Anthony
@timesflow
Rootless cosmopolitan | Reading wildly | 'Obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes.' — De Quincey | ‘. . . the importance of being at all times occupied with literary activities’. – Flann O’Brien.
Deeply enjoyable, slowing my pace to stay with the grace and elegance of the essays.
Enjoying Nabokov's deliciously eccentric commentary to Eugene Onegin, prior to reading James Falen's translation.
‘I adjusted the glasses to the front of each of us and reflected on the solemnity of the occasion.’ Flann O’Brien, ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ [I know porter≠ Guinness stout. Perhaps in Dublin I can have ‘my first taste of porter’.]
Unable to reconcile my need to read with the insatiable demands of chess, I've retired from the latter. Currently in Ireland with the rather wonderful Flann O'Brien (my first).
I'm very pleased that @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social are bringing Hélène Bessette into English via Kate Brigg's translations. 'Lili is Crying was one of last year's favourites and I expect no lesser experience with 'Twenty Minutes of Silence'.
Long harboured an ambition to read the Zibaldone cover to cover, following every allusion and reference to its source. Tried and failed, and tried again.
Sunday: Josef Koudelka’s diaries (to accompany Melissa Harris’s visual biography). ‘DON’T OWN ANYTHING; DON‘T BUY ANYTHING. DON’T BE A MATERIALIST.’
Extraordinary how the shape of this story emerges, to the extent that it does. It might be quite brilliant. I’m going to read it again immediately.
But next, another Antoine Volodine, being read in the order I track them down.
One of my Much Anticipated 2026 books: 'East of Dreams' by Nastassja Martin, author of the brilliant 'In the Eye of the Wild'.
Pleased that Granta 175 features excerpts from Lars Norén's five-volume diaries, translated from the Swedish by Sigrid Rausing. (Hope for a selected diaries volume at some point.)
Starting this on strong recommendation: Volodine's major novel, apparently the fullest entry into his 'post-exoticism' universe. (Zuckerman's translation much praised.)
The contents page of Denise Riley's 'Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect' suggests an ideal companion to follow James Elkins' brilliant 'A Short Introduction to Anneliese' (what words do to us and fail to do). It was either that or a cover-to-cover reading of Fowler's (still tempting).
What chances a translation into English of Hans Haider’s forthcoming biography of Friederike Mayröcker? @wordkunst.bsky.social
James Elkins: “A Short Introduction to Anneliese: the fascination and insanity of complex books. Begins with a 200 page rant. . . . At its center is a hundred-page chapter in which Anneliese talks about long books.”
Reminded of Larkin’s poem ‘Coming’ today with the longer, lighter Spring evening
Another pastoral English classic, paired well with 'Cold Comfort Farm', though Lee is sincere where Gibbons is subversive.
Stella Gibbons prose is genuinely accomplished. A bit of an outlier for me, but it is very good at what it does. Wonderful control. I'll be rereading, I imagine.