I have been reading in a very desultory fashion the last couple of months. I have found it impossible to settle down and concentrate. Isn’t it odd when you think you are going to have all this time and so we can do some really serious reading and then find you really can’t be bothered? Annoying as well.
I have been re-reading a lot of crime and lots of romance as well which seems to soothe my soul and relax me. It has given me some ideas for a future video as I get really cross when romance is dismissed and viewed with contempt as it frequently is. But that is for another day.
So what have I got on the table at the moment?
I have just finished The Geometry of Holding Hands by Alexander McCall Smith. This is the latest in the series featuring Isabel Dalhousie, philosopher, and I find these books a great joy. I gave up on the rest of the output of this author sometime ago as I found the books were all appearing as an amorphous blob in my mind and the 1st Ladies Detective Agency just turned into a ramble. Nothing wrong with a ramble but you do need a little something to happen now and then. I came across the latest one in the library a few months ago and thought I would give it a whirl but gave up after one chapter.
Now these Dalhousie books also ramble but because Isabel is a philosopher and her musings have a point and they are interesting and amusing. If you want a fast paced story then these will not be for you but I love them and find them enormously satisfying. Each volume hinges on a philosophical point and idea. There is also the pleasure of following Isabel’s family life and her growing sons, her younger husband Jamie and their relationship and her niece Cat who, in this book, is clearly heading for disaster. I have all these on my shelves and all in hardback as I am collecting the lot. This winter it is my plan to start at No 1 and read them all over again.
The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A N Wilson. I ordered this with a slight feeling of trepidation as I do find this author vaguely irritating but when he is writing about a subject or person I love then I find I cannot resist. However , the same irritations are rearing their head already and I am only two chapters in. I recently read his biography of Albert, Prince Consort so how he has had time to produce this latest tome I really do not know. One sentence really jarred with me in that particular biography when he referred to Queen Victoria as “drooling over Albert” which I thought was totally unsuitable in a book purporting to be a serious biography.
You may think I am being picky and perhaps I am but I found myself tut tutting at the phrase, referring to Peckham where he had a house for Nelly Ternan as an area that was “fast being swallowed by by jerry built houses” and a row of villas “built on spec”. Now I am sorry but if you are referring to a Victorian suburb you do not use these terms and I found it jarred. And I find his grammar somewhat lacking. “We know little about Nelly Ternan, she was part of this, obviously she was”. Again I found this jarred.
OK call me a pedant. I don’t mind. I shall carry on reading but but but....
As antidote to this I am very much looking forward to reading Jane Austen by Tom Keymer, subtitled writing, society and politics. It is a neat small sized book from OUP and dropped through my letter box today. I have already turned to the chapter Passion and Persuasion. Austen’s writing was felt to be lacking in passion, not least by Charlotte Bronte, but oh my goodness, the letter from Captain Wentworth at the end, the pouring forth of his feelings - well, blimey, passion abounding and one of my most favourite pieces of all literature.
I will report back in due course but I have a feeling I am going to enjoy this.
Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson a memoir set in the second World War which has shades of Diary of a Provincial Lady for me, not necessarily because of the setting, but more the style and dry wit of the writing.
”when I asked the local chemist for line and disinfectant, he felt it was only fair to allow the first aid post to claim me......half a dozen VAD’s made a rush at me and treated my small abrasion as though my whole head had blown off”
Published by the wonderful Dean Street Press.
And, finally, The Woman in the Wardrobe by Peter Shaffer another wonderful title from the British Library Classic Crime Series.
Enough to be getting on with methinks.
