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So looking forward to warnmer days, but even colder temperatures are coming up for this week…
Here is what I posted this past week:
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- Wednesday: The Classics Club: 26 questions in 2026
- Thursday: My Bookbound 2025 book chain
- Friday: Friday Book Hooks #4
Another week with a great and a meh book:
Greek Lessons,
by Han Kang
Literary fiction
Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
희랍어 시간 was first published in 2011
Narrated by Greta Young and Earl T. Kim
2023
192 pages / 4H36
I started this a while ago, dragged my feet, and didn’t manage to finish it in 2025!
I enjoyed a lot The Vegetarian, and the synopsis of Greek Lessons showed me this one would be about language and growing between two cultures, so I thought it would be a perfect fit for me.
And Borges, an author I admire, is mentioned in the very first line! So this ws all very promising.
I liked the passages in Greek or about the Greek language, as well as the lines showing the physical aspect of speaking, with breath and lips, and the power of language:
Now and then, words would thrust their way into her sleep like skewers, startling her awake several times a night.
But then, something happens to the girl, and she loses her physical ability to speak.
Some readers say this is Kang’s weakest book, I should have listened to them and skipped it.
At one point, I almost DNFed it, but was always hoping it would improve. It didn’t, for me at least.
It got muddled, with too many memories from both main characters, with a mix of first and their person narration.
I switched from reading to listening, but it didn’t make it better.
Plus, I thought both audio narrators were rather dull, and the male narrator’s voice was always less loud that the woman’s – which didn’t really make sense to me, as his problem is blindness. So I always had to adjust my volume when they switched narrators..
I guess the main message is that language can be both a prison and a bridge. But it got delivered in a painful way for me.
Call for the Dead (George Smiley #1),
by John Le Carré
Narrated by Simon Vance
Mystery
1961
144 pages / 4H35
Listened for my BookBound project
Counts for Hundred Years Hence Reading Challenge (#HYH26) (hosted by Neeru)
For the 1961 club
and for my Classics Club 5th list
This is one of my husband’s favorite author, and I had only read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the #3 in this series.
As this one was published in 1961, I decided to start with this series for the 1961 club.
It is lovely listening again to Simon Vance, one of the best narrators out there.
I’m just going to give you MY VERDICT at this point. You’ll have to wait until April to read my full review.
MY VERDICT:
The suspicious suicide pulled me in. And I found Smiley’s character captivating.
I’ll definitely keep reading/listening to the rest of the series.
“John le Carré classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him — and his hero, British Secret Service Agent George Smiley, who is introduced in this, his first novel — unprecedented worldwide acclaim.
George Smiley had liked Samuel Fennan, and now Fennan was dead from an apparent suicide. But why? Fennan, a Foreign Office man, had been under investigation for alleged Communist Party activities, but Smiley had made it clear that the investigation — little more than a routine security check — was over and that the file on Fennan could be closed. The very next day, Fennan was found dead with a note by his body saying his career was finished and he couldn’t go on. Smiley was puzzled…”
Among others:
This Perfect Day,
by Ira Levin
scifi
1970
309 pages
Counts for my Classics Club 5th list
and for #VintageSciFiMonth
Well, this was not planned, but a friend at church lent me this book. As it’s vintage scifi, it’s perfect for this month.
Interstingly, the context of humans turned into machines that I mentioned above is also here.
I have really enjoyed Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying, but I had no idea he also wrote scifi!
This is brilliant! I love the suspense, when the hero fails before maybe succeeding?
And a reverse of things when the better world he is hoping for might actually be our current one? It promises great discussions with my friend.
“The plot of this book takes place in a future which is perhaps not very distant. All the nations are now controlled by a giant computer, hidden under the Alps. The human ones are programmed from the time of their birth – at least those who were authorized to be born – and are regularly treated by drugs which immunize them against diseases, but also against initiative and curiosity.
There are, however, rebels…”
Out of the Silent Planet
(The Space Trilogy #1),
by C.S. Lewis
Narrated by Geoffrey Howard
scifi
1938
160 pages / 5H28
Listening for #VintageSciFiMonth
Counts for my Classics Club 5th list
The same church friend who lent me This Perrect Day also bought several volumes of The Space Trilogy for several of us to read it together!
So glad to finally readthis one!
I’m actually kind of alternating reading and listening to it.
I had an interesting experience with the audiobook. The narrator’s name didn’t ring a bell. But as soon as I started the book, I was struck by how much his voice sounded like Ralph Cosham’s. Cosham narrated many of the first books in the Gamache series by Louise Penny, and I so much enjoy his voice.
I thought it odd that two persons could have the exact same voice, as I was sure I was listening to “Gamache.”
So I did some research, and it ends up Ralph Cosham did record some books under the name Geoffrey Howard!
So it’s a delight listening to this book narrated by him.
I’m at 60%, where we understamd what the silent planet is, and why it’s called that way.
It seems no film adaptation was made on it, which makes sense, as there’s so much deep philosophical questions in the background.
I also enjoy all the input about language. Coming from C.S. Lewis, it makes sense.
“Dr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars.
His captors are plotting to plunder the planet’s treasures and plan to offer Ransom as a sacrifice to the creatures who live there.”
Kappa,
by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Fantasy
Translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Bownas
河童 was first published in 1927
January 1, 2000 by Tuttle
144 pages
Counts for Japanese Literature challenge 19
for my Classics Club 5th list
abd for my BookBound project
I have already enjoyed several stories by Akutagawa:
Rashomon and In a Grove
Hell Screen and The Spider’s Thread
So I’m very curious about Kappa:
“When first published, Kappa was perceived varyingly as a children’s story, a sweeping and satirical criticism of Japanese society, and a socialistic analysis – but this important work from one of Japan’s most prolific short story writers seems to defy literary classification.
Written shortly before Akutagawa’s suicide, as he became increasingly obsessed with his own unhappiness as well as the hallucinations and delusions that assailed him, Kappa takes place somewhere between dream and reality.
Kappa is told in the first person from the perspective of an institutionalized madman, identified only as Patient No. 23.
Ghost stories and the supernatural often provided inspiration for Akutagawa’s writing, and Kappa draws its name from a creature in Japanese folklore known for dragging unwary children to their deaths in rivers.
Kappa is a striking work from the disturbed though brilliant mind of one of Meiji-era Japan’s most prominent intellectuals.”
Reading
Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson
2026 readalong organized by Neglected Books
Lola, by Superbus
20 years old already, a bit of French nostalgia
Lock In (Lock In #1)
by John Scalzi
scifi
2014
336 pages
There are so many books by Scalzi I want to read.
And now I have finally the perrect occasion: a readalng in February with the At Boundary’s Edge Discord Book club.
“Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever and headaches.
But for the unlucky one percent – and nearly five million souls in the United States alone – the disease causes “Lock In”: Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.
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Words And Peace