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miércoles, 8 de junio de 2016

The Man Without Qualities Readalong


We'll get back to ye olde book review business soon.  In the meantime, just wanted to invite the more book fiendish among you to consider joining Frances of Nonsuch Book, Anthony of Time's Flow Stemmed and moi in a readalong of Austrian Robert Musil's simultaneously amusing and cerebral modernist masterpiece The Man Without Qualities in June, July and August this summer.  This famously open-ended doorstopper, which clocks in at a whopping 1130 pages in the standard incomplete theatrical release and some 1770 pages in the director's cut spliced together after Musil's demise, has been canonized by the Wall Street Journal as "the third member of the trinity in 20th-century literature, complementing Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past" and lauded by Thomas Mann for sporting "without doubt the greatest writing, ranking with the finest our epoch has to offer"--and that's just from the blurbs on the front and back covers!  Due to the size and scope of the tome, I personally intend to tackle writing about it in bite-sized chunks sometime during the last week of each readalong month; if you care to read along with us, though, please feel free to conform to your own schedule and post or don't post as you like.  Until then, pseudoreality prevails!


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miércoles, 1 de junio de 2016

Spanish Lit Month 2016


As one wag recently put it, it's "an accepted fact" that July is Spanish Literature Month.  Of course, it's an equally accepted fact that July is just around the corner now.  With that in mind, anybody who sees this is invited to join Stu of Winstonsdad's Blog and me for the fourth annual iteration of Spanish Lit Month in July and August this summer.  For those of you to new to Spanish Lit Month, participation is mandatory--but easy.  All you have to do to play along is to read and write about one or more pieces of Spanish language literature or Catalan language literature or Galician language literature (read in the original or in translation) in the month of July and/or August and then let Stu or me know about it so we can collect the links for others to check out.  Although July is the main month for the event as usual, we ran an overtime session in August last year and will do the same this year if anybody's interested in reading along during the bonus month.  FAQ.  What should I read for Spanish Lit Month?  What people read for last year's shindig can be found below.  Plenty of great ideas there.  Another great idea, at least for gluttons for punishment, is to join the La Regenta readalong hosted by our pal Amateur Reader (Tom) of Wuthering Expectations.  Tom pitches Leopoldo "Clarín" Alas' chunkster as "one of the gigantic classics of 19th century Spanish literature" and notes that he intends to read the novel through June and finish it "right in the middle of July, which is as an accepted fact Spanish Literature Month."  Which brings us back to where we started.  Questions?  Don't hesitate to get in touch!


Spanish Lit Month 2016 Readers

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