Beach Reads

Mid-life crisis continues. Inspiration to write is elusive so when a friend asked for a recommendation for something to read during the summer holidays, I jumped right on the topic. I am, by no means a literary critic, nor am I very up to date with the current listings on the book market, so here I made a short list of the books that have been in my beach bag for the past years. Some in Romanian, some in English, they range from thrillers to historic, from biographies to essays. About 20 of them, with Links from Amazon, because Kindle and Carturesti for Romanian.

• Every list I make shall always start with Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I am preaching about this book over and over. Because it is something that I keep on coming back to whenever I need to understand what I am and why I am. To say it is a book about a Jewish psychologist during WW2 is to say nothing about it. It is not really long, so give it some time. Here, the version in Romanian.
• If I don’t start a list with Frankl, then I start it with Ion Baiesu – Balanta. Because I can quote pages of it by heart. Communism in Romania in the 80s. And “the stupidest people in the world is the Americans” and “if we make a kid together, we don’t stop, we make the second one, because an old beauraucrat once told me everything you make in life, make in duplicates, because you may never know”. Only in Romanian.
• David Sedaris – anything from. All from. Because laughter and sarcasm and joy and sadness. Me Talk Pretty One Day is a good first read, but I cannot chose only one. Here in Ro.
• Mihail Sebastian – For 2000 years. Eye-opening quasi-biography from a Holocaust that was waiting nearby in a very racist Romania. Here in Ro.
• Javier Marias - Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me. A rather noir, rather mystery book about secrets and infidelity. His The Infatuations reminded me of The Girl on the Train a bit.
• Elena Ferrante – Neapolitan Novels (Tetralogy). The most intellectual of easy reads, stories about women.  Here in Ro.  
• E. O. Chirovici – The Book of Mirrors. A mystery, thriller, noir about secrets, easy to read. Here in Ro.
• Clarice Lispector – Near to the Wild Heart – a book about growing up and marriage and missing out. Strangely a book about FOMO written in 1943.
• Bora Cosic – My Family’s Role in the World Revolution. A gem of a satire  that I could not put down. It talks of war and survival and communism and family and the Balkans.  Here in Ro.
• Mihai Radu  - Extraconjugal – Only in Romanian, about family and sexuality and boredom and tiny towns and Romania as it is. Provincial. But all novels are about provincials, aren’t they?
• Richard Flanagan – The Narrow Road to the Deep North – a story of war, relationships and survival. The Japanese POW camps, the Burma Death Railway, and books. “He believed books had an aura that protected him, that without one beside him he would die. He happily slept without women. He never slept without a book.” 
• Jean Teule – The Suicide Shop. If suicide was a commodity and people could become entrepreneurs from it and everyone should be miserable, except the main character? Here in Ro.
• Muriel Barbery – The Elegance of the Hedgehog. A funny one about neighbours and blocks of flats.   Here in Ro.
• Matei Visniec – Negustorul de inceputuri de roman.  A fantasy about dying and living and love of life and starting a novel and how everyone is a writer, but mostly how everyone is a dreamer. Here in French – Le Marchand des premieres phrases.
• Junot Diaz – This is how you lose her. About relationships and love and losing . And I must give a shout-out to Black Button Books, for the Romanian version. All their books are simply wonderful. Here in Ro.
• Andrei Kurkov – Penguin Lost. AKA The Snail’s Law. A funny one about life and survival and corruption and surrealism in post-communist Ukraine.  Here in Ro.
• Susan Sontag – On Photography. But literally, any sort of book by Sontag I tend to devour. Here in Ro.
•  Marius Chivu – Sfarsit de sezon. Only in Romanian. A collection of short stories about current urban Romania.
• Telespan – Cimitirul. Only in Romanian. Being gay in a provincial town in Romania is no fun. Moving to London to work in a cemetery is.
• Oliver Sacks – On the Move: A Life. Full circle to Frankl’s joy. This list wraps up with another psychologist who wonders about what and how and why in a sort of a biography. Here in Ro.

The list could be longer, and perhaps I may add to it. But the beach calls and I’d rather read than write J

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