Wednesday What Are You Reading
Sep. 10th, 2014 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kafjCurrently Reading
For once I only have one book on the go: The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Required reading for young trade unionists, I suppose. I'm rather suspicious of it as I find myself thinking that surely all this is obvious.
I am also dipping into Music of Silence (Brother David Steindl-Rast) but I wouldn't say I'm reading it in the same way I do other books. It almost wants to go in with the poetry - not that there is any, this week.
Recently Finished
Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) which was beautiful; I cried through quite a lot of it. Proves that it is entirely possible to write a book full of sympathetic characters. This despite the set-up, which is a hostage situation. Slightly uncomfortable with the banana republic in which it's set not having a name - always seems like a bit of a cop-out to me. But really, this was lovely.
Scarlet Feather (Maeve Binchy) - irritating but compulsive. Couldn't stick the hero, who was the jealous sort who didn't like his girlfriend wearing mini-skirts. Also not keen on the author's obvious double standards. But I finished it, which is saying something when you consider that the prologue alone runs fifty pages long.
The Chalet Girl (Kate Lace) - I somehow feel that it's not fair to dissect this from the point of view of a lifelong Anglican. But I'm going to, because this raised my hopes - for scandal in the close! - and then dashed them. The heroine is the daughter of a bishop, which is where all the Barchester comes in; however, the author has clearly not done her research. The bishop is a cartoonish blood and thunder Evangelical obsessed by Sin, but at one point appears at a social occasion in a purple 'soutane'. Then there's the bit where someone says that he was made a bishop to 'shut him up'. The Church of England is not the savviest of organisations, I have to admit, but I don't think it's as thick as all that.
More seriously, I didn't feel that the characterisation was at all consistent. Much was made of the hypocrisy of the bishop, but the moral compasses of the other characters felt severely off-kilter. In particular, the heroine's unquestioning involvement in a dubious business practice didn't sit at all well with her guilt over her past.
I hated the hero of this, too; he's employed on a trashy magazine and at one point is shown including an unflattering picture of a celebrity on the grounds that 'she shouldn't have been off her face'. Not a move to gain my sympathy.
tl;dr I would have gobbled this up had Susan Howatch written it (radiant, ravishing Westhampton!)
The Voice (Seicho Matsumoto) - short murder mystery stories translated from the Japanese. The pacing of some of these felt a little off; more than once I was able to guess the twist, and there seemed to be a lot of extraneous clue-gathering and other filler.
And I finally finished Fame is the Spur (Howard Spring), which proved to be only mildly depressing in a "show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart; show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains" kind of way. Once I'd had a chance to really get dug into it I enjoyed it, bar some distasteful male gaze-y stuff. Not convinced by Spring's habit of killing people off with no warning for, so far as I could see, gratuitous drama.
Up Next
Fiction: continuing with the light stuff, I think. Non-fiction: Walking a Sacred Path (Lauren Artress).
Other Media
Lots and lots of cycling on the telly.No other telly. Doctor Who was spectacularly silly in the grand old manner. Many songs on Youtube - a Facebook friend is doing a musical round-the-world tour, linking a video each day, one for each of the UN-recognised nations.
For once I only have one book on the go: The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Required reading for young trade unionists, I suppose. I'm rather suspicious of it as I find myself thinking that surely all this is obvious.
I am also dipping into Music of Silence (Brother David Steindl-Rast) but I wouldn't say I'm reading it in the same way I do other books. It almost wants to go in with the poetry - not that there is any, this week.
Recently Finished
Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) which was beautiful; I cried through quite a lot of it. Proves that it is entirely possible to write a book full of sympathetic characters. This despite the set-up, which is a hostage situation. Slightly uncomfortable with the banana republic in which it's set not having a name - always seems like a bit of a cop-out to me. But really, this was lovely.
Scarlet Feather (Maeve Binchy) - irritating but compulsive. Couldn't stick the hero, who was the jealous sort who didn't like his girlfriend wearing mini-skirts. Also not keen on the author's obvious double standards. But I finished it, which is saying something when you consider that the prologue alone runs fifty pages long.
The Chalet Girl (Kate Lace) - I somehow feel that it's not fair to dissect this from the point of view of a lifelong Anglican. But I'm going to, because this raised my hopes - for scandal in the close! - and then dashed them. The heroine is the daughter of a bishop, which is where all the Barchester comes in; however, the author has clearly not done her research. The bishop is a cartoonish blood and thunder Evangelical obsessed by Sin, but at one point appears at a social occasion in a purple 'soutane'. Then there's the bit where someone says that he was made a bishop to 'shut him up'. The Church of England is not the savviest of organisations, I have to admit, but I don't think it's as thick as all that.
More seriously, I didn't feel that the characterisation was at all consistent. Much was made of the hypocrisy of the bishop, but the moral compasses of the other characters felt severely off-kilter. In particular, the heroine's unquestioning involvement in a dubious business practice didn't sit at all well with her guilt over her past.
I hated the hero of this, too; he's employed on a trashy magazine and at one point is shown including an unflattering picture of a celebrity on the grounds that 'she shouldn't have been off her face'. Not a move to gain my sympathy.
tl;dr I would have gobbled this up had Susan Howatch written it (radiant, ravishing Westhampton!)
The Voice (Seicho Matsumoto) - short murder mystery stories translated from the Japanese. The pacing of some of these felt a little off; more than once I was able to guess the twist, and there seemed to be a lot of extraneous clue-gathering and other filler.
And I finally finished Fame is the Spur (Howard Spring), which proved to be only mildly depressing in a "show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart; show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains" kind of way. Once I'd had a chance to really get dug into it I enjoyed it, bar some distasteful male gaze-y stuff. Not convinced by Spring's habit of killing people off with no warning for, so far as I could see, gratuitous drama.
Up Next
Fiction: continuing with the light stuff, I think. Non-fiction: Walking a Sacred Path (Lauren Artress).
Other Media
Lots and lots of cycling on the telly.
