The Reading Life Review - January, 2018

January Authors

I offer my great thanks to Max u for the provision of Amazon Gift Cards

From the Left, Column One

1. Imre Kertesz - Hungry- Nobel Prize Winner
2. Mulk Raj Amand - India - author Untouchable
3. Jhumpa Lahiri - USA - Pulitzer Prize Winner

Column Two

1. Goli Taraghi - Iran - author The Pomegranate Lady and other Stories
2. Julian Barnes - UK - Booker Prize Winner
3. Paul Bowles- USA

Column Three

1. Riham Adlay - Egypt - Award Winning Short Story Writer
2. Yente Serdatzky - Lithuania- Yiddish Short Stories 
3. Sholom Aleichem- Ukraine 

Column Four

1. R. K. Narayan- India
2. Tadeusz Borowski - Polish - Holocaust Short Stories 
3. Zadie Smith - UK
4. Zola Neale Hurston -  USA

Column Five

1. Francine Prose - USA
2. George Eliot - Uk
3. Alyssa Wong -  USA - Multi-Award Winning Fantasy Writer
4. Karen Russell -USA

Men 7, Women 10

Dead 9, Living 8

Included are a Nobel, Pulitzer and Booker Prize Winners

There are six Americans, two from India, three from the UK, two from 

Poland, and one each from Iran, Egypt, Lithuania, and the Ukraine

Four writers were featured for the first time, thirteen are old friends, the most frequently featured of this month’s writers is R. K. Narayan with 24 Posts.  For sure he should have won the Nobel Prize 

The Autodidactic Pick of the Month 

This month I’m urging all my fellow literary autodidacts to consider reading Untouchable by Mulk Raj Amand, 1935, a look at one day in the life of a young Dalit man in his late teens.  In just a few hours you can get a very good sense of what life was like at the bottom of the Caste System, not just for the young man but his abusive at times father, his mother who works as a maid for a Brahmin and probably services him sexually and his beautiful younger sister.  His dream in life is to get a position cleaning up after a British regiment.

I hope to add this as an ongoing feature in which I recommend at least one work to serious literary autodidacts in my month end reviews.  

Blog stats 

Since inception, July 7, 2009, there has been 5,055,375 pages views 

The five most viewed posts are all on pre WW Two Short Stories by authors from the Philippines. 

The top ten countries are The Philippines, USA, India, UK, France, Spain, Canada, Indonesia, Russia, and Germany.  

There are currently 3204 posts The Reading Life.

Future Plans and Hopes

Basically much like before.   I will Year long be reading Yiddish Literature, mostly short stories. In March I will return to the Irish. I will also be reading more Indian Short Stories.  I will continue, I hope, to read nonfiction, mostly history and literary biographies.  

Review Policy

I have no real fixed policy.  I look at all the books I receive, from services, agents and writers.  I will review serious academic history and biographies as well as literature.  

To my fellow Book Bloggers

You are the among the greatest readers in the world.  Keep blogging, in hard times slow down but don’t quit.  I imagine how great it will be if young book bloggers starting now can one day look back on fifty years of posts. 

To those who leave comments I give my humble thanks, sometimes I do feel I am posting into a vast void and you help keep me going.

Mel u