Reading Notes

It's no secret my favorite genre is historical fiction. What's kind of snuck up on me, though, is the number of times I've reached for foreign, i.e. translated into English, books. Who knew they could be so good?! I'd never given them much credit figuring something's always going to be lost in the translation. Still, if and when I'd come across a foreign author or title I was curious about, I'd often just grab it for a rainy-day reading whim, especially from the library or a used-book sale. It's only now, having done this for a couple of years, that I've come to realize just how excellent most of these books really are.

A quick survey of translated works on my shelf . . .

Roberto Bolano - 2666 and The Savage Detectives
Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
Fyodor Dostoyevski - The Idiot , Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Sandor Marai - Embers and Casanova in Bolzano

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood
Irene Nemirovsky - Suite Francaise and All Our Worldly Goods
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Short Stories
Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel's Game, and The Prisoner of Heaven

I'm quite pleased with my discovery. But, really, most of these books have been around for some time and I feel I'm just waking up to them now. Funny how that happens.