The Shoemaker's Wonderful Wife

I really like Lorca so I've been going through his plays gradually. So far these early plays of his show potential but don't wow like Blood Wedding. This one is about a 50 something year man who leaves his young nagging wife. During his absence, the two realize how much they actually do love one another. It doesn't help that the town is against them. This play was cute but greatness was around the corner.

Brigitta and other tales

I read the novella Rock Crystal and loved it. So I decided to read more by Adalbert Stifter. This contains four stories by him. Two stories were ok. The others were great. "Abdias", one of the ok ones, is about a guy whose daughter is blind and she recovers. "Limestone" is about a priest and this was the worst of them. However "The Forest Path" was fantastic. It was really cute. It's about a wealthy hermit who is a hypochondriac. He is cured when he meets a sweet country girl. The other one "Brigitta" was great too. It's about a good looking guy who has had lots of girls who finds himself returning to the plain wife he left years ago. I really like Stifter and I'm going to read more by him.

The Mummy Market

Every once in a while I like to try an out of print children's book. This was a cute one with a good message. Three children want to get rid of their mean housekeeper. They go to the "mummy market" to find a suitable mom to take her place. But they keep coming up with duds. Eventually they learn from a friend that what they want to do is actually find their real mom. SPOILER: Someone on goodreads said that they didn't like the fact that the enchantment was never explained. I was find with this. Not everything has to be solved in a book.

Abarat: Absolute Midnight

This is the third book in the fantasy young adult series. There's supposed to be five but I don't know if that is going to happen. It's been more than ten years since this was published. SPOILER: Things happened in the third book that I didn't expect. For example I didn't see Princess Boa being a bad guy and all of a sudden Carrion becomes a friend. So there were surprises. A new character Gazza becomes a love interest and I feel like I didn't really know him. Maybe perhaps in the next book if there is one I will. Overall it was an ok installment of the series.

Pan

This was a great short novel about a loner who falls for a girl but neither is able to communicate the emotions that arise between them. The epilogue shows the character Glahn in another person's eyes and we see he is not the person that the book beforehand showed but a handsome man. The narrator doesn't like Glahn in the least and Glahn is kind of annoying. I can see why. I read a lot of Hamsun when I was a teenager. I haven't read him in years so it was a nice revisit. I need to reread his books.

The Birds

This was a pretty good Norwegian book. It's by Tarjei Vesaas. I loved his book The Ice Palace and decided to read another book by him. It's about a simpleton who does small jobs here and there. He lives with his clever sister who puts up with him. One day a lumberjack enters their life and the mentally disabled man fears for his future when he hears the two are in love. From there the book gradually ends in tragedy. You really enter into the head of the simpleton he sees beauty in nature like no other and when he worries about his future you feel it too. He is like the beautiful woodcock that gets tragically killed in the beginning of the book. Goodreads doesn't have a 3.5 rating so I rounded it up to 4. I couldn't give it a 3 because it deserved better. I need to read more Vesaas.

The Heron

This wasn't my favorite book by Bassani. This is the third one I've read of him and The Garden of Finzi-Continis continues to be the masterpiece. It's about a middle-aged man who shoots a heron during a hunt and he reflects about his existence and the death of the bird. I didn't hate the book but it didn't captivate me either.