Tag Archives: A Post a Day in May

Looking Back on A Post a Day in May

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It’s hard to believe the month is over. And I did it. I posted one post a day all through the month of May. Even though I had such a tough time blogging in the last two years, I never doubted I would make it. I somehow knew I would enjoy it and I really did. The first weeks went by very quickly, the third was a bit dragging but the fourth was gone before it even started. I didn’t follow a plan, I just picked something every day, read it or looked at it and wrote about it.

Before I’m going to look at some statistics, I’d like to thank everyone who followed me this month. All those who read my posts, liked them, and commented. Thank you very much. You all made this so much more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. It almost felt like the early years of blogging. And gives me hope that I can celebrate my upcoming 10-year anniversary in style – posts and guest posts and maybe one or two themed weeks. We will see.

Some statistics:

I read 2 novels (which I didn’t review) and 18 novellas, short novels, longer stories, and nonfiction texts.

12 titles were written by women, 8 by men.

I read books from 11 different countries: UK, US, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Turkey, France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, and Russia.

Week two was the week when I had the most visitors and also the most new subscribers.

The posts that had the most views were: The Daphne du Maurier Week post on The Birds, 100 Must-Read Life-Changing Books and The Intro post The Temptation of a Post a Day in May.

The day when I had the most views was the day when I published on Dickens.

The posts that received the most comments were The Intro Post, the Post on The Birds, and the post on Chandler’s Killer in the Rain.

This is quite interesting as it shows how many people look at posts without commenting or liking – The Life-Changing Books post for example.

New Followers – I did count for a while but then there were so many every day that I gave up. By week two, there were some 40 or 50 new followers.

Where do I go from here?

The question that I’ve been asking myself in the last couple of days—where do I go from here? I don’t want to go back to posting only once a month or every two months. Obviously, that wasn’t exactly my choice since I had pain issues. That was actually my biggest worry for this month – that the pain would return. And it did for a week or so, but luckily it wasn’t as unmanageable as before.

Before this month, I also had issues with reading. I picked one dud after the other that I really didn’t feel like reviewing. I was astonishingly lucky this month. There was one book I could have done without, Odd and the Frost Giants, but even that was not terrible at all. And those that were good like Love, Am Südhang, Once There Was A Family, Killer in the Rain, The Dog,The Testament of Mary, or The Calligraphers’ Night were just amazing. Several will be on my best of list at the end of the year.

This will sound weird, but it looks like I do best when I have a project that leaves me a lot of freedom. If I had chosen the books I was going to read and write about beforehand – this would have been an utter failure.

So, what now? It is entirely possible that I will do another month like this. Maybe in August, maybe in December. It might not even be about books. I might resuscitate my World Cinema Series and do A Movie a Day.

And I would like to begin a late Literature and War Readalong. Last year I had to skip it, the year before I had to stop before the end. So, this year, I’d like to just read two or three titles, but not decide in advance which ones I’ll be reading. I’ll let you know two months in advance, so you can join, if you feel like it.

For now, I hope I can stick to a three days per week posting schedule. One review type post, one coffee table book, and maybe something more like essays or musings.

Thanks again to everyone who read, commented, liked and shared. It meant and it means a lot. Without you, it wouldn’t have been so much fun.

Wild Women and Books by Brenda Knight – Bibliophiles, Bluestockings, and Prolific Pens – A Post a Day in May

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I kept this one for last as it’s hands down one of my favourite books. Wild Women and Books – Bibliophiles, Bluestockings, and Prolific Pens contains entries that span from Aphra Ben to Zora Neale Hurston. Now this may sound like it’s similar to Literary Witches but it’s quite different. It’s a much bigger book and while it contains photos, illustrations, and pictures of artwork, there is a lot of text in each chapter and on each writer. Additionally, to the chapter texts, it has boxes that give information on where to find the authors online and themed lists.

There is a total of seven chapters.

Chapter 1 – First Ladies of Literature is on the precursors and pioneers like Anne Bradstreet, Aphra Behn, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lorraine Hansbury.

Chapter 2 – Ink in their Veins focusses on women who come from writing dynasties, like the Brontës or Mary Shelley.

Chapter 3 – Mystics and Madwomen explores authors like Hildegard von Bingen and Teresa of Avila.

Chapter 4 – Banned, Blacklisted and Arrested is particularly fascinating. Why do women get blacklisted and who are they? I’ve always been baffled when I saw these lists of books that have been banned in the US. You can find many of them above. There are a lot of children’s authors like Judy Blume on that list.

Chapter 5 – Prolific Pens explores those women who seem to be publishing nonstop or have published a lot like Margaret Mead, Joyce Carol Oates, and also Margaret Atwood, Edith Wharton, Danielle Steel, and Barbara Cartland.

Chapter 6 – Salonists and Culture Makers looks at authors like Dorothy Parker, Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Getrude Stein, Djuna Barnes and many more.

Cahpter 7 – Women Whose Books are Loved too Much is interesting and diverse. These are the authors who have a large fanbase, fervent followers and admirers. Some of them are Agatha Christie, Alice Walker, Anne Rice, and Margaret Mitchell.

I’m sure it’s easy to see why this is such an appealing book. Anyone will stumble upon authors they hadn’t heard of before as it is so diverse. The high and the low and those in the middle, they are all there. The book has a handy index at the back, lists with online book groups and further reading on women and books. Wild Women was initially published in 2000 and then reissued and updated in 2006. The only bad thing – it looks like it’s currently out of stock but second hand copies are cheap and easily available and there’s a kindle version too.

The Dog – Hunden by Kerstin Ekman – Swedish Novella – A Post a Day in May

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Swedish writer Kerstin Ekman is something like the grande dame of Swedish literature. She’s considered one of the most important, if not the most important living Swedish writer. She has written numerous novels, many of which received prizes and were made into movies. She’s also been extensively translated. Ekman began her career as a crime author but subsequently moved away from the genre. The novella The Dog – Hunden was published in 1986. I read the German translation, Hundeherz (by far the most poetic title) as I always feel it’s closer to the Scandinavian languages than English.

Before I start the review, I have to spoil the book. The blurb does so too and with good reason. The beginning of the book is quite sad, and, for most animal lovers, it would be too heart-breaking to read on not knowing whether there would be a happy ending. Luckily, there is. So, now you know it – Sad beginning, happy ending.

The Dog is set in the countryside of Northern Sweden. It’s winter and a man drives to a lake to go fishing. He has no intention to take his dog, but she sees him and runs after his scooter. Her little puppy follows her. In the snow and the cold, the puppy gets lost. Upon his return home, the man notices the dog’s absence and searches for him. To no avail. What follows is a dramatic tale of survival during a harsh winter, in a wild landscape. The puppy almost freezes and starves. At first, he just crouches under the low branches of fir trees, shivering, his heart beating wildly. Then he finds a dead elk and the meat of the massive animal helps him over many weeks.

During the long winter months, he learns to recognize the noises and traits of the landscape. Eventually, he explores farther and farther away from his hiding place. He learns to hunt and to avoid being hunted.

The story is told from the point of view of the dog, but Ekman doesn’t try to humanize the dog. She tells the story in a way that makes it very plausible, just describing what the puppy can see, smell, taste, hear. The result is brilliant. In lesser hands this might have become mawkish, but it isn’t. She is an astounding writer, with a huge vocabulary and intimate knowledge of the Swedish landscape, the flora, the fauna. The animals and plants are all named. It’s never just “a tree” or “a bird” or “a plant”. She’ll let you know exactly what it is. All the many wild birds and animals are differentiated through the noises their wings or paws make. The wind sounds different, depending on which grasses and plants it rustles. And the many scents are described in so much detail too. It’s true that every plant smells different when it is crushed.

The story isn’t sentimental and therefore, at times, a bit hard to read. After all, it’s a tale of survival and that includes hunting. The dog must hunt to survive. And there’s also an elk hunt later in the novella that leads him back to the man who lost him.

This is a tale about survival, about enduring cold, hunger, and loneliness. But ultimately it’s also a tale about the strong bond between man and dog.

I did expect this to be good, but I didn’t expect the writing to be this extraordinary. I’m already looking forward to reading more of her work.

 

Unlikely Friendships by Jennifer S. Holland – Animal Cuteness -A Post a Day in May

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I feel like we can all do with some cuteness these days and so I decided to share this book about animal friendships. Unlikely Friendships is such a lovely book. The stories are all so touching and the pictures that go with them are beyond cute. Some of these friendships aren’t that uncommon but some really make you look twice. There are 47 true stories in the book, most of them accompanied by three to four pictures.

Some of the stories like that about the gorilla Koko and the kitty are quite famous. Others are told by people who witnessed their pets suddenly being very friendly with an animal from another species. Other stories have been reported by visitors to parks or nature reserves like this one:

This young male Macaque found a stray kitten in the Ubud Sacred Monkey Forest in Bali. Visitors saw the two together. They were inseparable. The kitty could have gotten away many times, people even tried to take him away, but he always ran back to his monkey friend.

The story between the gorilla Koko and his kitten is well known as Koko was famous. In the 80s she was taught sign language and was able to communicate with people. One day, she told her teacher that she wanted a kitten for her birthday. And that’s how these two became friends. The story didn’t have a happy-ending as the kitten was later run over by a car. Koko was inconsolable and grieved her kitten for a very long time.

The friendship between this lioness and the baby Oryx is another very unlikely friendship. The two were spotted together in the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya.

There are several friendships between cats and other animals in this book. Cats and rats, cats and cockatoos, cats and pigs, and this one between an Iguana and a house cat. The Iguana was found wandering the streets of New York and someone rescued him. He couldn’t keep the animal and gave him to a friend, a nurse, who was known for rescuing stray animals. The Iguana thrived and grew and soon stretched to four and a half feet. When the nurse adopted a rescue kitten, the most unlikely thing happened – they became friends and are always close together.

This might be one of my favourite pictures because they both look at the camera in such a cute way. This friendship lasted until the owl was grown up, then it was brought to an aviary. To this day, when the owner of the greyhound walks by the aviary, the owl and the dog greet each other.

This male pit bull belongs to an owner who lives in Texas. When her female dog had pups, she noticed that the dad was even keener and more affectionate than the mother. Whenever there are small chicken on her farm, they climb on his back and he seems to love them very much. The closest friendship he has though is with a Siamese cat.

I hope you enjoyed this little sneak peek at this wonderful book. There are many other friendships in here – To name but a few more: Black bear and cat, dog and Bobtail Cat, White Rhino and Billy goat, seeing eyed cat and a blind mutt and macaque and white dove.

While this is a cute book, it also proves that animals have deep feelings and are capable to form strong connections and friendships.

Am Südhang – On Southern Slopes by Eduard von Keyserling – A Post a Day in May

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I wrote about one of Eduard von Keyserling’s novellas during GLM 2013 –here. Back then, not one of his books had been translated into English and that was such an incredible shame. Meanwhile, his masterpiece Die Wellen – Waves has been translated and published by Dedalus European Classics. As I wrote in that post, von Keyserling is often compared to Fontane because they are from the North and both set their novels in the Northern parts of Germany. It’s a very unfortunate comparison because the era and writing style are so different. Both are elegant writers, but von Keyserling is much more like Schnitzler than Fontane. He’s a typical impressionist writer. He has something very Austrian and when one knows a few things about his life, that’s no coincidence. He was born at Castle Tels-Paddern (now in  Latvia), Courland Governorate, then part of the Russian Empire, but then moved to Vienna and later to Munich.

Maybe Waves wasn’t a success – I never saw it reviewed on any blogs – because that remained the only official translation. There’s good news though, as Tony from Tony’s Reading List actually went and translated first the book I reviewed in 2013 – Schwüle Tage – Sultry Days and then two other short works, which you can all find here.

Sadly, Am Südhang – On Southern Slopes, the novella I read on my beautiful rainy reading day last week, hasn’t been translated. As with everything I’ve ever read by von Keyserling – it’s a shame. He’s such a brilliant writer.

Am Südhang opens with Karl Erdmann von West-Wallbaum in a carriage on his way to his parent’s estate where he will spend his summer. He has just been made Lieutenant and thinks that this rise will mean people will take him more seriously. He can hardly wait to arrive as the summers on his parent’s estate are always so beautiful. And he is always in love. Always with the same woman, Daniela, a friend of his mother, who is much younger and divorced. Every summer she’s the centre of all the men’s attention as she’s beautiful, intelligent, and likes to charm. It’s both painful and delicious to be in love with her, as Karl Erdmann muses, and he’s looking forward to lying in the grass and dream of her all day long.

But that isn’t the only thing he’s looking forward to. On the estate, with his family, his parents and siblings, he lives a life of sheltered ease and luxury which makes him languorous and lazy. While he can be hard and cynical in the outer world, during summer he’s like sensitive, thin-skinned fruit that grows on southern slopes.

It wouldn’t be a von Keyserling novel if things stayed light and harmonious. There’s always a dark undercurrent and tragedy and this story is no exception. Even though he doesn’t take it very seriously, the duel that awaits Karl Erdmann casts a dark shadow. And there’s also the deep sadness of the private tutor who, like everyone else, is in love with Daniela.

It’s a beautiful novella. Rich in emotions and descriptions. Nature and the weather always play important parts, mirroring the feelings of the protagonists. In this story, the garden descriptions are so very lush. Von Keyserling paints with words. He captures scents and sound, colours and forms. We sit next to Karl Erdmann in his carriage and feel the cool shade under the trees, hear the soft rustling of the dew in the leaves. We can see the family waiting for Karl Erdmann’s arrival, the women in their white summer dresses standing on the stairs.

The only thing that was hard to read was the duck hunting. It’s always part of these novels set among the upper classes. And it’s always terrible. It was over quickly, but still made me sad.

There is some criticism of the way of life described, but mostly von Keyserling just captures a moment in time. It’s a dying society but when he wrote this novella, in 1916, it was still very much alive.

I hope this will be translated because it’s so amazing. I’m sure most of us can relate to the magic of summer holidays when you’re still a child or very young. Those hot, languorous, carefree days, mostly spent outdoors unless summer rains kept you in.

If you haven’t read von Keyserling yet, do yourself a favour and read Waves or some of Tony’s translations. I’m adding the link to them here again.

Most of his novellas were translated into French – here’s a link to the collected works.

The cover of the German edition shows a painting of Max Liebermann, Landhaus in Hilversum (1901). It’s the perfect choice for this book.

Night Walks by Charles Dickens – London by Night – A Post a Day in May

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Today’s post is very short. We have the most delicious reading weather and I want to make the most of it. Yesterday the thermometer on my shady balcony showed 30°. It was hot and humid, so, as was to be expected, we have rain today. Not just a drizzle, a downpour. The back garden is full of very old trees with dense foliage that is now dripping with rain. It’s wonderful. The best reading weather ever.

Night Walks, one of the titles from the Penguin Great Ideas series, contains several journalistic texts Charles Dickens wrote between 1850 – 1870. I’ve only read the first short piece so far, the one that has given the book it’s title – Night Walks.

During a certain period of his life, Dickens suffered from insomnia. It was due to a “distressing impression” and led to his wandering the streets of London all night during a series of several nights. He never says what distressing impression caused his insomnia, only speaks about the cure. Since he couldn’t sleep, he decided, it would be best to go for long walks. He must have left the house around midnight and only returned after sunrise to, finally, fall into an exhausted sleep.

This is a very short piece but it’s immensely enjoyable. Dickens describes his nightly London so well, creates such an uncanny atmosphere, touches on so many themes like homelessness, social injustice, poverty, mental health, in a mere 15 pages.

But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the bans were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went down. The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river

He starts his walk close to Waterloo Bridge, at the time, a toll bridge, and walks on in the direction of London Bridge, Westminster, and ends at Covent Garden. He passes prisons, asylums, and theatres. After two in the morning, when the last pub closes, it gets very quiet. Only very few people are out and about and he cherishes what little contact he has, with the man on the toll bridge for example. His favourite parts seem to be having a light breakfast at Covent Garden or watching the mail come in at a railway terminus.

I tried to find out what caused Dickens’ insomnia and came across this interesting blog post

Tell Me A Dragon – The Wonderful Art of Jackie Morris – A Post a Day in May

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As you know by now, I’m fond of children’s books. Especially picture books. I only have a small collection, but I cherish every single book. Those I usually like the most are the ones that have been written and illustrated by the same person. When I discovered Jackie Morris and her art on Twitter, I knew immediately that I would love to collect her books. The artwork is just stunning.

She has also done several very interesting collaborations. Lost Words, her collaboration with Robert MacFarlane, garnered a lot of praise.

Fantasy Fans will know her from her cover art of Robin Hobb’s famous series.

Her books are exquisite and appeal to adults just as much as they appeal to children.

Even though I want to collect her books, I have only gotten one so far. The picture book – Tell Me A Dragon.

 

I absolutely love it. The artwork is delicate, the colors so intense.

 

I know I will get the books she did with Robert Macfarlen, Lost Words and Lost Spells, which hasn’t been published yet.

But I would also like to get her other picture books eventually.

Jackie Morris lives in Wales with her children and three cats.  It’s worth following her on Twitter. It’s such a lovely account with photos, kitten pics, and sneak peeks at her art. Here’s the link to her Twitter account and the link to her blog.