Unread

Pictured above is my current TBR pile, comprising seven books, namely (from the top): Moby-Dick by Herman Melville; Dimanche and Other Stories by Irène Némirovsky; The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger’s Guild by Mathias Énard; Milkman by Anna Burns; The Garden of Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol; Liberation Day by George Saunders and Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai. The newest arrivals are the two volumes at the bottom. Having much admired Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, I thought I’d try one of his short story collections. And I’ve been a fan of Krasznahorkai since the turn of the century, when The Melancholy of Resistance was the only novel of his available in English, so I was quick to buy a copy of Herscht 07769 when it was published a few months ago.

Other titles have been in the pile since 2023. I don’t know why I’m quite so hesitant to get around to Énard’s work. His Street of Thieves rested unread on my shelves for at least two years before I began it. I wasn’t quite as tardy with Compass which only had to wait for six months or so. The title at greatest risk of permanent residency in the pile is The Garden of Seven Twilights. I failed to appreciate when I ordered it quite how hefty a brick of a volume it would be: 880+ pages of smallish print. It daunts me. Of the others, Milkman, and the ’50s copy of Moby-Dick were cheap charity shop purchases; whereas Dimanche was part of an on-line order placed directly with the publisher. I have every intention of reading most of these by the end of this year.