WITMonth Day 30 - Books I've read

To be honest, WITMonth has not been all that successful for me this year. A stressful first half (schoolwork), followed by a fairly ill second half left me drained and unable to either read as much as I would have wanted to, or review and post at the pace I had initially planned. But... that's not to say I didn't get some quality reading done in August!

I had the opportunity to re-explore classic poetry by women writers in translation through two collections: Women Poets of Japan (tr. Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi) and Yu Xuanji's poetry in The Clouds Float North (tr. David Young and Jiann I. Lin). Both books were a refreshing change from the long-winded poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (tr. Margaret Sayers Peden), which I also mostly plodded through at the top of the month. All three collections, however, are critical reminders that women have been writing quality literature for a very long time. In the poetry department, I also explored poems by Anna Akhmatova (tr. D. M. Thomas) and Marina Tsvetaeva (translated into Hebrew by Miri Litvak).

But there was more than poetry this WITMonth! I sampled quite a few short story collections as well, most notably Tove Janssons's brilliant The Woman Who Borrowed Memories (tr. Thomas Teal and Silvester Mazzarella), which I've been finding a stylistic contrast to Cubana, a collection of short fiction by Cuban women writers. Jansson's style is fairly minimalist and crisp, while the stories in Cubana feel distinctly heavier and wordier.

In the novel department, we have two main books: First is an Israeli novel by teenager Carmel Ben Naftali ("Stages of Grief", which is not a direct translation but the one provided by the publisher), which is curiously written and uniquely young adult, but also predictably clumsy in its perspective of the world and very immature in its stylings. It's been an interesting experience, if somewhat uncomfortable simply because of the author's youth and inexperience. She shows a lot of potential, though.

The second novel I've been reading this WITMonth is Isabel Allende's classic The House of the Spirits (tr. Magda Bogin). I'm about halfway through but I completely understand Allende's status as a leading voice in Latin American literature now. While I've read her YA fiction in the past (middle school book club choices!), The House of the Spirits has a strength and confidence to it that makes me feel guilty for taking so long to read her more highly regarded titles. Regardless: I'm enjoying The House of the Spirits quite a bit and am glad that this is the novel with which I'll be wrapping up WITMonth.