The Leipzig Book Fair ran last weekend, and I'd intended to read Dutch and Flemish books before then. I didn't, much, but picked up music scores from German publishers.
Before, I'd dropped into a Polish-German bookstore in the Berlin areas of Kreuzberg/Neukölln. The bookshelves were full of books I might want to read and hadn't read yet. NoViolet Bulawayo's Glory and Olga Tokarczuk's Flights, for example. Zimbabwe's Bulawayo I'd heard about on YouTube, and Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk's prose was so good when I read an excerpt from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead that it has been on my mental list to read more.
Before that, I'd watched the 4 episodes of the literary Canada Reads 2024 competition on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's YouTube channel.
Jessica Johns's fantasy-thriller book Bad Cree was available in the Berlin bookshop just after I heard of it on Canada Reads.
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| Courtesy of ECW Press |
But the first Canadian book I want to finish is Denison Avenue by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes. So far it is one of the best books that I have read in years.
After those, I hope to read The Future by Catherine Leroux or Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji.
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In multimedia:
MIT's OpenCourseWare programme's self-guided English literature course of study on the medieval epic Beowulf, based on 2023 lectures for undergraduates. MIT has published lecture videos, reading lists, and other useful material on its website and on YouTube. It begins with a crash course in Anglo-Saxon grammar. I highly recommend it.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Roald Dahl's strange short story that left me wondering if it was fact or fiction (but I never tried seeing through a pack of cards, as it felt like too much trouble especially if it would likely only prove that I was gullible) when I was a child, has been adapted into a film by Wes Anderson. Breaking the fourth wall, the film weaves in Ralph Fiennes as Roald Dahl, the narrator. It is available on Netflix, and has won an Academy Award.
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