I have been reading lately more books than in the few previous years. I always read quite a lot if we use current average world readership statistics. There were different books I was interested in until now. I seem to have come back to the type of books I was reading when I was a young woman. I came back to reading novels. There was a time in my life I went through a kind of sabbatical, I was nineteen then. It was the time to learn about life and what choices I should make for my future. One of the main choices I had to make was the direction of my studies. I was good at mathematics, and I loved books. I believed that books had all the answers to my existential questions. I still do and they do. So I read to find the answers. For some years I read the new age type of books, philosophy, spirituality and psychology. They were the books to study rather than read. I studied them, it took time and sometimes I felt bored. I rediscovered that good novels have many answers and they are served with more elegance and lightness than the books there are akin to manuals, my choice of many years.
When I was nineteen, I must have read books about obedience to parents as my choice of professional direction turned out to be mathematics. I elected to live the dream of my father and forget my literary inclinations. No regrets, except for the very difficult five years when I studied pure mathematics. It was not the domain of my talents, but I got my fancy diploma of the Master of Mathematics that made me think that from now on nothing is going to be difficult to comprehend. I was not really right as human nature still puzzles and intrigues me. It is fun to explore it, though, and I love this process. Now, I am again on a sort of sabbatical and have plenty of time to read and learn. I started to really like this part of my life.
As I always been a planner I am planning what books I want to read this year. My book club has a list of books we will read and discuss and they may not all be the books of my choice so I am adding the ones I would like to read. It may be a bit presumptuous to assume that the readers of my blog may be interested in my book choices, but I can think of at least one who is an avid reader and in the past gave me good reading suggestions. Even if I may not have followed the advice it was only for the overload of my reading time. My reading appetites are always bigger than my ability to read all I would like to. This is a long introduction to my call for reading suggestions from those of you who are reading this post.
I am reading now Henry James - The Portrait of the Lady. I had the book on my bookshelf for many years. It is a Polish translation, and so far I am disappointed and even wonder if I am going to finish it. The American ladies are so irritating; I have a problem to even think of them as ladies. And here I consider myself to be a feminist while confident young women irritate me and even seem to me obnoxious. Maybe this is a function of Polish translation? I am only 200 pages down the track so my impressions might change.
The first book of my book club Ann Prichard’s – Commonwealth seems to be an easy read, I wonder how I will feel about it. I will not read all the book club book as I am planning 3-4 months sojourn in Europe. This will be the time to read books in Polish, and I have already a little pile of books waiting for me there. I do not remember the titles exactly, but one of the books is about a woman who was associated with Bruno Schutz, there is also Knausgard book number five waiting for me there. I a looking forward to coming back to reading the book about writing 3600 pages book. I hear the book number five is the best of the set. I will read at least one book by Jacek Dehnel, one of my absolute favourite young Polish writers.
Before I go to Poland, I intend to finally finish Adam Phillips – Missing Out. Thank you Ramana for the suggestion. I already ordered Peter Nadas – The Book of Memories. Another writer considered being a Marcel Proust. Hungarian Marcel Proust, hmm…. Then Hanya Yanagihara – The People in the Trees; Siri Hustvedt – The Blazing World; Julian Barnes – The Noise of Time and Polish Jerzy Pilch – Portrait of a Young Venetian (in Polish of course). There is also this book about Lynton Strachey on my night table. Maybe Siri Hustvedt book that has references to the Bloomsbury will re-ignite my interest which in this past was my main literary interest.
Wow, I have rather specific plans, and I am looking forward to exploring new choices.
What do you have in your reading plans? It would be fascinating to hear about it.
