Kanlaon

The Books section of the The Wall Street Journal of Saturday/Sunday, 23 – 24 November 2013 (Self bought it at the airport in Miami, when she and The Man were waiting to board their flight home), was extraordinary.  So many great reviews!

For weeks, self has been wanting to post the list of books she decided to add to her reading list, after reading the issue.  Finally, this evening, while self waits anxiously for Sleepy Hollow to begin, the opportunity arrives.

Without further ado, the list of books that most intrigued self when she read the reviews in the 23-24 November issue of The Wall Street Journal :

Kafka:  The Years of Insight, by Reiner Stach (Princeton University Press):  The reviewer, Gaddy Giddins (What. A. Name) writes, of Stach’s book:  “He locates Kafka in the world, illuminates his secual dread, documents the withering threat of tuberculosis, goes beyond the letters to breathe life into his women . . .  He also details autobiographical elements in his fiction, effectively dramatizing the birth of The Castle.

Farther & Wilder, by Blake Bailey (Knopf):  It’s about Charles Jackson, who was primarily famous as the author of The Lost Weekend, “perhaps the best novel ever written about an alcoholic . . .  He tackled touchy subjects like “the death by inches of a marriage” (in The Fall of Valor) and “perversion and violence” (The Outer Edges).

American Mirror:  The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux):  Self has been fascinated every since she saw the Norman Rockwell exhibit in Sacramento, last year.

Gettysburg:  The Last Invasion, by Allen C. Guelzo (Knopf):  “Mr. Guelzo gives us not just the strategy and a withering assessment of the leading characters but the screams of the wounded and the stench of bodies, both alive and dead.”

Catastrophe 1914, by Max Hastings (Knopf):  “Provides both a background to the war and a gripping account of the first five months of fighting.”

The Guns at Last Light, by Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt):  the final book of Mr. Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy, which “followed the fortunes of America’s sons from their first unsteady steps in North Africa in 1942, through the savage fighting up the leg of Italy, and now finally . . .  onto Normandy’s beaches and forward to the River Elbe, Berchtesgaden and Czechoslovakia in May 1945.”

Countrymen, by Bo Lidegaard (Knopf):  “a beautifully told account of how over 14 days in 1943 almost all of Denmark’s Jews were saved.  Their fellow Danes simply smuggled them on small boats to neutral Sweden.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.