Sherbert Illuminated

I am proud, fellow readers, of my accomplishments this week. I read eight books! This is admittedly the result of having tons of free time, but I feel proud of my progress nonetheless. I also got back my copy of Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night . Although I read that book a week ago, I will include it alongside this week’s reviews: Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona Stories from the perspectives of Black South African girls and women before the end of Apartheid. The most successful piece are the innovative monologues which peel back the pretense of the hypocritical medem-maid dynamic, but the collection as a whole is disappointingly conventional. “Now, I have to be careful I don’t find myself in another soup. Women like talking about each other and then forget they said what, and before you know it you will be answering questions about what you said to whom about whom. I have no time for that. But I would be lying if I said their stories are uninteresting...

Fellow readers, I messed up this week. I read six books—the best rate this year—but in order to conserve space in my suitcase I shipped one of them home before transcribing my favorite quotes. I’ll include my review of it in next week’s summary. In the meantime, I’m still pretty proud of the five books I managed to read: The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro Upon arriving in an anonymous Central European city, a famous pianist finds himself embroiled in a mess of critical disputes, bourgeois functions and failing marriages. I am unsure whether this book seeks to destroy the soul on purpose or if I am merely too young to understand it, but either way it is utterly unlovable. “Is it any wonder at all that in this little town of yours, you have all these problems, this crisis as some of you choose to term it? That so many of you are so miserable and frustrated? Does it puzzle anyone…look at the way you treat each other” (271)   Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz The arrival of a Tolstoy-t...

Fellow readers, I am proud to announce my participation in a new challenge: longform reading. At the urging of my very nice Discord friends, I have elected to page through Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick over the course of the next two months, discussing plot and character along the way. So far I am enjoying both work s—I expect the latter to become one of my favorites—but they are not the only things I have been reading. This week I managed to complete five books: Ormeshadow by Priya Sharma A boy comes of age on a hostile farm rumored to be the resting place of an ancient dragon. What could have been a tender, devastating fairy tale is incinerated by the dullest prose I’ve ever read. “Sleep and death are not the same” (151) A Country Doctor’s Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov In a collection of short stories inspired by the author’s experience at a rural hospital on the eve of the Russian Revolution, a newly-qualified doctor comes into his own. Bulgakov’s b...

Fellow Readers, I fear I may disappoint you: this week, I only read two books. The first was a buddy read with a new friend, and I had the opportunity to annotate as I was reading. I thoroughly recommend marking up the books you own, to pick out favorite lines and interesting themes. The other was a play from one of my favorite modern playwrights. I enjoyed them both: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce Against the urging of his friends and mentors, author avatar Stephen Dedalus grows from a confused child into a freethinking artificer. While many passages in this archetypical Bildungsroman are scarily accurate to my own experience, any personal affection I have for Joyce or his prose is overwhelmed by respectful awe.  “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can using for my defense the only a...

Good afternoon, fellow readers! This week I read books from many different genres and eras, from a Baroque treatise to a modern screwball comedy. One common thread in these works was the human tendency to obscure, knowingly or unknowingly, the truth. I hope my reviews aren’t too much of a misrepresentation: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco As the apocalypse looms, two monks investigate the lethal secrets of a wealthy abbey. One of those books which is more smart than enjoyable, but mystery fans will love the labyrinthine plot and fellow nerds will admire the semiotic shenanigans. “It is a hard thing for this old monk, on the threshold of death, not to know whether the letter he has written contains some hidden meaning, or more than one, or many, or none at all” (610)   Hopkins by Gerard Manley Hopkins The poetry (and selected prose) of the Victorian poet-priest famous for his use of sprung rhythm. Where every other Victorian poet composes their lines, Hopkins discovers them. “...

Fellow readers, today was a week of plays! I read four books this week, and three of them were scripts. The last one was a book of essays that I really enjoyed. Since I spent this week travelling, the fast pace of the stories helped me stay busy: The Strong Breed by Wole Soyinka Pursued by his in-laws, an outsider relives the events that led him to abandon his Yoruba community and become the scapegoat for a foreign village. The plot is genuinely thrilling, but I wish Soyinka had lingered a little longer on the pathos of his female characters, who perpetuate (or fail to prevent) the bloody climax of the play. “EMAN: A man must go on his own, where no one can help him, and test his strength. Because he may find himself one day sitting alone in a wall round such as that. In there, my mind could hold no other thought. I may never have such moments again to myself. Don’t dare come to steal any more of it” (591) Roosters by Milcha Sanchez Scott A Hispanic-American family is (almost) severe...

Hi, fellow readers! School is almost over (thank goodness!) and summer reading has begun. As I mentioned in my last post, I have altered my reviewing style for this summer. Instead of writing full-length reviews, I am posting weekly recaps of everything I read. This is the first one. This week, I finished a book and two plays: Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki As the Meiji Era draws to a close, a young student uncovers the tragic past of an older man known only as “Sensei.” Meredith Mckinney’s clean, beautiful translation sweeps over Sōseki’s quiet little story like a searchlight scanning the soft underside of a stormcloud —and damn, what a storm! “Now I will wrench open my heart and pour its blood over you. I will be satisfied if, when my own heart has ceased to beat, your breast houses new life” (124) The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman The town of Laramie, Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in 1998, bears witness to a group of actor-anthropologists. This play reminds me o...