Matt Snee's Blog, page 79
May 19, 2020
Currently reading.
Currently reading – East Into Upper East, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Jhabvala was a British novelist, short story writer, and Oscar-winning screenwriter. She died in 2013.
May 17, 2020
Currently reading.
Currently reading – City by Clifford D. Simak. A classic SF novel by Simak (1904-1988). I read this back in 2000 when I lived in a San Francisco with Gregg Chirlin. Gregg had found an old, ragged copy of this and fixed it with duct tape. A friend saw the duct taped cover and said “That’s the coolest book I’ve ever seen!”
May 16, 2020
Currently reading.
Currently reading – Crossing the Mangrove by Marys Condé. Condé is a French writer born in Guadeloupe in 1937. This novel is a Rashomon-like story of a murder in a small village.
May 14, 2020
Currently reading.
Currently reading – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce. Of all the experimental, Modernist writers of the early 20th-Century century, Joyce is probably the most beloved. He was born in 1882 and died in 1941.
Currently reading.
Currently reading – Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, by Anne Carson. Born in 1950, Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, and translator of the Classics. This slim book (a long poem) contrasts Norma Jeane Baker (Marilyn Monroe) with Helen of Troy.
May 13, 2020
Currently reading.
Currently reading – Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih. Born in 1929, Salih was one of a Sudan’s greatest authors. This book is about the impact of British colonialism on rural African communities. Salih died in 2009.
May 11, 2020
Currently reading.
Currently reading – The Water Cure, by Sophie Mackintosh. Mackintosh is a British writer born in 1988. This is a sort of post-apocalyptic novel about three sisters isolated on a remote island… until some men show up.
Currently reading.
Currently reading – The Snow Hunters. Born in 1980, Yoon is an American writer and half of a literary power couple – he’s married to novelist and short story writer Laura van den Berg. This novel is about a defector from the Korean War who makes a new life on the coast of Brazil.
May 9, 2020
Currently reading.
Currently reading – Transit by Rachel Cusk. Born in 1967, Cusk is a Canadian writer who lives in England. This is the second book in her “Outline” trilogy.
May 7, 2020
Currently reading.
Currently reading – The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Born in 1975, Coates is an American author and journalist. This novel is a sort of magical realist story that takes place in the Deep South before the Civil War.
