January 2020 in Books: What (I'll) Be Reading Next, Part 2

Zora Neale Hurston, Eatonville, FL
Photograph c. 1940, in the State Library and Archives of Florida
via Wikimedia Commons

UNWISELY I am working at reading farther into the Teilchen-detektoren book about physics, the biography Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Ο μεγάλος περίπατος του Πέτρου by Alki Zei, Cavafy's poems and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, at once. Yet, for inexplicable reasons, the impulse hit to begin reading even more books.

Therefore I'm rereading Anne of the Island, which is one of the sequels to the early 20th-century Canadian children's book Anne of Green Gables. And, more ambitiously, reading the 17th-century French drama Bajazet by Jean Racine for the first time. I don't even know what that play is about, because I'm still reading biographical introductory material and don't want to 'peek ahead.' Of course that makes it more fun: exploring old literature as if it were new and just hatched from the egg is exciting and (hopefully) rewarding.

The Three Escapes of
Hannah Arendt
by Ken Krimstein
Bloomsbury, via
Amazon.com

Lastly, godfather M. gave me a graphic novel about Hannah Arendt: The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt by Ken Krimstein. After Marjane Satrapi's memoir of life during the political revolutions in Iran during the second half of the 20th century, Persepolis, it's the second graphic novel I've ever read. It was published by Bloomsbury in 2018. And I'm glad to have a starting point to approach the philosopher. My mother has read her work and it sounded like not to read it is to miss timely and relevant perspectives.

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Also, I am re-reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. Its existence is, of course, not a great secret amongst fans of classics and literary romance.

North and South, ©BBC (2004)

The BBC adaptation of 2004 has lent it a broader, happy and active readership. Also, on YouTube one can probably still find an older adaptation where Patrick Stewart, predating his Star Trek captainship, strides through the scenes as the tradesman hero.

Amongst the author's other works, Wives and Daughters was depressing and 'domestically claustrophobic' as far as I recall, as well as unfinished. I don't feel like rereading Ruth or Cranford, and I never read Mary Barton or the life of Charlotte Brontë. In short, North and South is my favourite Gaskell work.

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Note Regarding Process: Last year these 'monthly round-up' blog posts appeared with the heading "What We'll Be Reading Next." But this month, new publications are not likely to be discussed and it would be silly to imply that other people must read the same older publications that I am, so I've chosen to use the first person singular instead.