Weekend Musings!

Beaten at my own game ... by a 4-year-old!

So, just when I am all the way congratulating myself on reading 120 books last year, I soon find out that I am royally beaten at my own game; out-read by a 4-year-old girl, who has already read 4000 books! I kid you not! And …. She got to be ‘librarian of the day’ at none other than the Library of Congress. Check out this amazing girl’s story HERE.

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Small & Beautiful ...

​With schools now back on, many are returning with beautiful stories and photos of things they’ve done and places they’ve been in the three-week winter holidays. Particularly gorgeous were the photos sent in by my wonderful friend Maria Andrea Ghersi. While holidaying in Venice, Italy just after the New Year with her son Mateo, she happened upon these fantastic miniature books and furniture in the San Marco district and thought of me. Here I share them with you too…

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Try Before You Buy

Two day ago Pushkin Press released the stunning new paperback of ‘Summer Before the Dark’ by Volker Weidermann, translated by Carol Brown Janeway. A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, enthralling, masterfully-drawn portrait of a coterie of artists and intellectuals taking shelter against the horrors of the Second World War.
 
Estranged friends Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth form the centrepiece of this fragile haven, as this circle of luminaries try to weather the storms raging in Europe. If you’d like to read the first chapter, click HERE.

Aura Xilonen’s ‘The Gringo Champion’, translated by Andrea Rosenberg is to be released on January 19 by Europa Editions.  Winner of the Mauricio Achar Prize for Fiction, it is the story of Liborio who has to leave Mexico, a land that has taught him little more than a keen instinct for survival. He crosses the Rio Bravo, like so many others, to reach "the promised land." And in a barrio like any other, in some gringo city, this illegal immigrant - and boxer - tells his story and how he finds himself on a path that just might save him.
 
It's been described as "Million Dollar Baby "meets "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," and a ‘story of migration and hope that is as topical as it is timeless’.
 
If you’d like to read an excerpt click HERE.
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