Still reading Proust. Always reading Proust. Gathered my convictions, and put down many books which I intended to read, but in fact had forgotten about. Had the nice idea which comes about once a month of focussing on some big mountains of books. In that mind, I started on Das Kapital, the penguin edition, following along with David Harvey’s lecture series. Have yet to make much progress on that journey however. I cannot help but pick up other books on the side, and this time that book is Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The corner that held them a historical materialist nunnery chronicle, right up my alley, and pertinent to boot.

I have also tried many times to scale the small hill of Timothy J. Clark’s long essay on Pissarro and Anarchism in his collection Farewell to an idea. I don’t have the stamina at the moment and no matter how many times I throw myself up that hill I always seem to come tumbling down again. Today I attempt the assent again. Raymond Gillespie’s Seventeenth Century Ireland has been on my list for a while, since I found a cheap copy by lucky accident in a charity shop, maybe it was in Wexford, maybe it was in Dublin, I don’t remember (I DO remember that I found an NYRB classic in that Wexford shop, a first, although I didn’t buy it). Seventeenth Century Ireland is a book I’ll get to eventually, I read the first chapter, and as expected, it’s wonderful. As always I am collecting my energy and shaking off my fatigue, my permanent state.

Chinese reading has been progressing well. I can’t say smoothly. The way is full of stones, and uneven ground. I’m never balanced when reading Chinese. And yet with my unsteady method, I have wobble forward faster and faster, and, even better, rarely stumble. Have been reading one fiction 明亮的夜晚, translated from Korean and recommended by a friend, and one non-fiction 跑外卖: 一个女骑手的世界. And other articles and posts on the side.

Since my last update I read through most of Annie Ernaux’s bibliography, brilliant, I want to copy her style. Read The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas, brilliant as well, and various other assorted things, including Hesse’s Steppenwolf recommended to me by a friend, which was nothing like I expected it to be, and far funnier than the Glass Bead Game which neither I nor anybody I know has ever been able to finish.