Last year went by in such a rush that I was surprised to
look back on my list of 2013 blog posts and find I’d read so many fun books that it
was difficult to pick favorites. Of course that’s partly because I abandon
a lot of books I don’t like, skewing my public results, but it’s largely because publishers and publicists have
been sending me so many good books. That’s especially nice because many of them
are books I’d never hear about otherwise. The only downside is that I rarely
seem to get to all the books I buy at the bookstore and the annual library book
sale! Anyway, without further fuss, here are some favorites from 2013…
Favorite Lost
Classics. I only read a couple in 2013 but I loved them both: Pitigrilli’s 1921
Cocaine, translated by Eric Mosbacher
(previous
post), and Antal Szerb’s 1937 Journey
by Moonlight, translated by Len Rix (previous
post). I noted some surface similarities in my post about Cocaine: “decadence between the World
Wars… humor, soul searching, friends who become monks, and sad endings.” I’d
recommend both.
Favorite Book Written
in English. Probably J.L. Carr’s A
Month in the Country (previous
post), another between-the-wars book. This one got short shrift here because
of my summer travel; I particularly enjoyed the combination of melancholy and
humor. (That seems to be a constant…)
Favorite Book
Translated by Someone I Know. Inga Ābele’s High Tide, which I read in Kaija Straumanis’s translation (previous
post), was a stealth favorite in 2013: with its backwards chronology and
blend of characters, the book couldn’t have been easy to translate but Kaija’s English
version reads beautifully.
Overall Favorite. I
think my top book for 2013 has to be Arnon Grunberg’s Tirza, translated by Sam Garrett: I called it “a spectacularly
compelling portrayal of a spectacularly awful personal breakdown” in my previous
post. And the book has stuck with me: thanks to Grunberg’s ability to
convey both melancholy and humor (there they are again!), I can still see and
hear Jörgen Hofmeester in all his anti-glory. Though Tirza was my clear favorite, I did have to stop and think about two
other books (yes, they’re also funny-and-sad), just to be sure I was sure:
Zachary Karabashliev’s 18% Gray,
translated by Angela Rodel (previous
post), and Bragi Ólafsson’s The Pets,
translated by Janice Balfour (previous
post).
Up Next. Who knows what the rest of 2014 will bring, but it got off to a great start with Pedro
Mairal’s The Missing Year of Juan
Salvatierra, which makes me happy because it’s from a new publisher, New Vessel Press, that specializes in
translations. Doubly happy because I seem to read quite a few books from
publishers that focus on translations. Two others books are waiting to be
written up: Donald Antrim’s The Hundred
Brothers, which I also liked quite a bit, and Romain Slocombe’s Monsieur Le Commandant, another one that
gets a thumbs up.
Disclosures: The
usual. Individual previous posts include individual disclosures about
books.
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