This is about my reading in both May and June, since I read at least two great books in May that I desperately want to praise. So here’s the list of what I read these two months:
Everyday Aesthetics by Yuriko Saito (May 5)
A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr (May 20)
The People of Hemso by August Strindberg (May 26)
Gigi and The Cat by Colette (June 3)
Words are My Matter by Ursula K. Le Guin (June 7)
A Brief History of the Czech Lands by Petr Cornej (June 9)
Daughters by Lucy Fricke (June 10)
B. Proudew by Irena Douskova (June 10)
A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar (June 16)
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki (June 19)
I’ll just focus on four books in particular here, although special shoutouts go to Le Guin’s essays in Words are My Matter and Hisham Matar’s A Month in Siena. I will not stop gushing about Le Guin anytime soon, so I’ll spare the words for now, and my reading of Matar was a reread this time in preparation for a trip to Siena. It is an extremely wonderful book though.
Everyday Aesthetics was the philosophical work around which I based my dissertation. It is a manifesto of recognizing and engaging with the aesthetics of our everyday lives – the simple, the elegant, the cute, the messy. Saito pushes for the study of everyday aesthetics for our personal wellbeing, for our political efficacy, and to simply expand the realm of philosophical aesthetic discussion beyond just art. It is a system of thought that I think many of us need to become familiar with, because the pandemic neutered much of our everyday aesthetic sensibilities behind screens and digital communication.
A Month in the Country emotionally wrecked me a bit. It’s the tale of a WWI veteran, trained as a restorationist, who goes to a small town parish to restore a suspected hidden ancient mural. It is, however, told from the perspective of the same veteran, another 60 years on, looking back at the community and life he made a choice to leave behind. Rather good timing to have read it just now.
Gigi and The Cat is a collection of two novellas (I think I just have a thing for two back-to-back novellas) about a young courtesan in training and then a man who chooses his cat over his new wife. Colette is such a passionate, evocative writer. Reading both these stories was no easy task, despite the shortness of the stories and the wonderful gentle flow the author generates, because you have your heart wholly invested in each character. It became an instant favorite, and I hope to reread it soon.
Kokoro is a tale of a student graduating university (I swear, I picked these books out not knowing these themes), the end of the Meiji dynasty, and one’s personal moral compass. Reading it, in my current state, with my own shared similarities with some of the main character’s traits, felt like engaging in a dialogue. No conversation took place without my having taken part as well, and it challenged me in a way no other fiction really has since The Left Hand of Darkness. The ending however, was structured a bit odd, and I can’t really tell what, if anything, I was meant to feel about it.
Forgive the terseness of writing here. I’m rushing somewhat to get this written for the end of June. Future updates will not be so clunky.