#long winter's read

[oldshrewsburyian]

Read your recommendation post and I would love some! Something wintery, dark and the feel of a lonely day in the mountains? Eh... well, anything longish is welcome. Hope you enjoy those days!

Andrés Neuman, Traveler of the Century, has a snowbound village and a snowbound traveler, discussions about language and religion and feminism and love.

Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago, has vast swathes of snow. So much snow. Poetry about snow and its light, and finding one’s way in landscapes familiar and unfamiliar, snow in the city and a candle behind a frosted window, snow in the countryside and a pile of potatoes to last you through winter.

Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body, is about the joys and perils and griefs of trying to find oneself in other people, and includes great imagery about snow, and ends in a snow-surrounded cottage.

A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner, deserves honorable mention here. “The more it snows (tiddly pom)” etc.

Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian, is a big, sprawling page-turner with lots of dramatic landscapes, and I think at least some of them are snowy.

Agatha Christie, The Murder on the Orient Express, has a perfect crime spoiled by a snowdrift.

[oldshrewsburyian]

Long Winter’s Read

These shortest days are my favorite time for settling down with long novels, so if you want to give or receive book recommendations, send me an ask (and feel free to reblog!)

[oldshrewsburyian]

Long winter read recommendation: this isn't out in the US till April, but it is in the UK and I think you can acquire it through Book Depository (although it is a subsidiary of Amazon and that kills me). Wait, it was originally written in German and you read German! But in any case, it's a book I think you'd enjoy: The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischwili (tr. Ruth Martin and Charlotte Collins).

That was a wild ride! And I’m really fascinated by the Spiegel review. Any book that’s described as “an epic of Tolstoy-esque dimensions,” “a statement in an era when films and opulent television have taken over, for many, the narrative function of art,” and “an aesthetic of unhappiness” is definitely my sort of thing. 

I’m also fascinated by the fact that the author is writing in her second language, and that she describes German as tasting “like chestnuts and dizzying altitude.” I’ll try to get my hands on a copy; thanks! 

[oldshrewsburyian]

I can't remember if I've ever recommended this one to you but if I haven't, I recommend The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr.!

Thank you! I confess that I’ve read a lot less medieval-ish fantasy since getting into medieval literature for pleasure and profit profession, but this looks really interesting.

[oldshrewsburyian]

Long Reads Recommendations: A Place of Greater Safety (Hilary Mantel), The Parisian (Isabella Hammad), and The Children’s Book (A.S. Byatt). I’m also always looking for suggestions, if you have any favorites!

Thanks! I keep meaning to get around to A Place of Greater Safety, because I love Mantel’s prose. The Children’s Book is great; I’ll have to seek out The Parisian, which looks extremely relevant to my interests.

For more post-WWI anti-colonialism I’d recommend Kamila Shamsie, A God in Every Stone.

For more (meta-)historical epic, I’d recommend Andrés Neuman, Traveler of the Century

[oldshrewsburyian]

We the Drowned by Carsten Jensen if you want anything seafaring!

This looks absolutely fascinating! Positive blurb here, even more fascinating negative review here. I’ve had very good experiences with Scandinavian tales of seafaring in the past.

[oldshrewsburyian]

@skjam replied to this post:

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame"

I’m not entirely sure whether you’re recommending it or asking my opinion on it. I’ve read it several times, and it is a monumental (pun absolutely necessary) piece of medievalism, dense and lyrical and humane and haunting. 

[oldshrewsburyian]

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Barker is a wonderful cold-weather tome! Also, The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard!

The first sounds interesting! Barker does such interesting work on the English Romantics. I’m suspicious of her positioning herself as an expert on the Middle Ages as well, but of course that doesn’t invalidate her work on the Brontës.

I would read the second book for the author’s name alone.