Monday, January 2, 2012

Musing Mondays- The First Book for 2012

This week’s musing asks…
What is/are the first book(s) you’re reading for the new year?

Well, I just finished John Crowley's Little, Big, and I think I want a shorter and less fantastical novel as a follow-up, so I'm going to read Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North. In 2009 I read The Wedding of Zein, which I really loved, and while this one doesn't seem to have Zein's comic angle it's been described in 2001 as "the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century" by a panel of Arab critics and writers.

It's about a young man who returns to Sudan after spending some years studying in Europe; in his village he meets a man, a stranger to him, with his own tales of woe concerning time he spent in Europe- his career, his friends and his love affairs. The man's story unsettles the younger man; the older man then disappears leaving the younger to look after his wife.

It's a fairly short book and I'm confident I'll enjoy it. Of course I'll let you know!

More Musing Mondays at ShouldbeReading.wordpress.com.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds interesting. :)
Here’s my Musing Mondays post. :)

Katharine Ott said...

My first book this year is Voyage of the Catalpa by Peter Stevens. It's the story of the rescue/liberation of a group of Fenians who had been shipped from Great Britain to a prison in Australia in 1867. I'm not Irish, so I don't have a dog in this fight, but find the story fascinating so far.

caite said...

not loving the book I am now reading, Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardittir (although I love that name...)

Amy said...

Great reads! This one is definitely being added to my TBR list - thank you for sharing! Happy New Year! :)

Here's mine:

http://amylunderman.blogspot.com/2012/01/musing-mondays-with-clockwork-prince.html

bermudaonion said...

I hope you love it!

Laurel-Rain Snow said...

Enjoy!

Thanks for sharing....

Here's MY MUSING MONDAY POST and
MY WEBSITE

ImageNations said...

this is a book I plan to read some day.

I wanted to read a book that will define all my reading resolutions so I chose The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer which is on my Top 100 Reading Challenge.

Zibilee said...

This one does sound rather interesting. I am also on pins and needles to find out what you thought of Little, Big. The ending was strange, and I would love to talk it over with you sometime!

Kathleen said...

I hope you enjoy it and can't wait to hear your thoughts on it.