February Read & An Exciting Buddy Read in March

I am now on the way of finishing my only read for this month: Martin Chuzzlewit - only 50-ish pages left to go. February has been a hectic month - as usual - but I'm beginning to be adapted to this new condition. I'm quite proud that in between chores and work, I can still squeeze 25 minutes of exercise and 60 to 90 minutes of reading every day. And these days, when everything looks gloomy, I feel that reading is getting more and more important to keep me peaceful and stay away from depression. (Painting: Woman Reading By A Window by Gari Melchers)


📚 What I've Read in February

I've picked Martin Chuzzlewit to read for my #DickensInFebruary this year. And while I haven't entirely completed it, just considered it done, haha! At least, after reading quite many Dickenses, I think I can roughly guess what the ending will be, anyway.

I have to say, Martin Chuzzlewit isn't my favorite. The first two third is quite boring; the humours felt dry, and Dickens created too many trifle characters that I felt weren't necessary, except to prolong the story, rather than developing more of the main characters.

Statistics

📊 Total books read: 4
📊 Challenge progress:
* 2022 TBR Pile Challenge: 2
* Back to the Classics Challenge 2022: 3
* 2022 Chunkster Challenge: 1

And so, I am now ready to face the new month!

📚 What I Will Read in March

March is promising to be an exciting reading month! My fellow Indonesian book, Melisa,  is hosting a buddy read of a short story collection from one of the most prominent Indonesian writers: Budi Darma. The book is: Orang-Orang Bloomington (or People from Bloomington in English).

 

It's exciting for me, not only because I haven't buddy-read with Melisa for years, but also because this book is being translated by Penguin Classics, and will be published next April, yay!

Excerpt from Penguin Classics:

An eerie, alienating, yet comic and profoundly sympathetic short story collection about Americans in America by one of Indonesia’s most prominent writers, now in an English translation for its fortieth anniversary, with a foreword by Intan Paramaditha.

In these seven stories of The People from Bloomington, our peculiar narrators find themselves in the most peculiar of circumstances and encounter the most peculiar of people. Set in Bloomington, Indiana, where the author lived as a graduate student in the 1970s, this is far from the idyllic portrait of small-town America. Rather, sectioned into apartment units and rented rooms, and gridded by long empty streets and distances traversable only by car, it’s a place where the solitary can all too easily remain solitary; where people can at once be obsessively curious about others, yet fail to form genuine connections with anyone. The characters feel their loneliness acutely and yet deliberately estrange others. Budi Darma paints a realist world portrayed through an absurdist frame, morbid and funny at the same time.

It promises to be an interesting read (I have tasted the 1st chapter, and really liked it), and it would be such an honor for me to read it to celebrate its forthcoming recognition as one of most important Indonesian canons.

Next book I plan to read next month:

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

I picked that up simply for Back to the Classics challenge, and it's in my 300 Books to Read list, so I have no expectation at all. Sometimes it might be good to start an unexpected journey, and to be a little surprised at what one might find from it. Let's hope it'll be a good one for me!