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The Waves

My first Virginia Woolf: The Waves

12 December 201729 August 2018 / thelitbooks / Leave a comment

So, yes, The Waves was my first Virginia Woolf ever. I tried to read A Room of One's Own last year but I wasn't in the best physical and intellectual dispositions to make the most of this reading so I just dropped it. So when an acquaintance suggested that I read this novel which is "a wonderful novel, you'll love … Continue reading My first Virginia Woolf: The Waves

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What’s that? October 6th? Well I say it’s not too late to share my #smallandproudbookwrapup of September! ~ Like I said in my previous post, I didn’t have much time to read but I managed to finish The Mysteries of Udolpho thanks to the constant support and cheerleading of @readbynight. I have to say I started this book in 2014. Don’t judge me. If it wasn’t for Emma, it’d still be on my bed pile, gathering dust. I’ll post a review as soon as my brain has some free space to think of something else than my PhD or my teaching. ~ I also read, in a horrified, hurried pace, The Handmail’s Tale. I’m still processing it. The horror of it. The shock of it. The metaliterary dimension of it — what appealed me the most. As soon as I’m done processing, I’ll post a review. I know I haven’t reviewed books for a while but I have to take care of my work tool, which is my brain, which gets tired very easily since my burnout. ~ The funny contrast between these two books, apart from their obvious epoch and literary differences, is the fact that I didn’t get the horror where I expected it. Udolpho qualifies more as a romance, in my humble opinion, and yes, there is some gothic in it but oh so few, compared to what I was expecting from the 700p. However, The Handmaid’s Tale, in its condensed 300p, gave me my share of horror, though not gothic, for a good while. I’ll probably not watch the show, thank you very much! . . What’s a book that has taken you ages to finish? And why? —— #bookblogger #bookreviewers #bloggingforbooks #bookishfeature #bookfeatures #literaryfiction #readwomen #bookwrapup #smallandproudbookwrapups #margaretatwood #thehandmaidstale#annradcliffe #themysteriesofudolpho #forgottenvoicesofliterature

Hello bookish fam! I’m back from my posting slump! September has been busy, as September was bound to be. September 28th was painful (If you saw my stories, you know that I fell to the ground and ridiculously hurt myself). September was full of new: a new rhythm, a new job (love it!), new students (love ‘em!). And September also meant returning seriously to my PhD. No I’m joking, I didn’t have time to. 😁 . I wanted to participe in @fondofbooks1 and @rainbowsandparachutes’s hashtag, #fondofrainbowsoct. Go check their account for the full program, it promises fascinating discussions! Today, they invite us to share spines with only people of colour on it, and I chose my (rather high) non-fiction TBR stack, which I’m extreeeemely excited about! . I’ve been savouring All The Women In My Family Sing that @nothingbutthetruthpublishing kindly sent me. This is not a book you can read quickly. So far, the text that moved me the most is one in which Randi Bryant-Agenbroad remembers how her insides chilled when, at a slumber party with girl friends, one of them suddenly said “let’s tell nigger jokes”. I want to use this text in my class on stereotypes. These texts need to be read. And not only during Black History Month. . In France, we don’t have a Black History Month, or day. What do you think about it? I know that there are contradictory opinions about this initiative and I can’t make up my mind on whether it is right or wrong because I hear both sides. What about you? . . —— #bookblogger #bookreviewers #bloggingforbooks #bookishfeature #currentlyreading #nonfiction #writersofcolour #blackliterature #blackhistorymonth #slayinyourlane #zadiesmith #thegoodimmigrant #bellhooks #paulgilroy

Time for another #booksandhotdrinkstuesday. This week with @katha_logisch we are talking about reading in translation. . A few years ago, I wanted to read The Brothers Karamazov but, as, surprisingly, I don’t speak Russian, I bought it in French. And really the story looked good and I wasn’t in the least daunted by the thickness of the book. Only, I read thirty pages. I tried my best though I spot the problem from the very first page, but I couldn’t stand a translation that was full of anachronisms and that teleported the story and all its characters in the beginning of the twenty-first century. I could not believe for one second that characters from the late 18th century would speak in such a colloquial and modern way. I tossed the book away and, with all the passion my youth and sense of betrayal could summon, I decided NEVER AGAIN to read translations. . Aaaand that’s how I became the happy owner of many English books and am yet to read the Russians writers. All right, I’ve read Anna Karenina, in French. The translation was good and that was before the Dostoyevsky revolution. I try to read in Spanish (hence Isabel on this picture), I discovered Italian recently (you’ve heard about that), and I read in English and now, very rarely, in French. . But I know it is stupid of me because not all translations are that disastrous, just as not all translations are perfect. However, as I also translated lots of texts as a student and as a teacher, I know how difficult it is to keep the narrative voice intact and most of all, the subtleties that make all the charm and uniqueness of a writer. I’m too afraid of the losses of translation to care to open my curiosity to what translated books can bring me. . That being said, if you know good translations (especially from the Russians!), hit me up! If you know how to change my mind, please do! PS: This photo almost didn’t happen because I bumped my little toe real hard on a chair while bringing my books, and I almost threw up on everything and bawled like a proper five year old so... big up to me! 😂 . . —— #bookblogger #bookreviewers #bloggingforbooks #bookishfeature #translation #isabelallende #virginiawoolf #stendhal

SLOW READERS OF BOOKSTAGRAM UNITE! . 📚You feel anxious when the end the month approaches because you’ve only read two books? 📚Wrap-ups containing more than five books make you feel nauseous? 📚You feel guilty and wonder why you can’t read as much as the others? 📚You don’t dare to share your wrap-ups because they are ridiculously small compared to some of our beloved fast-readers? 📚Above all, you’re afraid to lose the joy that bookstagram brings you and become self-conscious about numbers? If you’ve answered yes to one or several of those questions, welcome to the club! @reading.far.and.wide spoke about it in her recent post and we decided to create a hashtag for us slow readers who feel guilty for not being voracious enough. @readviveblog also made a thoughtful post about it yesterday, go check it out! . When I joined bookstagram and discovered wrap-ups, they use to give me stomachache and I still shun them, with a lump in my throat. Honestly. I don’t want to focus on numbers (which is appropriate because I’m appalling at maths!) and read for anything else than the pleasure of reading. . And then Reka said in her post something that strongly made sense: we should share our small wrap-ups too, if only to make us feel that we are not alone, hidden (and miserable!) in the safety of our silence! Slow readers, come out of the darkness, rejoice again at the end of each month and be strong enough to share your mini wrap-ups under our brand new hashtag: #smallandproudbookwrapups ! . . And so this is mine, for the first time in months, 3 books read in August: I am CHUFFED! . —— #bookblogger #bookreviewers #bloggingforbooks #bookishfeature #bookfeatures #literaryfiction #nonfiction #monthlywrapup #slowreader #staywithme #inotherwords #girlmeetsboy #alismith #jhumpalahiri #ayobamiadebayo #bookwrapup

I could not let #womenintranslation month pass without talking about it and luckily, @katha_logisch with our Italian buddy read and @theopenbookshelf & @sarahs89reads with #forgottenvoicesofliterature have given me this occasion, for thanks to these charming ladies, I have read In Other Words, by Jhumpa Lahiri. . This book is a collection of essays in which Lahiri reflects on the process of learning Italian, a relationship that developed like a love story, with the passion of the beginning, the first arguments, disagreements, misunderstandings, moments of puzzlements... In each essay, Lahiri develops a surprisingly apt metaphor to illustrate how learning a foreign language feels. If you have learnt foreign languages, you will recognise yourself in so many aspects! . And because this is Lahiri writing, we also get a bite of her favourite subjects: migration & integration, belonging, hybrid identities... The more she masters Italian, the more she feels anger when Italians pretend not to understand her, just because her dark skin tells them she cannot be “from here”. Learning Italian doesn’t save her from her state of permanent exile. . I already talked about what happened for me when I started reading the book in Italian (see last post with this book featured). I confidently finished it and by the end, I didn’t need to check the English translation very often. A small victory that decided me to keep on reading in Italian. . So, In Other Words is doubly fitting for these two tags because it is written by a woman, translated by another woman, and it is a book that could be easily overlooked among Lahiri’s other works. However, I recommended it, warmly. . Longer review on my blog. #linkinbio . —— #bookblogger #bookreviews #bookreviewers #bloggingforbooks #bookishfeature #bookfeatures #nonfiction #readwomen #writersofcolour #jhumpalahiri #inotherwords #italianbook #translation

Girl Meets Boy is how I met Ali Smith’s writing, and this encounter that was due to take place did not disappoint. In this short novel initially published in 2007 and re-published by @canongatebooks this month, Smith re-writes the joyful myth of Iphis, the girl who grew up disguised as a boy and who was eventually transformed into a boy in order to marry her betrothed. . What does Smith make of this myth today? A multi-layered, lyrical, modern, politically committed, passionate text which flows like water and troubles the notion of gender, among others. The punctuation marks set the tone. They do not guide you. Some are utterly absent, leaving no trace of the transitions between the narrator and the characters’ words. They invoke the fluidity the text was written to support & represent. . What is it about, you ask? Well, basically, about two sisters, one of whom wants a normal life with a normal job (Imogen is her name), and another (Anthea) who falls in love with, god forbid!, a girl who was “the most beautiful boy” she had ever seen. The eruption of Robin (androgynously named, you’ll have noticed) in their lives triggers turmoil and changes, which Anthea readily accepts whereas Imogen struggles while she tries to still fit in her less & less ethical job, which aims at finding creative formulas to sell.. bottled water. . The novel’s sometimes dreamlike atmosphere doesn’t prevent it from tapping into great modern tragedies (the killing of young women at birth, the unethical behaviour of multinational companies crushing ordinary people’s lives, the conservative & claustrophobic homophobic mentality). As for its ending, suffice it to say that Smith did not forget Ovid’s initial metamorphosis; only she metamorphosed it. . . #linkinbio for a longer analysis. . . —— #bookblogger #bookreviews #bookreviewers #bloggingforbooks #bookishfeature #literaryfiction #bookflatlay #readwomen #alismith #girlmeetboy #feminism #genderfluid #gender #ovid #partnership

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Welcome to this little breathing space! This blog is dedicated to books and literature. Help yourself with a nice cup of tea and dive into my literary world. I’ll be happy to respond if you leave a comment!

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