November reads

My reading schedule was abbreved this month perforce ... all were good, but nothing blew me away (Mehigan's poetry came closest).

Samuel Schuman, Nabokov's Shakespeare [Bloomsbury]: As per prior post, I'd hoped more would be made of the concordance. As it happens, Schuman passed away shortly after that, and will be sorely missed by the Nabokovian community, scholarly and otherwise, to which he long contributed.
Daniel Kehlmann, Measuring the World (Carol Brown Janeway) [Vintage]: an historical comedy of errors ideas, cruel & deadpan (that last aspect exculpating the flatness of the prose) (& how german is it?), and for me Gauss & von Humboldt is a great hook. [MAO]
Italo Calvino, Collection of Sand (Martin McLaughlin) [HMH/Mariner]: late and various essays, the first third on exhibitions the strongest, followed by progressive lightening in occasional pieces and reflections on travel. [tranlator's intro]
Joshua Mehigan, Accepting the Disaster [FSG]: per Adam Kirsch, prompting my picking it up. Transcends "New Yorker" styling (which, yes, I have a problem with).
Edouard Levé, Works (Jan Steyn) [Dalkey]: Art: apprehension & appraisal, an unmanifested manifest. [MAO]
Gerald Murnane, A Million Windows [only large print avail in US]: A further extrapolation and involution of his distinctive writerly concerns, perhaps pushing the boundaries a bit too far (but plaudits for taking the risk). [Emmett Stinson]

Coming up: I seem to have instigated a reading group on Shakespeare's sonnets ... part of my interest is in Booth's annotations recasting to the Renaissance eye: the flux in English though seems largely fixed by Shakespeare (who was twice as close to Chaucer as we to him) but more by circumchance than design (and the sonnets themselves not rehabilitated til the Romantics, later then than the plays).