Undirected Reading

 Books read for the Mount TBR Challenge 2021 . I signed up at the Mount Blanc level, meaning I hope to read 24 books from my TBR pile. I will list the books below as I read them, with reviews linked as they are completed. 1. Anne of Green Gables , by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Books read for the 2021 Back to the Classics Challenge . I will be listing the books I read for this challenge below, with reviews linked as they are completed. 1. A 19th century classic: any book first published from 1800 to 1899 2. A 20th century classic: any book first published from 1900 to 1971. All books must have been published at least 50 years ago; the only exceptions are books which were written  by 1971 and posthumously published. 3. A classic by a woman author. 4. A classic in translation, meaning any book first published in a language that is not your primary language. You may read it in translation or in its original language, if you prefer.  5. A classic by BIPOC author; that is, a non-white author. 6. A classic by a new-to-you author, i.e., an author whose work you have never read. 7. New-to-you classic by a favorite author -- a new book by an author whose works you have already read.  8. A classic about an animal, or with an animal in the title. The...

No cover image for this one, because there wasn't one on Goodreads and the library copy I had was just a plain blue cover.  I first encountered this book while working for a Polish American nonprofit in 2016/2017, and was at the time told the story of the "Kula letters." A collection of correspondence seized by the tsarist censor in Warsaw, it had been kept in an archive--but that archive was destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The only surviving letters, a collection of those from 1890 and 1891, were those that Witold Kula and his students had been using for research. The rest--thousands of letters--were lost. I found the subject matter interesting, and the story even more so--but merely put the book on my to-read list to request from interlibrary loan at some future date. I left my job at the nonprofit in 2018; the person who recommended this book to me passed away that same year. And yet finally I checked a copy of this book out of the library and read it, an...

 Books read for the 2021 European Reading Challenge . The terms of the challenge are to read at least one book either set in or written by an author from as many of the following countries as possible. I will be listing books below, with links to reviews, as I read them. Albania - Sworn Virgin (Elvira Dones) Andorra -  Armenia - Austria - Azerbaijan - Belarus - Belgium - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Croatia - Cyprus - Czech Republic - Denmark - Estonia - Finland - France - A Very Long Engagement (S é bastien Japrisot) Georgia - Germany - Greece - Hungary - Iceland - Ireland - Exiles (Dónall Mac Amhlaigh) Italy - Kazakhstan - Latvia - Liechtenstein - Lithuania - Luxembourg - Malta - Moldova - Monaco - Montenegro - Netherlands - Norway - Poland - Forefathers' Eve (Adam Mickiewicz) Portugal - Republic of Macedonia - Romania - Russia - The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar (Yury Tynyanov) San Marino - Serbia - Slovakia - Slovenia - Spain - Collected Poems (Federico García Lorca) Swed...

 I received an electronic ARC of this book via NetGalley for honest review. This is a well-written and interesting account of the history of Appalachian Movement Press, which operated in West Virginia during the years stated in the title. The book introduces the general history of movement presses in the United States, but really is focused specifically on this one example--enough overall information to let even a rather uninformed reader (I was almost entirely unfamiliar with movement presses) understand the context, while still having a clear focus on the particular press in question. Part biography of the variety of people involved with Appalachian Movement Press, part loose overview of the various veins of political and philosophical thought in Appalachia that gave birth to the press, it's both enjoyable and informative. The endnotes are extensive, and Slifer's use of a variety of both printed and oral sources makes for a compelling read. The latter portion o...

Books read for the 2021 Books in Translation Challenge . I signed up to read at least 10 books in translation in 2021, which I suspect should be fairly easy given my typical reading habits. I will be listing the books I read below, with links to reviews, as I read them. Tomorrow They Won't Dare To Murder Us - Joseph Andras (translated from the French by Simon Leser). Finished: 10 January 2021. An I-Novel - Minae Mizumura (translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter). Finished: 10 February 2021. Collected Poems - Federico García Lorca (translated from the Spanish by various translators). Finished: 2 March 2021. Exiles - Dónall Mac Amhlaigh (translated from the Irish by Mícheál Ó hAodha). Finished: 27 March 2021.

I received an electronic ARC of this book via NetGalley for an honest review. This rather short book is a novelization of the death--and, by extension, the life--of Fernand Iveton, an Algerian-born communist of French and Spanish ancestry, and the only pied-noir (a person of European descent born in Algeria while it was under French rule) to be executed by the French government for his involvement in the FLN during Algeria's war for independence. I can't speak to how historically accurate this telling is, because I'm no expert on the topic. It is based on fact. It's a beautifully written and emotionally stirring little book. Despite its brevity, it does a wonderful job characterizing not only Fernand, but the other people around him as well. The narrative moves back and forth through time, but it becomes clear pretty quickly which parts are taking place in the "present" (1956/57), and which are told in flashback. It isn't exactly a story wher...

I received an electronic ARC of this book via NetGalley for an honest review. The premise of this novella appealed to me immediately. The protagonist is a disgraced government minister, sent off from the capital to oversee the construction of a possibly-cursed tower in a not-entirely-peaceful borderland. Each of the component chapters tells an important part of the story, which covers a surprising amount of ground in relatively few pages. In some ways, short length is this novella's greatest weakness. There's enough plot for a full-length novel here, and in a longer form I think the worldbuilding and characterization could have been stronger. At times it feels like a novella meant to be read within an already-established world (actually, to the point that I double-checked Goodreads halfway through to make sure that there was not a previous book that I'd missed), rather than a freestanding work. It's a neat world, though, and I would have loved to see more ...

I received an electronic ARC of this book via Netgalley for an honest review. This book does, at its core, have some useful advice that I hope to work into my life. That said, it could have taught its lesson in a fraction of its length--and in my opinion, at least, would have been stronger for it. Most of the book's advice centers around identifying your professional passion, identifying a niche audience for it, and then--in essence--crafting a clear mission statement and using that when you meet people. The biggest issue I had with this book was that, despite being an introvert who struggles with the idea of networking, I spent most of the book feeling like the target audience was a person I both am not and have no desire to be. A considerable portion of the text seems to be aimed at a hypothetical reader who is already either a small business owner or else very successful in their field of passion, working in a capacity that specifically involves sales to wealthy clients. As a g...