July was an unusually quiet month for me, which gave me plenty of time to discover some fascinating new books, from a Spanish classic to a historian’s unravelling of “the West” to a dizzying Indonesian journey into magical realism.

Paris in Turmoil by Eric Hazan

A lifelong Parisian examines the changes the city has witnessed over decades and centuries. I read this one for Emma’s “Paris in July” event and wrote a full review here.

Across the River and Into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway

I read this late Hemingway novel after Meredith of Dolce Bellezza recommended it in a comment on my May roundup. I enjoyed the melancholy, death-tinged mood and the Venice setting, but I found the relationship between the retired American colonel and the teenage Italian countess tedious. So quite a mixed bag for me, but overall I’m glad I read it. More detailed thoughts to follow if I have time.

The Three-Cornered Hat by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón

Another book that I reviewed this month—this time a new translation of a 19th-century Spanish novel about corruption and social hierarchies. Also, a comic novel that I actually found funny, which is a rarity.

Running Down a Dream by Tim Grahl

I was expecting a fairly typical you-can-do-it creative-self-help adrenaline shot, but this book is a little different. Running Down a Dream kind of delivers the “road map to winning creative battles” that it promises in the subtitle, but it also undercuts that message by showing that the best techniques don’t necessarily provide satisfaction, and that even when you do run down that dream, it doesn’t always make you happy. So more of an adrenaline shot with a side of Xanax.

The West by Naoíse Mac Sweeney

In The West, historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney shows in great detail how “the grand narrative of Western Civilisation is factually wrong,” and the myth of an unbroken line of descent from ancient Greece through Rome to modern Europe and North America is perpetuated not because it’s true but because it’s ideologically useful.

I want to write more about this book, but in the meantime, please read it. We could save a lot of time on tedious culture wars if more people understood when and why the West was invented.

Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan

I bought this Indonesian novel in a bookshop in Jakarta and recently discovered it in a storage box. I’m glad I read it. It’s a very creative fictional journey through Indonesia’s painful history with heavy doses of magical realism (ghosts, curses, people returning from the dead, men who are impervious to bullets, etc.).

However, there were also some parts that left a very bad taste in my mouth, primarily around this male writer’s repeated depictions of rape, incest, bestiality, grown men falling in love with children, etc. I was bothered not so much by their frequency in the book (which could perhaps be justified based on allegories to the country’s violent history both during and after colonisation) but by the language with which they’re described and the way characters react to them, which seems at times to normalise or even approve of them. So, although it has some wonderful elements, I wouldn’t recommend this one.

What did you read this month?

Let me know your favourite books of the month in the comments, and tell me if you’ve read or think you’d like to read any of mine.