2025 on Goodreads by
Various
My rating:
5 of 5 stars
Read fewer books than last year's seventy titles, not sure why I was so busy, but only totaled about forty-four counting a couple DNFs. I only read, don't listen. Eighty percent were by women authors, or names that sounded female, fourteen percent (6) were translations from Norway, Portugal, Mexico, Chile, Italy or France. Over half, 27, were fiction and the rest non-fiction or the outstanding poetry of
Diane Seuss. Memoir accounted for eight titles.
The art books were particularly rewarding as I explored the work of Surrealist Painter/Poet Alice Rahon
Alice Rahon and
Shapeshifter also the stunning book from Wayne Thiebaud called
Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art chock full of color works from the many artists he copied.
If a theme was to be gleaned from the novels I read, it is bemoaning the evils of the patriarchy, particularly in marriages of the fifties represented by
Daddy's Gone A-Hunting,
A Bowl Of Cherries, and
Fonseca, and
Single Lady from 1931, as well as
Heat Wave from the nineties.
The diaries
Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I 1978–1986 of Helen Garner were favored reading as was rereading Helen Hanff's
84, Charing Cross Road and the Sontag memoir from
Sigrid Nunez.
I continue to be impressed by the quality of translated literature available at our local bookstores like Elliott Bay Books and hailing from so many small publishers. And I learn of many of these titles from GR friends. At least in reading, it was a very good year.
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Unfit by Ariana Harwicz