Novellas in November 2022: recap

Novellas in November 2022

Picking from my 4th list of books for The Classic Club, my plan was to read 8 novellas this month for the Novellas in November event.

I managed to read them all, but have been bad at posting reviews recently.
I did post a short review for these three (click on the cover), the three reviews are on the same post:

  The Lady Macbeth of MtsenskThe Lifted Veil  The Snow Goose 2

The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, by Nikolai Leskov (1865)
The Lifted Veil by George Eliot (1859)
The Snow Goose, by Paul Gallico (1951)

And here are now a few words on the 5 other novellas I have read.
I may end up writing more and more super short “reviews” of that type. Would you still be interested in this blog if I did?
Click to continue reading

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2021: November wrap-up

NOVEMBER 2021 WRAP-UP

Phew, November was a busy month for book bloggers, with #Nonficnov and #NovellasinNovember (and many more events I didn’t participate in), plus the readalong I co-hosted on The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
After 19 months, I also managed to finish my personal project of listening to all of Hercule Poirot novels and short stories collections – I will talk to you more about this another day.
I also got back into the groove of posting Orthodox notes at least every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

📚 Here is what I read in November:

12 books:
7 in print 
with 1,701 pages, a daily average of 56 pages/day
5 in audio
= 31H42
, a daily average of 1H03

7 in mystery:

  1. Third Girl (Hercule Poirot #40), by Agatha Christie
  2. The Hallowe’en Party (Hercule Poirot #41), by Agatha Christie
  3. Elephants Can Remember(Hercule Poirot #42), by Agatha Christie
  4. Curtain (Hercule Poirot #44), by Agatha Christie
  5. The Harlequin Tea Set (Hercule Poirot #46), by Agatha Christie – these first 5 were as audiobooks, for The Classics Club
  6. Le Port  des brumes (Inspecteur Maigret #12), by Georges Simenon – read with a French student. Counts for The Classics Club
  7. A Man Lay Dead, by Ngaio Marsh – Classics spin for The Classics Club

3 in literary fiction:

  1. Le Créa, by Jean-Marc Soyez – a reread in French
  2. The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares – a novella, read for #NovellasinNovember
  3. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie – for the readalong I cohosted

2 in nonfiction:

  1. Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love, by Haruki Murakami
  2. The Kingdom of God, by Archbishop Dmitri Royster

MY FAVORITE BOOKS THIS PAST MONTH

  The Invention of Morel Le Créa

READING CHALLENGES & RECAP

Classics Club: 94/137 (from November 2020-until November 2025)
Japanese Literature Challenge: 12 books
#20BooksofSummer21: 37/20 books
Total of books read in 2021 = 150/120 (125%)

Number of books added to my TBR this past month = 34 (17 of which are nonfiction added thanks to #nonficnov! A dangerous event for our TBRs, as you can see)

OTHER BOOKS  REVIEWED THIS PAST MONTH

Double Identity new cover  The Sleeping Car Murders

GIVEAWAYS

The open giveaways are on my homepage

Books available for swapping

REVIEW COPIES AVAILABLE

Posted on my homepage

And we offer a Book Box!
PERFECT gift – original and affordable
2 books per month for a low price!!

MOST POPULAR BOOK REVIEW THIS PAST MONTH

Double Identity new cover
click on the cover to access my review

MOST POPULAR POST THIS PAST MONTH
– NON BOOK REVIEW –

Nonfiction November: My year 2021 in Nonfiction

BOOK BLOG THAT BROUGHT ME MOST TRAFFIC THIS PAST MONTH

Let’s Read
please go visit, there are a lot of good things there!

TOP COMMENTERS 

Marianne at Let’s Read
Deb at Readerbuzz
Karen at Booker Talk
please go and visit them,
they have great book blogs

BLOG MILESTONES 

2,415 posts
over 5,540 followers
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📚

Come back tomorrow
to see the books I plan to read in December!

📚 📚 📚

How was YOUR month of November?

Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
has created a Month In Review meme
where you can link your monthly recap posts
Thanks Nicole!

Book review: The Invention of Morel

The Invention of Morel

The Invention of Morel,
by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Translated from the Spanish
by Ruth L. C. Simms
NYRB
La invención de Morel
was first published in 1940
103 pages
Literary fiction / Classic

Goodreads

Buy the book on my Bookshop

Last month, I started rereading Ficciones, and realized I wanted to go deeper, but didn’t have time then to do so. So I am planning to go back to it in December.
In the meantime, this is November, with many book blogging events, for instance Novellas in November.
For the occasion, I decided to read a novella in translation that’s on my Classics Club list: The Invention of Morel. And I discovered in the excellent introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine (NYRB Classics edition) that its author, Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999) was great friends with Jorge Luis Borges, who was also his mentor (and he wrote a prologue for this book). So I’m still in great company! Click to continue reading