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Hello, book-friends! Yesterday my schedule was booked back-to-back from eleven to ten - massage trade, massage client, then two classes, with just enough time in between to grab a bite or a break. It all went beautifully, but with the requisite house cleaning for hosting clients I had time to either write my book blog or practice piano, and piano won. (Still a little shaky on the body mechanics, but I managed to work out the entire opening of "Let It Be" from the music, rather than by ear! I'm super proud of myself. Also, much as with Beatles songs on guitar, there are a lot of octave-long reaches. Oh, John Lennon and your beautiful elegant piano-player hands.)
What I've just finished reading
Nothing this week - partly due to busy-ness, partly to splitting my reading time between three formats. I usually have a paper book, and ebook, and an audiobook going at any given time, and this week my schedule's been scattered enough that I've been doing some of each.
What I'm currently reading
My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du Maurier. I'm maybe a fifth of the way through, but this is shaping up to be just as excellent a fall read as promised - properly gothic, with an atmosphere of melancholy and dread that hints at a lack of reliability in the narrator. Something that occurs to me - while "gothic fiction" brings up a lot of associations, including rainy English moors and haunted manor houses, one of the most pervasive expectations is that the prose will be overwrought and flowery. du Maurier is something of an exception on that front; she does use the longish sentences and occasional archaic construction of gothic fiction (not inappropriate to the way people, especially people from her narrator's background, tend to think), but her word choices are fairly workaday - which in itself sets up a certain tension. For instance:
My first instinct, on climbing from the coach in Florence, as the dusty baggage was unloaded and carried within the hostelry, was to cross the cobbled street and stand beside the river. I was travel-stained and weary, covered from head to foot with dust. For the past two days I had sat beside the driver rather than die from suffocation within, and like the poor beasts upon the road I longed for water. There it was before me. Not the blue estuary of home, rippling, and salty fresh, whipped with sea spray, but a slow-moving turgid stream, brown like the river bed beneath it, oozing and sucking its way under the arches of the bridge, and ever and again its flat smooth surface breaking into bubbles. Waste matter was borne away upon this river, wisps of straw, and vegetation, yet to my imagination, fevered almost with fatigue and thirst, it was something to be tasted, swallowed, poured down the throat as one might pour a draught of poison.
Guilty pleasure reading, maybe, but I'm finding it thoroughly pleasurable.
Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. Really enjoying how this book makes explicit the character relationships that're hinted at in the film but never really explored. Arguably they don't need to be - show don't tell, etc. - but something about the film's portrayal never quite meshed for me; we never get any idea why Howl is so immature and incapable of confrontation, or why Michael puts up with him, or why Sophie has such a complacent streak. The book doesn't spend a lot of time on it, but it does give you enough that the characters feel far more fully developed. Although I'm happy to have Miyazaki's beautiful visuals in my head as I read it.
My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. Lila and Elena have hit puberty, and oh! the drama! Elena, with Lila's help, has turned out to be a dedicated student and is studying Greek and Latin in high school with the rich children, but Lila (not having the family resources to attend school even with the help of the teacher) is educating herself through library books and working in her parents' shoe shop. Furthermore, Lila developed later but is clearly going to be a great beauty, leaving poor Elena (whose sole consolation for the past couple of years has been her possession of breasts) feeling even more inadequate. What's probably most heartbreaking is that it's clear that Lila is just as jealous of Elena as Elena is of her, but of course could never acknowledge it and risk her sense of superiority. It's always tragic when our insecurities get in the way of actually connecting with the people we profess to care about.
What I'm planning to read next
After three days of Googling, I finally found the illustrated ballet storybook I had in childhood, and ordered a copy - somewhat battered (it is from 1962) but intact, and with the lovely illustrations I remember. Perhaps I'll pass it on to my goddaughter if she turns out to be interested in ballet.
What I've just finished reading
Nothing this week - partly due to busy-ness, partly to splitting my reading time between three formats. I usually have a paper book, and ebook, and an audiobook going at any given time, and this week my schedule's been scattered enough that I've been doing some of each.
What I'm currently reading
My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du Maurier. I'm maybe a fifth of the way through, but this is shaping up to be just as excellent a fall read as promised - properly gothic, with an atmosphere of melancholy and dread that hints at a lack of reliability in the narrator. Something that occurs to me - while "gothic fiction" brings up a lot of associations, including rainy English moors and haunted manor houses, one of the most pervasive expectations is that the prose will be overwrought and flowery. du Maurier is something of an exception on that front; she does use the longish sentences and occasional archaic construction of gothic fiction (not inappropriate to the way people, especially people from her narrator's background, tend to think), but her word choices are fairly workaday - which in itself sets up a certain tension. For instance:
My first instinct, on climbing from the coach in Florence, as the dusty baggage was unloaded and carried within the hostelry, was to cross the cobbled street and stand beside the river. I was travel-stained and weary, covered from head to foot with dust. For the past two days I had sat beside the driver rather than die from suffocation within, and like the poor beasts upon the road I longed for water. There it was before me. Not the blue estuary of home, rippling, and salty fresh, whipped with sea spray, but a slow-moving turgid stream, brown like the river bed beneath it, oozing and sucking its way under the arches of the bridge, and ever and again its flat smooth surface breaking into bubbles. Waste matter was borne away upon this river, wisps of straw, and vegetation, yet to my imagination, fevered almost with fatigue and thirst, it was something to be tasted, swallowed, poured down the throat as one might pour a draught of poison.
Guilty pleasure reading, maybe, but I'm finding it thoroughly pleasurable.
Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. Really enjoying how this book makes explicit the character relationships that're hinted at in the film but never really explored. Arguably they don't need to be - show don't tell, etc. - but something about the film's portrayal never quite meshed for me; we never get any idea why Howl is so immature and incapable of confrontation, or why Michael puts up with him, or why Sophie has such a complacent streak. The book doesn't spend a lot of time on it, but it does give you enough that the characters feel far more fully developed. Although I'm happy to have Miyazaki's beautiful visuals in my head as I read it.
My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. Lila and Elena have hit puberty, and oh! the drama! Elena, with Lila's help, has turned out to be a dedicated student and is studying Greek and Latin in high school with the rich children, but Lila (not having the family resources to attend school even with the help of the teacher) is educating herself through library books and working in her parents' shoe shop. Furthermore, Lila developed later but is clearly going to be a great beauty, leaving poor Elena (whose sole consolation for the past couple of years has been her possession of breasts) feeling even more inadequate. What's probably most heartbreaking is that it's clear that Lila is just as jealous of Elena as Elena is of her, but of course could never acknowledge it and risk her sense of superiority. It's always tragic when our insecurities get in the way of actually connecting with the people we profess to care about.
What I'm planning to read next
After three days of Googling, I finally found the illustrated ballet storybook I had in childhood, and ordered a copy - somewhat battered (it is from 1962) but intact, and with the lovely illustrations I remember. Perhaps I'll pass it on to my goddaughter if she turns out to be interested in ballet.
