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Weekend What Are You Reading
Mar. 29th, 2014 06:11 pmThe last two Wednesdays have been occupied with work-related socialising, and next week at least looks set to continue the pattern, so for the moment the reading post is decamping to Saturday.
Currently reading
Mary Barton (Elizabeth Gaskell) - I am a few chapters into this, and am mostly being irritated by the incessant footnotes. I can't tell whether this is Gaskell's fault or Penguin's - will have to look at another edition to check. What is also very noticeable is that she is writing for an audience who is most definitely not me - she's almost apologetic about the anger of John Barton, for example, and I hear far worse daily. On the same subject, which is a bloody disgrace in 2014.
In deliberate Lent reading, I am still going with Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan) - am now at the Delectable Mountains, further than I've ever got in the past, at least in the grown-up edition. Last night I was reading it in bed, with a chocolate biscuit and a shot of Cointreau. I dread to think what Bunyan would have made of that. I am still reading Abiding (Ben Quash), on a chapter-per-week basis. I find that I had read more of this last year than I had thought, and am concluding that it isn't going particularly deep.
Various Pets Alive And Dead (Marina Lewycka) - I stupidly borrowed the hardback, so not progressing fast, as it's competing with the other weighty tomes for my evening brain. But it's good fun so far. Likewise Les Misérables (Victor Hugo).
Recently finished
Three Men on the Bummel (Jerome K. Jerome) - not as good as Three Men in a Boat. Too much generalisation about the German character and not enough bicycle-related hilarity. I enjoyed such bicycle-related hilarity as there was, mind.
Big Brother (Lionel Shriver) - less fat-shaming than I expected, but that's not saying much, because there was still a huge amount of fat-shaming. Not believable. When you get to the twist, you understand why parts of it are not believable, but I - and the rest of the book club - felt that it was a bit of a cop-out.
Thought: it is currently considered undesirable for authors to stop their novels in order to pontificate. Is first-person narrative misused in an attempt to get around this?
Perhaps in the case of Big Brother. Not so much so with Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn). I was again annoyed by the unreliable narrator(s) (is this because people can't write unreliable narrators these days, or because I'm fifteen years older and more cynical than I was when I read that Agatha Christie?) - but I stayed up to finish it.
The Weather in the Streets (Rosamund Lehmann) - dreamy and pragmatic and cynical all together. I loved it, though it leaves a bitter taste.
The Subterraneans (Jack Kerouac) - rather faily, but honest about it. Last week may not have been the week to read it, as I was variously exhausted, drunk, hungover, and feverish. Or maybe it was. And who needs punctuation, anyway? Comes in the same volume as Pic, which I did not read.
Up Next
Life After Life (Kate Atkinson) has been selected as the next book club choice, though I have yet to obtain a copy. Possibly The Years (Virginia Woolf) or Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro).
Poetry
It was Housman's birthday a couple of days ago (by bridges the Thames runs under...). Thinking it's time I had another go at Blake, too. I wonder where my copy's gone.
Other media
Rev. is back. Hurrah! It is still hitting my embarrassment squick, but it is still so good that I'm still watching it. I had been losing interest in The Musketeers (why, in the name of all that is good and logical, does d'Artagnan find out about the destruction of his farm - which has been hardly mentioned since week 1, if that - from Treville? Really, if that's how he looks after it I'm not surprised it got raided) but it has recaptured me with some awesome nuns. I am a sucker for awesome nuns.
Currently reading
Mary Barton (Elizabeth Gaskell) - I am a few chapters into this, and am mostly being irritated by the incessant footnotes. I can't tell whether this is Gaskell's fault or Penguin's - will have to look at another edition to check. What is also very noticeable is that she is writing for an audience who is most definitely not me - she's almost apologetic about the anger of John Barton, for example, and I hear far worse daily. On the same subject, which is a bloody disgrace in 2014.
In deliberate Lent reading, I am still going with Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan) - am now at the Delectable Mountains, further than I've ever got in the past, at least in the grown-up edition. Last night I was reading it in bed, with a chocolate biscuit and a shot of Cointreau. I dread to think what Bunyan would have made of that. I am still reading Abiding (Ben Quash), on a chapter-per-week basis. I find that I had read more of this last year than I had thought, and am concluding that it isn't going particularly deep.
Various Pets Alive And Dead (Marina Lewycka) - I stupidly borrowed the hardback, so not progressing fast, as it's competing with the other weighty tomes for my evening brain. But it's good fun so far. Likewise Les Misérables (Victor Hugo).
Recently finished
Three Men on the Bummel (Jerome K. Jerome) - not as good as Three Men in a Boat. Too much generalisation about the German character and not enough bicycle-related hilarity. I enjoyed such bicycle-related hilarity as there was, mind.
Big Brother (Lionel Shriver) - less fat-shaming than I expected, but that's not saying much, because there was still a huge amount of fat-shaming. Not believable. When you get to the twist, you understand why parts of it are not believable, but I - and the rest of the book club - felt that it was a bit of a cop-out.
Thought: it is currently considered undesirable for authors to stop their novels in order to pontificate. Is first-person narrative misused in an attempt to get around this?
Perhaps in the case of Big Brother. Not so much so with Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn). I was again annoyed by the unreliable narrator(s) (is this because people can't write unreliable narrators these days, or because I'm fifteen years older and more cynical than I was when I read that Agatha Christie?) - but I stayed up to finish it.
The Weather in the Streets (Rosamund Lehmann) - dreamy and pragmatic and cynical all together. I loved it, though it leaves a bitter taste.
The Subterraneans (Jack Kerouac) - rather faily, but honest about it. Last week may not have been the week to read it, as I was variously exhausted, drunk, hungover, and feverish. Or maybe it was. And who needs punctuation, anyway? Comes in the same volume as Pic, which I did not read.
Up Next
Life After Life (Kate Atkinson) has been selected as the next book club choice, though I have yet to obtain a copy. Possibly The Years (Virginia Woolf) or Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro).
Poetry
It was Housman's birthday a couple of days ago (by bridges the Thames runs under...). Thinking it's time I had another go at Blake, too. I wonder where my copy's gone.
Other media
Rev. is back. Hurrah! It is still hitting my embarrassment squick, but it is still so good that I'm still watching it. I had been losing interest in The Musketeers (why, in the name of all that is good and logical, does d'Artagnan find out about the destruction of his farm - which has been hardly mentioned since week 1, if that - from Treville? Really, if that's how he looks after it I'm not surprised it got raided) but it has recaptured me with some awesome nuns. I am a sucker for awesome nuns.
