Another reading challenge, this time from A Reader’s Journal. I like this challenge, firstly because it’s a simple idea. Read five classics in January and February 2007. You’re also permitted to overlap other challenges, so hopefully I can cheat a little with the From the Stacks challenge.
Stop reading now if you’re bored with the whole Rachel Cooke and Susan Hill and John Sutherland debate. I’d read countless blog posts criticising Cooke’s views before I decided to go and read her original article for myself. Now I’ve read it I think it’s time I added my own tuppence worth.
The mouse is no longer hovering over Amazon’s ‘pre-order this item’ for Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day. Instead I opted for what I hope will be a much easier read, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I’ll get round to Pynchon. One day.
I’m finding it difficult to write anything substantial at the moment, although I’ve thought of a couple of ideas for memes. Coming soon.
I’ve almost finished White Heat, Dominic Sandbrook’s story of Britain in the 1960s. I like this, an account of the infamous Rolling Stones drug bust of 1967:
They were clearly amused by the fact that Marianne Faithfull, having taken off her muddy clothes before her bath, was wrapped in an enormous fur rug. But when the rug slipped, whether by accident or design, to reveal her naked body, the constables kept their cool. ‘She wasn’t anything to look at anyway,’ said (PC) Rambridge dismissively. ‘She was obviously a drop-out type.’
I’ve booked tickets for Casino Royale tonight. I think it’s time I tried a film review.
Yesterday’s ghostly quote was from Heart of Darkness, where Marlow visits Kurtz’s widow at the end of the book. I can’t wait to start reading A Christmas Carol, so I can find the passage that Conrad nods towards.
On the ghostly theme, I’m enjoying Walter de da Mare’s Ghost Stories. Think empty houses with lonely people left to their own thoughts and haunting themselves, and you have de la Mare:
If, it appeared, you only remained solitary and secluded enough, and let your mind wander on its own sweet way, the problem was always bound to become, if not your one and only, at least your chief concern. Unless you were preternaturally busy and preoccupied, you simply couldn’t live on and on in a haunted house without being occasionally reminded of its ghosts.
I’m a sucker for a well written ghost story.
I’m about halfway through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I was expecting a pulp sci-fi novel that I would easily tire of but it’s actually an excellent book. I’ve rediscovered science fiction and I’m a convert to Philip K.Dick.
I’m also pretty close to pre-ordering Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon’s new novel. I’ve never been much of a fan of his but somehow I feel drawn to his latest. I keep returning to the Amazon website and hovering the cursor over ‘pre-order this item’. Now’s the time to decide whether he really is as good as they say, or if I still think it’s a case of the emperor’s new clothes…
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