Claire McAlpine 📚

Yes, that village and community are imprinted on the reader, do vividly brought to life they are.

Write-atomata Why me, Lord?

#JeanetteWinterson on
1 Aladdin🧞‍♂️ 2 💡

"It’s a reading of the 1001 Nights.
It’s a book about how to make a life. You can’t do that if you are lost in the literal. Life is more than utility. Life is lived best through the imagination. That’s where everything begins."

open.substack.com/pub/jeanette...

"Magical realism is not only a realm of boundless imagination, it is also a powerful literary and cultural tool for resisting dominant and imposed powers."

#ShokoofehAzar

Around fifteen differently shaped leaves painted in colouful designs on a cream background

Brazilian artist Gabee Meyer creates artworks by painting on leaves 🍂🍃

Yes, big and beautiful and worth persevering when you're in the right frame of mind. It's epic. I'm so glad I have a free afternoon to get back into it. 🥰📚💙

Book cover of The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen by Shokoofeh Azar translated from the Farsi by Anonymous. Spanning 50 years in the history of modern Iran, a tale of one family's efforts to preserve the richness of Iranian culture in the face of Islamic hegemony following the 1979 revolution.

Starting Book Two - The Ordeal of Liberty

A solo journey to the front in search of a missing brother, our heroines journey, guided by her Grandmother's Ball of Light. 🌕

#ShokoofehAzar
The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen translated from Persian #Anonymous

Peace Begins at Home Summit 2025: Global Online Event for Peace & Partnership — Peace Begins at Home Summit Collage of Peace Begins at Home Summit speakers, representing diverse voices across ages 14 to 94 from 17 countries, united for global peace.

How do patterns of domination in the home ripple into wider systems — fuelling authoritarianism, violence, and inequality — and how can we shift toward partnership to create cultures of care, democracy, and peace?

"The revolution that begins with book burning and assassinations does not end in a Republic."

#shokoofehazar The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen
📚💙

#europaeditions

Still 300 pages to go, it's time to commit to finishing this. I'm enjoying it, but need to overcome the overwhelm at its length.

I'm reading #MarianaEnriquez's interesting essays at the same time, 'Somebody Is Walking On Your Grave: My Cemetry Journeys' translated from Spanish by #MeganMcDowell. 🪦

My Top 5 Irish Fiction & Nonfiction Books It’s Reading Ireland Month and in addition to posting reviews as and when I read books from my Irish Literature pile, I’ll be following Cathy at 746book’s weekly prompts to explor…

Handiwork by Sara Baume,
I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O Farrell,
Poor by Katriona Sullivan,
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ni Griofa,
Girl in the Tunnel by Maureen Sullivan,
Fierce Appetites by Elizabeth Boyle,
Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Thin Places & Cacophony of Bone

clairemcalpine.com/2022/03/04/m...

Any contemporary favourites?

I was definitely missing the Charco titles this month, I need to remedy that. Last year, I read a bumper crop of them!

I love getting recommendations in August during #witmonth seeing all the reviews and what's being read.
Looking forward to your column!

Another by Marlen Haushofer, that's a good find.

The book cover of Iranian Australian author Shokoofeh Azar's The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen translated ftom Farsi by Anonymous features details if a painting by the author, with red and green motifs, birds, leaves, a dark green trunk, a red flower. A bookmark showing growth a bird reads "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." In the background, a lake in Cabrères d'Aigues, Vaucluse, France.

Last day of #witmonth I started The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of the Kitchen by Shokoofeh Azar translated from Farsi by Anonymous.

A surreal epic, a tree erupts through the ceiling, the protagonist experiences what might be love, dreams come to life, prophecies manifest, ancestral links appear.

It's so well portrayed that you really feel for the character and just know this transition is not viable without consequence, adding a subtle layer of tension.

Book cover of Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó, translated from Hungarian. The cover shows a single wooden chair on wooden floorboards, in the background we can see a cupboard with tea cups. Behind the book is a lake, beyond the lake an abandoned château. La Motte d'Aigues.

Today's read, Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó, a tale of an old woman shocked by the death of her husband, sent to live with her only child in Budapest where there is no role for her. Every attempt to help rejected, her own decline hastens.

A generational divide.

#witmonth #hungarianliterature

Book cover of Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó, translated from Hungarian. The cover shows a single wooden chair on wooden floorboards, in the background we can see a cupboard with tea cups. Behind the book is a lake, beyond the lake an abandoned château. La Motte d'Aigues.

Today's read, Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó, a tale of an old woman shocked by the death of her husband, sent to live with her only child in Budapest where there is no role for her. Every attempt to help rejected, her own decline hastens.

A generational divide.

#witmonth #hungarianliterature

She has a few sabotaging tricks with those paws 🐾

Book Cover of Love Forms by Claire Adam longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 and a black cat seeking attention, sitting on the book, preventing the reader from being able to read it.

A 16 year old Trinidadian in a predicament is smuggled across to Venezuela to avoid the shame her family may experience.

40 years later, she searches for what she has lost.

Compelling, insightful, at times uncomfortable. Unique for its raw, honest cultural observations.

Love Forms by #ClaireAdam

Nine Booker-nominated novels featuring strong female friendships | The Booker Prizes The connection between close friends can feel like a superpower, but it can be devastating when things go wrong. These novels explore the joys and complexities of female friendship

The connection between close friends can feel like a superpower, but it can be devastating when things go wrong. These novels explore the joys and complexities of female friendship.

Send to a friend who would love this reading list ⤵️
https://thebookerprizes.pulse.ly/z2pzlxlvnf

Painting of red and pink flowers in a glass on a table, in sunshine with a view to turquoise water behind

Vanessa Bell,
Flowers on a Balcony, c.1924
English painter
#WomensArt

Book cover of All Our Yesterdays (Tutti I Nostri Ieri orogonally published in 1952) by Natalia Ginzburg, Italy translated by Angus Davidson, published in UK by Daunt Books (2022) with an introduction by author Sally Rooney. The cover features a black and white photo Jinx and Justin at Cafe, Florence, Italy 1951 and a quote from the New York Times that reads "Ginzburg's books snare so much of what is odd and lovely and fleeting in the world."

After loving 3 of her novellas, I started this 408 pg #NataliaGinzburg novel All Our Yesterdays, spanning the war years in northern Italy.

Utterly captivating, it follows 2 families that live opposite each other. I never wanted it to end.

A brilliant original work of observation and community.

The final act. You'll appreciate it with all that backstory of novels and stories known.

I've only heard good things, one day I too will take the plunge.🤠🐴

I think so. It is on another level for sure, the way it endures and so thoroughly immerses you into their lives. The first half reminded me quite a bit of the memoir Family Lexicon. It felt familiar in some way, the visits to the mountain house especially.

'I turn my face from the ominous day,
Before it comes, everlasting night,
So lifeless, it’s long since passed away.

But shimmering faith renews my fight,
And I turn, with joy, towards the light,
Along galleries of deepest memory.'

JOSEP CARNER, Absence

Catalan poet, quoted in
The Song of Youth

So good, completely immersive.

I haven't read any Rooney yet, but that explains why she writes the intro. She seems very affected and admiring of Ginzburg's work.

Book cover of All Our Yesterdays (Tutti I Nostri Ieri orogonally published in 1952) by Natalia Ginzburg, Italy translated by Angus Davidson, published in UK by Daunt Books (2022) with an introduction by author Sally Rooney. The cover features a black and white photo Jinx and Justin at Cafe, Florence, Italy 1951 and a quote from the New York Times that reads "Ginzburg's books snare so much of what is odd and lovely and fleeting in the world."

After loving 3 of her novellas, I started this 408 pg #NataliaGinzburg novel All Our Yesterdays, spanning the war years in northern Italy.

Utterly captivating, it follows 2 families that live opposite each other. I never wanted it to end.

A brilliant original work of observation and community.