In order of completion:
1. Muriel Spark. “Loitering With Intent.” Recommended by a clerk at Moe’s when I brought two other Spark books to the counter. This trod familiar ground others of hers did better and concludes my Spark reading for a while.
2. Leonardo Sciascio. “The Moro Affair.” Had seen a TV show about the kidnap/murder of Aldo Moro and had hoped a book would tell me more. This one didn’t. But it came with a separate piece, “The Mystery of Majorana,” about the disappearance of an Italian pre-WW II physicist which I found interesting.
3. Kuzhali Manickavel. “Things We Found During the Autopsy.” Swapped me for a “Schiz” by a fellow in the café who publishes books in English by writers from India. A collection of short stories by a young woman with a punk sensibility which, since I am neither young nor punk, failed to move me.
4. Janet Malcolm. “The Silent Woman.” This is at least the third time I’ve read this. Once when it appeared in “The New Yorker” and once before in book form anyway. It was recently mentioned as Malcolm’s best work, and since I am a great fan of her work, I decided to read it again. It has a lof of good stuff to say about biographies but her “best”…? No way.
5. Han Kang. “We Do Not Part.” When Benj DeMott, the editor at FOM suggested I write about Kang, this novel had recently been published in English. Usually I wait for books to show up “pre-owned” on-line, but a café buddy who works in a bookstore offered me his employees discount. What I think about this and Kang will be available at www.firstofthemonth.org on or about June 1.
6. William Melvin Kelley. “A Drop of Patience.” A gift from a friend who had been a friend of Kelley’s. A disappointing novel about a blind jazz musician. I have read much better things about blindness by sighted people, but I was hoping for an enriching jazz immersion, but jazz was barely touched upon, while many unsatisfactory relationships with women were discussed, a subject many men were writing about in more depth than Kelley managed.
7. Bora Chung. “Cursed Bunny.” When the publisher of books from India (See: #3 above) learned I was reading Han (See: #5 above), he suggested I read this collection of stories by a younger South Korean woman. Some were quite good, if not my usual thing.
8-9. George W. S. Trow. “In the Context of No Context” and “The Harvard Black Rock Forest.”
When I ordered “Context,” it was so I could read Trow’s profile of Ahmet Ertegon, which I thought was included, but it turned out I was getting a later edition which, while not containing the profile, included an introduction which was about as long as “Context” itself. So then I ordered the earlier edition which had the profile, now called “Within That Context, One Style,” which I have now finished (Hence the “½” above). When I mentioned to Benj DeMott I was reading Trow, he said I had to read “Forest.” Trow is an excellent writer and intriguing thinker who manages to convince you he has important things to say while expressing them in a style that is often impenetrable.
10. Kate Atkinson. “Murder at the Sign of the Rook.” Atkinson’s “Jackson Brodie” series is the only crime fiction I read, so it’s nice to have him back. The book is amusing and entertaining, though Brodie only appears on about half its pages. He should be met, I believe, in sequential order, beginning with “Case Histories.”
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.