The Lit Talk | What I read March -July (excl. International Booker 2020)
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- čas přidán 12. 08. 2020
- Hi Guys, it’s Kamil here and I’m coming to you with The Lit Talk a casual segment on my channel where I usually talk about the books I’ve read, am currently reading, and what I’m planning on reading next. Today I’m going to catch up with all non-International Booker reads I’ve read March-July including the books I’ve been listening to while running.
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Videos mentioned:
International Booker Prize 2020 Playlist
• Playlist
Review of Apeirogon by Column McCann
• Apeirogon (2020) by Co...
Video in which I explain why I’m not a huge fan of Murakami
Can we objectively judge literature? Murakami or Dostoevsky?
• Can we objectively jud...
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Books mentioned:
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen,
/ getting-things-done
Actress by Anne Enright,
/ actress
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
/ apeirogon
Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
/ cleanness
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
/ what-belongs-to-you
Dominicana by Angie Cruz,
/ dominicana
Writers & Lovers by Lily King
/ writers-lovers
Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski,
/ swimming-in-the-dark
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
/ 28381.dead_souls
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams,
/ queenie
Platform by Michel Houellebecq,
/ 88514.platform
The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver,
/ the-motion-of-the-body...
Native Son by Richard Wright,
/ 15622.native_son
Fever and Spear (Tu rostro mañana #1) by Javier Marías,
/ 254351.fever_and_spear
Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag,
/ notes-on-camp
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon,
/ heavy
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami,
/ what-i-talk-about-when...
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje,
/ the-english-patient
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters by Julian Barnes,
/ 440141.a_history_of_th...
No-Signal Area: A Novel by Robert Perišić,
/ no-signal-area
How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Jenny Odell
/ how-to-do-nothing
#thelittalk #readingwrapup
I recommend
House On Endless Waters by Emuna Elon. Translated from Hebrew. Dual timeline WW2 & present day.
The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
👋☘️📚📖🦋
All of them sound great I'll check if I can access them on scribd or audible.
Grat reviews once again, glad you really liked writers and lovers , l absolutely love her writing. Just finished Autumn by Ali Smith , ploughing through Ducks ,Newburyport , have really started out liking 'motion of the body through space ' now yikes wat a disappointment 😔 otherwise just great Kamil. 👏👏👏
Cheers leonie
Thank you Leonie, what do you think about Ducks, Newburyport?
@@WhatKamilReads
I really enjoyed it in the beginning, and like her thoughts and relate to her a lot , but now further in am l becoming a bit weary 😴 so l find myself picking up another book for awhile but l will go back to it , l think its worth finishing even if takes me awhile. Thanks for asking Kamil, l will never be as an astute or as efficient reader or reviewer as you !
Great job !
Fab wrap up Kamil. I shall have to add The English Patient to my 40 classics/modern classics by 40. I have Heavy on my TBR. Must get to it. I’ve read What Belongs To You and really want to read Cleanness soon. I didn’t love Dominicana sadly, though it would make a great screenplay which is what it read like.
Thank you, Simon. That's a great initiative, 40 classics/modern classics by 40. I had maybe not similar but still a TBR list of 35 novels from my shelves I wanted to read this year, and I'm a bit behind. Those are mostly modern classics but also a few newer titles (ie Testaments by Atwood). Just picked up Moby Dick today, and hopefully, that will give it a good kick. I found Cleanness brutally honest, and that was very refreshing, especially when he talks about internalized shame. Dominicana felt like a telenovela a bit but I liked it for what it was.
Oof, glad you reviewed Lionel Shriver and confirmed my suspicions about it, so I don't accicentally recommend it to my customers ;).
I felt the same way about Swimming In The Dark, it was an okay debut novel but it didn't really know whether it wanted to be social commentary or a love story, and ended up being neither.
I have just picked up Heavy and started listening to it, it's already brilliant. Thank you for the recommendation!
Oh, I'm sorry for Shriver now :) and I'm very happy you enjoy Heavy.
I read the Murakami book, too and enjoyed it very much.
It was a good one
OMG! YOU ARE SO DAMN GOOD LOOKING MAN !🤩🤩🤩🤩
Thank you :)
So many fabulous books! I would love to hear more of your thoughts on Garth Greenwell, I had heard good things and was planning to pick one up - sounds as if you did not enjoy :/
I liked Cleanness but that is very sexually explicit, by deep psychologically, I didn't like What Belongs to You though as that one is contrast is quite basic.
What I Talk About When I Talk about Running is so good! I'm not interested in running and I still loved it.
That's interesting, didn't you feel at least a tiny bit motivated to run?
@@WhatKamilReads I'm really into other forms of exercise (I lift weights), just not exactly running (I do run but because I want my exercise routine to be well rounded and not because I don't like it much, haha!) But I do relate to the meditative quality of and the joy that comes with engaging in one's favourite form of exercise, so I really liked the book. :D Additionally , have you read The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distance by Matthew Inman (Oatmeal comics)? It's available online on his comic website, do check it out, it's wonderful.
I read about a third of Writers and Lovers and drifted away from it. Maybe I should try the audio. Glad to hear you enjoyed Murakami on running, it's a great little volume.
The audio was great, so maybe it's with to give it a go. Have you read Euphoria? Did you like it? Regarding Murakami’s book, do you run yourself?
@@WhatKamilReads Cool, I'll see if I can get my hands on that. I haven't read Euphoria, I only heard about Lily King for the first time recently. I don't run, no, but I was training to do a 5K when I read it. I'm more of a yoga person.
I unfortunately had to read The Motion of the Body Through Space as part of my bookclub. There was so much hatred in the book I began to wonder about her, I’ve only read We Need to Talk About Kevin previously and now I’m convinced she is actually Kevin!
That’s funny, she seems to be. There were similar racial accusations regarding her last but one book I believe, and those were due to her depiction of Latinos.
I don’t think I’ll be reading any more of her books...but that’s probably obvious because they aren’t translations 😂
Good summary of Native Son
Thank you Sandra
You encouraged me to read The English Patient.I loved the movie. Did you read Gogol in the Russian or Polish?
Polish, my Russian is still not on the level to read literature yet.
How did you not put Getting Things Done and How to do Nothing back to back? I know they're about pretty different things... I've read both of them and I agree with your assessment as well.
There are some great websites out there summarizing getting things done, that do a better job than the book. It's written in such a weird Style...
Yes, agree, that would be an amusing juxtaposition.
Czapki z głów dla Ciebie za ten biegowy reżim! Ja tylko wynajduję kolejne wymówki, żeby nie biegać, chociaż kiedyś sprawiało mi to ogromną przyjemność 🤷♀️
Co do książek, to mam ochotę na "Dominicanę" i "Apeiregona", a Murakamiego też średnio lubię.
Pozdrawiam !
Dagmara
Ja zawsze mówię ze z bieganiem jest jak z czytaniem jak sie wyjdzie z nawyku trudniej do niego wrócić. Ja tez miałem przerwy i tez po nich wymagało to dużo dyscypliny by wrócić do rytmu. Ja biegam od podstawówki, wtedy trenowałem (można tak powiedzieć) 400 metrów, szkolenie nie zawodowo, dłuższe dystanse zacząłem na studiach a dopiero w Warszawie pewnie z 8 lat temu zacząłem naprawdę regularnie biegać. Apeirogon jest niesamowity.
I'd be interested to see if your opinions of the greenwell novels would have been different had you read them in the other order. I liked what belongs to you, but thought cleanness was repeating what he had already done - more of the same.
I think you might be right, that my reception in terms of Greenwell novels would be different if read in release order. I do feel like Cleanness was more psychologically driven but it might be that my brain has emphasized it because I read it first.
Hi Kamil!!I m a beginner in reading.Plz suggest me a book that is suitable for beginners🙇
Response will be highly appreciated 💕
What did you read recently that you liked?
@@WhatKamilReads I recently read Palace of Illusions and loved it.It was page turning fiction by Chitra Banerjee
Please read Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. He is the greatest living writer.
This is one of those writers I really feel I'm missing out not reading, I will make a conscious effort to pick him up end of the year or beginning of the next one.
WhatKamilReads Thanks for the reply. I look forward to hearing your review. Both of those books are extraordinary, although, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is perhaps my favourite contemporary novel of all time.
Hi Kamil. Great selection of books there. I read Apeirogon last month...disappointing to hear that in spite of producing a work which is monumental in its scope and beautifully sensitive and intricate in its depiction of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it has attracted controversy for something as meaningless as the authors nationality. The question on people's lips should be 'is there a better piece of literature on the subject out there?' My personal reading experience provides an answer of 'No'.
There is a fantastic book of essays by David Grossman titled "The Yellow Wind" that I would strongly recommend. However, I agree with what you've said about Apeirogon in terms of misunderstood political correctness, I believe there's a huge difference in writing something as emotionally manipulative and rooted in scandalization of given experience like Ameican Dirt, and the attentiveness of approaching the subject and seriousness of addressing it that McCann showed with Aperiogon, and somehow both of those are almost thrown into the same bucket. Not even mentioning the literary merrit, there's none in Cummin's book and there's huge amount of it in Apeirogon.
@@WhatKamilReads That's brilliant Kamil! Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out.
I watched waiting for your review of Actress. It was on your list below video. Rewound video watched again. No review?
I'm so sorry, I totally forgot about mentioning that one. I will remove it from the list under the video. I liked it, I wasn't blown away, but I think there were tons of great things in it, and she writes spectacular, I think that the rape scene is one of the most horrifying and gripping that I have ever seen in the literature.
You read while running. Impressive.
I mean I listen to audiobooks :)
I have only read the native son out of all the books in this video ..too intellectual for me. :)
Nice to see another post, Kamil, I always look forward to them. Unfortunately, I hate things attached to me (I can't wear watches or rings for example) so for that reason, on my long walks, I can't listen to audio books, which is a shame.
Of these titles I've only read The English Patient and Platform, and as you know, I have the same sort of problems with Houllebecq that you do.
I'm inspired by you to get the Gogol, as I've read about eight of the great Russian writers, but never him. No excuse now, as my TBR list no longer exists!
I've also read many black writers from Zora Neale Hurston to Colson Whitehead, but Native Son is a glaring admission, so I'll add that to my new list.
I notice that you show the Jedrowski in English. Has it been published in Poland, or has it run foul of the anti-gay rhetoric?
I'm in agreement with you about the so-called self-help books : too many banalities masquerading as deep insights.
I'm reading 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange New World, which I'm enjoying very much, and it adds a female voice to balance the male voice of Pamuk in current Turkish literature.
Hmm, that feels like a very mediative walk, very in the now type of a walk, quite inspirational.
I envy you not having a TBR list in a way, mine is neverending, but I guess this is the outcome of my personality rather than anything else.
Jedrowski's book was written in original in English, it has been just translated to Polish, therefore I would rather read it in English either way. Jedrowski was born in Germany and although being Polish he was educated there and as of 16 years old in England. He says he got to know literature through English and that is the language he writes in. I watched a few interviews with him in Polish and his Polish is rather spotless although with a tiny bit of accent, still ten times better than my English.
We have quite good examples of Polish queer literature but this is not one of it.
I would like to hear your opinion on 10 minutes 38 seconds when you finish reading it. I still am rather in Pamuk camp if I was to choose but Shafak is a very good writer, I agree although I think though 10 minutes is guilty of quite a few flaws.
@@WhatKamilReads My opinion : whatever possessed Shafak to end her book with a series of madcap, farcical adventures, I don't know, but it was a grave misjudgement. In the first part, delicately and beautifully she had written a paean to the marginalised in Turkish society. The simple act of acceding to Leila's last wish, told in twenty pages would have been fine, brave and dignified, but the knockabout aspects of how it unfolded very much undermined what had gone before. Her use of language is exemplary, and deserves better. My favourite Pamuk is "A Strangeness in My Mind". Yours?
I learned that over the last two or three years, femicide in Turkey has risen by 50% mainly due to the swing to the right of Erdogan's government, so with that in mind, I'm now reading "I Will Never See the World Again", penned by an imprisoned writer, Ahmet Altan. Don't worry, I also have "Native Son" at home, and "Dead Souls" is on order.
ESTÁS MUY GUAPO !!!!!!! 😍😍😍😍😍😍
Gracias :)
WhatKamilReads whaaatttt???, jajaja, que pena, hi from Mexico 🇲🇽, your videos are amazing, like you 😍, entiendo la mitad de lo que dices pero no importa. P.D: READ JUAN RULFO, his books are diamonds