Catching up on Fall Reading

Though it's true that I haven't been reading much these past several months, I have read some books. I'm neglecting this site more than I'm neglecting to read. So, to catch everyone up:

In October, I read Identitti by Mithu Sanyal for my Women in Translation book club. Truly, I have this book club to thank for keeping me reading at least a few books a year. I'm not quite sure what to say about Identitti, which is maybe why I never posted here after reading it. I found it jarring to read at first. It's hard to even explain what I mean by this, but I found the narrator to be somehow loud. The book is also full of social media posts, which I find unpleasant to encounter in book form. But the book ended up being more complex and nuanced than it seemed at first. 

Before I started Identitti, I had been reading (and really enjoying) All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski but somehow I never built up the necessary momentum on that (perhaps I will go back over the holiday break). Later I also started Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson after I found a copy on the sidewalk. I set them both aside to read Identitti, for which I had a deadline. Then one Saturday in November, I was out for a walk and I found a copy of Ancillary Justice in a little free library and I thought it might be fun to reread that, so I grabbed it and over the following 3 days I did read it again. And I loved it again. It's very refreshing to me these days to read something I know I will just tear through. 

After Ancillary Justice I didn't even attempt to read anything else. I was leaving a few days later for a weekend upstate with family and then a few days after that for a trip to Italy. I brought a copy of The Periodic Table (which I read more than 25 years ago and keep meaning to reread) with me to Italy but I never even opened it. 

Just before I left for Italy, I picked up the next book for my Women in Translation book club: On the Calculation of Volume I, by Solvej Balle. The day after I got back from my trip, I started it and I got about halfway through. I picked it up for a second time yesterday evening and finished it. I absolutely loved this book. The premise will be familiar to anyone who knows the movie Groundhog Day, but (no disrespect to the movie) this is no Groundhog Day. Stuck in a never-ending series of November 18ths, the narrator changes her approach to the day gradually in the book. She answers (though she cannot explain or account for) the troubling questions of reliving the same day, such as do the things you consume return to the world or disappear? 

The language in this book is so clear and precise and beautiful, the treatment of the situation so thought out and real. I kept thinking: this is not how I would behave in the circumstance, only to later conclude that, no, the narrator was right to behave this way and what I imagined myself doing would be a mistake. 

The "I" in the title of this book is there because there are, at present, 5 more volumes in the series (with another planned). I'm anxious to read the continuation.