so-soTycho Brahe: glutton, tyrant, star gazer, genius, friend to alchemists & fortune tellers. Private island. Prosthetic nose. Weather. Lots of weather. Trans. 2023
20 “the most illustrious noseless man of our time.”
43 “I have discerned the secrets of the universe from this soup tureen of a country during the brief and rare moments when the lid was raised and heaven could be espied.”
104 “We are created from the same fire as these distant lights.”
pickThis brief, surreal novella consists mostly of a few extraordinarily long run-on sentences, which makes for a strangely propulsive galloping pace. The narrator is a librarian named "herman melvill," obsessed with the author of the same name, as well as author Malcolm Lowry and architect Lebbeus Woods, and the idea of a Permanently Closed Library. His descent into madness is strangely compelling, although I couldn't tell you what it means.
pickMy Norwegian edition contains only The Old Child so I don‘t know what stories are included in the English edition
This is Erpenbeck‘s debut story from 1999 and it‘s considerably shorter than the other books I‘ve read by her
A girl is found on the street and no one knows who she is, so she‘s placed at an orphanage. She‘s an outsider there, and she‘s trying to figure out how things work
The ending was a little weird, so if anyone has read this,
pickAnne Serre‘s novel is partly a response to her sister‘s death. This is a character study that plays games with the narrator… or The Narrator. It‘s wonderful in language, but a little lacking in reader drive. I enjoyed it enough and… it completes my read through the 2025 International #Booker Longlist! #IB2025
I will add my personal ranking of all 13 books in the comments. But leave off my quirky reasoning. Feel free to ask questions, though.
Started this. And it will complete my reading through this year‘s International Booker longlist - the 1st i will have done this.
#booker #IB2025
so-so"Was it true? Was she making it up? It doesn't matter."
Small but mighty. This is not a tiny book you can race through. The language is gorgeous but incredibly dense, I often had to reread entire pages, I would get to the end and not remember what I had read. Possibly this was too smart for me.
But I still enjoyed it, the mystery of the relationships, the aspects of mental illness were done well, also love the cover.
3.75/5⭐
pickA weak pick
Our Narrator is talking about his friendship with Fanny. & friendships are never easy, especially when you don‘t know which of you friend‘s personalities you‘re going to meet
I watched Jen Campbell‘s YouTube video where she read some of the longlisted International Booker books & one of several ideas she talked about was that the Narrator & Fanny where the same person, & the Narrator where Fanny looking at herself from a distance
