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








Saturday, September 1, 2018

The Reading Life Review - August 2019


August Authors 






Nine  August Authors are living, nine have taken the Celestial Omnibus

Three are men, fifteen women

Nine were featured for the first time in August, nine are old friends



This month eight of the featured authors were immigrants.  Seven writers from Eastern Europe of Ashkenazi heritage left to escape the Holocaust, six to the New York City area and one to Toronto. 

Birth Countries

Poland - 4

Uk - 4

Australia - 2

Denmark - 1

Bolivia - 1

France - 1

Ukraine - 1

Belarus - 1

Ireland - 1

Ukraine- 1

Moldova - 1

Column One

  1. Eric Karpeles.  Uk. Painter, biographer

  1. Suzanne Valadon, UK. Author Renoir’s Dancer

  1. Kate Grenville.  Australia. Author Secret River, Sarah Thornhill

  1. Shauna Gillian.  Ireland.  Author of Happiness Comes from Nowhere, often featured on The Reading Life.

Column Two

  1. Celia Dropkin.  Belarus. Yiddish writer.  Moved to New York City. Highly regarded poet and short story author

  1. Janet H Swinney.  UK.  Featured numerous times on The Reading Life.  Amazing short stories

  1. Rikudah Potash.  Yiddish Writer.  Poland.  Immigrated to Israel.  Short stories mostly set in Israel.

  1. Shirley Hazzard.  Australia.  Author Transit of Venus, The Great Fire and other multi-genre works. Now on my read all I can list.

Column Three

  1. Blume Lempel. Yiddish Writer.  Born in Ukraine, left there for Paris where she lived for ten years, then moved in New York City just in time to escape the Holocaust.  I love her short stories

  1. Kadia Molodowsky.  Poland.  Moved to NYC.  Poet, Short story writer.  Yiddish

  1. Jan Schwarz. Denmark.  Historian of Yiddish culture 

  1. Heather Fowler. U.S.A.  Author Beautiful Ape Girl Baby, four Short Story Collections.  I am following her work closely.

  1. Rachel Korn.  Yiddish Writer. Poland, then to Sweden, then NYC



Column Four


  1. Rebecca Lloyd.  UK.  Featured in a Q and A on The Reading Life, frequently featured

  1. Honore de Balzac.  France.

  1. Yente Mash.  Moldova.  Yiddish writer.  Looks very much like my paternal grandmother. 

  1. Liliana Colanzi.  Bolivia.  Dark Short Stories.  Two collections in Spanish 

  1. Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn.  Yiddish author.  Poland.  Immigrated to Toronto

August Blog Stats


5,359,641 page views since inception

3393 posts on line

Of the nine most viewed posts, six are pre-WWII Short Stories by authors from The Phillipines, three are by Indian authors.

Top Visitor Home Countries for August were The Phillipines, U.S.A, India, Indonesia, France, UK, Cambodia and Brazil.  It is gratifying to see lots of visitors from Indonesia, Cambodia, and Brazil.  All making their first appearances in this list.

Books I read in August but did not post upon.

  1. Yiddish Civilazation The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation  Paul Kriwaczek.  Decent introduction.  
  2. The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante.  I Will probably post once i complete the full series of four.

Future Plans for September - basically more of The same

I offer my great thanks to Max u for his kind Amazon Gift Cards.

To those who leave comments, you help keep me going.









4 comments:

Suko said...

Mel,
I am once again "wowed"! August was a great month for The Reading Life. So many women authors, too!

Buried In Print said...

I wonder what explains the sudden surge in internet traffic from new countries in your metrics: that's so interesting. I wonder if they are all adding to their lists of Jewish writers to explore!

Mel u said...

Suko. Thanks very much.

Mel u said...

Buried in Print. Big influxes of readers frim new countries are normally from School assignments or media mention of a writer. Once I had 41,000 hits in a day from India, all on one Short story about The 1948:partition of India. A nationwide network highly publized TV Show based on The story started that day