December (fourth week) 2017 Reads

Once again my reading was all over the map: Libya/Italy, Sudan, New York's Chinatown, Chile, and a creepy unnamed fantasy village from a Catalan author.

Deal Me In

This week's story: The Past by Ellen Glasgow: In The Best Short Stories of 1921 originally published in Good Housekeeping, October 20, 1920. (The anthology covers the period from October 1920 through September 1921).
This is a gentle ghost story set in a Fifth Avenue mansion.





Card: Queen of Diamonds from a  promotional deck printed by B. Dondorf for Saks & Company, New York, late 1920s. Found at The World of Playing Cards.








A picture book from from Project Gutenberg...
My Book of Ten Fishes by Rosalie G. Mendel

from my shelves...

 
Morning Sea by Margaret Mazzantini; translated from the Italian by Ann Gagliardi
The stories of two mothers and their son are told in this short novel of migration between Italy and Libya. One pair are boat refugees-a mother and her young son traveling from Libya to Sicily. The other story line involves a nineteen year-old son of a woman who was born in Libya of Italian immigrant workers.


 
Death in Spring  by Mercè Rodoreda; translated from the Catalan by Martha Tennent
Weird and compelling world building. This is part of Open Letter Books Two Month Review Project.
Rodoreda is a fine writer. Actually the guided read has another week to go but I couldn't stop myself from finishing ahead of time.





  
Navidad & Matanza by Carlos Labbé; translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden 
Another weird one from Open Letter, this one from Chile. Teenage brother and sister go missing, there is an odd research lab, a group writing of a story. It's all mixed up but worth figuring it out. 


 


 
Mambo in Chinatown by Jean Kwok  
Two American born Chinese sisters live with their immigrant father (a noodle maker in New York's Chinatown). The father and his brother (an herb doctor) are traditionalists. The girls must deal with living an "American" life while trying to respect the views of their elders. 

The Book of Khartoum: A City in Short Fiction by Raph Cormack (Editor), Max Shmookler (Editor); translated from the Arabic
Contents:
 The tank / Ahmed al-Malik ; translated by Adam Talib --
 In the city / Ali al-Makk ; translated by Sarah Irving --
 A boy playing with dolls / Isa al-Hilu ; translated by Marilyn Booth --
 It's not important, you're from there / Arthur Gabriel Yak ; translated by Andrew Leber --
 Next Eid / Bawadir Bashir ; Translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes --
 Passing / Rania Mamoun ; translated by Elisabeth Jaquette --
 The story of the girl whose birds flew away / Bushra al-Fadil ; translated by Max Shmookler --
 The passage / Mamoun Eltlib ; translated by Mohamed Ghalaeiny --
 The butcher's daughter / Abdel Aziz Baraka Sakin ; translated by Ralph Cormack --
 The void / Hammour Ziada ; translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid.