The Reading Life Review - July 2018

July Authors 

For July five authors are living, ten have taken The Celestial Omnibus.

Nine are men, six women.

Eleven are authors new to The Reading Life, four are old friends

World wide venal rabble rousing politicians scream against immigrants.  I am adding a new  feature to The Reading Life Review, tracking the immigrant

 authors I feature.

This month there are six such authors, each enriched their new homes.  Four emigrated to survive, two for their own reasons.  

By Birth Country

1. France 3
2. Poland 3
3. USA 2
4. UK 2
5. Japan 1
6. Australia 1
7. Russia 1
8. Ukraine 1
9. Czech Republic 

Left Column 

1. Akihuki Nasaka - Japan - very prolific author
2. Martine Reid - France - her biography of George Sand was featured 
3. Lisa Moses Leff - USA - wrote The Archive Thief, nonfiction 
4. Shloyne Gilbert - Poland- Yiddish language author
5. Jozef Czafski - Poland, artist and Cultural historian

Middle Column

1. Gaito Gadanov - born Russia, moved to Paris, wonderful Short stories
2. Shirley Hazzard - born Australia, lived in Hong Kong, U.S.A, Italy,author Transit of Venus and The Great Fire
3. David Downie - born U.S.A, moved to France, author of several best selling nonfiction works on Paris
4. Colette- France
5. Bohumil Hrabal - Czech Republic - considered on of counties finest 20th Century Writers

Right Column

1. Andre Schwartz-Bart - France - parents immigrated from Poland, author of The Last Just Man, a Master work
2. Eric Karpeles - UK - Artist, Cultural historian 
3. Blume Lempel - born in Ukraine, lived in Paris for ten years then moved to New York State where she lived for fifty years while writing in Yiddish, very frequently featured on The Reading Life
4. Karen Bartlett - UK - Holocaust Historian
5. Pinchas Golder - born Poland, moves to Australia as a teenager with his Family,  Australia’s Leading Yiddish language writer

Blog Stats for July 

Since inception there have been 5,320,749 Pages views

3375 posts are online

The top nine most viewed posts are all on Short Stories set before WW II by writers from The Phillippines.  These stories are a great Cultural treasure, helping to keep alive memories fast being lost.

Top Home Countries of visitors

1. The Phillippines 
2. The U.S.A
3. India
4. France
5. UK
6. Lebanon
7. Vietnam
8. Germany
9. Indonesia 

Works I Read but Did not Post Upon

1. Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick, 2004,kind of a rewrite of The Ambassadors by Henry James with a female lead character
2. In Another Country by James Baldwin,  1960, overall this seemed dated to me, things like mixed race same sex romances might have been shocking in 1960 but are commonly seen on TV now,  plus The 1960 NYC hipster slang seemed kind of silly.  Parts were beautiful 
3. “Salmon Rushdie at The Louvre”, Cynthia Ozick, interesting essay
4. “The Ukrainian Girl” by Catherine McNamara, 2017, very good story
5. “In The Land of The Armadillos by Helen Maryles Shankman, amazing Holocaust short story.
6. To Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabil, I loved this book.

Paris in July 2018,an international book Blog event I greatly enjoyed joining in motivated me to read several Paris themed works.  Soon I Will do a seperate post in summery of my experiences.

Coming Plans 

In August I Will be participating in Women in Translation Month, soon I Will do an intro posts on that.

In September and October I am considering focusing on South Asian Writers

In November I hope to once again participate in German Literature Month 

I am  looking for new to me writers and Welcome all suggestions 

Final Thoughts 

My thanks to Max u for his very kind Amazon Gift Cards

To my fellow book bloggers, the world’s greatest readers, keep blogging, taken together we Help fight the growing Miasma of ignorance and venality we all sense.

Mel u