{misc.} wrapping up 2012

This is pretty much the end of my blogging year, as I am off to China in a few days. I have never been there (although my sister has lived in Beijing for ten years), so that should be an exciting and different (and freezing) Christmas holiday. 

I will likely read a bit on the journey, so I expect that I'll end the year with somewhere around 110 books finished. This is a big drop in numbers from 2011 (171 books), but in 2012 I had an almost bookless month travelling in the UK and France, and also a conference paper to prepare, with lots of not-counted-and-not-much-fun books being read early in the year. 

Fiction came in at 93 books; non-fiction a paltry 11. E-books (71) whipped tree-books (33). Re-reads accounted for 9 titles. If I break down fiction, I have 26 books of the literary sort, and 56 all somewhat lighter (crime, mystery, action, espionage, historical fiction, etc.). 11 were really meant for children or young adults. Only 5 books were translated from other languages (very poor). 

And my top reads? I have ruthlessly omitted re-reads (sorry, Georgette Heyer) and books I haven't yet reviewed (in this category, I loved Mary Norton's The Complete Borrowers and Cassandra Parkin's outrageously funny Lighter Shades of Grey: a (very) critical reader's guide to Fifty Shades of Grey) [and, no, I haven't read the original]. 

So… in the end, I have 11 FAVOURITE READS OF 2012 (yes, 11), in no particular order:

Joanna and Ulysses - May Sarton {REVIEW} 

Memento Mori - Muriel Spark {REVIEW} 

Seducers in Ecuador & The Heir - Vita Sackville-West {REVIEW} 

Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World - Stephanie J. Snow {REVIEW} 

Miss Buncle's Book - D. E. Stevenson {REVIEW} 

The Blood of the Vampire - Florence Marryat {REVIEW} 

Lamberto Lamberto Lamberto - Gianni Rodari {REVIEW} 

A Kiss Before Dying - Ira Levin {REVIEW} 

The Best of Everything - Rona Jaffe {REVIEW} 

Diary of a Nobody - George & Weedon Grossmith {REVIEW} 

Lightning Rods - Helen DeWitt {REVIEW}

    

    

    

   

Wishing you all 

a Merry Christmas and 

a very Happy New Year!

{review} lamberto, lambero, lamberto

Gianni Rodari Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto (1978; English translation 2011 of C'era due volte il barone Lamerto)

I had to read this after I saw Marg's enthusiastic review. This book was such fun.

The aged and infirm Baron Lamberto, owner of 24 banks, possessor of 24 illnesses and "the world’s greatest chamomile collection", takes a tip from a fakir and employs a group of people to speak his name over and over and over, continuously 24 hours a day -- growing mysterious younger, fitter and handsomer in the process. But will his miraculous renaissance be hijacked by his greedy heir and a gang of Red Brigade-style bandits?

This book is wonderful and witty. The language (translation by Antony Shugaar) is gorgeous and I desperately want to read it in Italian, though being appallingly lazy I probably won't. Preferably, I'd like to read it again during a lovely holiday in the Italian Lakes region.

"We should also speak to Signora Zanzi about the way she draws out the second syllable of Lamberto, and then clips off the third and final syllable. She sounds like a sheep bleating—be-e-e-eh, be-e-e-eh—and we can’t have that." …
"I’ll attend to it, My Lord. If I may venture to do so, I shall also ask Signor Bergamini to be a little less emphatic in the way he punctuates each of the three syllables. There is, if I may say so, the faintest reminiscence of a soccer cheer: Lam-ber-to! Lam-ber-to!"

Rating: 5/5.

If you liked this... something somewhere between Andrew Kaufmann's The Tiny Wife {REVIEW} and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

 

{weekend words}

Baron Lamberto has the world’s greatest chamomile collection. He has chamomiles from the Alps and the Apennines, from the Pyrenees and the Caucasus, the Sierras and the Andes, and even from the high valleys of the Himalayas. Every variety of chamomile is carefully catalogued and stored on special shelves, with an index card indicating the place, year, and day it was harvested. 

“I would suggest,” said Anselmo, “a 1945 Campagna Romana.” 

“Quite so, you’re the expert.” 

One day every year, the villa opens its wrought-iron gates and hardwood portals, and tourists are invited in to see Baron Lamberto’s collections: the chamomile collection, the umbrella collection, the collection of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings...

Gianni Rodari (1978)

Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto