Waking Up at the End of the Line Wednesday
Jun. 8th, 2016 02:55 pmArchived from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
This week is going to be a catching-up week, in which I scramble for something to say about last Wednesday's reading. Next week will probably have a similar catching-up quality, if I get to it at all.
( Guards! Guards! )
( Scenes from Provincial Life )
( The Disenchanted )
What I'm Reading Now
Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and also the name of a book I have spent decades not reading, despite having been assured many times that it is full of the things I like (represented so far: epigraphs from real authors, epigraphs from made-up authors, unexpected discoveries of letters, people getting book flakes on their fingers, shocking thefts of valuable letters from a library). Well, those days are over!![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer is reading Possession and I have agreed to read Possession, too. I am only on Chapter One, but I look forward to this new, post-Possession era of my life. It's a largeish book with a hell of a lot of epigraphs, and you know how easy it is to impress me by throwing a big plateful of epigraphs my way. Candy from a baby.
The story so far: A guy is doing research on a nineteenth century poet when he stumbles on a couple of drafts of a letter to an unknown lady admirer, tucked into a book from the poet's library. Who is she? Was the letter ever mailed? Did they meet again? Why this sudden confusion of passion? Will this change everything we think we know about the poet and his life? Our researcher slips the letters into one of his own books and goes away rippling with questions.
What I'm hoping it will turn out to be: another edge-of-the-seat academic fact-hunt like The Daughter of Time only with less face detection and less unwarranted gloating about miners. One of the back-jacket blurbs calls it a "thriller," which either supports my theory or undermines it, depending what The Times (London) thinks count as thrills.
What I Plan to Read Next
Shit, A Dance to the Music of Time is twelve volumes? And A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight is fifteen! Fucking hell, Anthony Burgess.
For some reason, I was thinking these were quartets, like the Alexandria Quartet (also counted as a single novel in 99 Novels). But no.
What I've Finished Reading
This week is going to be a catching-up week, in which I scramble for something to say about last Wednesday's reading. Next week will probably have a similar catching-up quality, if I get to it at all.
( Guards! Guards! )
( Scenes from Provincial Life )
( The Disenchanted )
What I'm Reading Now
Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and also the name of a book I have spent decades not reading, despite having been assured many times that it is full of the things I like (represented so far: epigraphs from real authors, epigraphs from made-up authors, unexpected discoveries of letters, people getting book flakes on their fingers, shocking thefts of valuable letters from a library). Well, those days are over!
osprey_archer is reading Possession and I have agreed to read Possession, too. I am only on Chapter One, but I look forward to this new, post-Possession era of my life. It's a largeish book with a hell of a lot of epigraphs, and you know how easy it is to impress me by throwing a big plateful of epigraphs my way. Candy from a baby. The story so far: A guy is doing research on a nineteenth century poet when he stumbles on a couple of drafts of a letter to an unknown lady admirer, tucked into a book from the poet's library. Who is she? Was the letter ever mailed? Did they meet again? Why this sudden confusion of passion? Will this change everything we think we know about the poet and his life? Our researcher slips the letters into one of his own books and goes away rippling with questions.
What I'm hoping it will turn out to be: another edge-of-the-seat academic fact-hunt like The Daughter of Time only with less face detection and less unwarranted gloating about miners. One of the back-jacket blurbs calls it a "thriller," which either supports my theory or undermines it, depending what The Times (London) thinks count as thrills.
What I Plan to Read Next
Shit, A Dance to the Music of Time is twelve volumes? And A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight is fifteen! Fucking hell, Anthony Burgess.
For some reason, I was thinking these were quartets, like the Alexandria Quartet (also counted as a single novel in 99 Novels). But no.
