You may (or may not) have noticed a silence around my computer activities over the last few weeks, and (sadly) that's not coincidental. Unfortunately, I am once again being forced to abandon my blog, hopefully temporarily , owing to my usual aches and pains. For the time being, at least, this monthly wrap-up will probably be all he wrote, so I'll do my best to be informative - and brief...Total Books Read: 11
Year-to-date: 22
New: 9
Rereads: 2
From the Shelves: 3
From the Library: 3
On the Kindle: 5
Novels: 7
Novellas: 3
Plays & Short Stories: 1
Non-English Language: 4 (1 Japanese, 1 German, 1 Russian, 1 Chinese)
In Original Language: 1 (German)
Books read in February were:
1) Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
2) Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
3) Plays and Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol
4) Salem Chapel by Margaret Oliphant
5) Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
6) Rabbit, Run by John Updike
7) Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
8) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
9) An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
10) Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
11) Sanctuary by Edith Wharton
Books read in February were:
1) Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
2) Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
3) Plays and Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol
4) Salem Chapel by Margaret Oliphant
5) Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
6) Rabbit, Run by John Updike
7) Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
8) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
9) An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
10) Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
11) Sanctuary by Edith Wharton
Murakami Challenge: 0 (1/3)
Aussie Author Challenge: 1 (3/12)
Victorian Literature Challenge: 4 (6/15)
Tony's Recommendation for February is: Ma Jian's Beijing Coma
I had Beijing Coma down as my February pick right from the start, but I did waver a little towards the end of the month. Thousand Cranes was beautiful (but very short), and Siddhartha was intriguing (but also short). However, it was Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World, with its wonderfully unreliable narrator and a gradual, insidious slide into uncertainty and confusion which almost changed my mind. In the end though, I decided that Ma Jian's depiction of the events which took place around Tiananmen Square in 1989 was the winner by a nose!
That was February; I wonder what March will bring...
