Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among my Interests








Monday, May 1, 2017

The April Reading Life Review






I will remember April 2017 as the month I first encountered Leonora Carrington

April Blog Stats

There was a surprising change in the top blog visiting home countries, for the first time since I began to track this over seven years ago, India was in second place.

USA
India
The Philippines
UK
Germany

I have had 4,573,305 page views since inception

There was also a change in the most viewed post category

The most  viewed post was

"The Assignment" by Sadaat Manto Hasan, a classic Partition short story, in second place was Pigeon Pie by Nancy Mitford.  Rounding out the top five were three stories by writers from the Philippines.

The latest new country was Mali.  I also received my first visit, since I began tracking this in February of 2016, from American Samoa.

There are now 3035 posts.

Works Read on Which I did not Post

A Serious History of Jewish Comedy by Jeremy Dauber.  A very good book with some Hilarious jokes:

"An iconic joke of the period depicts two Jews before a Russian firing squad, both offered blindfolds. One accepts, the other scornfully refuses. His friend urges him: “Shh . . . don’t make trouble.”

Hadrian the Seventh by Baron Corvo.  A very strange book!

"A Birthday" by Katherine Mansfield

"The Semplica-Girl Diary" by George Saunders

"Kohl Do" by Sadaat Manto Hasan.  Another Partition short story, some say his most famous work

Literary Biographies

Last month I read two works named by Richard Holmes as among the very best of the form

Lytton Strachey The New Biography by Michael Holyrod

The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography by A. J. A. Symons

Novels

Way Station by Clifford Simak. - A Hugo Award Winner

The House of Dreams by Colm Toibin

Dawn by Octavia Butler

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Bloodlines by Octavia Butler - A Hugo and Nebula Prize Winning Novella.  A powerful work

Swing Time by Zadie Smith.  Loved it and will try to read all her other novels soon.  I have read several of her short stories

The Dream by Ivan Turgenev, a novella, a rare venture into the supernatural

Additionally I read and posted on four Yiddish Short Stories and three by authors from the Indian Subcontinent

Review Policies

I have no defined policy.  I look at every book I am sent.  I am very interested in posting on new works of literary biography.

Leonora Carrington

I read three of her Surrealist short stories.  I will be reading as much of her work as well as secondary works on her as I can.  I admit I was spooked out a bit when I saw her with a cat that looked just like our Mr. C, passed away in 2012 after 19 years.

I offer my great thanks to all who leave comments.  They are very appreciated and help keep me going.

Mel u








4 comments:

Mudpuddle said...

impressive figures; the Baron Corvo rings a bell but i can't quite bring it up so i don't know if i read it or not... i know i tried the Search for Corvo a couple of times because my mom recommended it but i just couldn't get into it...

Buried In Print said...

I find your stats interesting: don't you want to *know* how some things shift like that? What drew so many more people to a certain post or from a certain region? It's fun to think of possibilities.

That Zadie Smith novel was so impressive; I really appreciated the way that you could simply read along as a good story, or you could dig a little beneath the surface to consider themes of belonging and exclusion, alliance and betrayal, etc. Having read most of her novels, I'm curious about her essays now.

Mel u said...

Mudpuddle. The Corvo biography is a bit strange! Thanks as always for your comments

Mel u said...

Buried in Print. Yes I often wonder what draws readers to old posts. Sometimes it is from university assignments, sometimes from a media mention of an author. I am one of the very few book bloggers who post on older Indian and Filipino short stories and this draws a lot of readers. One day I had 35,000 hits on a short story by Hasan Manto, famous Pakistani writer. A Google search revealed All India TV network had just launched a tv series based on one of his stories about the Partition.

I really liked Swing Time. It is for sure readable on several levels. I have read a few of her short stories and hope to read all of her novels, maybe this year.