Recent Reads – January

In 2022, I gave myself credit for finishing 62 books. I used a few indulgences to arrive at this number: I counted reading an issue of Ploughshares cover to cover, along with the unpublished manuscript I read for my beta reader (more on that delightful exchange later). I also counted shorter things that are complete in themselves, such as the book of Job. But if this seems like fudging, consider my first entry for 2023: The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, in a much-anticipated new translation by Michael E Moore.

The book weighs in at 648 pages, so right out of the gate, I’ll be off my usual pace of five books per month. This might be hard to make up, especially since all three kids were just here over Christmas break (a most welcome distraction from reading). Manzoni’s characters are funny and flawed, and the story is edifying; I would compare it to Les Misérables, with perhaps a touch of Don Quixote. I’ve just finished a fifty-page discussion of the superstitions and brutalities that were rampant during the plague of the late 1620s, and that section was preceded by at least forty pages about the fight over Milan during the Thirty Years’ War. But I’m in the home stretch, and I’m anxious to see how the story turns out. After all, our pitiable ingenue, Lucia, has already converted a notorious criminal known as the Nameless One.

And due to the vicissitudes of library queues, this morning I started the audio version of David Copperfield. I read this book for the first and only time as a freshman in high school (see the photo on my home page), and I was inspired to revisit it by the release of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, which is on my to-read list for 2023. And while I’m admiring and often enjoying Manzoni’s iconic work, I absolute love Charles Dickens. The pacing is quicker (though perhaps I have that impression because I turned up the reading speed on my app) and the asides are hilarious. I feel as though a great treat has been prepared for me.

Some highlights of my 2022 list include As Earth Without Water by Katy Carl, Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson, Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, and Works of Mercy by Sally Thomas (you can read my review at https://www.tinymolecules.com/joan-bauer). I read Elizabeth Hardwick and Annie Ernaux, along with Miriam Toews, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Anna Seghers, and Olga Tokarczuk. And with any luck, I can still hit my number this year. Because as it turns out, I began 2022 with a wonderful, very long book: Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle. Happy reading!