October 2016

Started as a Vietnamese folktale. Now it's a deeply personal story. Lan and Nam both come from Vietnam but their paths couldn't be more different. This autobiographical novel takes that old fairy tale structure and fills it with real migration, real struggle, real identity crisis.

Vallejo is Colombian, gay, born in '42 in Medellin—cartel central. He's the bad boy of Colombian lit. Scandalized Bogotá's Catholic elite by being unapologetically himself. This book hits hard with its raw honesty and refusal to play nice.

Young, gorgeous, elite-school grads making bank in advertising and PR. They call themselves "The Dominants" with that cocky youth energy that thinks it owns the world. Then reality checks in. Hard.

I love when existential mysteries suddenly click. Saw a question on another blog weeks ago: "Ranger or Morelli?" Made zero sense then. Now I get it. This bounty hunter series is addictive pulp fiction with actual personality.

Next book club meeting is about cooking in literature. Made myself a reading list: Barbery's "Gourmet Rhapsody", Desarthe's "Eat Me", Zola's "The Belly of Paris"... Food as character, food as culture, food as memory.

It arrived! Yesterday after a brutal commute (transport strike = walking + packed metro), found a note from my concierge. Package waiting downstairs. This morning I tore into it. Book swap magic.

Updating my list for the Scandinavian lit swap. Everything Nordic I've read: Andersen's tales, Dinesen's "Out of Africa", all the way through modern crime fiction. This region produces serious storytelling.

Under a stone bridge grow rosemary and a rose, tangled together. Every night beautiful Esther dreams the emperor loves her. Classic impossible love between two people from different worlds. Perutz makes it feel inevitable and devastating.

Best part of a swap? Preparing the package. The random draw gave me someone whose profile sparked immediate ideas. I went all in on the curation. This is the fun part.

First time reading Narayan. Only picked up this memoir because it's in the excellent Serpent à Plumes "Motifs" collection. Reads like a novel. Brings Southern India to life through one man's century.