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Fontana dei Libri, Via degli Staderari, Roma

This has been a weird year for me in terms of reading and, particularly, because of my on-and-off presence in GR. The year has been good overall, though. The main positive thing has been that I have skirted around Covid even though I have been moving around, traveling, and living in a city which did not close down.

A bookish highlight has been the ongoing gift of a year subscription to a Bookshop in the UK. The monthly surprise has fared brilliantly. There was only one book that was already under my radar, Letters to Camondo, but most were surprises �� either because I did not know about them or because they challenged my prejudices. The bookshop choices have certainly taken me out of my area of comfort. Samples of this are How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World and Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. Several were books that I had not yet heard of: Cathedral, Olga, The Artificial Silk Girl. The subscription also pushed me to immerse myself in the cosy and witty world of Barbara Pym. They sent me Excellent Women to be followed a month later by the new Bio, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (a playful Bookshop) �� which prompted me into reading more novels by her, apart from the one they sent me before I tackled the weighty volume on her life. I plan to read a couple more in 2022.

Another headline in 2021 was that I managed to spend a total of one month in Paris and over one month in Rome. These stays directed a fair amount of my reading. About twenty of my reads had to do with either the city of Rome (classical, renaissance and baroque), or were written in Italian --or both. I can select The Domus Aurea Book, In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire, Roman The Roman Forum, Due vite, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (reread), The Public Image, Julian and Pilgrim Princess: A Life of Princess Zinaida Volkonsky. Spending so much time walking around meant I had no time for reviewing. I am now trying to catch with some of these.

For Paris I managed to read almost twenty others. Several of these were Art books (Atget Paris, Monet) and a few were rereads (Madame Bovary, Seven Ages of Paris, Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue, L'Argent). I managed to visit the recently renovated Carnavalet museum where they have redone Proust’s room. This year I finally read Celeste’s Monsieur Proust. As 2022 will be the centenary of Proust’s death this museum has just opened an exhibition on him. I have already purchased the catalogue, Marcel Proust: Un roman parisien and this is a read for me next year.

Until now I had not realized how much of my reading this year was centred around these two cities, but I suppose I treated them as books �� streets can be understood as lines in a text. French literature is Paris, and Paris is French literature. What other city has a wall with one of the poems from its literature?


Rimbaud's Le Bateau Ivre.

As for Rome, well, Rome with all its strata can be understood a palimpsest: texts written over texts.

I had wanted to read more on Music, but I only managed about three books with Handel’s standing out, Handel in London: The Making of a Genius. In this recount I realize that I read a fair amount of art books, which I did not think had received the proportion of time I usually confer to Art. For music I plan to start Ross’s Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music this January.

Next year seems still as a blank page in terms of my reading choices. My bookshop subscription has been renewed, which makes me extremely happy �� it is like an extended Christmas. Otherwise, I think that, given the year will bring an homage to Proust, I think I will reread two or three of the Recherche. I would also like to revisit the Iliad and read finally the Aeneid (Rome again) as well as several of those recent novels that are retelling the Troy tale �� such as those by Pat Barker and Madeline Miller.

The worst bookish thing of 2021 has been my partial disconnection from GR. I have truly missed this community, with the wonderful book choices and opinions.

I wish a merry, healthy and literary 2022 to all.



I wrote this below about a year ago - Things have turned out differently.

(view spoiler)[Mmmm..

This is the exciting, and daunting, moment in which we all begin to plan what we'll read over the coming twelve months.

Still undecided but there are several candidates. Several of these are long, so I expect to read fewer volumes. Some are spilling over from 2020, since my reading path took unexpected turns. Two subjects will dominate: Russia and Italy and I would like to pay more attention to books on Music. I will also continue my long term plan of reading the episodes (46) by Benito Pérez Galdós. My next will be the 15th. And I plan also some rereads, something I did in 2020 and was very gratifying.

Spilling over from 2020

Peter the Great: His Life and World
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
The Thirty Years War

A big tome:
Les Misérables

Music
Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven
Handel in London: The Making of a Genius

Rereads
Madame Bovary
The Portrait of a Lady

And last but not least, I will read 12 books that will be sent to me, as a surprise, from a London Bookshop - I received this plan as a Xmas present.

I will not do with this review what I did for 2020 - listed all the books I read. The point of doing this was to sustain a discipline in not starting too many at the same time and of writing reviews. It helped but it also meant that I was limited in space when the time arrived to write the final overview. (hide spoiler)]