The Monthly Booking: October 2020

The autumn of intense publication continues, added to by the recent appearance of shortlists for the Booker Prize and the Deutscher Buchpreis, but as is so often the case my core reading list for October is composed of books already sitting on my shelves. A couple are relatively recent releases, while the others are stalwarts

The Monthly Booking: September 2020

Women in Translation Month might be over, but I’m not done with women in translation yet. Not having a theme this month gives me the chance to catch up on some of the most hotly anticipated titles sitting on my shelves, including Alta L. Price’s translation of Anna Goldenberg’s I Belong to Vienna. This book

The Monthly Booking: August 2020

In my last post I mentioned that August is Women in Translation Month – the perfect opportunity to explore some of the incredible literature being written and translated by women (and support some independent presses while you’re at it!). Although I will be reading a couple of these titles in the coming month, my actual

The Monthly Booking: July 2020

It was my birthday last month, which means that my shelves are happily groaning under the weight of yet more books to read. As such, I once again have a themeless reading month – it’s my aim to get my to-be-read shelf down to a manageable size before I buy anything new, although given the

The Monthly Booking: June 2020

After last month’s desert theme, I’m moving into June with no reading plans grander than trying to clear a few titles from my to-be-read pile. The fact that I often buy books and take for ever to get round to reading them has nothing to do with having changed my mind, but more with there

The Monthly Booking: May 2020

It appears that this month I am dreaming of far-off places, places that are vast, often inhospitable and to a certain extent unknowable. My starting point when putting together my monthly reading list was ‘desert’, and while a couple of these books have a rather tenuous link to the subject, they have all ended up

The Monthly Booking: April 2020

I’m not sure that I even want to mention the dreaded c-word here, but suffice to say that recent events have been playing havoc with my monthly reading plans – not to mention everything else. My reading list for April is less thought-through than it would have been, but I suppose it’s nice to have

The Monthly Booking: March 2020

After having had a Dutch moment in February, this month my reading list is expanding somewhat. Apart from the fact that all of them have been sitting around on my ‘to be read’ list for a while, there is absolutely nothing to link these four books (although two of them did appear on the shortlists

The Monthly Booking: February 2020

Dutch literature is having its day, so I’m beginning 2020 with a heavy focus on translation and a list of books written by Dutch authors. At the end of last year I visited Amsterdam and remembered something I used to do when I travelled a lot for work: wherever I went, I made sure to