There but for the - Ali Smith

A novel that I started to read on my return journey from Bolivia this Christmas.

I highly doubt that one can appreciate a novel, or a movie, or anything really, while on an intercontinental flight in economy class on New Year's Eve while travelling with two young daughters. Also, I've probably read too many Ali Smith novels recently (more on those later, as I work my way backwards through the list of the books that I've read over the last three years).

There but for the is a typical Ali Smith novel for me, but its witticisms fell flat for me, and I've probably started to have enough of some of her likeable smart misfits. Yet, the book is set in Greenwich and along roads and buildings that I can see from my flat, and I now won't be able to enter the foot tunnel without thinking about Ali Smith, so after all it was worth the read.

And obviously there's a really good chance that if I hadn't read this book while on a flight, or if this was my first Ali Smith novel, I would have found it wonderful. Sadly, I read this book while on a flight, and it was the latest in a long list of Ali Smith novels for me.

Flights - Olga Tokarczuk

  

 

I try to use my Italian library subscription to read books originally written either in Italian or in a language that I don't speak. Having read dozens of Italian novels throughout 2022, I decided to start 2023 with something else, and opted for the 2018 Nobel Prize winner.

And I spent a few hundred pages wondering why she won a Nobel Prize.

Or why this book got published really.

I found a number of her pseudo-reflections on her approach to life and travels to be pretentiously and unoriginally new-agey.

I also repetedly found my mind wandering off as I read a 10-line "short story" and managed to retain a little less than zero of it by the following page.

To give credit where credit is due, I rather liked the story of Chopin's funeral, but that's about it.

At the end of the day though, it's probably a good thing I don't get to decide who wins the Nobel Prize, otherwise American authors would be even more over-represented...

 

World Cup Wishes - Eshkol Nevo

 

The front cover of the English edition of this book was so profoundly ugly that I had to use the Italian one for the blog (which is ultimately fine, also because I read the book in Italian after all...).

At first I found it funny that this author's first name was actually the surname of the former Israeli Prime Minister, then I realized that his first name is actually the surname of his grandfather, the former Israeli Prime Minister.

I didn't have great expectations from this novel, as I hadn't particularly liked Three Floors Up, but World Cup Wishes was a very pleasant surprise, and so far is without a doubt the best book I've read in 2023 (yes, it's February 7th, but still, it's best book out of the six that I've read).

Why did I like it, you ask? After all, it's a pretty normal story of love and friendship, against the backdrop of Tel Aviv and Haifa. But I like a bildungsroman that tells the story of someone who is still full of flaws in his 30s, and I like a bildungsroman that tells the story of someone in his 30s in the first place (now try to guess my age...). And the decision to present the book as a manuscript marginally edited by its (fictional) author's friend plays nicely with the mind of the reader, who can't take anyone's word and is left wondering about who's right and who's wrong, but most of all develops an interest for the lives of all characterts, despite not really liking all of them.

The Wall - John Lanchester

 

Over the last three years I haven't become illiterate and I haven't lost the ability to connect to the internet. I just didn't update this blog, but I'll now try to make amends. Now that most of my reading is done on my iPad, and now that my iPad stays in the office on Monday and Tuesday nights I'll hopefully be able to find some time to play catch-up with the novels that I read through multiple lockdowns and the birth of my second daughter...

Over the last three years I've discovered the joys of library ebook loans. Southwark gives me some, Westminster gives me more, and, incredible as it may sound, my small Italian hometown gives me the best service of all three.

Over the last three years I've read almost all the novels from the Southwark Library that I found somewhat interesting. The Wall was something that I wouldn't have picked by its synopsis, but I decided to read it because all the John Lanchester books I had read I had found to be somewhere between "easy and cute" and "brilliant".

Over the last three years I've read a number of dystopian novels, like this one, and remained ambivalent to most of them (though this one has the advantage of making me ask myself "would I survive in a similar situation, and if so how?).

Over the last three years, dystopian novels haven't changed that much in tone. But that's probably true of dystopian novels over the last century. And in the real world the climate threat hasn't changed that much either probably, but now it feels much more real, and this novel makes it scarily so.