When on holiday it is totally pointless to try and read weighty tomes. Your mind just cannot cope with anything heavy. Well mine cannot anyway. So if I was thinking of reading A la Recherche de Temps Perdu (yes I am sure I have mispelled it) or a re-read of War and Peace (please note my cunning insertion of the word re-read to show that I have actually read Tolstoy?) then all such thoughts came to naught.
Instead I read books that I could put down at will when gazing out at sea or, what is more likely, falling asleep in the sun and just motored my way through stuff fairly indiscriminately. The ship’s library was a total write off. Columbus was supposed to be a new refurbished ship and had its maiden voyage in June last year but the books in the library looked as if they had been there since the Titanic. (I am sorry I told myself that I would avoid Titanic references when writing about being at sea but I cannot resist) and all behind locked glass doors. I would have liked to have taken a closer look but unless a member of the crew were there, locked they stayed. There were hours when somebody was meant to be on duty but I tried six times and, despite complaining, nobody ever turned up. it was on the English books that were locked up, all other languages were available. Still trying to work that one out...
No matter. Thank the Lord for my Kindle. I had the foresight to dowload loads before I got on board, bearing in mind that the wifi would be a tad dodgy so was well stocked. I was motoring through my endless list that had been on the device for years. I am now going to have a mass deletion as, having atempted to read the latest Jack Reacher book which was same old sameold, have decided that Lee Childs and I are to part company. ditto David Baldacci as there is a sameness about them all that palls.
While on board I read Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain which I suddenly had a fancy for. I sat there on deck snorting with laughter and trying to to make too much noise. I loved it. The description of dancing when the ship was pitching made me hoot out loud, particularly as the Columbus was going through a heavy swell when I read this:
”When the ship rolled to starboad the whole platoon of dancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought up in a mass at the rail and when it rolled to port they went floundering down to port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun round precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down to the rail as if they mean to go overboard. The Virginia reel, as performed on board, had more genuine reel about it that any reel I ever saw before. We gave up dancing, finally....”
I also revisited Three Men on a Bummel by Jerome K Jerome which also reduced me to mild hysteria. I love Three Men in a Boat and know it is the better known title, but Bummel is well worth reading.
Two other Victorian reads while on board were An Eye for an Eye and Cousin Henry by Anthony Trollope. Both shorter novels. I had not read An Eye for an Eye before and it was a full on Victorian melodrama featuring an innocent maiden seduced by a member of the aristocracy and with a real shock ending. Cousin Henry featured a missing will and the hunting down of its location. Both just so good I love AT.
I have just read The Dreams of Bethany Melmoth by William Boyd, a writers whose work I admire. But, blimey, do not read this if you are feeling low. First half of the book is made up of short stories, witty, superbly written and bang on the money. But, and this is the but, every single character in them is miserable, devious and unpleasant. Roald Dah short stories are exactly the same and it gives a poor view on life. Then we have a full length novella about Bethany and oh my goodness what a winey moany wingey useless person she is. Again riddled with angst and put me in mind of one of Jean Rhy’s dreary and useless heroines. I read it sitting in the sun on a beach else I may have keeled over with misery.
I have just discovered an author who writes Regency novels all full of Dashing Rakes and Feisty Maidens who bring them to heel...and marriage.
After Bethany I need them.
