Books!

What I’ve been reading this week

Hello dear readers,

I’ve put together a short reading list based on the books I enjoyed reading this past week.

My hope is that you’ll find a book you want to read as well. I’ve added little introductions for each of them and why I think they’re interesting.

Enjoy! And happy reading,

Julian

1: Monsieur Teste, by Paul Valéry

“This imaginary character (…) I had made for myself an inner island and spent my time exploring and fortifying it.”

I love this book so much. These are very short “stories” about a fictional character called “Monsieur Teste”. Part literary alter-ego, part apologia pro vita sua, but also a humorous exploration of the notion of an “ideal” man of perfect reason and self-control, Válery creates a hypothetical ideal version of himself that he continued to return to his entire life. A monster, a saint, an enigma -Monsieur Teste is all these things and more.

2: The Only Story, by Julian Barnes

“It was a matter of some pride to me that I seemed to have landed on exactly the relationship of which my parents would most disapprove.”

I really enjoy Julian Barnes’ non-fiction writing, but he’s also written more than 20 novels. This attracted my attention because it’s a “tennis-novel” (and I like tennis), but it’s really a modern “Bildungsroman”, a coming of age story, in which a young man falls in love with a much older woman and receives what you might call a not-so-sentimental education.

3: Memories of Distant Mountains, by Orhan Pamuk

“It’s a mistake to expect every day to have meaning, we experience moments, time passes, and, little by little, the dream we call life begins to fade.”

Orhan Pamuk may be the world’s most famous Turkish author, but originally he wanted to be a painter. These notebooks are extraordinary in that they show him finding a way to be both. Intensely personal, this collection reveals Pamuk’s private thoughts on fame, the literary life, Turkish politics, and more.

4: The beggar: and other short stories, by Gaito Gazdanov

“Maître Rueil, a Frenchman, blond with black eyes and a sharp, square face, an agent of the Sûreté Genérale, had been dispatched from Paris to Moscow on an important political assignment.”

Imagine if Wes Anderson directed a James Bond movie, that’s what this reads like.

5: One Hundred Shadows, by Hwang Yungeon

What if one day your shadow appeared and started leading you away into darkness? What if you lived in a Seoul housing development marked for demolition. What if your life-world was suddenly relegated to the word “slum?” In this tender but critical novella, the South Korean author Hwang Jungeun explores the vicissitudes of late-capitalism with a surreal allegory of alienation and depression, resistance and redemption. The book was inspired by the author’s own experiences and activism following the the 2009 Yongsan Disaster in which the police stood by as thugs violently evicted protestors from their homes, killing several of them in a fire.

That’s all for this week. I hope you’ll be interested in reading some of these. The Paul Valéry one is probably my favorite. Have a wonderful week!

Julian

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