What Are You Reading? Feb 07

[suedonim]

So what are you reading, to start the new month? I'm reading 'Notes On A Scandal' by Zoe Heller. I found it hard to get into but am doing a bit better now. It won't be on my list of all time faves unless something amazing happens, though!

The Girl from the Chartreuse - Pierre Peju. A beautiful, although sad, book, beautifully written (in translation from French). Picked it up by chance but am loving it.

Ggirl - I LOVE the Woman in White! Def. one of my favourite books. Didn't want it to end - read the Moonstone straight afterwards!

As in I read the Moonstone straight afterwards; I'm not ordering you to!

Currently by my bed are a clutch of books most of which arrived as part of a 'mystery selection' from a book club:

Iain Banks: The Business - took me a while to get into but am now enjoying just because the premise is so unusual, I can identify with the corporate-warrior heroine and I like the humour.

Carol Shields: Unless. So well-written and thoughtful, so interesting on the experience of motherhood, but wanly sad and made all the more so by knowing that Shields died of breast cancer not long after completing it.

Hugh Cunningham: The Invention of Childhood: - a little disappointing but interesting to dip into (the book was serialised on Radio 4).

Ian McEwan: Atonement. Too scared even to start it.

I feel a bit embarrassed to admit this, but my problem is that as I get older I find it less and less easy to cope with tragedy or even sadness in literature, particularly if it's unresolved. Despite being both very happy and lucky personally, middle age (is 43 middle aged?) has brought with it a profound sense of just how disappointing, dreary and downright ghastly life could be and I don't want to read about it. I do however still want to read well-written, challenging and interesting books; just ones with happy endings or at least ones that don't actively make me sad. At this rate I'll be on an unrelieved diet of 1990s Chicklit, David Lodge and Georgette Heyer by the time I'm 60. Bink, Marina et al: Any suggestions for books that will engage and uplift me but I won't have to hide behind a copy of The Economist on the train?

I am reading Plain Truth by Jody Picoult and I cant put it down, its amazing

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Know exactly what you mean, Issymum.
Presumably you've read Possession? - overwhelming memory of that is how good-hearted a book it is.

Eugene Onegin? - not exactly uplifting, but really engaging and downright satisfying.

Gorky's autobiographies.

Now can I have some jury-service suggestions please?

I love Wilkie Collins too. There's something about the 19th century - I've always loved Dickens - think is a brilliant story teller. I really loved "The Quincunx" - modern author - can't remember name tho - huge book, sort of pastiche of 19th century novel, lots of twists and turns, marvellous characters and intricate plots. "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Susannah Clarke is in a similar style, huge but just so absorbing.

I'm reading Prep by Curtis Sittingfield which I'm really enjoying. I've just finished Man Of My Dreams by the same author and she's a great writer. American. Like watching a film rather than chick lit (hate that label).

I'm also reading Wasting Police Time by PC Copperfield which is REALLY funny, I'm loving it.

I just bought The Genius Factory for my dp's birthday and it looks so interesting, I might try and read it without bending the spine before I wrap it up

Issymum, I think this feeling is very common. I have not been able to re-read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, nor go anywhere near Jamila Gavin's Coram Boy for this reason.
I just avoid the literary fiction on this sort of theme, (although I had to stay with Kate Atkinson's Case Histories) but I have to admit to feeling huge anger and disgust at the growth in the market for mass-readership memoirs of abusive childhoods/parental bereavement. I find this phenomenon in publishing really quite distasteful. Even walking past the "have your heart broken, thrill to this tragic tale of grim adversity" ghastly billboards at stations makes me angry.

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an irresponsible age by lavinia greenlaw. it's beautifully written, in a quiet way. i am really enjoying it, sad to be getting towards the end.

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Pruni, I think Kate Atkinson's writing is unacknowledgedly autobiographical in this area, don't you? But she doesn't bang on about it interviews etc. Her writing is full of integrity.

Wrack, I think

Bink, have you read Olivia Manning's Balkan and Levant trilogies? Probably, as you've read most things. If not, they are meaty enough to get you through jury service, and not too full of the things you don't want to read about (though I guess a bit of misery, unfulfilled dreams, dreary death etc is part of the human condition).

I have just been through a Truman Capote phase as I realised I hadn't read any of his stuff, and I also went through a John Le Carre stage recently, as I decided I didn't know much about spy fiction. I know enough now.

OOH nellieEllie - haven't read either of those. straight off to the bookshop at lunch!

Or maybe rack
Bink have you read Georges Perec's "Life: A User's Manual". There is a recent, good translation I think. Or, if your French is up to it, in the original.

1. the vocab is nothing out of the ordinary
2. it is an episodic, jigsaw novel, perfect for putting down and picking up as you schlep round the corridors of justice

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Just read Anita Shreve Sea Glass quite liked it. I think it is next on the list on the MN bookclub.
Just started Carol Sheilds Mary Swann which I am liking too so far.

Marina - please give HDM a try it is worth the tears.
Maycontainstress I read Prep recently too, I think I may give it to my 18 year old cousin next - she spent a lot of time at boarding school...

Balkan and Levant Trilogies good, definitely. Although I felt they were a rare example of improvement through dramatisation on the BBC.
Or my best buddy Robertson Davies - Salterton Trilogy or hugely entertaining slim volume of ghost stories High Spirits

Think it's 'racking' and 'racked' (causing huge pain and distress, tearing apart). From 'rack'.

Have had to double check in Collins . How sad am I.

Strangetown, I did read it once and thought it was magnificent . I just cannot go back. I don't think it is just the fact that I lost a baby around the time I finished reading it though

I really like "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell", too, and thought it was a good story with a clever imagined recent history. That's also meaty, and got me through most of a week's holiday this summer.

While you are there pruni does wrack therefore derive from wreck/shipwreck then?

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