Month in Review: May 2024

Literature

This month, I reviewed April’s Reading the Theatre event and looked forward to my 10 Books of Summer plans. I kept up with my one book a month for the Ozathon (Emerald City) and read another book for the Nonfiction Reader Challenge, though I have yet to post about that one.

Otherwise, my reading was all over the place: comfort rereads, kooky mysteries, dark-tinged stories from a favorite fantasist, a visceral memoir of mental illness and relationship woes, one of the most baffling novellas in English literature, and more. Here’s the list:

Magic Flutes by Eva Ibbotson – Reread Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone and Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum – Reread, Ozathon Buried Deep by Naomi Novik Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer by Michael Ende The Turn of the Screw by Henry James American Nations by Colin Woodard – Nonfiction Reader, Review to come The Guest Cat by Takashi HaraideLanguage

The Turn of the Screw is a book written in English, but upon first encountering it in college I found even more obscure than reading in another language. It was picked by an English student to read together, but I have not heard from her since, and hope it hasn’t put her off English literature altogether!

Upon rereading it, I still can’t parse all the sentences, but I gained more insight into this ghostly tale — which, like all the best ghost stories, appears to be about a haunted person, not just a spooky place. James has created a compelling but ultimately impossible to solve puzzle about how we store and process memory, capturing us within the mind of a narrator we can neither trust nor get away from. I’m glad I finally read it again and that it offered up a bit more of its secret.

Meanwhile, I keep plugging along with German and French — more the former, but that is soon to change with what has become an annual French Summer Book Club hosted by Emma of Words and Peace. This year we’re reading Madame Bovary, a request of mine as it’s another book I read in college and could get very little out of. The link to join our Discord discussion group is here — feel free to read along in translation if you wish. The discussion will be in French, but the level there will be much simpler than the book!

Madame Bovary, with Isabelle Huppert — from the 1991 film by Claude ChabrolLife

My digestion has been up and down lately. After a scary bad migraine, I had a gastrocopy to check for a bleeding ulcer or other serious issue. I found that I don’t have that, but I do have a hiatal hernia (a very common condition where part of the stomach pokes up through the diaphragm, making it easier for acid to get into the esophagus.) Could that have been causing some of my problems? With this information, will I be able to take steps that improve my digestion and overall health?

Hoping that to be the case, I am hoping to get somewhere further afield during our July holiday — I don’t want to jinx the plans yet by sharing them, but will certainly do so if they work out. In the meantime, it’s mostly been a cold and rainy spring, though with some opportunities to enjoy the blooming season.

My favorite sheep have appeared by the roadside, where I walk daily as part of my work shift when weather permits … I think they are Valais Blacknose, also known as the world’s cutest sheep. When their fleece grows you can see why: it’s long and curly and makes them look adorable. Here they are taking a nap, and I can only aspire to be so relaxed.

Linked at The Sunday Post at Caffeinated Book Reviewer, the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, and the Monthly Wrap-up Round-up at Feed Your Fiction Addiction