Alas that funk does not mean funky

[flemmings]

One indication of my wibbles this last month is that I read eight of the ten Mary Russell books in four weeks, half of them in the last seven days. They're excellent pre and post-op books, I grant you that; interesting enough to satisfy but not demanding at all. In fact I'm a bit miffed that I have nothing similar to carry me through the mug of July. Bar O Jerusalem and The Game, which I don't think I'm up for, post-colonial sensibilities or not.

(Must say, it's a good thing I couldn't get into the second book, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, and finished it last, because then for sure I wouldn't have read any of the others. Holmes has always wanted to kiss Mary violently, from the moment he first saw her as a seeming fifteen year old boy? I do not think so.)

Should either sit down with a door-stopper like A Suitable Boy, or start on that pile of picked up books that threatens to topple off the whatnot cabinet. A Suitable Boy is not portable so maybe Ackroyd it is.

A Monstrous Regiment (30)
Justice Hall (28)
The God of the Beehive (26)
A Letter of Mary (24)
The Language of Bees (19?)
The Moor (15)
Locked Rooms (12)
The Beekeeper's Apprentice (6)
Lovingkindness- Salzberg

Comments

[doire]

I've still not managed to finish A Suitable Boy. Took it with me on a flight to Iceland, with the notion that just one book would do if that was the book, but still couldn't manage it. Perhaps if I photocopied the family trees to have them to hand at all time, I'd do better.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

You make it sound like The Three Kingdoms. Maybe another time then.

[unearthly-calm.livejournal.com]

A Suitable Boy is surprisingly funny and easy to get into, I've found. Oddly enough, I was just re-reading parts of it the other day, when I visited the Indian Embassy library in Tokyo. I enjoyed it when I first read it and it stands up well to repeated reading, I think.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Someone whose opinion I respect said it was a good read because it's filled with basically likable characters. Sounds like my kind of book, if only it wasn't so Bible-length.

[unearthly-calm.livejournal.com]

Very true! Sort of the anti-Gone with the Wind.
There's a part in it where a character shocks a book club by telling them that he only got through Shakespeare's plays by ripping his "Collected Plays" into single-play-long chunks and carrying one at a time around with him, so there's always that solution...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Sacrilege! Also the pages then come loose and you lose them and can't page back to remind yourself who So-and-so is. Otherwise that's the way to go.

If it had been a fantasy they'd just have published it in three volumes.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. Everyone's so charming and pleasant, except for maybe the tutor, who doesn't appear much anyways. I found that once I got into it it was a quite easy read, though I think it's best read by flipping it open randomly and reading a couple chapters when you feel like it.