In the last seven months, since I arrived in Seattle, I’ve read at least twenty-eight books. This does not include whatever I read over Thanksgiving at my grandparents in California, or the Russian books I read half of before I couldn’t renew them anymore.
Books include:
1 Kogda bogi spiat – Sergei Alekseev
2 Night of the Avenging Blowfish – John Welter
3 American Gods – Neil Gaiman
4 The Dust of Empire – Karl E. Meyer
5 e. – Matt Beaumont
6 Ordinary Wolves – Seth Kantner This novel was described by my mother (working at the time as a book critic) as the first true example of Alaska literature – written about Alaska, by an Alaskan, and written well. If such a description were one day applied to something produced by me, I’d be truly happy.
7 Microserfs – David Copeland
8 The Gentleman from Finland – Robert Goldstein
9 Survivor – Chuck Palaniuk
10 Snowstruck – Jill Fredston
11 Sea Legs: Tales of a Woman Oceanographer – Kathy Crane Kathy Crane has one of the careers I want: research in the Russian Arctic, and the Arctic in general. Hopefully I don’t have to face the same struggles she did to get there, since they’ve decided it might be okay for women to be present on research vessels…
12 Zorro – Isabel Allende I love Zorro. I heard many wonderful things about Isabel Allende. It wasn’t what I expected, being a fairly serious historical novel. Probably something was lost in translation.
13 A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers
14 The Russian Debutante’s Handbook – Gary Shteyngart
15 The Turk and My Mother – Mary Helen Stefaniak
16 The Unforgiving Coast – David Grover Despite being an academic account of mishaps met by large ships (tankers, ferries, etc) in the Pacific Northwest, I found this book quite fascinating.
17 The Inner Side of the Wind, or The Novel of Hero and Leander – Milorad Pavic I got this book because half of it is printed upside down. It turned out to be a wonderful piece of Serbian magical realism, and I may be trying to read some of his work in Russian, on the basis that it will be good practice for me, and closer to Serbo-Croation.
18 Cassandra French’s Finishing School for Boys – Eric Garcia
19 In a Sunburned Country – Bill Bryson
20 The Madonnas of Leningrad – Debra Dean Set partly in Leningrad and partly in the Seattle area, the only thing that bothered me about this book was one female character given a male surname. Otherwise it is a fascinating description of the art in the Hermitage, the seige of Leningrad, and the disconnect with reality caused by Alzheimer’s.
21 The Dreamlife of Sukhanov – Olga Grushin Reading this novel directly after The Madonnas of Leningrad was curious, since Sukhanov is also disconnected from reality, moving fluidly between his past and present, contemplating art and (spoiler) ultimately losing contact with sanity enitrely, which madness is precipitated by the Soviet ideological system and its sudden shifting in the 1980s.
22 Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
23 A History of the World in Six Glasses – Tom Standage The section on distilled liquor was the best.
24 Desolation – Yasmina Reza
25 Waiting for the Barbarians – JM Coetzee On Coetzee I will comment later, having more of his works still to read.
26 Death and the Penguin – Andrei Kurkov
27 The Master of Petersburg – JM Coetzee
28 Ape and Essence – Aldous Huxley