#20BooksofSummer (more like 10): Berlin and Romania

It’s a wonder what a little ambition and focus can achieve – I’ve now read two more books that fit into my #20BooksofSummer category, and, since my next one is Dream of the Red Chamber, which is a bit massive, it’s just as well that I can write two more reviews now (and that I’ve in fact chosen to do only 10 Books of Summer). The reviews will be quite brief, because, to be honest, neither of the two books wowed me. I think they were both trying to achieve more in the terms of social or philosophical commentary and that affected the flow of the story or the characterisation.

Philip Hensher: Pleasured, HarperPerennial, 1998

Described as a ‘literary and cinematic, intimate and epic’ ambitious novel, this one is about the year 1989 in Berlin through the eyes of two men and a young woman who happen to come together on New Year’s Eve through a car share trip from Cologne to Berlin. Very similar in subject matter to Sven Regener’s book, it describes a drifting sort of lifestyle, and the major historical event here too gets relegated to the background while the self-absorbed characters worry about their personal lives.

The difference here, however, is that the characters do have some political aims – to fight capitalism and gentrification by throwing paint, blood and pig’s heads in cafes, for example, or bringing about the fall of the GDR by getting East Berlin hooked on drugs. Needless to say, both misguided actions descend into farce. The cafe owners are Turkish so the incident is blamed on right-wing groups. Friedrich cares more about money than politics, so he decides to substitute the Ecstasy pills with paracetamol, and run away with the money from Mr Picker, the rather shady Englishman who so desperately longs for the fall of the GDR.

Although the author does seem to have an eye for describing the streets and bars of Berlin at the time, his characters seem a little less convincing and at times a bit of a caricature. However, there’s no denying that some of the dialogue is quite funny – the kind of humour that would appeal to English people though, rather than Germans, which is why it feels a little unrealistic to me.

Here’s one of the funniest scenes from the book, when the Englishman Picker and the German Friedrich are brainstorming ways to bring about the downfall of the GDR. Can you spot which one of them feels more English?

‘Better to use something very small, that pretty soon you could persuade them they couldn’t do without.’ [said Friedrich]

‘Drugs.’

Friedrich looked at Picker; he seemed overwhelmingly excited with his excellent idea…

‘Not very moral, of course.’

‘No, but perfect. You know East Germany.’

‘I think so.’

‘You know what they lack in the DDR.’

‘Freedom. Fun. Money. Food. Whatever. Go on.’

‘Pleasure.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘So anyway,’ Picker started. ‘We find some really reliable seller of drugs…’

‘A dealer?’

‘Sorry, can you say the word?’

‘Dealer,’ Friedrich said carefully. Picker got out a small red notebook from his pocket, from which a stub of pencil on a string dangled. He made a little note… ‘Spell it, please. I don’t know the word,’ he said. Friedrich spelt it. ‘That’s the English word,’ Picker said.

Laura T. Ilea: N-am chef să mor (I don’t feel like dying), Cartier, 2026

When I said the book is set in Romania, actually, most of it is set elsewhere: Montreal, Machu Picchu, the US and some South American jungle. The author is Romanian but has been living in Canada for quite a while, and her main protagonist, the 42 year old journalist Anne Legendre, is in exactly the same situation. Her parents are still in Romania, and her much-loved father has been ill for quite some time. She is a single mum (we find out very little about her son’s father) and her 19 year old son seems to be succumbing to the influence of the manosphere.

The author does capture a certain malaise of a contemporary 40-something woman stuck between cultures, with her elderly parents on a different continent, who has sacrificed family for her career and is now worried this may have caused her son’s estrangement, and who fears that this may be her last chance to have another child, although she has no truly suitable candidate to be the father of her second child.

So far, so familiar, and I thought the whole ayahuasca scene and other extreme travel accounts were the author’s effort to show how well she can keep up with those Western trends. Perhaps this type of soul-searching is less familiar to Romanian readers, but to me it’s something I’ve grown a little bored with after seeing it so often in essays, autofiction and films.

Where the book does succeed, or at least where it moves me most, is the way she calls her home country ‘my father’s country’ and associates it with the childhood trips they used to take together. There are lyrical descriptions of moments of bonding… but she is also realistic about how much she has distanced herself from Romania. [My rapid and rough translation below.]

I was on the plane going to Montreal and was saying loud and clear how glad I was that I was able to escape. Because, no matter that it was coursing through my veins, my father’s country was still rejecting me. With its innate resistance towards foreigners, towards women, towards minorities, with its children who were living without parents, with the parents who were working themselves to exhaustion abroad, with its violence and anger, with its frustrated people, who rejected political and environmental issues, because they wanted to punish corrupt politicians. That was their only joy. My son couldn’t understand why my heart would skip a beat every time I heard my language and how I’d take part in futile demonstrations, without growing tired or despairing.

I was reading this book to see if it might be suitable to pitch to a publisher to be translated, but I don’t think I’m passionate enough about it to attempt that. It was interesting enough to see how contemporary Romanian fiction is embedding all those foreign influences (and relatable as a Romanian a little older than the main protagonist, living abroad, with inreasingly fragile elderly parents far away), but it’s not as outstanding as some other projects which I’ve been peddling around for a while and still haven’t had any takers.

#SixDegrees of Separation June 2026

I can never resist participating in what is probably one of my favourite bookish memes to write and to read on other people’s blogs – the Six Degrees of Literary Separation – or wild association – as hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best.

This month we start off with an old favourite author of mine – a must-read for anyone who grew up in Vienna – Stefan Zweig and his posthumously published fragment of a novel which has been translated as The Post Office Girl.

That is a gift for my first link, which is to another famous posthumously published book, one of my favourite books ever, which I have in multiple translations. It’s The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and it’s probably not its first appearance on my six degrees post. I’ve even written a post about the various covers. It’s a shame that one of my favourite covers is NOT by one of my favourite translators.

The next link is to another book featuring a giant cat – Bagheera in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. Long before I read the book with my sons, I loved the animated film and still know every word to each of the songs. The live action remake wasn’t too bad, compared to all the other live actions which followed.

Speaking of animations, I recently rewatched the definitely NOT for children Perfect Blue on the big screen, but I haven’t read the book it is based on Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis by Yoshikazu Takeuchi. It seems a bit hard to find in English translation, although there is a sequel to it which is more readily available on Abe Books, for instance.

For my next link, I’ll stick to books with blue covers rather than simply the word ‘blue’ in the title. I believe I read this one but cannot remember much about it since I didn’t review it at the time, which is a shame. It’s The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman.

Lighthouses and lighthouse keepers play an important part in the Stedman book, but I avoided the obvious link with the Moomins, which I probably have used many times already in a Six Degrees post. So instead I opted for the lighthouse designer/engineer featured in Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss, probably the first book by Sarah Moss which I ever read. An intriguing historical novel featuring Cornwall, Japan, a flawed marriage and lighthouses – what more could one want?

For my final link, I’ll admit somewhat shamefacedly to a mistake of mine. I keep mixing up the title of the Sarah Moss novel with another one by Valeria Luiselli, namely Lost Children Archive. I still haven’t read it, although I eagerly downloaded it when it first came out. Other than the title, there is no similarity at all between the two books.

So this month my Six Degrees of Literary Travels have taken me to Russia, India, Japan, Australia, Japan again and Cornwall, and the United States. Where will your Six Degrees take you?

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Can’t Believe I’ve STILL Not Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl and I occasionally join in when I can.

The topic this week is: Books I Can’t Believe I’ve Never Read.  These can be super popular books you’re surprised you haven’t read yet, books that have been on your to-read list forever, review copies you’ve been sitting on for a decade, books you were so excited to get your hands on and haven’t read yet. I’ve got quite a few of those, that I was so adamant I needed to acquire IMMEDIATELY and then they never made it off my shelves onto my bedside table. But I’ll also add another sub-category: ‘Books other people couldn’t believe I hadn’t read, so I had to do it and rather regretted it afterwards’.

The three that fall into this last sub-category (and that will teach me never to rely on buzz alone) are:

Now for the more interesting ones, that I look forward to reading… some day… Many of these are on my Kindle, because out of sight means out of mind.

  • Don Winslow: The Cartel – a Netgalley request which has been lingering there for 11 years now!
  • Joyce Carol Oates: The Dollmaster and Other Tales of Terror – I’m still trying to find a way in to reading this author, and I thought short stories might be an easier start
  • Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad – ten years on my Kindle, keep hearing good things about it
  • Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Refugees – you know how I can’t resist a novel about immigrants, but why have I not got around to reading it?
  • Bernardine Evaristo: Girl, Woman, Other – have even seen the author talk a couple of times and loved other books by her, but somehow…
  • Kapka Kassabova: To the Lake – Balkanic history is certainly something I like reading about
  • Cheon Myeong-Kwan: Whale – I was waiting for the buzz to die down and then forgot about it – but it’s only been three years, a youth on my list!

#20BooksofSummer: Japan and Berlin

I’m setting off at high speed, because I fear I will be slowing down dramatically later on. I started reading these two books in May but finished them on 1st of June, so they fall into my approximate and very lazy #20BooksofSummer plans.

  1. Sven Regener: Berlin Blues, transl. John Brownjohn, Vintage, 2004

I had no idea that Sven Regener was a musician, but it turns out that Berlin Blues (called Herr Lehmann in German, far less evocative) is his first novel, published in 2001. He adapted it as a screenplay and later wrote a number of prequels and sequels to the Lehmann story.

The story is set in summer/autumn of 1989 in West Berlin, when you’d think that people could feel something explosive in the air. However, Frank Lehmann (jokingly called Herr (Mr) Lehmann by his friends, because word had got around that he’d soon turn thirty) is more concerned with his personal life: he’s working at a Kreuzberg bar, he’s not made much of himself, he’s not very successful with women either, and he’s told his parents he is a manager at a restaurant because he doesn’t want to disappoint them. He drifts into a vague relationship with the chef Katrin, and he goes out drinking with his best friend Karl, who also works at the bar but aspires to be an artist.

The aimless, ambitionless drifter lifestyle and series of linked anecdotes of city life and types reminded me very much of the earlier Berlin novel Fabian by Erich Kästner. This too is a depiction of a stagnant city and a stagnant group of people, perhaps less desperately poor and violent than in the 1930s. The terms that best describe Herr Lehmann are probably ‘hapless loser’. He overthinks everything and ends up in farcical situations. The book opens with a hilarious drunken encounter with a dog. Then there is the chapter where he tries to get on time to his parents’ hotel on the Kudamm and everything goes wrong. He also fails miserably in his attempt to visit East Berlin to meet his long-lost aunt. The fall of the Wall is a sidenote in the final scene – less impressive than shown on TV. The dialogue is often full of banter and in-jokes which must have been a challenge to translate – and not just to an English-speaking audience, but possibly to a lot of the rest of Germany as well, who had not experienced that particular hothouse of encircled West Berlin populated by misfits and loafers in the 1980s.

Yet there are serious moments too in all of this absurdity. Karl gets anxious about the works he has to produce for an upcoming exhibition and starts behaving erratically. It’s Lehmann who tries to take him home to rest and ultimately ends up taking him to the hospital – then realises that Karl has no one else to help, and that he knows nothing about his family or where he’s from. The drinking buddies are actually not all that close, relationships come and go and linger in a limbo, and it’s easy to get lost in the big city.

This is the evocation of a particular disengaged generation ”that came of age between the crushing of the Baader-Meinhof underground and the demolition of the Wall’ (as the blurb on the back describes this), and it’s interesting to compare this with the chic expats thirty years later portrayed in Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection.

2. Murata Kiyoko: A Woman of Pleasure, transl. Juliet Winters Carpenter, Footnote Press, 2024

This is my homage to the translation skills of Juliet Winters Carpenter, who translated many of my favourite Japanese books by women writers (Enchi Fumiko, Tawara Machi, Minae Mizumura) and also the newest translation of one of my favourite novels of all time, No Longer Human by Dazai Osamu. A Woman of Pleasure book was published in Japan in 2013 and won the Yomiuri Prize there, but it’s historical fiction, set in 1903 in Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu. Fifteen year old Aoi Ichi stems from a family of women divers (known as ama) and fishermen from Iwojima. Her family are very poor and sell her off to a luxury brothel in Kumamoto, where she is teamed with the reigning queen and highest earner of the establishment, known as the ‘oiran’ – and expected to become one herself.

The other girls are surprised, since she seems very uncouth and can barely speak in intelligible Japanese. However, the Shinonome brothel is a touch more enlightened and respectable than others: the girls are sent to school to learn to read and write, in addition to also learning about sexual techniques. They are not expected to start prostitution until the age of 17, they are allowed to rest on their ‘red silk days’ (when they are on their period) and they are regularly checked for venereal diseases.

However, Ichi is not quite the submissive, downtrodden type and her non-conformity means she forfeits her chance to become an oiran, and becomes an ordinary prostitute instead. Despite her youth and inexperience, and despite her bitter disappointments (a young man from her hometown whom she thought of as an ally, her father whom she missed and hoped would be concerned how she was doing), she makes friends among the other women and won’t let herself be brought down.

Hearing rumours of workers’ strikes in Nagasaki, and learning about money and social justice from their dedicated teacher Tetsuko, the daughter of a former samurai, they organise a strike of their own and make their bid for freedom. This last part is apparently based on real events, although nothing is known about the fate of the historical strikers.

This is a fascinating book, and clearly the author has done a lot of research. I wonder to what extent the way the knowledge of the inner workings of a woman’s body is passed on verbally has ever been captured in writing quite like this before. And how Murata captured that knowledge (perhaps from talking to former courtesans, although the type described in this book is obsolete by now). Maybe a little too much research is visible when she talks about the writing of educator Fukuzawa Yukichi, who is initially venerated by the teacher Tetsuko, but then ultimately disappoints her when she realises he does not consider the women who work in the pleasure districts to be human at all. According to him, even those who eventually married into good families were still disgraceful and not fit for the company of fine ladies.

It’s been a long time since I read Memoirs of a Geisha (and I still haven’t read the response to that by the former geisha Iwasaki Mineo, whom Golden used for research purposes), but I felt this book was more realistic but not unbearably miserable, and did an excellent job in conveying female solidarity not just rivalry.

As for the translation, Juliet says in the afterword just how much of a challenge it was to convey the local dialect. Ichi herself is at times incomprehensible to the other women in the story and is scolded for using ‘bird talk’, but the translator felt that trying to replicate it with some English dialect or making her writing compositions barely readable would be too distracting for English readers, and I heartily agree with that.

May 2026 Summary

I’ve gone a bit missing in action since I started my part-time job, while still doing all the other things I need and want to be doing (translating, editing, hip-hopping, Korean lessons plus lots of admin). Not that I actually work very long hours… but I’m just exhausted when I’m not working, and this has had an impact even on my reading, but especially on my reviewing. I was also laid low by the flu for a few days, and I just slept most of the time instead of reading. I don’t think I’ll do a lot more reading over the next few days, so let me write the wrap-up post now instead of my usual Friday Fun.

Eight books which took me to a total of six countries (or even seven, depending on how we count the travelling undertaken in Elinor Glyn’s novel). China and the UK were represented by two books each, then one each set in Romania, Germany (Berlin) and South Korea, and then finally Three Weeks which describes a young Englishman touring Switzerland and Italy. Only three of the books were in translation though, because the Romanian author Sophie Van Llewyn wrote Bottled Goods in English. The Russian author Kamier wrote Russian Disco in German but I actually read it in English translation (having bought it long before I moved to Berlin).

Hugh Battye’s book A Tale of Two Chinas is non-fiction and based on the author’s many years spent in China, first learning the language and then completing his Ph.D. on ethnic and religious minorities there. The two Chinas he talks about is the urban vs. rural divide, and it was full of fascinating and detailed information that was entirely new to me, but also quite humorous and easy to read.

I’d read and enjoyed novels by Shin Kyung-Sook, but this one entitled The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness is pretty much a memoir (perhaps with a little poetic licence), about young people moving from the countryside to work in factories in Seoul and attending night schools in the 1970s and 80s against a complicated totalitarian political backdrop. The author (or her alter ego) keeps asking herself throughout why she finds it so difficult to write about that period and why she has almost wilfully forgotten her colleagues from that time. The answer, of course, is that it was too traumatic.

But if I thought that was depressing, then Red Sorghum by Mo Yan definitely trumped it. No amount of lyrical descriptions of the sorghum fields in all seasons could make up for the sheer brutality (against the oppressive Japanese forces, against other fighting factions, against neighbours, against animals) described in stomach-churning detail. There was a stench of blood on every page almost.

I read Big Ben Strikes Eleven intermittently while I was ill and, although it started off well enough, and I had high hopes of it becoming very political, it became a little too bogged down in family relationships and budding love stories and alibis. But it’s interesting that David Magarshack turned his hand to fiction as well.

Wladimir Kaminer left Russia for Berlin in 1990, when it was still possibly to leave the Soviet Union to go to GDR and then, upon unification of the two Germanys, remain there forever. The book Russian Disco includes a little bit of autobiographical detail, but it is in fact a collection of vignettes about his life and that of his friends in Berlin, from Russian-speaking and other communities. There are some witty observations, but I didn’t find it as funny as some others described him (comparing him to David Sedaris), and some of his stories fell completely flat.

Bottled Goods is a novella in flash about a marriage and a family that is torn apart by the secret services in Romania, when one of their relatives defects to the West. I liked the way the story was not always told directly, but from multiple perspectives, in different styles, in little vignettes. And, compared to the Asian books, it wasn’t quite as harrowing, although it certainly isn’t light-hearted.

After all the trauma books, I wanted something very different and silly. I can’t remember who recommended Elinor Glyn’s Three Weeks, or maybe I just impulse bought it in a second-hand bookshop, but it was a scandal when it was published in 1906 for its frank portrayal of sex without marriage. That may be the case for the English-speaking world, but to be honest, I think the French and the Austrians had written far worse by then. A naive young Englishman is sent off to Europe to get over his desire to wed the local squire’s daughter, and promptly gets besotted by a mysterious older woman. They spend a total of three weeks together, but apparently it completely changes him – and he suddenly matures and becomes subtle and all. Because, you see, it was not just lust, but he was also really taken by her mind (and they both have no money worries, so they can recreate all sorts of romantic scenarios in mountain cabins in Switzerland and palazzos in Venice). It was sickly sweet and needlessly melodramatic, and not very raunchy at all, with high-falutin’ speeches that made me laugh.

The best book of the month was A Working Mother by Agnes Owens. I knew I had it on my shelves when I read Jacqui’s excellent review of it, so I searched for it and read it in pretty much one day. It’s so deadpan and clever, yet also quite heartbreaking. As Jacqui says, it has something of Muriel Spark or Beryl Bainbridge about it, with a dark underbelly but a deft and light touch.

It has been a quieter month in terms of events as well. I had a nice day out on the 1st of May and did a guided tour of the notorious Kreuzberg neighbourhood at the start of the month. I saw an exhibition about the Bauhaus women photographers. I took part in a literature get-together organised by Lettretage, where I met a lot of budding and established writers, translators and event organisers – hugely enjoyable to talk about books and creativity once more! And then last Sunday I watched the Carnival of the Cultures parade – Brazil being the great mood-maker, as usual. I only found later on, sadly, that a Korean friend had prepared a T shirt for me to join the parade, but I’m not sure I could have lasted the whole route in the blazing sun.

I also watched and even rewatched some good films and series this month, six of them, which took me to a total of four countries. The rewatched ones were even better than I remembered. First of all, the Japanese TV series Long Vacation from 1996, which had all of us Japanese students drooling over Kimutaku, but is also an excellent depiction of those years when the Japanese economic bubble burst (and we were all a mess in Romania as well). Paprika remains utterly crazy and fun, but also sad and anxiety-inducing, with beautiful imagery and saturated colour. I also watched two films about people working behind the scenes in stores, a world I now know from my own experience. The German In the Aisles with Sandra Huller and Franz Rogowski felt much more realistic than the Korean Pavane. The Frog and the Water was the only one I saw in the cinema this month, a film that was trying perhaps too hard to say something about how we treat people with Down’s syndrome, but it did have its moving moments, although it occasionally descended into farce and a sheer unbelievable ending. Finally, Innocents with Dirty Hands is a film in which Claude Chabrol seems to mock his own film style – over the top, camp, with too many twists and turns. But Romy Schneider is luminous, so I awarded an extra half-star for her alone.

#FridayFun: Controversial but Beautiful

In honour of Taiwan Travelogue winning the International Booker Prize, I decided to do a Friday Fun post with tropical(style) houses. Why? Because I’ve heard the book provoked some virulent reactions from people calling it an anti-Chinese book, a nostalgia for colonialism, a romance and so much else. When actually it brings back a well-known debate among anthropologist: To what extent do we honestly understand and portray another culture? Does our fascination for this foreign culture smack of ‘Orientalism’ or ‘exoticism’ or can we love it free of guilt? Are we reducing someone else’s culture only to those bits that we like (the food, the anime, the pop idols etc.)? And then feel free to criticise those aspects that don’t appeal to us, because our culture is ‘more progressive’ (but is it, really?)?

Long story short: I adore tropical style houses and gardens, of the type you might find in South-East Asia and the Far East. And clearly I’m not the only one, since many of the houses below are in other parts of the world – why wouldn’t you be attracted to something so aesthetically pleasing? But I constantly question whether my preference is shallow or deep, whether I’m behaving like those people in the outposts of the British Empire (or French for that matter), sipping their G&Ts on their shady porches, while some unobtrusive, silent servant in the background keeps the plants and insects under control. Still, the Friday posts are all about escapism, so let’s not overthink it and simply enjoy the images (tried my best to avoid the AI so-called conceptual visions, but many websites are becoming unusable because of that).

Modernism meets traditional in Thailand, from Living Asean.
Traditional style meets contemporary building materials in this Indian house, from Thearchitectsdiary.com
Australian take on tropical houses, from IDW Architecture
Modern ranch living in the US, by Corrine Rau
Similar principle but fitting in more realistically with the environment in the US, from buildgreen.nh
You can have this Japanese styled house in Portland, Oregon for a couple of million of dollars. From Dwell
And I believe The Reserve by Metropole Architects in South Africa is open to holiday bookings

Shadow Panel Winner for International Booker Prize 2026

I think I detect a little fatigue among my fellow Shadow Panelists, a disenchantment with the political or commercial choices that go into the longlist and then shortlist selections for the International Booker. I am still relatively new to the Shadow Panel (this is my third year), but even I am starting to mourn the books that miss out on the longlist or shortlist. Yet, please believe me that we were not being deliberately rebellious or annoying when our winner (and the runner-up) ended up being two books from the Shadow Panel shortlist rather than the official one. They were the two that scored highest with all of us throughout the process.

Our winner is The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken. Although the story of 16th or 17th century witch hunts in Europe is not a new subject, the way that this story is told (through the eyes of a wax doll created by one of the women as a sort of crutch for suffering miscarriages) feels fresh and innovative. The language is beautifully crafted, hitting you often deep in the gut with its immediacy, never feeling too flowery simply for the sake of being flowery. It is very different from Ravn’s other books, which shows the versatility of her talent.

Our runner-up is The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, translated from Dutch by David McKay. Although I found the verbal tic of starting each sentence with ‘And…’ annoying and unnecessary, the story and characterisations were very gripping, nuanced and moving. It was a long, long book but I never struggled to finish it.

Neither of these two books made the official shortlist, much to the Shadow Panel’s surprise. Of the ones that did, I am now hoping that my personal favourite (the two above were Nos. 2 and 3 respectively among my choices) Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-Zi, translated by Lin King. This is not just because of my predilection for East Asian literature, but because it does such an interesting job of examining colonialism – within a country and within our own minds. It also felt like a much fresher subject, that has been less explored in literature than wars in Europe or witchcraft.

However, if I dare to make a prediction, since the International Booker is trying desperately to appeal to a younger audience, and since apparently the book below has been popular among younger readers, it may well be that She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated by Izidora Angel might be the official winner.

As a fun extra, I wanted to ask you which of the two covers you prefer for The Wax Child? The one with the cradle is published by indie (mostly academic) publisher Norton & Co, the fiery woman is published by Viking, now owned by Penguin Random House.

And now let’s see who the official winner will be tonight! Good luck to all of the hard-working authors and translators out there.

Books on My Nightstand

Inspired by the Mookse and Gripes podcast, with their latest episode entitled Our Nightstands, Ourselves, I decided to take a long hard look at what they call nightstand and what I call bedside table (but their version is shorter, so I’ll use that for the rest of this post).

Before I get started, I have to admit that my current nightstand is a compromise. It is no longer the generously proportioned nightstand (in fact, two of them) that I had back in Britain: one housing some of my lifelong favourites such as Tove Jansson, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys and Shirley Jackson, the other housing my current reads plus some assorted Russians (the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva particularly prominent amongst them).

Because of the miniature proportions of my Berlin bedroom, I have actually inherited my older son’s nightstand, which is just about big enough for a pile of current and future reads. But, if I’m honest, when I turn around at night on occasion and shift a pillow, a book or two (and the hand cream) have been known to fall with a thud. I may have to consider another table at some point, one that is long and thin, as I have more space on the side but not really much in depth.

What’s even worse, I only have one of them. On the other side of the bed there’s only room for some boxes housing bedsheets.

I’ll explore the books in more detail in a minute, but what else is going on in the chaos of my nightstand. I apologise for the mess, but I have been in bed with the flu for most of the week!

In addition to the books, on top of the nightstands I have of course my reading lamp (I have another one poised over my reading couch in the library/study which is better for reading, but this one has a warmer glow). Dangling from the lamp is a little cloth bag from Petit Bateau that I got back when I was living in France and which contains some treasured memories, such as the boys’ letters to Santa Claus. There is a brush for Kasper, who will jump on the bed to be brushed as soon as I pick it up (he has other brushes in other reading places). Bookmarks, of course, although there are a few spares in the drawer. And the hand and foot cream which has become indispensable since I started working in retail.

In the drawer I have tissues, medicine and a rubber band for doing some exercises when my hip gets really painful. On the lower shelf I have my diary (woefully neglected at present) and a couple of magazines which I’ve only skimmed through but keep meaning to read – my last magazine as a Tate member and a monthly magazine about all that is going on in Berlin called (somewhat unfortunately to an English ear) TipBerlin.

So let’s take a closer look at the book pile, shall we?

There is a book that I’ve had on there since early December and I haven’t really picked it up since January, but I am reluctant to move it back to the bookshelves. I keep telling myself I will get around to it eventually. It’s Platonov’s Chevengur – which I’m sure will be worth finishing but it’s so darn long!

The other books fall roughly into my 20 Books of Summer category, partly because my reading has really slowed down recently, and my reviewing even more so, so I need a bit of a lead. In preparation for my China trip, I feel like in addition to a fairly recent academic one Knowing China by Frank Pieke, published by Cambridge University Press, I should also finally get around to reading Red Sorghum. I believe I saw the film soon after its release back in Communist times, but can’t remember much about it, other than that it covered similar themes to a lot of Romanian cinema and books of that period.

But before I head off to the Far East, I still want to explore my new home, so two books set in Berlin are also on the nightstand: Russian Disco by Wladimir Kaminer (an immigrant like me) and Berlin Blues by a German author Sven Regener, both full of anecdotes about the weird and wonderful people you meet in Berlin.

I’m also looking forward to reading more Romanian women authors for possible future translation pitches: Dora Pavel and Laura Ilea are the two that are currently on my nightstand. Bottled Goods is a novella-in-flash by Romanian-born but writing in English author Sophie Van Llewyn and is set in Romania during the 1970s.

There is also a Japanese book A Woman of Pleasure by Kiyoko Murata, translated by the late great Juliet Winters Carpenter, one of the few on my shelves that I haven’t got around to reading yet, which will certainly fit into the Women in Translation Month category.

Last but not least, please admire my Kiki’s Delivery Service diary which I bought at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka back in 2023. I loved it so much that even after 2024 was over, I kept the cover and just keep replacing the diaries inside – only Japanese ones will fit, but luckily there are quite a few stationery shops selling Japanese items here in Berlin. Yes, I know people use their phone nowadays for appointments and notes and the like, but I still love my paper diary.

Speaking of phones, I think one of the reasons for my drop in reading recently is the phone. I know it’s a waste of time to scroll on Twitter and Bluesky (I don’t have Instagram or any other social media installed on it), that it’s no longer even very useful for Corylus Books, because the book world has fragmented. But I still find myself just quickly checking one thing, which leads to another, which leads to me raising my head an hour or two later and realising that I’ve done nothing constructive.

For example I see Slow Travel Berlin post something about walking the length of the Landwehrkanal, which I intend to do one day, and I click on the link. Then I start wondering what’s on at the Neue Nationagalerie, so I check out their website, or else I realise I’ve forgotten the architect of the famous Shell House, so I search for him. That leads to me wondering when and where exactly an earlier Berlin architect, the renowned Schinkel, built the churches for the so-called northern suburbs, including two in my neighbourhood. Then I remember that between the Nazareth Church and the other church built on Leopoldplatz there is a bit of a park which is now notorious for being full of druggies and drug-dealers, so I check out any news about recent initiatives to improve the area. Then I remember that I’m also involved in the local clean-up initiatives (cleaning up rubbish rather than drugs, to be clear), so I go to see what activities are planned for next month. But then I suddenly remember that the open air cinema is now open, so I check out the programme…

Well, you get the idea. I should leave the phone out of my bedroom, I guess.

Finally, another thing that no longer has room on my nightstand, so has moved to the windowsill: my small collection of cuddly toys. My boys had a vast collection of those and would never want to give any of them to charity (they took some of them with them to university and I was finally allowed to get rid of the rest while moving). I used to smile indulgently and think they’d outgrow them, just like I did… until Zoe died. In those 18 or so months between Zoe and Kasper, I found those cute cuddly toys (most of them acquired in Japan at Studio Ghibli) very comforting. Perhaps they also compensated a little for my sons going off to university. And Kasper has allowed them to live on untoppled, unscratched and unbothered.

#FridayFun: Hidden Beauty of Kreuzberg

Last Sunday I did a guided tour of Kreuzberg, which had (and to some extent still has) the reputation of being one of the most rebellious parts of Berlin, where street demos are particularly virulent on the 1st of May, and where in the past there were squatters and punks and heavy-handed evictions. It was in the West, but bordering the infamous Wall. It has become a lot more sedate and gentrified now, but still has its rough edges.

The old Bethanien hospital building was saved because of squatters and is now a centre for all sorts of cultural initiatives
The treehouse built by Turkish guest worker Osman Kalin on a piece of no-man’s land bordering the Wall
Lots of graffiti in this part of town, some of it quite artistic, as in this youth centre
Some of the graffiti is just a slogan
The shops are interesting too, often heavily political: ‘Transform steel helmets into potties’ suggests this window.
But around the back of the punk clubs and anarchist slogans, there are very nice-looking and no doubt expensive apartment blocks
While I just rejoiced in the lilac in bloom, especially white lilacs, my favourite flowers. I used to go past a whole road full of them on my way to the boulangerie when I lived in France… I miss them!

#20BooksOfSummer Anticipation

Annabel will be hosting the #20BooksofSummer #20BOS26 reading challenge this year, running from the 1st of June to the last day of August. In past years I over-planned and then woefully under-delivered, so this time I will aim for a modest target of just ten books and keep the list of books very vague indeed.

I’ve become much more of a whim reader now, especially since I can’t attend the two virtual book clubs I used to belong to (because they are on Monday evenings, when I’m either working or have evening classes). But I thought a general sense of direction might be helpful nevertheless. So I have will choose books from the following shelves:

What one might call the Oriental section: a bit lopsided, four shelves of Japan, one of Korea, one of China and Taiwan and Vietnam.

The Far East – China, because I’ll be travelling there in October/November; Korea, because I’m studying the language right now; Japan, because I need to read at least one book in honour of one of my favourite translators who died recently: Juliet Winters Carpenter. I also want to return to my beloved Genji Monogatari. Plus, I should move outside my comfort zone and read books from other countries in the region…

Kasper thinks I should be focusing on Romanian literature, and there are at least four shelves of that…

Romania – because I want to keep abreast of all that is being published and discussed in Romania nowadays, and because I will never give up trying to get Anglo publishers and readers interested in our literature

A whole Berlin shelf and other books set in Germany and written in German (this does not include the Austrians and Swiss, who have their own shelves)

Berlin – I read quite a few of these books ahead of my move to Berlin, but there are a few that I missed, so I will try to read those first before borrowing any more from the library

My poetry shelves are double-stacked, but I so seldom review poetry

Poetry – I love reading and writing poetry – and, for the past two years, I’ve even started translating poetry. So I should spend a little more time going through the many, many volumes of poetry that I have on my bookshelves and even review a couple of them.

So my ten books (I am secretly hoping that I will surpass my goal) will be drawn from these ‘regions’ of my bookshelves. Can’t wait to see who else is planning to join in and what you are going to be reading…