April has been another good reading month, with a more varied literary diet after March's IFFP feast! There were a couple more English-language works in there, but the main focus (as always) was on the best in translated fiction :)Oh, yes - the usual...
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Total Books Read: 11
Year-to-Date: 37
New: 8
Rereads: 3
From the Shelves: 3
Review Copies: 6
From the Shelves: 3
Review Copies: 6
From the Library: 2
On the Kindle: 0
Novels: 7
Novellas: 1
Novels: 7
Novellas: 1
Short Stories: 3
Non-English Language: 8 (3 Japanese, 2 Portuguese, German, Hungarian, Dutch, Spanish)
In Original Language: 1 (German)
Aussie Author Challenge: 2 (2/3)
IFFP 2013 Longlist: 1 (16/16) - Finished!
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Books reviewed in April were:
1) The Iraqi Christ by Hassan BlasimBooks reviewed in April were:
2) Trieste by Daša Drndić
3) Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories by Rafa Lombardino (ed.)
4) Black Baza(a)r by Alain Mabanckou
5) Bundu by Chris Barnard
6) In Praise of Hatred by Khaled Khalifa
7) The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare
8) The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto by Kenji Nakagami
9) Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman
10) The Last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani
11) Meer der Tusche (Sea of Ink) by Richard Weihe
12) The Timeless Land by Eleanor Dark
Tony's Turkey for April is: Nothing
Another month without any obvious turkeys - I really am going to have to get more critical about my reads...
Tony's Recommendation for April is:
Elliot Perlman's Seven Types of Ambiguity
There were a couple of books from the IFFP longlist which stood out, namely The Fall of the Stone City, and The Last of the Vostyachs, and I greatly enjoyed Eleanor Dark's long historical novel on the first years of modern Australia. However, Perlman's classic, even at the third time of reading, remains a simply wonderful novel, one I'd recommend to anyone :)
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That's all for April - what does May have in store? The answer is: a few review books, some neglected classics and the odd surprise. Same as most months, really :)
