For some reason in leading up to the start of teaching classes in Sept. I did a lot of skim-reading in the last two months rather than complete book. But worthwhile a usual to keep track.

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day. I’ve read this several times and seen the movie several times, but for sure more than 15 years ago… so was fun to just open up random pages, knowing the whole context and story, and enjoy Ishiguro’s writing. It is, though, a painful read, in the sense of an unreliable not-very-likeable narrator about a bad subject-for-our-times (collaboration with Nazis).

Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World. I had not read this and am slowly working my way through. So far very “complement” to Remains of the Day… unreliable, uncomfortable, icky subject (aligning with fascism).

R,F, Kuang, Babel. Got halfway through and then just jumped to the end. Heavy-handed, I found. Lots of exposition. The plot was too thin for me (gosh, I’ve read a lot of these wizard academy coming-of-age plots…). But I can see people who have not read a lot in the genre enjoying, or if you like reading the familiar genre and don’t want the genre to do much more than deliver, it’s probably fine.

Jose Saramogo, Levantado des suelo. Really the first 50 pages got depressing for me so I stopped but I will come back to this. Something maybe I will read Rayuela-style and then if enough chunks are good start over and read linearly.

Mark Gregory Pegg, Beatrice’s Last Smile. I read this a couple years ago. You can open to any of the short chapters and read super interesting anecdotes from primary sources about life in the 300-1300 AD period in Europe.

Richard Hingley, Hadrian’s Wall: A life. Like Pegg’s book, you can open anywhere to read vignettes of the ~2000-year history of the wall. Definitely makes me want to walk the length of the wall.

Richard Jenkins, A Fine Brush on Ivory. Appreciation and light literary criticism of Jane Austen. The enthusiasm is infectious. You start thinking, couldn’t I become an Austen-ite too? How delightful, the arcana, and the debates over interpreting Willoughby, etc.

Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann. Again, can just open randomly and be “listening” to Vinteuil ….

Hermann Melville, White-Jacket. I think I was reading this in pandemic and picked up again. So many interesting vignettes. The homeward-bounder beards struck me again some reason.