BOOKLOVE: June 2013
This month’s edition of BookLove is a little bit late since it’s already the middle of July. Still, I want to chronicle my book hoarding in this little corner of cyberspace that I occupy. June is the month when, quite by incident, I bought a stack of books written by Nobel winners and National Book Award winning short story collection to boot.. Here they are:
- Disgrace by JM Coetzee – I had heard many things about Coetzee’s masterpiece. Some of them are good while some are bad and which, for me, is reason enough to be intrigued about reading this book because I somehow want to formulate my own opinion about it.
- Death With Interruptions by Jose Saramago – I have read Blindness a few years back and, although my memory about its plot is already foggy, I still remember liking the book and I even compared it favorably with one of my favorite authors, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Sadly, I wasn’t able to read any more works by Saramago after Blindness and, hopefully, Death With Interruptions can fix that soon.
- The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty – Lately, I have been gravitating towards short story collections and seeing this in one of my favorite 2nd-hand bookstores made me pick it up even though I only know Eudora Welty by her reputation and not much else. I hope that this book will be a worthwhile introduction to her works.
- The Appointment by Herta Müller – I’ve been reading good things about Herta Müller from the reviews of some of my bookish friends. Three of such friends have favorable reviews for one of Müller’s works, The Land of Green Plums, and I trust their reviews.
- In Praise of Stepmother by Mario Vargas Llosa – Having read Llosa’s Death in the Andes last year made me a fan of his work and I hope to be more acquainted with his other works in the near future.
- The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Ōe – Ōe’s Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids was one of the saddest books I’ve ever read last year. I do hope my second read of Ōe, which is hopefully The Silent Cry, will turn out to be as rewarding as the first one.
This should make my Nobel reading month, if I ever choose to have one again, interesting.
The Book Hooligan 
NOOO! I’ve been forever hunting for a copy of Eudora Welty’s collection. Oh well, I should visit bookstores more often, hehe. You enjoy Oe and Saramago. Death with Interruptions is a great book. It’s easier than Blindness but it’s also compelling (in a different way).
I just had a chance encounter with that Welty collection.:D I’ve been lucky lately in second-hand bookstores.:P I’m already excited to read Death with Interruptions.
Let’s read The Appointment by Herta Muller together? 🙂
Sure!:)
I’m a fan of Saramago too but still have not read Death with Interruptions. Would love to hear your thoughts on that Saramago.