Reading 2013

Empire of the Inca, Burr Cartwright Brundage

The Incas & Their Ancestors, the Archeology of Peru, Michael E. Moseley

Moche Art & Visual Culture in Ancient Peru, Margaret A. Jackson

& other books on Peru, ceramics, textiles, etc.

* Sky Burial, Xinran

Beyond Sleep, Willem Frederik Hermans

A Brief History of Peru, Christine Hunefeldt

The Tortoises, Veza Canetti (1930s Europe)

An Experiment in Love, Hilary Mantel

Their Heads Are Green Their Hands Are Blue, Paul Bowles (travels in N. African Maghreb recording vanishing ethnic musics)

Epitaph of a Small Winner, Machado de Assis (19th C. Brazilian, brilliant philosophical novel)

The Twin, Gerbrand Bakker (Netherlands)

The Pyramid, Henning Mankell

The Water Beetle, Nancy Mitford essays

Sorrows of Young Werther (& a novella) Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

*Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm

of Vanishing Cultures, Wade Davis

Harry the Locust, Frank Bailey (a Brit leads pest control in

1950s east Africa and the southern Arabian peninsula--

terribly amusing, but you’ll never find a copy:)

The Rift, V. Y. Mudimbe  (Univ. Minnesota 1993)

L’Ecart,, Editions Presence Africaine, 1979.)

A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor (1930s travels of a

very young man on foot across Europe to Istanbul)

The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho

Points and Lines, Seicho Matsumoto

A Visit to Don Ottavio, Sybille Bedford (Mexico, 1950s)

A Journey into Matisse’s South of France, Laura McPhee

Berlin: The Twenties, Rainer Metzger, Christian Brandstatter

A Systems Theory of Religion, Niklas Luhmann (online)

Death of an Irish Tinker, Bartholomew Gill

(dynamic mystery, part of a series)

The Transposed Heads, Thomas Mann

Levitation, Cynthia Ozick -- nice odd stories

London: A Biography, Peter Ackroyd

(long, detailed, but rewarding with buckets of factoids)

Borderline, Janette Turner Hospital

Fludd, Hilary Mantel

Scenes from Village Life, Amos Oz (Israel, lovely writing, as always.)

Soundings, Anita Brookner (art essays)

Anatomy of a Disappearance, Hisham Matar  (Libyan-British writer,

fictionalized autbiography)

1491: the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann

The Last of the Angels, Fadhil al-Azzawi (novel, Iraq)

Learn Japanese …

The Abomination, Paul Golding

The Grid Book, Hannah B. Higgins (a deep history of the grid:

archeology, art, design, urbanism, architecture, social history)

Media Study, Media Practice, Media Pioneers 1973-1990:

Buffalo Heads, Edited by Peter Viebel and Woody Vasulka

The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf, Kathryn Davis

Cathedral, Forge & Water Wheel -- Technology and Invention

in the Middle Ages,  Frances and Joseph Gies

The Cello Player, Michael Kruger

A Brief Life, Juan Carlos Onetti

The Man Who Smiled, Henning Mankell

Japanese grammar books

A Writer at War, Vasily Grossman (Jewish Ukranian writer, sent by Moscow to The Front(s) during WWII. This work was banned in the USSR for decades.)

Thousand Cranes, Yasunari Kawabata

Before the Frost, Henning Mankell

Exotics & Retrospectives, Lafcadio Hearn (Japan circa 1900, by an eccentric émigré)

Small Memories, Jose Saramago

Hallucinations, Oliver Sacks

Sunflower, Geza Konstantinyi

Caucasus, Nicolas Griffin

Recovery, John Berryman

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

The Bones of Paris,  Laurie R. King

Villa Ariadne, Dilys Powell (Crete, Evans, Knossos, etc.)

Saudi Arabia, Heidi Sawfazi

Tailchaser’s Song, Tad Williams (fantasy-adventure, cat protagonists)

God Against the Gods, (struggle between monotheism & polytheism) Jonathan Kirsch

Blue Aubergine, Miral al-Tahawy (Egypt)

The Galosh & Other Stories, Mikhail Zoshchenko (Russian satire, 1920s, brilliant)