I always enjoy monthly reading and review re-caps (or “wrap-ups” as some like to call them) on other book blogs, even if I seldom post my own. Now that I’ve more time on my hands, I thought it might be fun to put together my own re-cap, though I’m going to keep my opinions about specific books having to do with the BTBA to myself this time around jusst so as not to give anything away by mistake. Anyway, here’s where I’m at four months into 2018.

Total Books Read:  26 (I’ve set myself a goal of 100 books this year and, according to Goodreads, I’m 8 books behind schedule)

Books Read for BTBA:  23

Translations:  24

Audiobooks:  1

Books Written by Women: 10

Total Languages Translated: 11

 

Books Reviewed & Recommended Elsewhere:

• Who to Believe? The Wife by Alafair Burke (The Los Angeles Review of Books, 3/2/18)
• Through a Child’s Eyes: Mystery and Longing in Masatsugu Ono’s Lion Cross Point (3:AM Magazine, 4/26/18)
• Why This Book Should Win: Return to the Dark Valley (Three Percent, BTBA 2018)
• Books To Read Between Episodes of The Alienist: The House of Silk, The Ballad of Black Tom, Dan Leno & the Limehouse Golem, The Waterworks, The Angel of Darkness and Surrender, New York (Book Riot, 1/22/18)

 

Some Random Stuff I’m Excited About:

The Best Translated Book Award Longlist – Shortlist is due out any day now.

The Paris Review Gets a New Editor (Book Riot, 4/18/18) – and I can’t wait to see what she has planned.  Emily Nemens is such a departure from The Paris Review’s traditional vibe, or at least she seems to me.  She comes across as so… well… so millennial versus mid-century, Manhattan intellectual, Mad Men image the magazine has long cultivated. For anyone else out there tracking this – she takes control in June. Of course, magazine publishing being what it is, I’m guessing that means we won’t see what her vision for the magazine looks like until the Winter Issue. And even then it will be her first, so she will probably be conservative in her changes/initiatives.  But what if she’s NOT???? She’s a visual artist with a very distinctive style – and I can’t help wondering how it will that influence the artists she chooses?  I know, I know – this is all entirely speculative on my part, backed by few facts, even less knowledge and an excess of enthusiasm.  Whatever. I intend to enjoy every single minute of it.  Expect more on this topic from me in the months to come.

Messy Tony’s Why This Book SHOULDN’T Win Posts for the #BTBA2018 – After months of reading, comparing and agonizing over these books, reading Tony’s satirical take on the final long list makes me happy.

And, best for last: I made the (personal) discovery that THIS existed — At the Edge of the Wood by Masatsugu Ono — while doing research for my review of Lion Cross Point. Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, who also translated A True Novel by Minae Mizumura, At the Edge of the Wood is published by Strangers Press – a teeny-tiny publisher I’d never heard of based out of Norwich, England – in 2017. The copy I ordered finally arrived at the end of April, it’s bound together with lovely white staples and has french flaps… I can’t wait to dig in.