Books I Read and Loved in August

and an update on my africa reading challenge 🦁

my favourite place to read in ibiza ⛱️⛱️

---

Friends,

Inspired by this post, and a general slump in enthusiasm for reading, my August was full of easy, slim reads. And whilst Clarice Lispector has been on my TBR list forever, it was this timely newsletter that prompted me to pick up my first of her books. I loved this quote from Peyton’s post:

“When I speak the name of Clarice for the first time, Otto takes a deep breath, as if something were dragging him far away from there, and he’s got to focus hard not to lose himself. Then he says to me, ‘You’d better be careful with Clarice. It’s not literature. It’s witchcraft.’ And urges that whenever I read her books, I proceed with the utmost caution.”

-José Castello

Here’s my favourite (mostly slim) reads from August.

---

---

Orbital - Samantha Harvey (136 pages)

Let me quickly say that books about space are not usually ones that I reach for, but I am so glad I did. Orbital was longlisted for The Booker Prize this year and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award too. Set across just one day, a crew of six astronauts orbit the earth from the International Space Station. They will each spend 9 months there and we get to experience one day with them. The novella is set in space, but it is really a novel about the earth and her fragility. A beautiful meditation on humanity written in Samantha’s wonderfully poetic prose. I loved this book.

The Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector (96 pages)

(A hora da estrela - translated from the Portuguese twice by Giovanni Pontiero in 1992 and Benjamin Moser in 2011)

Clarice’s final book written in 1977, the Ukrainian-Brazilian author wrote nine novels; ten short story collections and five children’s books. In her first and only television interview, she once stated “When I’m not writing, I’m dead.”

Narrated directly to the reader by Rodrigo S.M., we meet Macabéa, an uneducated woman living in the slums of Rio and eking out a living as a typist. Lispector investigates the psychological consequences of poverty in this small novella, it’s difficult to assign a genre as it’s different to anything else I’ve read before. I’m not sure it turned me into a Lispector fan but I enjoyed this read immensely.

In February 1977, Lispector gave her only televised interview, with Júlio Lerner of TV Cultura in São Paulo. In it, she mentioned a book she had just completed with "thirteen names, thirteen titles", referencing the thirteen alternative titles on the title page of the novella. (They are: "The Hour of the Star", "It's All My Fault", "Let Her Deal With It", "The Right to Scream", ".As for the Future.", "Singing the Blues", "She Doesn't Know How to Scream", "A Sense of Loss", "Whistling in the Dark Wind", "I Can't Do Anything", "Account of the Preceding Facts", "Cheap Tearjerker", and "Discreet Exit Through the Back Door".)

---

The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century - Olga Ravn (133 pages)

(translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken)

A Time 100 must-read book of 2022
A The Guardian Book of the Year
A TLS Book of the Year
A Financial Times Best Summer Books
An LRB Bookshop Autumn Pick

Shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 2022
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021
Longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021
Longlisted for the DUBLIN Literary Award 2022

This may be the second science fiction book I’ve read in my life (not my favourite genre at all) but given it is only 133 pages I was willing to give it a go :)

Set on a space ship called Six-Thousand Ship, the book is written as a series of crew witness statements compiled by a workplace commission. The crew of the ship consists of both humans and humanoids, those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, both human and humanoid employees start to feel a deep longing for these items, as if they are essential to their well-being.

“It’s not hard to clean them,” says a crew member of the strange objects found on the faraway planet New Discovery, now housed in the Six-Thousand Ship orbiting above. “I normally use a little brush.”

A thought provoking satirical read exploring late-stage capitalism and also what it means to be human.

I Hate Men - Pauline Harmange (Moi les hommes, je les déteste - 112 pages)

(translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer)

The feminist book they tried to ban in France

‘A delightful book’ Roxane Gay

“I Hate Men” started in 2019 as a blog post about feminist burnout. Nonprofit press Monstrograph’s editors, Martin Page and Coline Pierré, saw the post and asked her if she would turn it into a book. For Harmange, who volunteers with an association supporting rape victims, misandry had come to feel like the best concept to express her frustration with structural gender violence. “It was an insult you would get as a feminist,” she said. “Whatever you say, as soon as you criticise men, you’re accused of being a misandrist. That’s when I realised: Actually, that’s exactly it.”¹

A short refreshing feminism read with a different approach to tackling the patriarchy. I loved it!

“Women, especially feminists and lesbians, have long been accused of hating men. Our instinct is to deny it at all costs. (After all, women have been burnt at the stake for admitting to less.)

But what if mistrusting men, disliking men – and yes, maybe even hating men – is, in fact, a useful response to sexism? What if such a response offers a way out of oppression, a means of resistance? What if it even offers a path to joy, solidarity and sisterhood?”

---

If you’re following along, it’s been a while since I shared progress on my personal Africa Reading Challenge. I’ve added books from Angola, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia these past few months and I’m currently at almost 30% (16/54) I’ve just finished what may be my favourite read so far and will share her in next months newsletter.

---

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/books/pauline-harmange-i-hate-men.html