Member: AliceKathleen

I enjoy the connections to other libraries. Thank you.

posted by AliceKathleen at 3:51 pm (EST) on Jan 22, 2011

Yes, I finished Proust last April and loved all of it.
I have only read one book by Sebald so far (austerlitz0. He is a very interesting writer indeed and I am certainly going to read more by him.
I read Adalbart Stifter's Rock Chrystal about the same time that I finished Proust. It's the perfect Christmas novella, an absolutely lovely tale (a gem, to use an appropriate pun). Too bad I read it around Easter!
I am curious to know how you will like Thomas Bernhard. He is one of those big names that I have never got round to reading yet.

posted by AnnavanGelderen at 11:23 am (EST) on Dec 12, 2010

Hugo Claus's The Sorrow of Belgium is supposed to be quite good. I really must read it one day.
I am ashamed to admit that I don't know the Belgian artist whose exposition you viewed. I minored in medieval art, so the last exhibition I visited was one of 15th century illuminated manuscripts. I loved The Cloisters in New York, by the way. Somehow such a lovely collection of mediaval art was the last thing I expected to find in a city like New York!

posted by AnnavanGelderen at 11:37 am (EST) on Feb 12, 2010

Sorry for not replying sooner, but I had a very very huge court case coming up, which consumed all my mental energy for a while. Fortunately that's behind us now (the hearing was yesterday,) so things are now back to normal.
As for your question: I don't read a lot of Dutch literature, since most of it is rather mediocre, but we do have some excellent books. Some of my favourites (al least those available in English translation) are:
* Beyond Sleep by W.F. Hermans is brilliant(and his The Dark Room of Damocles, is said to be equally good); my review is here: http://annavangelderen.blogspot.com/1997/01/beyond-sleep.html (one of the very few in English, the rest are in Dutch;
* Marcel by Belgian author Erwin Mortier;
* In a Dark Wood Wandering by Hella S. Haasse, a meditative account of the life of the medieval nobleman Charles d'Orléans;
* The Hidden Force by Louis Couperus, a classic about 10 years old, set in the Dutch East Indies;
* The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi by Arthur Japin, based on the lives of two princes from Ghana who came to the Netherlands in the mid-nineteenth century;
* Rituals by Cees Nooteboom, which I read a very long time ago, and which I remember as philosophical rather than a plot or character driven novel - I will have to reread it one of these days.
You can check all of them out here on LT, which is really quite wonderful, I think.

posted by AnnavanGelderen at 12:37 pm (EST) on Jan 27, 2010

Hi, My sister is up visiting from Palo Alto. I was showing her my LT books, profile and noted your comment. Clicked on your profile and she immediately recognized some of your favorite stores in the SF area. Thanx for your comment. I enjoy my book collection. Kind of labor of love keeping it updated.

posted by usma83 at 1:27 pm (EST) on Jan 23, 2010

I am reading the Modern Library translation by Montcrieff et al. The English is somewhat old-fashioned, but that's fitting, I think, and I rather like the beautiful "flow" of the sentences. I will check out Lydia Davies as an author. I did know that her translation of volume 1 is supposed to be quite good, but I had no idea that she was an author in her own right. Thanks for the tip.

posted by AnnavanGelderen at 12:48 pm (EST) on Jan 22, 2010

That sounds wonderful, your belonging to a Proust group and Eric Karpeles coming to visit. I expect to finish The Guermantes Way in about a week's time, so that means I will soon be halfway through the whole cycle. It is my first read, but by no means my last. I actually gave it a first try in 1980, in the original French, but that proved to be rather too ambitious :-)

posted by AnnavanGelderen at 10:31 am (EST) on Jan 19, 2010