will entirely change their world.

On a nighttime coach ride to alleviate one of Esteban’s acute asthma attacks, Victor takes them to the teeming harbour area, full of sailors and prostitutes. This passage about the various nationalities amused me:

“Victor avoided the drunks with a coachman’s skill and seemed to be enjoying this squalid turmoil; he picked out the North Americans by their swaying gait, the English by their songs, the Spanish because they drank their wine out of wineskins and porrons.”

When Esteban has a particularly bad attack, Victor calls in the help of Doctor Ogé, whom he had met in Port au Prince in Haiti. Sofia is horrified at the idea of a Black man touching one of her relatives. Looking around, Ogé immediately remarks upon an ox-eye window in Esteban’s room. This is a term I didn’t know, but is a translation of the French oeil de boeuf, a round window that is commonly used in barns in the Netherlands. On the other side of this window, he identifies the cause of the asthmatic attacks, though his reasons are more folk medicine and observation than medical. The instant cure will also change their lives.

An ox-eye window in Balgoij, a village in Gelderland

On the night of a hurricane, everything shifts. Ogé has disappeared, possibly arrested, and Victor is upset. He sets to, rescuing carpets and furniture from the flooding, commanding the workers to save the stock in the warehouse. But afterwards, he retires to Sofia’s bedroom, sleeps next to her in her bed without waking her, then attempts to rape her. She fights him off, but the night has changed her.

“The strangeness of everything, the violence of an event, which had jolted everyone out of their habits and routine, now helped to aggravate the countless, contradictory disturbances produced in Sofia, when she woke up, by the memory of what happened the night before. This formed part of the vast disorder in which the city had been plunged; it had integrated itself into the scene of the cataclysm. But there was one factor which outweighed in importance the collapse of walls, the destruction of belfries, the foundering of ships—she had been desired. This was so unusual, so unexpected, so disturbing, that she could not admit its reality. Within the space of a few hours she had emerged from adolescence, feeling that her body has matured in the presence of a man’s desire. He had looked on her as a woman, before she had looked on herself as a woman, or imagine that others might concede her the status of woman. ‘I am a woman,’ she murmured resentfully, as if weighed down by an enormous burden which had been placed on her shoulders, and she looked at herself in the mirror as if she were looking at someone else, someone different and beset by adversity, finding herself tall, ungainly, and insignificant, with those too-narrow hips, skinny arms, and the asymmetry of her breasts which, for the first time, made her feel angry about her figure. The world was full of perils. She was leaving a road free from dangers to take another—a testing road, where everyone would make comparisons between her real and her reflected selves, a road which one could not travel without harm and giddiness.“

Book serendipity: freemasonry

When Victor accuses the Executor, Don Cosme, of embezzling the orphans’ money, Cosme “suddenly stood up and barked a single word at Victor, which sounded in Sofia‘s ears like an explosion in a cathedral: ‘Freemason!’” Coincidentally, I have started reading an ARC in which freemasonry is central: Split by Alida Bremer, set in the former Yugoslavia before the second world war. In that book, too, a main character is a Freemason and a murder victim was on the verge of joining the lodge.

Accused of embezzlement, Don Cosme retorts to Victor with a counteraccusation about Freemasons:

“These are the men who pray to Lucifer; these are the men who insult Christ in Hebrew; these are the men who spit on the crucifix; these are the men who hold an abominable feast on the night of Holy Thursday, when they carve a lamb, crowned with thorns and laid face downwards on the table with nails through its feet. It was for this that the Holy Fathers Clement and Benedict excommunicated these infamous men, and condemned them to burn in hell-fire.”

Revolution

When Alejo Carpentier wrote this novel in 1962, revolution was in the air as Fidel Castro had overthrown Batista in Cuba in 1969. Although Carpentier was working for the State Publishing House as he completed Explosion in a Cathedral, the book has been described as a “meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.” (citation on Wikipedia of Colchie, Thomas (editor), A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes: stories from Latin America; Penguin Group, 416–417 (1991)).

“To talk revolutions, to imagine revolutions, to place oneself mentally in the midst of a revolution, is in small degree to become master of the world. Those who talk of revolutions find themselves driven to making them. It is so obvious that such and such a privilege must be abolished that they proceed to abolish it; it is so true that such, an such an oppression is detestable that measures are concerted against it; it is so apparent that such a such a person is a villain that he is unanimously condemned to death. Then, once the ground has been cleared, they proceed to build the City of the Future.”

Carpentier’s rich language

Carpentier’s descriptions are lush and vivid in general, but his descriptions of nature are particularly sublime. For instance, on a sea journey to Haiti:

“The Arrow was cleaving slowly through a vast migration of medusas, heading towards the shore. As she watched this multitude of ephemeral creatures, Sofia wondered at the continual destruction which was like a perpetual extravagance on the part of creation : the extravagance of multiplying only to suppress on a larger scale; the extravagance of engendering as much from the most elementary matrices as from the moulds which produced the men-gods, only to surrender the fruits to a world in a state of perpetual voracity. They came from the horizon in their lovely carnival costumes, these myriads of living things still suspended half- way between the vegetable and animal kingdoms—to be offered up in sacrifice to the sun.”

Sometimes the richness of Carpentier’s descriptions have a downside: for instance, when the sailors encounter sharks, an orgy of slaughter ensues and this is described equally vividly.

Translation woes?

Another aspect of the language, at least, in John Sturrock’s translation into English, is the use of obscure words. Without finding the original Spanish, it is difficult to assess if this is down to Carpentier (as I suspect), or direct translation of common Spanish words into similar English words that are scarcely used. And that could either be deliberate, to give a flavour of the Spanish, of it could be down to clunky translation. Assuming I’ve got the right one, Sturrock was a literary journalist, reviewer for the TLS and the LRB and most of the books attributed to him on Goodreads are either overviews of world literature or translations from French, not Spanish. One begins to wonder if he didn’t translate this from a French translation, rather than directly from the Spanish, but that doesn’t excuse him from using odd vocabulary if the original words were used commonly used in Spanish. Google even presented me with a preview of a blogpost entitled John Sturrock is an idiot because he misremembered a plot point in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, a book which he translated himself, so should have known inside out. He also expressed rather abhorrent views which seemed to condone rape as a means to an end. However, he was obviously a respected translator of French, being entrusted with such works as the aforementioned Notre Dame de Paris and the fourth volume of Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah; I had no idea my unopened two-volumes Proust held such a title! He was praised for his contemporary, readable translations from French, so I suppose I should trust his judgment for Explosions, rather than brand him an idiot.

These are my comments after only the first third of the book as I wanted to post for the 1962 Club, hosted by Karen and Simon, and I’m already late. There is an excellent Goodreads review of the book on Goodreads by someone calling themselves Samuel, if anyone is interested. I shall return to my reading and hope to share more comments later.

The Guardian’s Wind-rush reading list: celebrating 75 years

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Empire Windrush ship arriving in Britain in 1948, bringing the first major wave of immigrants from the Caribbean, the Guardian has compiled a list of 75 books about the Black British experience.

As is usually the case with such lists, it’s an odd and uneven thing. The books asked various experts to suggest the books. Some of the books picked are ‘important’ academic tomes, with very few reviews on Goodreads. Others are so new, the ink is hardly dry, so they also have a lack of reviews. Andrea Levy’s work is recommended several times, as is the poetry of Lyndon Kwasi Johnson. There is rather a lot of poetry, some memoir and plenty of non-fiction.

Windrush bookshelf on Goodreads

I’ve made myself a Windrush shelf on Goodreads, i.e. tagged all the books on the list. You should be able to click on the covers on Goodreads (not here) to see details of the books. You can find my Windrush bookshelf here.

Windrush list books on my shelf

Currently reading:

• The Windrush Betrayal, Amelia Gentleman

To be read:

• Africa is Not a Country, Dipo Faloyin
• Black and British, David Olusoga

Previously read:

• Small Island, Andrea Levy

To be honest, I’m surprised at how few of the books on this list have passed through my hands, though I have read different books by some of the authors on the list, e.g. Buchi Emecheta. This is one list I feel absolutely no compulsion to complete. I’ll just continue to try to make my reading as diverse as possible. As you can see from my previous post on Black History Month in the UK, that never seems to be a problem.

British Black History Month, October 2023

American friends often post about Black History Month (BHM), but until recently, I didn’t realise that there was such a thing in the UK. In fact, I suspect it’s very easy to live in Britain without hearing much about it. Bookshops and libraries are often the first place to highlight such events, so it seems fitting that I was first alerted to this year’s BHM in an email by bookshop.org.

Black History Month (UK) possibles on the right

Black History Month (UK)

As so often happens, I have an embarrassment of riches to choose from. Not all British, but all written by Black authors or about Black history. My local library is also increasingly impressing me with their selection of books in their English section, including some that fit this theme.

• The Windrush Betrayal (2019), Amelia Gentleman. I read two thirds of this during 20 Books of Summer. This is just the push I need to finish it. It’s about the appalling ‘hostile environment’ policy in the UK towards refugees, and the dreadful impact it had on people who were born in the Caribbean and had lived most of their lives in Britain, but had no passport or proof of right to stay; the government somehow forgot most were British citizens by right.
• Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016), David Olusoga. Planned towards the end of the month, almost definitely postponed until #NonfictionNovember.
• Africa is Not a Country (2022), Dipo Faloyin. An overview per individual African country of its colonial history and modern life, all told in a humorous style. I bought it. I want to read it. But perhaps it will be #NonfictionNovember by then.
• View of the Empire at Sunset (2018), Caryl Philips. A novel based on the life of Jean Rhys, whose real name was Gwendolen, which makes it really bizarre that I also have…
• Gwendolen (1990), Buchi Emecheta. A Jamaican girl is first abandoned by her parents in London, reunited, then decides to take charge of her own life. On my shelf since time immemorial, but I will probably postpone it until December and the BookCrossing theme of ‘names’.
• Quicksand (1928), Nella Larsen. 1920s Black American culture. Passing was wonderful, but I have this as an ebook and I want to clear some of my physical books.
• Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1001). A classic of Black American literature, but I’m unlikely to have time this month.
• The Long Song (2010), Andrea Levy. Plantation culture in 19th century Jamaica. Perhaps…
• Fruit of the Lemon (1999), Andrea Levy. I’m tempted to read this just for the beautiful cover. It’s the story of a Black British woman sent to visit family in Jamaica after she has a breakdown due to racial violence.

Good Morning, Midnight (1939), Jean Rhys. A young woman in 1930s Paris, seeking independence. Wait until #NovNov.

The Wife’s Tale (2018), Aida Edemariam. The life story of the author’s grandmother through a hundred years of extreme change in Ethiopia. Wait until #NonfictionNovember.

The Shadow King (2019), Maaza Mengiste. A women’s army created to protect a fake emperor as Mussolini’s forces attacked 1930s Ethiopia. Maybe.

De Haayre (2002), Caroline Angenant (Dutch trans. Mirjam de Bruijn). Translation of Les Rois des Tambours au Haayre, a Malian story recited by Aamadu Baa Digi. #NovNov?

Spelen in het donker (1992), Toni Morrison, Anna Kapteijns-Bacuna (trans.) Translation of Playing in the Dark; Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. What role do African-Americans play in American literature? Unlikely to read this month.

Love (2003), Toni Morrison . Three generations of Black women in a fading beach town. Just too long for #NovNov, so I’ll try to read it this month.

Waiting for the Waters to Rise (2010), Maryse Condé, (Richard Philcox trans.). A Malian doctor in Guadeloupe takes an orphan to find her family in Haiti, helped by his Palestinian friend.

It wouldn’t surprise me to find more on my shelves, but this is more than enough, especially considering the length of some of them.

Previously read

• Place of Cool Waters (2023), Ndirangu Githaiga. Fiction. A Black American boy travels to Nairobi to visit the graves of his legendary Scouting heroes, only to find that their legacy is remembered differently in Kenya. I need to write a long-overdue review for NetGalley. TO DO ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Everything That Rises: a Climate Change Memoir (2023), Brianna Craft. Non-fiction. An insider’s view of attending the climate change talks as an intern for the Least Developed Countries. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Imaginary Friends (2023), Chad Musick. A fantasy about a (coincidentally) Black disabled girl, a Japanese shut-in boy and her imaginary friends (animals), trapped in a library with an evil librarian. This is another overdue ARC that I need to read and review for BookSirens. I got sidetracked… TO DO
• Passing, Nella Larsen. Two light-skinned friends meet after several years. One is ‘passing’ as white, the other involved in the Black community. Their lives intersect with dramatic consequences. Read in October 2022. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain (2021), Sathnam Sanghera. Non-fiction. The subtitle says it all. Everything I didn’t learn at school, with an emphasis on the Indian subcontinent. I still haven’t written a proper review. TO DO

Available at my library

• The Hate U Give (2017), Angie Thomas. YA about racism in the USA.
• The Girl With the Louding Voice (2020), Abi Daré. A Nigerian girl who refuses to be oppressed, who dares to speak out. A hyped debut I’m curious to read.
• Girl, Woman, Other (2019), Bernadine Evaristo. I’ve never read anything by the winner of the Booker prize, but having to share it with Margaret Atwood (for The Testaments). This is the story of twelve very different British black women. It’s about time I read this.
• The Hope Family Calendar (in Dutch translation: Het jaar na jou) (2016), Mike Gayle. Incidentally, I had no idea Mike Gayle was a Black British author until Liz Dexter mentioned this recently on her blog. I’ve read a couple of his lighthearted novels before, they used to have them in the English section. There are other available on inter-library loan.

Tips

Are you doing anything to celebrate Black History Month? Are there any must-read books, particularly British ones, that I need to look out for? Do you know of any TV programmes that are relevant? I know that David Olusoga has a new series on the BBC called Union that deals with the conflicting identity groups attempting to live in harmony within the United Kingdom.

October dithering: reading challenges galore

This was a post I intended to appear at the beginning of October, but somehow it is now the 25th and I am rapidly running out of month. I shall stick my head in the sand and proceed as if that wasn’t true.

From 16 to 22 October, it is (was) Kaggsy and Simon’s 1962 Club, for books published in that year. I just opened an email from Bookshop.org, and October is also Black History Month in the UK, focussing on ‘Saluting Our Sisters’ in 2023. To avoid the congested month which is November, Brona has moved Australian Reading Month to October. As if that weren’t enough, it has also come to my attention that it is (was) Kinderboekenweek (Children’s Book Week) in the Netherlands from 4 to 15 October, with the theme of home (bij mij thuis). I want to release some children’s books into local little free libraries, but first I would like to read them.

The BookCrossing Ultimate Challenge theme is not going to engage me too much this month as it’s ‘arts and crafts’, simply because I don’t have many books that fit the bill. September’s theme was ‘wild animals’, many of which are on the loose on my bookshelves, but as I was travelling virtually all month, I deferred those books until a later date. I also note that I currently have three books on loan from the library, and if I were so inclined, I could easily be tempted to borrow a couple more that would fit the Black History theme. All this leads to Much Dithering over which books to read when.

Books, TBR and finished, for October’s challenges and beyond

Australian Reading Month #AusReadingMonth23

• The Song of Wirrun (1987), Patricia Wrightson. A chunky children’s eco-fantasy trilogy, of which I have read the first part. I am determined to read it later this month.
• Rabbit-Proof Fence, (1996) Doris Pilkington (pseudonym of Nugi Garimara). This will probably be delayed until Non-Fiction November, whether or not that is an official challenge this year. Edit: it is, hosted by five people, including Liz Dexter, whose announcement post I have linked to. LINK!!!
• Poems of Henry Lawson (1979), Henry Lawson. (Not pictured.) I’m not a great poetry reader, but this is a slim volume with beautiful illustrations. Perhaps I should read a little a day while my husband is watching the neverending Aussie Outback Opal Hunters or Gold Diggers; he never seems able to clear the backlog of recorded episodes.
• The House at Riverton (2006), Kate Morton. A mystery in a grand house, between the wars. At well nigh 600 pages, I’m unlikely to read this one now, however much I’m tempted.

1962 Club (16-22 October)

You can find my 1962 possibles, previously read and wishlist books in my overview blogpost.

Black History Month (UK)

Again, I have an embarrassment of riches to choose from. Not all British, but all written by Black authors or about Black history. My local library is also increasingly impressing me with their selection of books for the English section. I will put more detail and the full list in a separate post.

• The Windrush Betrayal (2019), Amelia Gentleman
• Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016), David Olusoga
• Africa is Not a Country (2022), Dipo Faloyin.
• View of the Empire at Sunset (2018), Caryl Philips
• Quicksand (1928), Nella Larsen (not pictured)
• Gwendolen (1990), Buchi Emecheta
• Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1001) (not pictured)
• The Long Song (2010), Andrea Levy.
• Fruit of the Lemon (1999), Andrea Levy
• Good Morning, Midnight (1939), Jean Rhys
• The Wife’s Tale (2018), Aida Edemariam
• The Shadow King (2018), Maaza Mengiste.
• De Haayre (2002), Caroline Angenant; Mirjam de Bruijn (trans.) Translation of Les Rois des Tambours au Haayre, a Malian story recited by Aamadu Baa Digi.
• Spelen in het donker (1992), Toni Morrison, Anna Kapteijns-Bacuna (trans.) Translation of Playing in the Dark; Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
• Love (2003), Toni Morrison
• Waiting for the Waters to Rise (2010), Maryse Condé; Richard Philcox (trans.)

I’m sure I have many more books that would fit the bill, but that’s all for now, unless I serendipitously find something else on my shelves in the meantime that I can’t resist.

Black History Month, previously read

See my Black History Month post for quick blurbs.

• Place of Cool Waters (2023), Ndirangu Githaiga
• Everything That Rises: a Climate Change Memoir (2023), Brianna Craft
• Imaginary Friends (2023), Chad Musick
• Passing, Nella Larsen
• Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain (2021), Sathnam Sanghera

Available at my library

• The Hate U Give (2017), Angie Thomas
• The Girl With the Louding Voice (2020), Abi Daré
• Girl, Woman, Other (2019), Bernadine Evaristo
• The Hope Family Calendar (in Dutch translation: Het jaar na jou) (2016), Mike Gayle

Dutch Children’s Book Week

I have plenty of Dutch children’s books to read, many of which I acquired at BookCrossing meetings. You can see them on the left hand pile:

• How to Train Your Dragon (2003), Cressida Cowell. First up, a book in English, because I’ve had it since 2012 and it wants to travel.
• De torens van februari (The Towers of February) (1973), Tonke Dragt. Dutch sci-fi about an alternate universe.
• Het fort van Sjako [Sjako’s stronghold](1985), Karel Eykman, Peter Vos (ill.). Historical fictionalisation of the exploits of a real gang of thieves in 16th century Amsterdam.
• De nieuwe wereld van William Tinker [William Tinker in the New World] (2007), Hans Ulrich. Historical fictionalisation of the life of a British Pilgrim boy living in Leiden who travels to America on the Mayflower.
• De verdronken Amerikaan [The drowned American] (1967), Hektor van Gijsel. An adventure story set in Belgium. When an expensive American car is fished out of the canal, the police cannot find the driver. A teenager and his friends realise someone they know is involved in something shady and set out to investigate.

Library Love (already borrowed)

This is a meme hosted by Rebecca at Bookish Beck, on the third Monday of every month. I hope to post properly on this in October, too. I have the following on loan:

• Crusoe’s Daughter (1985), Jane Gardam
• Lessons in Chemistry (2022), Bonnie Garmus
• Little Beach Street Bakery (2014), Jenny Colgan

Hopefully I can update this post later with links to reviews and posts. For now, I need to get on with some reading!