Orgeluse's 2023 EtL Bingo Challenge

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I will of course again go for a blackout.
I have some ideas about how to fill the squares to get me started and the rest will eventually fall into place over the course of 2023 :-)!

15/16

Sq 1 = a short story or a short story collection
- Colette: Barks and Purrs (France) (5 stars)

Sq 2 = a title from our bookshelf that you haven't yet read
- The Scent of a Lie by paulo da costa

Sq 3 = a fantasy novel or a sci-fy
- Nick Perry: London Bridge (3 stars)

Sq 4 = a title about / from a country we will be reading in 2024 or 2025
-Dorthe Nors: Karate Chop (3 stars)
- Dorthe Nors: Minna Needs Rehearsal Space (3.5 stars)

Sq 5 = a graphic novel
- Kajaani by Ville Ranta, a sort of biography of Elias Lönnrot who wrote down the Finnish Kalevala (4.5 stars)
- Freibad by Paulina Stulin about women of different backgrounds spending a summer in an open air swimming pool (5 stars)

Sq 6 = free choice
- The Story Smuggler (Volume 29) by Georgi Gospodinov (5 stars)

Sq 7 = a (Nobel) prize winner
- Elfriede Jelinek: Angabe der Person (4 stars)
- Olga Tokarczuk: Empusion (2 stars)

Sq 8 = a title about or set in one of the 5 smallest European countries

These would be:
Andorra, Lichtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican

Secrets of the Seven Smallest States of Europe: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City

Sq 9 = a children's book
- Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows (a re-re-read and still 5 stars:-))

Sq 10 = a crime story / novel
- Stille Nacht in der Provence by Cay Rademacher (cosy crime, 3 stars)

Sq 11 = a travel report about a European region, city or country (not necessarily by a European author)
- Lesereise Slowenien: Erkundung eines Miniaturkontinents (Picus Lesereisen) (3.5 stars)

Sq 12 = a poem or a poetry collection
- Grand Tour, a collection of modern European poetry

Sq 13 = a title from a country we will be reading in 2026 or 2027
- Schnee and I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Sq 14 = a play
- John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays (4 stars)
- The Dance of Death by August Strindberg (5 stars)

Sq 15 = a group read
- The Anarchist Banker by Fernando Pessoa (providing food for thought and thus 4.5 stars)

Sq 16 = an essay or an essay collection
Ulrich Steuten (Hrg): Vom Reisen. Brendow Verlag. 2022 (4 stars)

[Carolien]

Glad to see I'm not the only one having to think of Sq16. Then again I just realised I have a collection of Ibsen on my shelf for Sq14.


I'm going to look for ideas for Sq 4 from your shelves! Enjoy your reading!

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I was thinking of trying In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays as Jehona liked it a lot...
Ibsen is always worth reading and as far as Eastern European writers is concerned, I have just discovered that istrosbooks has interesting upcoming titles for 2023
http://istrosbooks.com/products/catal...
Enjoy!

[Valerie]

Orgeluse wrote: "I was thinking of trying In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays as Jehona liked it a lot...
Ibsen is always worth reading and as far as Eastern European writers is concerned, I have j..."

I had never heard of Istro Books publishers but they have an interesting selection of books. Thanks for sharing the info!

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

Valerie wrote: "Orgeluse wrote: "I was thinking of trying In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays as Jehona liked it a lot...
Ibsen is always worth reading and as far as Eastern European writers is co..."

They will publish a collection of short stories from Serbia / Montenegro by female writers in 2023 which I thought especially interesting!

[Carolien]

Istros books have fascinating stuff. Thank you!

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I already managed to finish two titles fitting two squares:
Sq 10 was an easy one (cosy crime set in a small village in Provence around Christmas).
I also read our classic group read The Anarchist Banker and really loved it though I do not think this is a novel...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Carolien]

Orgeluse wrote: "I already managed to finish two titles fitting two squares:
Sq 10 was an easy one (cosy crime set in a small village in Provence around Christmas).
I also read our classic group read [book:The Ana..."

Good stuff. I'm sure I have Cay Rademacher's books somewhere, I should try him.

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I can recommend his trilogy starting with The Murderer in Ruins!

[Carolien]

I have it, so will move it up the list!

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I have finished the graphic novel Kajaani by Finnish cartoonist Ville Ranta. The protagonist is Elias Lönnrot ( 1802-1884) who became known as he traveled through Karelia and collected the orally handed down stories that form the Finnish national epic poem Kalevala.
This graphic novel however focusses not so much on him working on the Kalevala but on him trapped in the village of Kajaani in the Finnish province, the reader gets to know why he was there in the first place and how he coped with this situation.
I thought the drawings quite fitting to the atmosphere and also liked how the plot is presented (sometimes with gaps the reader has to fill or that are only filled later on).

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I finished Barks and Purrs by Colette which was quite a fun read. The novella / story collection features a couple of dialogues between a cat and a dog of the same household in different situations (e.g. at their mistress's sickbed or while travelling by train with their owners) and for all dog and cat owners out there the depiction of the typical and contrasting characteristics of cats and dogs was spot on :)))

[Carolien]

Orgeluse wrote: "I finished Barks and Purrs by Colette which was quite a fun read. The novella / story collection features a couple of dialogues between a cat and a dog of the same hous..."

This looks like fun!

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

Carolien wrote: "Orgeluse wrote: "I finished Barks and Purrs by Colette which was quite a fun read. The novella / story collection features a couple of dialogues between a cat and a dog..."

It is really a delightful read - highly recommendable!

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I finished two plays recently.
The first one is The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster.
I really like Webster's use of language - the dialogues display a directness I had not expected (quite different from Shakespeare) and there is also much play with words.
The play as such presents a strong female character and I also thought the figure of Bosola was really interesting in that he struggles to find out what is going on and at the same time struggles to protect himself from the intrigues of the court as we are given an insight into the fairly dirty politics and the bigotry of that time.
In the second half of the play everything gravitates towards "Constantia", the allegory of faith represented by the duchess which is typical for the Baroque so it all becomes a little too much for my taste but this might only be me :). So I gave this play 4 stars.

The second play I read recently is The Dance of Death by Swedish playwright August Strindberg. I have the impression that Alice and the Captain were the inspiration for a lot of other playwrights including Edward Albee as this couple, already trapped in a dreadful marriage on an island off the coast of Sweden and stationed in a former jail (!), performs life in hell which gets even worse with the appearance of an old "family friend".
The ending was not to my taste and this is why I only gave it 4 stars.

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I finished two titles that fit sq 7 (title by a Nobel prize winner).

The first one is Elfriede Jelinek's latest piece of work called Angabe der Person. It has unfortunately not been translated yet but it deals with the author's personal experience with the Austrian authorities (here: the tax office). This experience led her to create a web of thoughts consisting of this mentioned experience, the history of the Jewish members of her family, the injustice of Jews not being compensated but Nazis getting compensations for their financial losses and on top of all this are her thoughts about her role as an Austrian writer who fell from grace with the publication of her play Burgtheater. To me she is THE voice of Austrian literature and I admire her witty use of language and this definitely was a 4-star read!

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

The second title fitting sq 7 is Empusion by Olga Tokarczuk. Helaas, I was bored to death by this novel which annoys me a lot as I normally like what Tokarczuk writes...
The novel is closely connected to Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain which to me personally is already hard to stomach as I do not like the writing of Thomas Mann - it oozes out suppressed (homo)sexuality and is displaying artificially decaying characters, and having read Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie, Joseph and His Brothers (yes, I'm not kidding...), The Magic Mountain (not kidding either) and Mario and the Magician I can honestly say that Thomas Mann wasted enough of my lifetime already...

What is even worse is that Olga Tokarczuk apparently decided to write a "Magic Mountain" but set in 1913 in what is the Walbrzych area in today's Poland. One striking feature of this novel is that it shows a primarily male world and that its male characters incessantly utter innumerable misogynist phrases that are real quotes by innumerable famous real life personalities such as Ovid, Plato, Thomas of Aquin etc. This is rather tiring...

Another striking feature is that the narrative voice is a bunch of female beings (the Empusen) who watch the bunch of male characters and overhear their stupid babbling. This could be an interesting construction even more so as these female ghosts seem to have the habit of killing off one man every November but having read this novel I can report that there is only few if any tension whatsoever...
To sum up this is by no means the best Tokarczuk and if readers would like to read something witty they should go for Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I finished two of Yrsa Sigurdardottir's crime novels (I Remember You: A Ghost Story and Schnee). The atmosphere in both books was creepy: a winter's cold and harsh climate in Iceland's remote areas is used to evoke a surrounding that is not really made for human beings to live there and the characters struggling with a hostile environment is one ingredient of creating suspense. The other is the use of revenants (dead people whose souls do not rest in peace and quiet but haunt people and turn evil), so these books are for everyone who likes these ingredients.
The two books displayed more or less the same plot construction: two different sets of characters at first appearing not to have anything in common but then it becomes more and more obvious that they are linked in the most peculiar ways. This is what made me want to finish the second book but the similar patterns also put me off reading anything else by her. Another aspect that put me off is that Schnee displays mentalism to make the story creepier.

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I finished an essay collection about travelling (Vom Reisen edited by Ulrich Steuten) which is not listed here on Goodreads. Though some ideas repeatedly appeared in the different essays it was all in all a quite interesting read.

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

For square 3 (fantasy&sci-fy) I listened to London Bridge by Nick Perry. It is a gloomy story in a dystopian London which is divided into a northern and a southern part along the Thames. A detective who investigates the disappearance of boys gets personally involved. (3 stars)

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

For sq 4 I read Karate Chop & Minna Needs Rehearsal Space by Dorthe Nors.
This edition comprises the two titles back to back and topsy-turvy which is fun!
Karate Chop is a collection of 15 fairly short and sometimes weird shorts (3 stars).
Minna Needs Rehearsal Space is the story of Minna and her struggle to come to terms with her partner, her mother, sister, father and diverse friends. The novella is written in a slightly peculiar but not unpleasant style (3.5 stars).

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

For sq. 6 I read The Story Smuggler (Volume 29) by Georgi Gospodinov from Bulgaria. The little volume was a 5 star read, the author being one of the few better known writers from this country, although I think there are definitely some more to be discovered!

[Anetq]

Orgeluse wrote: "For sq. 6 I read The Story Smuggler (Volume 29) by Georgi Gospodinov from Bulgaria. The little volume was a 5 star read, the author being one of the few literary sta..."

Ooh I have his Natural Novel lying around, really must get to it!

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

Anetq wrote: "Orgeluse wrote: "For sq. 6 I read The Story Smuggler (Volume 29) by Georgi Gospodinov from Bulgaria. The little volume was a 5 star read, the author being one of the..."

Haha, I have his Time Shelter on my shelf waiting for the right moment...

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

Over the year, I dipped in and out of Grand Tour, a collection of contemporary poetry from all over Europe. The poems are printed in their original language as well as translated and there is a good amount of background information (5 stars).

[Orgeluse, Contemporary reads]

I am left with two squares still open. I will probably not manage to tick off sq. 8 though it would be interesting to find sth for it...

For sq. 11 I have Lesereise Slowenien: Erkundung eines Miniaturkontinents (Picus Lesereisen) from my library, so this should not pose a problem :-)