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Currrently reading - July 2018

I don't know if it's age, but I now tend to have several books on the go at once.

Here's what I'm reading now:

1. Repeat - A J Kohler's time-shift love story but, oh, so much more. Carefully thought-out, logically plotted and readily readable, is Kohler's longest novel so far, and his subject well suits the larger canvas. See the homepage for links.

2. Neverworld Wake - Marisha Pessl. Pessl's third book is, she says, aimed at the teen market, but, like similar titles by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, adult readers will enjoy this, too. This is also a time-slip story, and like Special Projects in Calamity Physics and Night Film, a dark tale that explores personal fears and relationships in extraordinary circumstances.

Re-reads

3. Jacob Have I Loved - Katherine Patterson. I read this when I was teaching in Maryland. It was one of the books that students seemed to like. It's a coming of age story about a girl who lives on an island in Chesapeake Bay with a popular older sister and how she comes to terms with being herself. Insightful and atmospheric this is a story about a teenaged girl (for all teenagers) who is not shallow, silly, or stupid.

When I remembered the book (it's been 40 years since I first read it), I could remember neither the title nor the author, only that it was set in Chesapeake Bay. I am grateful for the search facility on Goodreads.com that enables searches by location.

4. From the Holy Mountain: Travels in the Shadow of Byzantium - Willian Dalrymple. One of the best titles ever. Dalrymple travels from Mount Athos, in Greece, to Al Kharga, in Egypt, visiting Orthodox monasteries and holy places. The perspective this puts on western Christianity is fascinating. Written with wit and wisdom, this is much more than a travel book. A Scottish Roman Catholic, Dalrymple illustrates the differences between the Roman Church and the Orthodox in ways that sermons and religious tracts cannot. It also illustrates the influence of Christianity on Islam.


Comments

  1. I am currently re-reading Kingsley Amis's letters, many of which are to Philip Larkin, of course. I get rather irritated by the rather juvenile coprophilia. Passages from the soft porn novels are quite amusing as are the frequent literary pastiches. However, the literary criticism is often bang on the money. He is expert at debunking pretentiousness and his disdain for fine writing is a useful corrective warning to me in my scribbling hours. His critique of Brideshead Revisited is devastatingly sharp though short (as a scalpel is) and, although I loved the book in my youth, I have to admit that Amis is right: Waugh does not escape sentimentality despite his own protestations. He is also right that it is hard to see what we are supposed to make of Charles Ryder, when his marriage to Sebastian’s sister is in bad faith because ‘he couldn’t bugger the boy’. He picks out various sentences for scrutiny, including: ‘The languour of youth - how unique and quintessential it is.’ He’s right. Under the surgeon’s lights, it doesn’t mean much, does it?

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    Replies
    1. I will add a "Reflection" on Brideshead Revisited. It's a seductive book, but the more I re-read it, the more I am amazed that a novel with such a shit as its central character could ever have been so popular. Charles Ryder being gay has nothing to do with it (should anyone be looking for an opportunity to take offense), he's just not a nice human being.

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