Reading list for December, 2024

 

Today is the final day of December and the time has come for the list of books I've read this month. Unlike in most months, I was able to post onto the blog a little bit about each book read. Clicking on the titles listed will, of course take you to the individual blog post.

There are only six books listed; I was certain that I'd have more, but that was not to be. A few days ago, I had created different images with the book covers - one image showing eight books, another showing seven just in case. Sadly, I was unable to finish End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland in time to make this month's list.That book will be the first in 2025. That's just as well. I'll be doing an additional blog post on the book.

Here is the list of books I read in December, 2024.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls  by Haruki Murakami
Crime and Punishment   by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Kafka on the Shore   by Haruki Murakami
Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End   by Bart Ehrman
The Stranger   by Albert Camus
The Plague   by Albert Camus

Albert Camus' The Plague.

 

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, most of the books I'll read in December will be books that I've read before. I also mentioned in that post that one of the books I'll re-read this month will be Albert Camus' The Plague.

I last read The Plague in April, 2020, during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. According to wikipedia, I wasn't the only one reading the novel at that time - the novel's British publisher Penguin Classics reported struggling to keep up with demand for copies of the book:
"Sales in Italy tripled and it became a top-ten bestseller during its nationwide lockdown.Penguin Classics' editorial director said 'it couldn’t be more relevant to the current moment' and Camus's daughter Catherine said that the message of the novel had newfound relevance in that 'we are not responsible for coronavirus but we can be responsible in the way we respond to it'."

While the reading of the novel during a global pandemic was certainly relevant, it's not exactly what I'd call Christmas reading. Yes, the novel is a masterpiece, but reading the novel doesn't give one an abundance of hope and joy that might be associated with yuletide reading choices.

Camus published the novel in 1947 - the story takes place in the French Algerian city of Oran sometime in the 1940s. No exact date is given. The photo at the beginning of this post is a view of Oran in 1943 , taken from the above mentioned wikipedia article.

Rereading Albert Camus' The Stranger

After reading The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, I wanted to spend some time this month rereading some of my favorite novels. I managed to stay on track with Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore . I took a little detour with Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End by Bart D. Ehrman. I'm now back on schedule with my rereading  of Albert Camus' The Stranger.

I can't recall when I read The Stranger the first time - probably back in the 1980s. I began making note in my PC in 2011 of the books I read and I have it on record that I read the book in 2014 and 2020. Now, I've read the book once again. (December - 2024) Assuming that I'd managed to read it twice between 1980 and 2011, it's fair to say I've read The Stranger about five times - each time the Stuart Gilbert translation. There are other English translations, although I haven't been able to download copies.

Needless to say the book is one of my favorites.

In his 1956 analysis of the novel, Carl Viggiani wrote:

On the surface, L'Étranger gives the appearance of being an extremely simple though carefully planned and written book. In reality, it is a dense and rich creation, full of undiscovered meanings and formal qualities. It would take a book at least the length of the novel to make a complete analysis of meaning and form and the correspondences of meaning and form, in L'Étranger.

I'll be staying with Camus. I'm now reading The Plague which I last read in 2020 during the COVID 19 pandemic.

Camus During COVID19 Days

There are a number of books which I feel a need to read more than once. Number one on that list is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, followed by Hunger  written by Knut Hamsun and Camus' The Stranger, which I recently reread.

Upon finishing The Stranger, I thought I'd like to reread The Plague and even though it was difficult finding an ebook copy, I was finally able to download a pdf. which I converted to mobi.  Like many others, it seemed appropriate to me to read it again during this time of covid19.

While you'd imagine many similarities, there are actually many differences between life in Camus' Oran and the quarantine we're currently living under in Negros Oriental.

The obvious difference is in the diseases. We're living in the age of covid19, while the disease in Camus' novel is the bubonic plague. In the novel, the town of Oran is closed, but there, the only people experiencing quarantine are the actual victims of the plague. Those who do not have the disease are free to move about outside the home; cafes are not closed, nor are the cinemas. There is no "social distancing".

Here in our province, we are under what is being called an Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ). No one is permitted to leave their home except for essential needs, and then only one person per household is allowed outside. Each household is allotted one pass which can only be used on a limited number of days per week, and only for a limited number of hours on those days.

In Camus' novel, while not dying in the streets, many people are dying every day during the height of the epidemic. As of April 07, there have been only 4 confirmed cases of the corona virus in our entire province, with 2 deaths from the disease. These cases were some time ago. No recent cases have been reported.

There are several rumors floating about on Facebook as to when our ECQ will end. I won't repeat those rumors here, as I have no way of verifying any of the reports.

I suppose some might say that our response to covd19, when compared to earlier responses to plague, is out of line and over board. I can't say. Staying home now seems appropriate, although an extreme lock down does appear to be a bit much.