July Check-In

[00:00:03]Hello everybody and welcome or welcome back to the second shelf and to my kind of sort of midmon uh check-in for July.

[00:00:12]Um it is today the 19th so over mid but you know we just roll with it. I have 1 2 3 4 five books to talk to you about. Um that's not all not all of them are read but I will start with uh two books that I have finished. Uh the first book um that I read in July or that I finished in July because I started it in June. I think I even finished on the 1st or the 2nd of the month um is this one, A Simple Intervention by Yael Inoai. Uh translated from the German by Mariel Sutherland. And yes, Perini books at least they put I mean it's smaller but at least they put the translator on the cover which I think is what you should do. Um if if you're watching my videos um uh regularly, you will have known when I hauled the book uh this was a buddy read by the way with Joe Smith. um that [laughter] I only realized once I had started the book that it was actually translated from the German. So it was originally written in German and I normally don't read German language books in translation but I just didn't know. It's all um Ya Inoai is was born in Switzerland, but she she writes in German, and I think she lives in Berlin now, but I still would call her a Swiss author. Anyway, a simple intervention is um about uh a nurse called Merit. Uh it's set in Germany.

[00:01:52]U Joe and I couldn't really figure out whether it was set in the past. Joe was leaning towards it. It sounds like the 1950s or60s. It's often uh marketed or called a dystopian novel, but it's not future or futuristic in by any means.

[00:02:12]Um, so but from the names in the book, I deducted that it was uh from set in Germany because you had these very German names uh like Marianne um and one other last name or something. So it sounded like Germany and Merit anyway is a nurse and there is this new procedure the simple intervention [snorts] um uh that uh it's kind of a brain surgery and that cures mostly women from you know as we learn in the book um behavior that we don't like you know women who are are angry or raging or for me the whole premise of the book was especially Marian the main character whom we follow through the procedure. Um it very much reminded me of uh even though this word is not used but the labbotomy that was practiced um uh last century up until the 1970s or 80s and if you're familiar with the Kennedy uh family uh one of the um Kennedy John F.

[00:03:28]Kennedy's sister Rosemary uh she had um uh she was not disabled really but she during birth there was a lack of oxygen so her development her mental development uh wasn't um uh what we would call quote unquote normal um but she could function but the father thought oh no she's going to you know wander off and have sex with guys and get pregnant and stuff like that. So he ordered a labbotomy and she was practically a vegetable afterwards for the rest of her very very long life. And what is described here reminded me of that procedure. So we follow Merritt and um another nurse with whom she she befriends another nurse and there's also a love relationship and we follow a couple of uh patients Marian and uh in particular but also Vera uh I think that's the first patient that is mentioned. This is um I really liked it and I would have absolutely loved it if it hadn't been for the ending. There was this kind of you know rosy resolution in the end. I'm not going to say more in order not to spoil it. And I just did not like it and I didn't think it served the book. It would have been a perfect book if that hadn't been, you know, it almost read as if an editor said to the author, well, you know, you need to have a kind of a more happy end on a happy note. Yeah, that that was real pity because the rest was very good and the language was uh fantastic. The writing was crisp. Um the translation is really good. I I checked a couple of um pages in the German. So that it's it's a real I would have wholeheartedly recommend this book if it hadn't been for the ending.

[00:05:43]Yeah. Anyway, the second book uh that I have finished uh so far that I can talk about uh oh by the way I finished the book prize books.

[00:05:54]Yeah, me or almost almost I have couple of pages to read in the last book. So, I'm almost almost done with that. Um, and I read a couple of other books or started to read for a new project that I'm can't yet talk about. Uh, but the second book that I actually finished and can talk about is this one, Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson. Uh, published in 1980.

[00:06:22]This was u Marilyn Robinson's debut novel, by the way. Um I have um kind of a hit and miss relationship with this author. I did like uh the Gilead uh series uh Laya in particular. Um but um her work for me is often too much um centering around religion or too praiseful of a certain practice of religion, Catholic or whatever. I it that's just not uh for me. Um, and this one is part of this possible new project about, you know, how do you make a home?

[00:07:10]What distinguishes a house from a home?

[00:07:13]How do you um live up to expectations about how housekeeping should look like?

[00:07:20]Um, and this there are two sisters, Ruth and Lucille, and the the story is told by Ruth in retrospect. So after all the events in her childhood had had happened um but she recounts her youth. Lucille is her younger sister and her mother uh dies and then they are cared for by the grandmother and then the grandmother dies and they're cared for two sisters of the grandmother and then later um a sister of their mothers and they always live in the same house that the grandfather built in a town a fictional town little town called Fingerbone somewhere in the northwest I think but it's not there isn't any there aren't any markers.

[00:08:10]Um, as you could probably tell from the cover, this is a rather bleak book. It is about the two sisters coping with the completely dysfunctional family home situation in different ways. Um, and especially when Sylvie, the uh Lucille and uh Ruth's mother's sister, uh takes over. That's probably twothirds of the book, Living with Sylvie. And she is not your traditional housekeeper. And I don't mean that in a like hippie uh and happy golucky sense, but she has definitely uh psychological issues. Um you know, she um the house is full of newspaper that is um uh collected and cans that are collected. So this um I'm not sure how you call that um disorder in English, but when you can't throw away stuff. Anyway, so it's quite bleak.

[00:09:11]I did enjoy the writing. I there's very little plot, but there's a lot of story. Um and I thought it's amazing uh that this is somebody's first novel. So, if you are into that theme of housekeeping, um, and you don't mind if your books are rather bleak, I can certainly recommend this one. Um, and then I want to mention the three books that I'm uh reading at the moment. I'm almost uh finished uh with this one. Another translated work, but this time not from the [laughter] German but from the Spanish because this is a Mexican author, Carmen Bulosa. And again, translator is mentioned on the cover. Samantha Schne coffee house press. Yes. Uh the book of Anna uh I think published a couple of years back.

[00:10:11]Uh 2016. Yeah, it's 10 years back.

[00:10:15][laughter] Um uh this book I first came across this uh um Stephanie's channel um time to read.

[00:10:26]She really loved it and I thought I liked the premise because this book is um [clears throat] if you have read Anna Karenina um this book is heavily not a retelling but it is a uh takes the story of Anna Karenina especially the two children Ana Karenina's children Si and Ana and they are two of the main protagonists and they know that they are fictional so it's kind of a postmodern meta um story. If you're not into that, this won't work for you. It didn't work for Adam. Uh he uh gave up on the book halfway through. But that's also I think if you are not familiar with the story of Anna Karenina and even better if you have read Ana Corenina by Toloy, this works much better. Uh, I I liked I'm always again a hit and miss with the postmodern, you know, meta stuff, but here it's humorous. So, it's not pretentious, I felt. Um, and I like the humor. So, yeah, I will probably finish it um this weekend or the beginning of next week. Um, and then I'm buddy readading uh with Jess from Garden Scriptorum or formerly Garden Scriptorum. She's not making any videos at the moment. And we are reading Andrea Levy, Small Island. Um, published in uh 2004. Uh, Andrea Levy was a Jamaican um, English author. Uh, and she died uh, rather young because she was born in 1956, but she died 2019.

[00:12:11]Um, and this book is mainly about two women. Hortens, the Jamaican woman and an English woman called Queenie. Um, and set in 1948. And then you have back flashes chapters that are called before and we learn about the backstory of the characters. Um, Hortens's husband Gilbert Joseph and her husband Bernard.

[00:12:42]Um, we learn their backstory in Jamaica and then in London in 1948. I so far I'm liking it, but I'm not completely in love with it. And that's also something that is very subjective that I'm not that much into dual timelines. I just have difficulties. If I know, for instance, a character ends up with a certain man and then I get the backstory where she falls in love with somebody else, I already know what the outcome will be and that kind of gets me less interested. But still, this is very wellcraftrafted, very well written. the the bleakness of after war London uh 1948 as I said uh and the racism in the army her husband uh was in the uh RAF um also he's also from Jamaica so there are a lot of good things and we are not yet 2/3 through so I will just reserve judgment um until after I finished and Then I finally picked up this big one, Traversal by Maria Popova.

[00:14:05]Uh, published in I think 200 and yeah, it was published this year, earlier this year. Um if you follow my channel you might have uh you might remember that I really really loved the previous book in this kind it's a non-fiction um in in this vein and that was called figuring which you would call could call a multi-person biography kind of thing making links between you know uh art and science and talking about various people through the centuries. Um, figuring starts with Kepler, but then we also have Emily Dickinson. We have, uh, all types of female, mostly female, even though it starts with Kepler, female scientists and artists, uh, writers, poets. Um, and this is in the same vein, but it's heavily focusing I'm halfway. Yeah, it's heavily focusing on Mary Shelly, which I love because that's another, you know, long-term project that I want to familiarize myself with Mary Shel's work and her uh history. And so, a lot of what I've read so far is about her. So, it's much more focusing on one person or the life on one of one person and the people, you know, in her life. So the interspersed uh chapters that I got so far, it's maybe two or three and that kind of doesn't work as brilliantly. Um because it's kind of a little lopsided um and in figuring it was this flow of people one after the other and that worked really well. But again, I'm halfway through, so I don't know how the end will be. But I definitely love the way that Maria Popova um combines science and art and uh traversal. Um is about the one of the traversals is the traversal of Venus. Um you might be familiar if you're interested at all in astronomy or stars or whatever. Um, Venus traverses the sun for us in on the on earth viewable um once every 100 years and then twice in 8 years. So the last one was 2012 I think um and the one before that was 2004 and the next one will be 2117 or something. And in in the 18th century they used the traversal of Venus in six in 1769 um if in order to measure or to calculate I should rather say um the distance between earth and sun. So this was a a big deal but anyway the traversal she traverses across a lot of things. So it's not about the traversal of Venus. Uh but yeah, it it is mentioned there and it is part of the book story. Um and I'm definitely enjoying it, but not sure yet whether I will love it as much as I loved figuring and it is heavy because I bought it the just released hard cover in 2026. Anyway, so this was my July kind of sort of midmon uh check-in. And yes, it's still warm, but not as oppressive anymore as it has been. So, it's it's okay. We are in the high8s, 90ish, so that's definitely better than it has been. Anyway, this was my uh as I said, midmon check-in. Thank you very much for watching. I hope you've enjoyed it. As always, I'm looking forward to your comments down below, and I'll see you all soon in the next one, next Sunday.