Recently finished books?

[dc007777]

If you liked this enough to look for other works of his, I'd like to recommend Le Chercheur d'or (translated as The Prospector). It was my ownb introduction to Le Clézio and still my favorite after reading many, many more of his books. I found it (and its prose) a mesmerizing recreation of a fascinating childhood--in this case, on Mauritius.

The Prospector and Desert are on my future reading lists!

 

[Leseratte]

Furthermore, in the enclosed interview, the author explains the reason why they chose that title for the French translation (there were already 4 books whose title is 'Symphonie en blanc', so they finally opted for something else). Also, she gives some details about the changes that were brought to the English translation.

But sorry for the great quantity of typing errors in the Portuguese version of the interview. I didn´t read the French one.
(PS- If staff considers that this lengthy discussion about the books of Adriana Lisboa would be better placed in her own thread, feel free of relocating it.)

 

[Johnny]

The African is another wonderful book by Le Clezio, similar themes of childhood memories ( including unreliable memories) and freedom from post War Europe in Africa as a young child. It’s a small book and beautifully written. Also explores themes of relationship with a difficult father and the evils of colonialism. Highly recommended.

 

[Benny Profane]

The African is another wonderful book by Le Clezio, similar themes of childhood memories ( including unreliable memories) and freedom from post War Europe in Africa as a young child. It’s a small book and beautifully written. Also explores themes of relationship with a difficult father and the evils of colonialism. Highly recommended.

I liked it too.

 

[Hamishe22]

The Deluge is the second book in a trilogy written by Henryk Sienkiewicz of historical novels about Poland. This book deals with the Swedish invasion of Poland in the seventeenth century. It's one of the most entertaining novels that I've ever read, but I didn't feel like it's a literary masterpiece. It's superior to the previous novel in trilogy, With Fire and Sword, in that the main character is interesting. Kmita is flawed and trapped between divergent loyalties and we follow him as he becomes a better person, and his tensions with the main love interest is rooted in both the political allegiances of the two characters and their different personalities, which makes their story much more interesting to follow. Olenka is herself a much more interesting character than Helena although she too comes very close to the perfect Christian girl trope. In the end, unlike the previous novel, I wasn't hoping to get to the secondary characters anytime the novel returned to its protagonists. Similarly to the first novel, the secondary characters are all very well-written, from the glorious return of Zagłoba to Radziwiłł who's both tyrannical and traitorous yet very compelling and plausible, and also the descriptions of war scenes are sublime. So the novel can be summarized as an improved version of With Fire and Sword, a very entertaining and competent action-romance drama, but nothing much more either.

 

[nagisa]

Just finished Wandering Star by JMG LeClezio.

Compassionate and impactful. I'm not wholly sure what I think of the structure. Most of the story is about Esther, a Jewish woman who escapes the death camps and makes her way to Israel with her mother. There is about an 80-page detour where the narrative shifts and focuses on Nejma, a Palestinian forced from her home into a refugee camp. There is a brief moment when the two women interact, as Esther is driven to her new home and as Nejma walks to her new "home." The two sections are not weighted but part of me thinks LeClezio never intended for the novel to be marketed as two main characters etc and really, the reason he briefly segways into Nejma's story is to show that even though she is a blip on the radar of Esther's life, she is still a person with her own story/history/tragedy/love. This is the first LeClezio novel I have read and I'm astonished by his empathy. I also enjoyed the last part of the novel where Esther returns to a village where so much horror happened and sees how life has moved on and landmarks of pain are now basically chain stores selling crap to tourists.

I'm glad that Le Clézio is having a moment of appreciation here. And especially for Étoile errante, given the current events... As @dc007777 very aptly puts it, the empathy of Le Clézio at his best is astonishing.


Le Clézio subjugated me when I first read him (Onitsha). I've read Laxness for the first time (Under the Glacier), and am... nonplussed. Bewildered. This is a 1968 novel, so a bit over a decade after his win in 1955. And perhaps I should have gone with something pre-Prize; Salka Valka, Independent People, Iceland's Bell, the socio-historical novels that made him famous. The book is, as far as I can tell, a kind of hopeful (?) satire (?) of Iceland and spirituality in a society undergoing the rapid changes of international market forces and disenchantment with organized religion. Very '60s turmoils. Susan Sontag herself bills it as one of the funniest novels ever written, and while I get that some satire must be going on, either I am not versed enough in Icelandic culture to get the general thrust of it; or it misses its mark for me.

A EMissary of the BIshop is sent to investigate the state of Christianity in a remote location called Glacier. The Priest there is, apparently, not officiating; ignoring missives as months and months go by; there is a rumor of a corpse having been left on the glacier itself, unconsecrated. The emissary, who simply calls himself Embi (EMissary of the BIshop) and fluctuates wildly between third- and first-person account, recounts this a bit haphazardly between recorded conversations (with a very modern tape recorder) and interjected personal reflections in what is supposed to be a neutral report back to the bishop (the failure is intentional, part of the humor). And he meets a bizarre cast of characters: a hostess who only serves him endless mountains of cake and coffee; a quarrelsome self-proclaimed honest Icelander; a mad investor from abroad (who turns out to be Icelander himself of course) trying to defy death itself by channeling a bunch of technojargon about galactic biovitality (again, part of the humor). And the priest himself of course. And out of the perplexed musings of Embi, a (young, probably bad) theology student (perhaps not even wanting to become a priest) and his interactions with these tall-tale characters, we get an open-ended (and purportedly funny) meditation on faith in the modern age and Iceland's foibles.

I do think I get some of what is being done: Laxness is modelling off the template of sagas, tales of the ordinary with a touch of perplexing (and quite certainly, under the wrong circumstances, dangerous) happenings and beings. (My partner read it under the impression it was magical realism, and was disappointed. I wouldn't classify as such either; but difficult to tell whether I feel it's a qualitative difference, or just socio-geographic. What Laxness hearkens back to feels "older", more... chthonic? primordial? survival-inflected? than what I feel magical realism hearkens back to and evokes. But is this just a difference in "flavor" stemming from the material conditions and literary histories of Iceland versus, broadly, Latin America in the 40s-50s? Etc.) The chapters are short, revolve around one or two interactions at most, propelling things forward as the situations get more and more bizarre (a section of the Eyrbyggja saga, where a dead woman comes back to life, is an important reference and mentioned in the text). And from what I can get, the characters are also satirical stock figures ("We can't feed you *ordinary* food! Have more cake!" "Now, as a real Icelander my man..." "I got out of here and am rich and have wives in every port and am back to improve everything for all time with my modern things!"); and while I'm certainly lacking some finer details, I understood their functions well enough. And the final resurrection of Úa, eternal woman, from the glacier, is the final question Laxness poses to faith, and Christianity. And yet. I was not subjugated! I wanted to boo the saga-teller back to his seat and fall under the spell of someone else's tale. I confess to not having the same humor as Susan Sontag: your jokes are bad and you should feel bad (jk, it's a meme)

So. Disappointed; but not deterred. I will revisit him and his pre-Prize works. (60s hyper-local politico-moral satire doesn't age very well, I guess!)

 

[childeroland]

Mark Helprin -- Paris in the Present Tense
A pleasant old-fashioned narrative like all of Helprin's novels that I've read, sad in a way that isn't maudlin and provides uplift.

 

[Ben Jackson]

I'm glad that Le Clézio is having a moment of appreciation here. And especially for Étoile errante, given the current events... As @dc007777 very aptly puts it, the empathy of Le Clézio at his best is astonishing.


Le Clézio subjugated me when I first read him (Onitsha). I've read Laxness for the first time (Under the Glacier), and am... nonplussed. Bewildered. This is a 1968 novel, so a bit over a decade after his win in 1955. And perhaps I should have gone with something pre-Prize; Salka Valka, Independent People, Iceland's Bell, the socio-historical novels that made him famous. The book is, as far as I can tell, a kind of hopeful (?) satire (?) of Iceland and spirituality in a society undergoing the rapid changes of international market forces and disenchantment with organized religion. Very '60s turmoils. Susan Sontag herself bills it as one of the funniest novels ever written, and while I get that some satire must be going on, either I am not versed enough in Icelandic culture to get the general thrust of it; or it misses its mark for me.

A EMissary of the BIshop is sent to investigate the state of Christianity in a remote location called Glacier. The Priest there is, apparently, not officiating; ignoring missives as months and months go by; there is a rumor of a corpse having been left on the glacier itself, unconsecrated. The emissary, who simply calls himself Embi (EMissary of the BIshop) and fluctuates wildly between third- and first-person account, recounts this a bit haphazardly between recorded conversations (with a very modern tape recorder) and interjected personal reflections in what is supposed to be a neutral report back to the bishop (the failure is intentional, part of the humor). And he meets a bizarre cast of characters: a hostess who only serves him endless mountains of cake and coffee; a quarrelsome self-proclaimed honest Icelander; a mad investor from abroad (who turns out to be Icelander himself of course) trying to defy death itself by channeling a bunch of technojargon about galactic biovitality (again, part of the humor). And the priest himself of course. And out of the perplexed musings of Embi, a (young, probably bad) theology student (perhaps not even wanting to become a priest) and his interactions with these tall-tale characters, we get an open-ended (and purportedly funny) meditation on faith in the modern age and Iceland's foibles.

I do think I get some of what is being done: Laxness is modelling off the template of sagas, tales of the ordinary with a touch of perplexing (and quite certainly, under the wrong circumstances, dangerous) happenings and beings. (My partner read it under the impression it was magical realism, and was disappointed. I wouldn't classify as such either; but difficult to tell whether I feel it's a qualitative difference, or just socio-geographic. What Laxness hearkens back too feels "older", more... chthonic? primordial? survival-inflected? than what I feel magical realism hearkens back to and evokes. But is this just a difference in "flavor" stemming from the material conditions and literary histories of Iceland versus, broadly, Latin America in the 40s-50s? Etc.) The chapters are short, revolve around one or two interactions at most, propelling things forward as the situations get more and more bizarre (a section of the Eyrbyggja saga, where a dead woman comes back to life, is an important reference and mentioned in the text). And from what I can get, the characters are also satirical stock figures ("We can't feed you *ordinary* food! Have more cake!" "Now, as a real Icelander my man..." "I got out of here and am rich and have wives in every port and am back to improve everything for all time with my modern things!"); and while I'm certainly lacking some finer details, I understood their functions well enough. And the final resurrection of Úa, eternal woman, from the glacier, is the final question Laxness poses to faith, and Christianity. And yet. I was not subjugated! I wanted to boo the saga-teller back to his seat and fall under the spell of someone else's tale. I confess to not having the same humor as Susan Sontag: your jokes are bad and you should feel bad (jk, it's a meme)

So. Disappointed; but not deterred. I will revisit him and his pre-Prize works. (60s hyper-local politico-moral satire doesn't age very well, I guess!)

Onitsha was also my first Le Clezio, and I did loved it as well. I just finished The African (a more detailed review will come later), and I loved it as well. His books after Desert really showed a much accessible style from his Noveau Roman beginnings in The Interrogation (Le Process-Verbal). I think he might be a sort of writer with under-rated persona but he's worth reading. His works has a way of showing empathy and digging up memories of European living in colonies (Onitsha, an important city in Eastern Part of Nigeria known for its famous market and its port), and other places. Has anyone read Revolution, a work highlighted by the Nobel Committee?

 

[Leseratte]

I'm glad that Le Clézio is having a moment of appreciation here. And especially for Étoile errante, given the current events... As @dc007777 very aptly puts it, the empathy of Le Clézio at his best is astonishing.


Le Clézio subjugated me when I first read him (Onitsha). I've read Laxness for the first time (Under the Glacier), and am... nonplussed. Bewildered. This is a 1968 novel, so a bit over a decade after his win in 1955. And perhaps I should have gone with something pre-Prize; Salka Valka, Independent People, Iceland's Bell, the socio-historical novels that made him famous. The book is, as far as I can tell, a kind of hopeful (?) satire (?) of Iceland and spirituality in a society undergoing the rapid changes of international market forces and disenchantment with organized religion. Very '60s turmoils. Susan Sontag herself bills it as one of the funniest novels ever written, and while I get that some satire must be going on, either I am not versed enough in Icelandic culture to get the general thrust of it; or it misses its mark for me.

A EMissary of the BIshop is sent to investigate the state of Christianity in a remote location called Glacier. The Priest there is, apparently, not officiating; ignoring missives as months and months go by; there is a rumor of a corpse having been left on the glacier itself, unconsecrated. The emissary, who simply calls himself Embi (EMissary of the BIshop) and fluctuates wildly between third- and first-person account, recounts this a bit haphazardly between recorded conversations (with a very modern tape recorder) and interjected personal reflections in what is supposed to be a neutral report back to the bishop (the failure is intentional, part of the humor). And he meets a bizarre cast of characters: a hostess who only serves him endless mountains of cake and coffee; a quarrelsome self-proclaimed honest Icelander; a mad investor from abroad (who turns out to be Icelander himself of course) trying to defy death itself by channeling a bunch of technojargon about galactic biovitality (again, part of the humor). And the priest himself of course. And out of the perplexed musings of Embi, a (young, probably bad) theology student (perhaps not even wanting to become a priest) and his interactions with these tall-tale characters, we get an open-ended (and purportedly funny) meditation on faith in the modern age and Iceland's foibles.

I do think I get some of what is being done: Laxness is modelling off the template of sagas, tales of the ordinary with a touch of perplexing (and quite certainly, under the wrong circumstances, dangerous) happenings and beings. (My partner read it under the impression it was magical realism, and was disappointed. I wouldn't classify as such either; but difficult to tell whether I feel it's a qualitative difference, or just socio-geographic. What Laxness hearkens back to feels "older", more... chthonic? primordial? survival-inflected? than what I feel magical realism hearkens back to and evokes. But is this just a difference in "flavor" stemming from the material conditions and literary histories of Iceland versus, broadly, Latin America in the 40s-50s? Etc.) The chapters are short, revolve around one or two interactions at most, propelling things forward as the situations get more and more bizarre (a section of the Eyrbyggja saga, where a dead woman comes back to life, is an important reference and mentioned in the text). And from what I can get, the characters are also satirical stock figures ("We can't feed you *ordinary* food! Have more cake!" "Now, as a real Icelander my man..." "I got out of here and am rich and have wives in every port and am back to improve everything for all time with my modern things!"); and while I'm certainly lacking some finer details, I understood their functions well enough. And the final resurrection of Úa, eternal woman, from the glacier, is the final question Laxness poses to faith, and Christianity. And yet. I was not subjugated! I wanted to boo the saga-teller back to his seat and fall under the spell of someone else's tale. I confess to not having the same humor as Susan Sontag: your jokes are bad and you should feel bad (jk, it's a meme)

So. Disappointed; but not deterred. I will revisit him and his pre-Prize works. (60s hyper-local politico-moral satire doesn't age very well, I guess!)

Not having read any one of them, was first somewhat bewildered by the juxtaposition of Le Clézio and Laxness

 

[Liam]

60s hyper-local politico-moral satire doesn't age very well, I guess!

I also think that a lot of these early Scandi/Nordic authors suffered from the bane of overproduction, so: Lagerlof, Undset, Sillanpää, etc. Undoubtedly they had produced quite a few gems in their careers, for which they deservedly won the Nobel Prize, but among those pearls were also a large number of... duds. I adore Laxness but was bored to death by Iceland's Bell, which I initially thought would be right up my alley.

 

[meepmurp]

Le Clézio subjugated me when I first read him (Onitsha). I've read Laxness for the first time (Under the Glacier), and am... nonplussed. Bewildered. This is a 1968 novel, so a bit over a decade after his win in 1955. And perhaps I should have gone with something pre-Prize; Salka Valka, Independent People, Iceland's Bell, the socio-historical novels that made him famous. The book is, as far as I can tell, a kind of hopeful (?) satire (?) of Iceland and spirituality in a society undergoing the rapid changes of international market forces and disenchantment with organized religion. Very '60s turmoils. Susan Sontag herself bills it as one of the funniest novels ever written, and while I get that some satire must be going on, either I am not versed enough in Icelandic culture to get the general thrust of it; or it misses its mark for me.

So. Disappointed; but not deterred. I will revisit him and his pre-Prize works. (60s hyper-local politico-moral satire doesn't age very well, I guess!)

Yeah, you started with the wrong book. Independent People, Salka Valka, and World's Light are really his best vibes - tonally and politically more interesting, much more impressive writing and in scope.

 

[Johnny]

Onitsha was also my first Le Clezio, and I did loved it as well. I just finished The African (a more detailed review will come later), and I loved it as well. His books after Desert really showed a much accessible style from his Noveau Roman beginnings in The Interrogation (Le Process-Verbal). I think he might be a sort of writer with under-rated persona but he's worth reading. His works has a way of showing empathy and digging up memories of European living in colonies (Onitsha, an important city in Eastern Part of Nigeria known for its famous market and its port), and other places. Has anyone read Revolution, a work highlighted by the Nobel Committee?

I just wish more of Le Clezio’s books were translated. I don’t understand why that has not happened. His translator C. Dickson has done a great job on the books I’ve read. The more I think of it I’m convinced he’s one of the truly great Nobel winners of this century.

 

[tiganeasca]

I just wish more of Le Clezio’s books were translated. I don’t understand why that has not happened. His translator C. Dickson has done a great job on the books I’ve read. The more I think of it I’m convinced he’s one of the truly great Nobel winners of this century.

I'm hardly the best source, but I have ten of his books in English (I'm presuming with no evidence that you mean translated into English) and I know there are others available that I don't have. He also has had more than a few different translators. (My ten books involve the work of six different translators.)

 

[Johnny]

I'm hardly the best source, but I have ten of his books in English (I'm presuming with no evidence that you mean translated into English) and I know there are others available that I don't have. He also has had more than a few different translators. (My ten books involve the work of six different translators.)

Yes ( and I did mean English, sorry I should have specified) but I believe he has about 40 or so books to his name? I’m open to correction there. Yes 10 is a good number but still only about 25% of his work. I’m far from a reliable source here so happy to be corrected.

 

[tiganeasca]

Yes ( and I did mean English, sorry I should have specified) but I believe he has about 40 or so books to his name? I’m open to correction there. Yes 10 is a good number but still only about 25% of his work. I’m far from a reliable source here so happy to be corrected.

You may well be right; I don't include his non-fiction, works for kids, travel stuff, but he still does have a large number of novels and short story collections untranslated. And, as I wrote, although I have ten, there are (many?) others available in English that I do not own. My larger point, which I failed to make clear, was simply that the percentage of his works that ARE translated nevertheless represent a fairly good selection of his work and offer a reasonably good choice for readers new to him.

By way of (unfair) comparison, a writer I enjoy greatly is Stijn Streuvels (1871-1969). He is quite well-known (if, perhaps, "out-of-date") in Belgium and the Netherlands (he wrote in Flemish): according to (the always-correct) Wikipedia: "In 1937 and 1938 Streuvels garnered the majority of the Nobel Committee votes for his receiving the literature Nobel Prize, but each time the Academy awarded the prize to someone else: in 1937 he had to give way to Roger Martin du Gard and in 1938 to a new discovery, Pearl Buck." He has written literally dozens of books; I know of three in English. Total. And they were all translated long ago (the most recent in 1976). Nothing since.

 

[Phil D]

?? Raymond Chandler - The High Window (++)
I was gonna say Chandler is one of my guilty pleasures, but I actually don't even feel bad about it. He's terrific.
One thing I love about him is that I never have any idea what is going on in his novels, so they're infinitely rereadable.

 

[kpjayan]

?? Keiichiro Hirano - A Man : Interesting premise. An attorney is on a trail of an 'impersonator' on the request of his client ( realizing that her recently dead husband was not the person he said to be), trying to get into the labyrinthine world of lives that are lived on false identity. A sort of thriller, with predictable outcome, is an easy read, despite it's presumptuous foray into some psychological and sociological aspects of the Japanese society. There can also be a parallel read of the 'alternate identity/life' one is living, mostly narrated through the experience of the Attorney. This is not perfect and the writing isn't extra ordinary, but the whole book is fairly attractive.

?? Vivek Shanbag - Sakina's Kiss : Second book of his available in English Translation, after Gachar Gochar. I found this book better. An acute observation on the changing political, spiritual, social life of the urban middle class ( in this case Bangalore) in the 21st century. Told as a few sequential events over 4 days and nights in the family of a typical Bangalore Urban middle class man - Mid tier managers in IT firm , rebellious girl in the college - despite the projected progressive, liberal outlook, these events see the family looses it's grip on their progressive values. At the adversity, the traditional patriarchal, male dominant, orthodox political values creeps back in his life, as he realises he is loosing his 'control' over his family.

?? Kathy Acker - Don Quixote : A Women Quixote, determines to become Knight and defeat the Enchanters of the World in the modern era. The narration takes us to NY, St Petersburg, London amongst other places. Post model, complex, difficult to get in, many times moves away from the standard fictional narrative. Very cerebral affair, as in the case of all her books.

?? Roberto Colasso - The Unnamable Present : One of the latest books, originaly published in 2017. Two major essays, in one he looks at the religious extremeism and it's roots in the earlier civilizations - Tourists and Terrorists. The second, which was very impressive, he looks at the literary correspondences, writings and diaries from various writers during 1933 to 1945, from Celine to Grossman- the prophetic observations by some of them..

?? Nguyen Du - Kieu : Kiue or the The Tale of the Kieu is the early 19th century epic from Vietnam. Long narrative poem, apparently based on a Chinese novel, is remarkable. Some of the passages were really really beautiful. While there had been multiple translations to English, I had a chance to sample Michale Counsell's and Tomothy Allen ( Penguin Classics) at the Da Nang airport. Found the Michael Counsell's version more fluid and appealing ( you can check at the below wiki link), and decided to pick that. More over, this was a bi-lingual version ( just in case I decide to learn modern Vietnamese in future ). The details and some of the samples of the translations can be found here.

The Tale of Kieu - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Phil D]

?? Martin Boyd - A Difficult Young Man (+)
Second book in Boyd's quartet on the Langton family, though I was able to enjoy it without reading the first. The Langtons are based very closely on the Boyds, the influential Anglo-Australian family of prominent creatives. Not necessarily great literature, but very interesting for its explicit presentation of social snobbery in 1900s Melbourne. Martin Boyd/Guy Langton is curious company as a narrator who is highly critical of snobbishness and hypocrisy and yet self-consciously snobbish himself.

 

[alik-vit]

?? Keiichiro Hirano - A Man : Interesting premise. An attorney is on a trail of an 'impersonator' on the request of his client ( realizing that her recently dead husband was not the person he said to be), trying to get into the labyrinthine world of lives that are lived on false identity. A sort of thriller, with predictable outcome, is an easy read, despite it's presumptuous foray into some psychological and sociological aspects of the Japanese society. There can also be a parallel read of the 'alternate identity/life' one is living, mostly narrated through the experience of the Attorney. This is not perfect and the writing isn't extra ordinary, but the whole book is fairly attractive.

?? Vivek Shanbag - Sakina's Kiss : Second book of his available in English Translation, after Gachar Gochar. I found this book better. An acute observation on the changing political, spiritual, social life of the urban middle class ( in this case Bangalore) in the 21st century. Told as a few sequential events over 4 days and nights in the family of a typical Bangalore Urban middle class man - Mid tier managers in IT firm , rebellious girl in the college - despite the projected progressive, liberal outlook, these events see the family looses it's grip on their progressive values. At the adversity, the traditional patriarchal, male dominant, orthodox political values creeps back in his life, as he realises he is loosing his 'control' over his family.

?? Kathy Acker - Don Quixote : A Women Quixote, determines to become Knight and defeat the Enchanters of the World in the modern era. The narration takes us to NY, St Petersburg, London amongst other places. Post model, complex, difficult to get in, many times moves away from the standard fictional narrative. Very cerebral affair, as in the case of all her books.

?? Roberto Colasso - The Unnamable Present : One of the latest books, originaly published in 2017. Two major essays, in one he looks at the religious extremeism and it's roots in the earlier civilizations - Tourists and Terrorists. The second, which was very impressive, he looks at the literary correspondences, writings and diaries from various writers during 1933 to 1945, from Celine to Grossman- the prophetic observations by some of them..

?? Nguyen Du - Kieu : Kiue or the The Tale of the Kieu is the early 19th century epic from Vietnam. Long narrative poem, apparently based on a Chinese novel, is remarkable. Some of the passages were really really beautiful. While there had been multiple translations to English, I had a chance to sample Michale Counsell's and Tomothy Allen ( Penguin Classics) at the Da Nang airport. Found the Michael Counsell's version more fluid and appealing ( you can check at the below wiki link), and decided to pick that. More over, this was a bi-lingual version ( just in case I decide to learn modern Vietnamese in future ). The details and some of the samples of the translations can be found here.

The Tale of Kieu - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thanks for detailed reviews, Kathy Acker seems really intriguing read. And belated but best best happy birthday wishes, dear @kpjayan !

 

[kpjayan]

And belated but best best happy birthday wishes, dear @kpjayan !

Thank you