3 Novels - César Aira
The Literature Machine - Italo Calvino
Towards the beginning of December I found myself in Foyles thinking about my upcoming fifty book challenge. I love visiting the Tottenham Court Road Foyles - it's massive and packed to the brim with all sorts of amazing books that I just wouldn't pick up in any other shop.
On this particular occasion I spent a lot of time wandering around the shop paying particularly close attention to the alphabet. For some mad reason I had convinced myself that not only should I try and read fifty books next year, but that I should read through an alphabetical list of authors (e.g. two authors beginning with the letter a, followed by two authors beginning with the letter b and so forth). This particular (albeit short-lived) ambition meant that I spent a lot of time browsing authors with surnames beginning with the letters A, B, C and D.
Happily, it wasn't a complete waste of my time. I was lucky enough to stumble across two books that I probably wouldn't have otherwise chosen. The first is a collection of three novels by Argentinian author César Aira, a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015. This collection contains his novel Ghosts, which had particularly caught my eye, but after a little more browsing I saw that this collection was the same price as the individual novel. So not only does this seem like good value for money, but I thought that it might also be a cheeky way to blitz through three novels and get a head start on my challenge.
The second book that I chose is a novel from Italo Calvino, and initially I'd scoped out his books looking for Invisible Cities which I'm keen to re-read. However, I was quite taken by the sound of The Literature Machine; a collection of essays that discuss literarutre, philosophy, politics and past great writers. I'd highly recommend Invisible Cities as an introduction to Calvino's writing, but I can't deny that I'm looking forward to reading something new. I feel as though 341 pages of (academic) non-ficiton might be a struggle to work through in a single week, but perhaps I'll make up some time for myself when I read Aira's novels.
All in all, I'd describe this particular haul as incredibly exciting. I purposefully undertook it before the beginning of 2016 to whet my appetite for the upcoming challenge, and it's safe to say that it's been quite successful!
Have you read any of César Aira or Italo Calvino's writing?
Are there any other authors that you'd recommend adding to my reading list?
Towards the beginning of December I found myself in Foyles thinking about my upcoming fifty book challenge. I love visiting the Tottenham Court Road Foyles - it's massive and packed to the brim with all sorts of amazing books that I just wouldn't pick up in any other shop.
On this particular occasion I spent a lot of time wandering around the shop paying particularly close attention to the alphabet. For some mad reason I had convinced myself that not only should I try and read fifty books next year, but that I should read through an alphabetical list of authors (e.g. two authors beginning with the letter a, followed by two authors beginning with the letter b and so forth). This particular (albeit short-lived) ambition meant that I spent a lot of time browsing authors with surnames beginning with the letters A, B, C and D.
Happily, it wasn't a complete waste of my time. I was lucky enough to stumble across two books that I probably wouldn't have otherwise chosen. The first is a collection of three novels by Argentinian author César Aira, a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015. This collection contains his novel Ghosts, which had particularly caught my eye, but after a little more browsing I saw that this collection was the same price as the individual novel. So not only does this seem like good value for money, but I thought that it might also be a cheeky way to blitz through three novels and get a head start on my challenge.
The second book that I chose is a novel from Italo Calvino, and initially I'd scoped out his books looking for Invisible Cities which I'm keen to re-read. However, I was quite taken by the sound of The Literature Machine; a collection of essays that discuss literarutre, philosophy, politics and past great writers. I'd highly recommend Invisible Cities as an introduction to Calvino's writing, but I can't deny that I'm looking forward to reading something new. I feel as though 341 pages of (academic) non-ficiton might be a struggle to work through in a single week, but perhaps I'll make up some time for myself when I read Aira's novels.
All in all, I'd describe this particular haul as incredibly exciting. I purposefully undertook it before the beginning of 2016 to whet my appetite for the upcoming challenge, and it's safe to say that it's been quite successful!
Have you read any of César Aira or Italo Calvino's writing?
Are there any other authors that you'd recommend adding to my reading list?
