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No Pleasant Wednesdays
Sep. 12th, 2018 01:32 pmTime is still an issue, so I'm going down to two posts a month for the time being.
In the meantime:
What I've Finished Reading
Over the past two weeks I finished Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy, for 99 Novels, and then the next three books in the series (The Levant Trilogy), just because I wanted to follow Harriet and Guy Pringle around some more. Then I found out there was a TV miniseries and got it from the library (I haven't had the chance to watch it yet). Why did I get so invested in these hapless kiddoes and their debatably tolerable marriage? In the hands of a slightly less gifted writer, or even a differently gifted one, this story of two people who let each other down in exactly the same ways 500 times over a thousand pages might seem pointlessly frustrating or boring, but it wasn't for me - I just liked them and wanted them to be debatably happy.
At the end of The Battle Lost and Won, Harriet becomes ill and leaves Cairo, dejected because Guy doesn't share her belief that they should stay together no matter what. She ditches the boat to England at the last minute and hitches a ride to Damascus. Then the boat she ditched sinks and everyone on board dies, and there's a stretch of maybe 200 pages where Harriet is wandering around Damascus and Jerusalem, determined not to say anything to Guy because she's supposed to be on a boat anyway and he shouldn't have sent her away so there and Guy is certain that Harriet is dead. And for the entire two hundred pages (which are mostly taken up with the same kind of aimless knocking about that defines the Pringle Life wherever they go) I was frantic because SEND GUY A POSTCARD, DAMN IT. She FINALLY hears about the shipwreck and realizes Guy thinks she's dead, but after calling his workplace a bunch of times and getting some random porter she doesn't know, she decides to just head back to Cairo instead of LEAVING A SIMPLE MESSAGE, GOD DAMN IT HARRIET.
Guy is also objectively infuriating - an amiable, oblivious, desperately insecure teddy bear who believes that the whole purpose of marriage is to have someone you can take for granted. There's also a character called Simon, who gets his own POV chapters like Yakimov the supermooch in The Balkan Trilogy. Unlike Yakimov, he's an ordinary dude with problems that aren't entirely of his own making, so he doesn't yank the books off kilter as much as poor Yaki, and at first they're a little less memorable as a result. I soon got used to it, though I wasn't overly invested in either character and mostly found myself wanting to get back to the Pringles and their complete and intractable inability to talk themselves into any dynamic but the one they rode in on.
Catch-22 isn't the hammer between the eyes that it was when I was fifteen, but how could it be? Even with a memory as bad as mine, there are only so many times you can read a cynical takedown of piety and patriotism for the first time. It's reasonably durable for a black comedy.
What I'm Reading Now
At one point in their friendship, Boswell was feeling neglected by his great friend Sam Johnson, so he decided not to write him any more until he got a letter, to test how long it would take for Sam to "break". Then, being Boswell, he was unable to prevent himself from confessing this "test" to Johnson, with a promise never to do it again.
Johnson, being Johnson, never let him forget it. After the confession, every time a month goes by without a letter from Boz, Sam J.'s next letter begins with a stern warning that Boz had better not be testing him again, and a reminder that such behavior is childish and ill-mannered, and likely to spoil the friendship it tests, but he hopes Boz and the Mrs. Boz and the young Bozlettes are doing well all the same in spite of this inexplicable vice of their protector.
Boswell, naturally, includes every one of them. It gets funnier every time it happens.
The Life of Samuel Johnson is winding down. Sam J.'s health is failing even more than usual, and one of his oldest friends has died. I'll be glad to get to the end of this enormous book, but I'll also miss it.
I've started Temporary Kings (penultimate entry in Anthony Powell's gossip-roman "A Dance to the Music of Time," also a 99 Novels selection) and it's just as much a pile of candy as all the others.
What I Plan to Read Next
The library copy of Hearing Secret Harmonies, last in the Powell series, is on my floor along with The Mighty and Their Fall by Ivy Compton-Burnett - an author I'm excited to read after a lot of glimpsing from afar. I've also put in an Interlibrary Loan request for the next Henry Williamson, A Test to Destruction - which could take anywhere from two days to eight weeks to get back to me. I have to learn to live with the uncertainty, since I've put a lid on book buying at least until the Fall Friends of the Library Book Sale.
In the meantime:
What I've Finished Reading
They had learnt each other's faults and weaknesses: they had passed both illusion and disillusion. It was no use asking for more than anyone could give.
Over the past two weeks I finished Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy, for 99 Novels, and then the next three books in the series (The Levant Trilogy), just because I wanted to follow Harriet and Guy Pringle around some more. Then I found out there was a TV miniseries and got it from the library (I haven't had the chance to watch it yet). Why did I get so invested in these hapless kiddoes and their debatably tolerable marriage? In the hands of a slightly less gifted writer, or even a differently gifted one, this story of two people who let each other down in exactly the same ways 500 times over a thousand pages might seem pointlessly frustrating or boring, but it wasn't for me - I just liked them and wanted them to be debatably happy.
At the end of The Battle Lost and Won, Harriet becomes ill and leaves Cairo, dejected because Guy doesn't share her belief that they should stay together no matter what. She ditches the boat to England at the last minute and hitches a ride to Damascus. Then the boat she ditched sinks and everyone on board dies, and there's a stretch of maybe 200 pages where Harriet is wandering around Damascus and Jerusalem, determined not to say anything to Guy because she's supposed to be on a boat anyway and he shouldn't have sent her away so there and Guy is certain that Harriet is dead. And for the entire two hundred pages (which are mostly taken up with the same kind of aimless knocking about that defines the Pringle Life wherever they go) I was frantic because SEND GUY A POSTCARD, DAMN IT. She FINALLY hears about the shipwreck and realizes Guy thinks she's dead, but after calling his workplace a bunch of times and getting some random porter she doesn't know, she decides to just head back to Cairo instead of LEAVING A SIMPLE MESSAGE, GOD DAMN IT HARRIET.
Guy is also objectively infuriating - an amiable, oblivious, desperately insecure teddy bear who believes that the whole purpose of marriage is to have someone you can take for granted. There's also a character called Simon, who gets his own POV chapters like Yakimov the supermooch in The Balkan Trilogy. Unlike Yakimov, he's an ordinary dude with problems that aren't entirely of his own making, so he doesn't yank the books off kilter as much as poor Yaki, and at first they're a little less memorable as a result. I soon got used to it, though I wasn't overly invested in either character and mostly found myself wanting to get back to the Pringles and their complete and intractable inability to talk themselves into any dynamic but the one they rode in on.
Catch-22 isn't the hammer between the eyes that it was when I was fifteen, but how could it be? Even with a memory as bad as mine, there are only so many times you can read a cynical takedown of piety and patriotism for the first time. It's reasonably durable for a black comedy.
What I'm Reading Now
At one point in their friendship, Boswell was feeling neglected by his great friend Sam Johnson, so he decided not to write him any more until he got a letter, to test how long it would take for Sam to "break". Then, being Boswell, he was unable to prevent himself from confessing this "test" to Johnson, with a promise never to do it again.
Johnson, being Johnson, never let him forget it. After the confession, every time a month goes by without a letter from Boz, Sam J.'s next letter begins with a stern warning that Boz had better not be testing him again, and a reminder that such behavior is childish and ill-mannered, and likely to spoil the friendship it tests, but he hopes Boz and the Mrs. Boz and the young Bozlettes are doing well all the same in spite of this inexplicable vice of their protector.
Boswell, naturally, includes every one of them. It gets funnier every time it happens.
The Life of Samuel Johnson is winding down. Sam J.'s health is failing even more than usual, and one of his oldest friends has died. I'll be glad to get to the end of this enormous book, but I'll also miss it.
I've started Temporary Kings (penultimate entry in Anthony Powell's gossip-roman "A Dance to the Music of Time," also a 99 Novels selection) and it's just as much a pile of candy as all the others.
What I Plan to Read Next
The library copy of Hearing Secret Harmonies, last in the Powell series, is on my floor along with The Mighty and Their Fall by Ivy Compton-Burnett - an author I'm excited to read after a lot of glimpsing from afar. I've also put in an Interlibrary Loan request for the next Henry Williamson, A Test to Destruction - which could take anywhere from two days to eight weeks to get back to me. I have to learn to live with the uncertainty, since I've put a lid on book buying at least until the Fall Friends of the Library Book Sale.
