Saturday, July 19, 2008

Check out 'The Guardian'’s Summer Reading List

Here's the link to the article, if you want to read it yourself. I already have a Summer Reading List (more or less), so this might become a part of my autumn reads. To be noted that, as far as I can see, all these books were written in English. Is The Guardian biased against non-Anglophone authors? Or do Anglophone readers tend to read only fiction written in their own language? However, there are some books that I plan to read here (in violet):

  • De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage (Lebanon / Canada): ‘a searing account of life in war-torn Beirut, brutal and poetic by turns’;
  • The Gathering by Anne Enright (Ireland): Booker Prize winner;
  • When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson (UK);
  • According to Ruth by Jane Feaver (UK);
  • The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam by Lauren Liebenberg (Zimbabwe / South Africa): a journey into childhood's foreign country - and the dying days of Rhodesia. Postcolonial stuff: must be mine.
  • Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel by Gordon Burn (UK);
  • The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan / UK): shortlisted for the Booker Prize, wanna read.
  • The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (India /UK): I’m not gonna read this before Midnight’s Children, even though it is set in Italy;
  • The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore by Lorrie Moore (USA);
  • Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (India /USA): I’ll probably read this, hoping it will be a second Namesake;
  • The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser (Australia / Sri Lanka): tipped for the Booker;
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (USA / Dominican Republic): already in my TBR list;
  • The Point of Rescue by Sophie Hannah (UK);
  • End Games by Michael Dibdin (UK);
  • Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor (UK);
  • Revelation by CJ Sansom (UK);
  • Darkmans by Nicola Barker (UK);
  • Ascent by Jed Mercurio (UK);

6 comments:

  1. I'm so glad you posted this, though I can't believe they named "DeNiro's Game." I think my pneumonia came from second-hand smoke from reading about too much cigarette handling.

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  2. OMG, do you have pneumonia on top of your leg injury? :-(

    I guess that fiction set in war-torn countries is the new trend (see Khaled Hosseini etc.)...

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  3. I'm rather a hopeless case this month!

    I think you're right... though some of these appear to be more uplifting than others. It'll be interesting to compare notes with you.

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  4. i've read "the reluctant fundamentalist" (italian version) and i want to read the english version.
    it is very captivating and i finished it in 2 days (ok, it's just a bit more than 100 pages...), but in the end i had contrasting feelings about it. donno. strange book.
    but the way the writer develops the story is very interesting. in the end you feel like wrapped by it.

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  5. "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is defenitely in my TBR list for next autumn!

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