The astonishing translation by Emily Wilson Last month I posted about my Ursula LeGuin reading project for 2019; here’s the complete list of everything my husband Dan and I read over the past year. We read just two books in common this year: Lauren ...
All I need: green tea, GF donut, riveting book. What a lame blogger I’ve become! This is literally my only post for the year. But I had my reasons, chief of which was a breast cancer diagnosis this spring that proceeded to derail the entire year. I hope ...
Can't lie: I love my Kindle For the eighth consecutive December 31, I’m seeing out the old year by reporting what my husband Dan and I read over the past year. A few comments about this year’s lists: One big change to my reading habits: I started read ...
Books we both read & loved[/caption]
This was the year my husband read more—a lot more—than I did.
There were two simple reasons for this: He read more, and I read less.
He joined two book clubs in 2016, which explains, at least in part, his impressive list. He read so many books this year that he spent over an hour typing up and annotating his list. Then, after handing me the notebook where we record our completed books, he suddenly cried out, “Wait! I need that back. I skipped a whole page.”
Show-off. ... 
In under the wire, my annual round-up of the books my husband and I read over the year.
My book-loving guy and I read two books in common this year: Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, which we both loved (a rare event for us), and Alice McDermott’s Someone, which I loved and warned him he wouldn’t. I was right, alas.
The other thing I’ll say about Dan’s list is that he’s shown his usual penchant, both for reading work in translation and for finding an author he loves and reading a lot of their work. ... 
A long, mesmerizing read about a really dysfunctional society.[/caption]
This was the year of long books for me and my spouse. Dan read Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov. I read The Goldfinch and The Tale of Genji.
Needless to say -- but I'll say it anyway -- those books not originally written in English, we read in translation. In fact, most of Dan's reading for the year was work in translation. I actually attempted to read Genji in a modern Japanese version, an attempt that lasted two hours and one paragraph.
This year my family did a new thing, which was reading a summer book that all four of us agreed to read. We selected One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was, needless to say -- but I'll say it anyway -- an inspired choice, and a fitting tribute to the author, who died in April.
Another new thing: I'm giving Goodreads a try. ... 
I couldn't wait to read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. The novel is about nearly everything I enjoy reading and writing about: Japan. The late 18th century. The early 19th century. Sailing ships. Encounters between East and West. It even includes a few references to my own pet subject, the La Pérouse expedition.
Well, now I’ve read it, and I’m so sorry to say this because it makes me look like the girl at the party who sits in the corner and scowls at all the people having fun, but I have some serious gripes with this book. ...