Sunday Salon

I completed my post on Follow Me with quite the feeling of accomplishment. I'm starting to worry that I spend too much time reading one or two books and constantly blogging about them (mostly in Teaser Tuesdays and Sunday Salons). It's repetitive. Other book bloggers are constantly posting new reviews and I just feel . . . really, really lame.

But I am more than halfway through Hermann Hesse's Demian, a true novel of ideas, which I expect to finish today with a post up by tomorrow. It's a neat little thought-provoking tale and I can see how it resonated with the disillusioned Lost Generation that emerged from World War I. Needless to say, I will absolutely be reading more Hesse (winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize for Literature), especially given my intended focus here on translated fiction (Hesse was German). Steppenwolf sounds particularly interesting. Hesse considered it his most misunderstood work. Although Jack Kerouac dismissed it in Big Sur, other counterculturalists of his era embraced it for its frank depictions of sexuality and drug use, as well as the psychedelic "Magic Theater" part at the end. So I'll have to check that one out.

Other than the third book of Roberto Bolaño's 2666, "The Part About Fate," I am not quite sure yet what I'll be reading next, although some nagging part of me is demanding to finish An American Tragedy already, even though I haven't picked it up in weeks. I just found out about Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles the other day and that sounds like something I'd definitely like. Also: Philippe Soupault's Last Nights of Paris (French) and Thomas Glavinic's Night Work (Austrian). The latter was recommended to me by Larry, who loved it, but it's only averaging three stars on Amazon right now so I'll wait for his review before starting it. It does sound really cool though.

Ahhh, so many books! I need to get started!