The Reading Life Review- May 2020

May Authors 

Row 1

1. Anton Chekhov - Russia
2. Ivy Ngeow - Malaysia to London - Author Overboard and numerous other works, highly talented in both music and literature, we expect to feature her many more times
3. Ruby Cowling - UK - author This Paradise, we plan to feature another one of her stories in June
4. Farah Ahmed - Kenya to UK - Farah Ahamed is a short fiction writer. Her stories have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Thresholds, Kwani?, The Missing Slate and Out of Print among others. She was highly commended in the 2016 London Short Story Prize, joint winner of the inaugural Gerald Kraak Award and has been nominated for The Caine and The Pushcart prizes. She has been featured eight times on The Reading Life,all of her additional works will be featured

Row 2

1. Mavis Gallant - Canada to France
2. Joseph Opatosha. - Poland to USA
3. Elaine Chiew -Malaysia to Singapore - author of a a highly regarded debut collection, The Heartsick Diaspora.  Her work has been featured 15 times on The Reading Life. We Will follow her closely.

Row 3

1. Nancy Eisenberg - U.S.A - author of Aaron Burr: A Biography
2. Alison MacLeod - Canada to UK. Highly regarded Multi-genre writer.  Her Short stories have been featured six times, more to come.
3. Arn Meyer -Poland to U.S.A - an important Yiddish writer

Rokhl Bernshteye was also featured.  We could find no images of her work.  She was born in Minsk. Yehudis was her surname
Pseudonym1869–1942), Yiddish poet and writer. Virtually forgotten today, Yehudis is notable for her bold poems, several dramatic pieces, short stories, fragments of a novel, translations from Russian, and a memoir of her youth. Born into a well-to-do merchant family in Minsk, Bernshteyn was educated by private tutors and began working in her parents’ shop at age 12. Her subsequent exposure to the socialist movement, and through it to Russian culture, led her to read widely on her own.

Home Countries of May Authors

1. Malaysia - 2
2. Canada - 2
3. Russia - 2
4. UK - 1
5. U.S.A - 1
6. Kenya - 1
7. Poland - 1

Works by 8 women were featured and 3 men.  Five authors are deceased. Three writers had their initial feature in May

The Reading Life is a Multi-Cultural Book Blog dedicated to The Goals of Literary Globalism.


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 our Interests


Blog Stats

The Reading Life has as of today received 6.040,026 page views

There are currently 3,747 posts online

The five post viewed posts in May were

1. Piegeon Pie by Nancy Mitford
2. Flush: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
3. “The New Doll” - A Short Story by Rabindranath Tagore
4. “Sugra” - A Short Story by Farah Ahamed
5. “Kingdom Come” - A Short Story by Mavis Gallant

The top home countries for May were U.S.A, Philippines, Hong Kong, Russia, Germany, India, UK and Bangladesh.

This is the first appearance of Bangladesh in the list.

Blog traffic rates are down about fifty percent from pre-pandemic days.  We predict once universities World wide open rates will exceed the past.

Future Plans

Much of our Reading Plans hopes are pictured in our side bar.
We Will probably continue focusing on Short Stories.

In July We Will once again Participate in Paris in July.

There are a number of Yiddish Short Stories Mel wishes to feature soon.

To our fellow book bloggers, among the world’s greatest readers, don’t give up.

Mel offers his thanks to Max u for The Amazon gift cards

To those who take the trouble to leave comments, you help keep us going.

I hope everyone is staying safe, at home with a good book


Ambrosia Bousweau - European Director




















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