Tag Archives: George Saunders

Top Ten Books with Geographical Terms in the Title

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Top Ten Books
with Geographical Terms in the Title

TTT for September 12, 2022
#TopTenTuesday 

📚  📚 📚

Funny, I thought I would quickly find 10 titles for this theme, just going through my list of books read by descending chronological order, but in fact, I had to go back to August 2021 to be able to find ten of them!

I’m happy with the diversity of geographical terms I harvested:
alley, archipelago, hollow, mountains, pond, river (2), street, village, woods

Top Ten Geographical terms

And here are the links to those I have reviewed:

Midaq Alley
The Archipelago of Another Life (review and read-along, with Q&A)
No Woods So Dark As These

At the Mountains of Madness
River of Stars
A River Runs Through It
The Village of Eight Graves

Have YOU read
or are YOU planning to read any of these?
Please leave the link to your own post,
so I can visit.

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Nonfiction November 2021: Book Pairings

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Nonficnov 2021

#NonficNov
#nonfictionbookparty: Instagram Daily Challenge
Click on the logo to see the detailed schedule

Here is the topic for Week 2 (Nov. 8-12):
Book Pairings
hosted by Katie at Doing Dewey

This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title.
It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!”
or just two titles that you think would go well together.
Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history
by reading a nonfiction version of the story.

Today, I’m offering you 3 novels paired with 3 nonfiction books I read this year

Click on the covers to get more details

BOOK PAIRING #1

RUSSIAN LITERATURE

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain  And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon

And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon: Essential Stories
VERDICT: A good sample of strange and disorienting short stories of the Russian master in the genre.
The Nose is one of the stories studied and brilliantly presented by George Saunders – as part of his classes on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University.
And it is one of Gogol’s stories offered in this new collection.

BOOK PAIRING #2

INDIAN-ANGLO LITERATURE

Languages of Truth Quichotte

Quichotte:
VERDICT: Brilliant take on Don Quixote. Tragicomedy on our society and where it’s going.
I finally discovered Salman Rushdie’s brilliant mind and writing last year.
So this year I decided to read this amazing collection of essays.
And in case you are interested, even though it’s not nonfiction, you might want to join us in our readalong of The Satanic Verses.

BOOK PAIRING #3

FRENCH LITERATURE

Looking for The Stranger  The Meursault Investigation

The Meursault Investigation:
I could obviously have paired it with the novel itself, The Stranger by Camus, which you probably all know.
But you may not know The Meursault Investigation:
A fascinating rereading of The Stranger by Camus, opening up to broader historico-social perspectives, and casting a harsh light on the events of yesterday and today.

HAVE YOU READ ANY OF THESE?
WOULD YOU HAVE OTHER BOOK PAIRINGS
RELATED TO THESE CATEGORIES?

Nonfiction November: My Year 2021 in Nonfiction

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Nonficnov 2021

#NonficNov
#nonfictionbookparty: Instagram Daily Challenge
Click on the logo to see the detailed schedule

POST EDITED on 11/06: 
After visiting another blogger who mentioned Mary Oliver, I realized I forgot to include poetry, and I did read some awesome ones!!

Like every year, a bunch of really cool bloggers are co-hosting Nonfiction November.

Here is the topic for Week 1 (Nov. 1-5):

YOUR YEAR IN NONFICTION

Hosted by Rennie at What’s Nonfiction: 
Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions:
What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year?
Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year?
What nonfiction book have you recommended the most?
What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

Here is the recap of the nonfiction I have read (the links will send you to my review when it’s posted).
So far, I have read or listened to 43 nonfiction, which is already 22% more than last year (I read 35 nonfiction in 2020).
And I may read a couple more before the end of the year.

Here are the titles. Obviously, most of these are Biblical books, as I finished my project of relistening to the whole Old Testament.

Bible and religious books:

  1. The Book of Psalms
  2. The Book of Job
  3. The Book of Proverbs
  4. The Book of Ecclesiastes
  5. The Book of the Song of Songs
  6. The Book of Wisdom
  7. The Book of Sirach
  8. The Book of Hosea
  9. The Book of Amos
  10. The Book of Micah
  11. The Book of Joel
  12. The Book of Obadiah
  13. The Book of Jonah
  14. The Book of Nahum
  15. The Book of Habakkuk
  16. The Book of Zephaniah
  17. The Book of Haggai
  18. The Book of Zechariah
  19. The Book of Malachi
  20. The Book of Isaiah
  21. The Book of Jeremiah
  22. The Book of Baruch
  23. The Book of Lamentations
  24. The Book of Ezekiel
  25. The Book of Daniel – so all the above were audiobooks.
    They count for The Classics Club and The Books in Translation Challenge
  26. The New Testament, by David Bentley Hart
    I read this new translation.
    It counts for The Classics Club and The Books in Translation Challenge
  27. Less Than Fully Catholic, by Trisha Day

About words and authors:

  1. Le Jourde & Naulleau, by Pierre Jourde and Eric Naulleau
  2. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, by George Saunders
  3. Languages of Truth, by Salman Rushdie
  4. Living With a Dead Language, by Ann Patty
  5. Sur la lecture, by Marcel Proust
    It counts for The Classics Club 
  6. History in English Words, by Owen Barfield
    It counts for The Classics Club 
  7. Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic, by Alice Kaplan

About science:

  1. The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race, by Walter Isaacson

About history:

  1. The Romanov Sisters, by Helen Rappaport

About Japan:

  1. In Praise of Shadows, by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki
    It counts for The Classics Club and The Books in Translation Challenge

On contemporary issues:

  1. The Future of Buildings, Transportation, and Power, by Roger Duncan & Michael E. Webber

About nature:

  1. A Bird Watcher’s Guide to Blue Jays, by Katherine Ponka

Poetry:

  1. The Half-Finished Heaven, by Tomas Tranströmer
  2. The Lost Spells, by Robert MacFarlane & Jackie Morris
  3. Alphabet, by Paul Valéry
  4. Haiku: This Other World, by Richard Wright

I also reviewed 8 books published by Rockridge Press, but I didn’t read these books from A to Z as I would read other books, so I didn’t count them in my statistics.

So really, this was a big nonfiction year for me.
I’m very happy for the diversity of topics as well.

***

What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year?

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain    Languages of Truth

I had to choose two. And it was very difficult. I actually loved a lot titles 2 to 7 in my “words and authors” category above.

What nonfiction books
have you recommended the most?

The Code Breaker

Haiku This Other World

Do you have a particular topic
you’ve been attracted to more this year?
Besides religious topics, words and authors

What are you hoping to get out
of participating in Nonfiction November?
As usual, to get acquainted with more nonfiction readers
and find good titles unknown to me.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE NONFICTION THIS YEAR?

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