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Right now I’m halfway finished with Roberto Bolaño’s book of short stories, Last Evenings on Earth. I started reading this book solely because it was on the 2006 NYT Notable List and because I needed another foreign language (I’m committed to 10) for my Reading Across Borders Challenge. Bolaño is a Chilean author, and his stories were originally published in Spanish.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I started this book, but I’m finding Bolaño’s stories very readable. In fact, some of his stories seem to have no point at all, and yet I’m still enjoying them. I find myself gravitating toward this book when I need to be finishing up some other challenge books as well. Maybe it’s the international settings–I’m a sucker for that. Many of his characters are literary types. Another thumbs up. He also writes in first person, which makes the stories seem all the more real; reading them seems almost voyeuristic.

I’ll give the final verdict on Bolaño when I finish the book, but here, hopefully, is a small glimpse into a relatively unknown (at least to me) author.