Hot Reading From the Cooling Embers

So far it’s been rough my first few weeks here in Florida but hopefully it will all improve over the last quarter; by then my new rooms will be available, my desk stocked and well-lit, and my new built-in bookshelves loaded with all the books that are today still stored in boxes and shoved into dark closets.

Everyone should remember that any reading plan is subject to sudden interruptions and changes. Things were going good this last month and I was beginning to appreciate the new author concentration … but then a swift bout of pneumonia laid me low and tossed me into the hospital for a few days. I’m still not concentrating enough to ease back into a good-day of reading so I’m counting on the new month’s reading pool to punch-up my interest.

Again I am following the scheme of mixing a couple of author’s works with a more general list of suggested reading … it seems to be working so far. So here is the reading pool for October 2016:

Green=Newish Title

1. Dinner — César Aira
2. A Rage In Harlem — Chester Himes
3. Princess Bari — Sok-yong Hwang
4. Stealth — Sonallah Ibrahim
5. Snakebite — Moses Isegawa
6. The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden — Jonas Jonasson
7. The Bear Went Over the Mountain: A Novel — William Kotzwinkle
8. The Accidental Pallbearer — Frank Lentricchia
9. A Quiet Place — Seicho Masumoto
10. Young Once — Patrick Modiano
11. The Fishermen: A Novel — Chigozie Obioma
12. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy — Laurence Sterne
13. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook — Gary Shteyngart
14. The Dragonfish — Vu Tran
15. I Hotel — Karen Tei Yamashita

William Boyd

• A Good Man In Africa
• Armadillo
• Brazzaville Beach

Sinclair Lewis

• Dodsworth
• Cass Timberlane
• Elmer Gantry
• It Can’t Happen Here

Emile Zola

• The Belly of Paris
• The Kill
• The Debacle