Wuthering
Expectations

I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes too distant. I should also mention my health.   A little over a year ag...

I have continued on with The Story of the Stone , the 2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or mostly by, Cao Xueqin.  Here I will write...

Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal shifts, mean...

Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter trying to understand one of his paintings...

The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was born with the jade stone in his mouth, is an Imperial Concubine, a high prest...

I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a party.  I will rejoin the party planning m...

Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five volumes of the...

Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian writers from three different strands of Russian literature: Andrei Platonov’s Che...

My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said it out loud so maybe I will really do it....

My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature.  Eh, I did all right, but I will have to save Ibn Battuta’s Travels a...

Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night .  That...

More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures. Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, enjoying Jeremy Denk’s performance of ...

Right, July, July, so long ago.  I was on the road a little bit, making literary pilgrimages.  Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for example, to He...

Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper Powys – among the most eccentric nove...

I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua classroom in Porto , or one much like it: ...