The May, 2024 Reading List

 

The list of books read in May isn't long. Six isn't spectacular, but it is more than one a week - so there's that.

Three books on the list were reviewed in earlier blog posts : The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami - and The Steppenwolf  by Hermann Hesse, so there's no need to write more on those three here.

In the Courts of Three Popes by Mary Ann Glendon tells of the writer's experiences in Rome during the pontificates of Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. Unfortunately, the book deals more with her than with the three Popes. It's not exactly what I thought I was getting into when I started reading the book.

Edith Tiempo was a Filipino poet, fiction writer, teacher and literary critic in the English language. She graduated from Silliman University in Dumaguete (the city I call home now) and would go on to attend Universities in the U.S.. She would eventually return to Dumaguete to teach at her alma mater. Although she wrote six novels in English, I was only able to locate one as an ebook - Blade of Fern. The story tells of a mining operation is the fictional village of Nibucal, Mindanao.

One of Tiempo's short stories was required reading in my son's final year of high school. I suppose I might be able to find more of her books at the local public library.

The Provincials - A Personal History of Jews in the South by Eli N. Evans was originally published in 1971. Although I'm not Jewish, I can relate to much of the book, having grown up in the American south during the time period of which the book was written. Again, although Evans wrote a number of books, this one is the only one I could find in ebook format.

This list for May, 2024:
The Son of Tarzan    by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle  by Haruki Murakami
In the Courts of Three Popes   by Mary Ann Glendon
The Steppenwolf      by Hermann Hesse
Blade of Fern   by Edith Tiempo
The Provincials   by Eli N. Evans