Saturday, February 10, 2007
So freaking tired
And should probably sleep a little but am feeling jangly-nerved with coffee and Siouxie Sioux and heat and sleep deprivation.
I'm reading all this dreadful Sharon Penman books at the moment - someone this dreadful girl I was friends with at secondary school introduced me to. At that time they seemed some how exciting and glamorous but now they seem so freaking DRY. Dull and dry... I'm not a quitter though, I'll see them through to the bitter end.
I think the glamour was in the Medieval arranged marriages... the twenty year age gaps and bedding-down sequences that amounted essentially to institutionalised rape... disturbing that this was perceived as romantic to my sixteen year old self.
I really actually am disturbed now that I've written that down. Eek.
Sleep or something.
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This post is brought to you by the letter "d" and the word "dreadful".
ReplyDeleteSarah,
ReplyDeleteThrow the dreadful book out of the window NOW! RIGHT THIS MOMENT.
Thank you.
Now, a couple of excellent novels that could do with your attention are: Susanna Clarke's 'Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell' a novel about real magicians in the time of Napoleon. Don't be put off by my description it's a strange and brilliant work.
William Boyd's 'Restless' about a woman who was a spy during WWII though it's as much about the post war period as living during the war itself.
Read anything by Sarah Waters, or anything by Annie Proux or for that matter anything by David Mitchell but particularly Ghostwritten by Mitchel, The Shipping News by Proux and Fingersmith by Waters.
Read Henning Mankell's Inspector Wallender series if you like detectives. Wallender is a hang dog Swedish cop who operates in small town Sweden and who's always worrying about relationships and particularly the one with his daughter. If you haven't yet read Donna Tart's 'The Secret History' then you need the back of your legs smacked.
Ian McEwen's novel 'Attonement' is just brilliant though don't read the miserable 'Saturday'. If you've not read any Harry Potter then do, they're great yarns that require no intellectual energy whatsowever.
Finally, do not read books that make you miserable or that are not uplifting. By uplifting I mean the story can be sad but the quality of the writing is uplifting, or the story can be uplifting.
And finally, blog more!
Hi Dan!!!
ReplyDeleteI loved Fingersmith and the most recent one that Waters wrote, the one set in the Blitz. The Shipping News and a book of short stories that Proulx wrote that one of my old flatmates had and I adored both. Been meaning to read Clarke's book for ages - my little bro took it with him to Europe and raved about it and read it while nicotine deprived at Taipei airport. Lots of great recommendations and reminders and hope for avoiding unnecessarily dull dense reminders of my twisted adolescence.
I am also reading Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera that was leant to me by this boy I'm dating... Have you read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides? Fuck it's a great book.
Penman is going to back to the library today. I spit on her.
Young Sarah, (and Dan Flynn for that matter) I suggest that if you haven't already you read Emma Donoghue's 'Slammerkin' and 'Life mask'. I read Water's Fingersmith and then got introduced to the others.
ReplyDeleteI have a copy of both of those books, and of Donna Tart's 'Secret history' which is spectacular fun to read. Perhaps we should meet up for that glass of wine / coffee we've been meaning to have and swap literature. We could be all 'ladies book club' about it.
xx F
Ah Fran and Sarah,
ReplyDeleteMuch as I'd love to meet you both for wine, and I really would my UK diary won't allow it. I am visiting Oz in November and maybe could fit you in if you're at that time in the vicinity of Perth but apart from then...well... soz. However have a glass of wine for me, have more than one have two or three, bugger, have a bottle each. Life's short but that doesn't mean the drinks must be too.
x
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteHmm. Not read Middlesex but will now on your suggestion. Read Love in the Time of Cholera a long time ago and I think GGM is a magnificent writer.
Fran,
On your recommendation will look up Emma Donaghue and see what she's about.
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteThe 60's playwright Joe Orton, who incidentally was murdered by his jealous lover Kenneth Halliwell used to deface library books. Indeed he and Halliwell were sent to prison for it. Is the Penman book something that might improve with a little defacing? Hmmm? Certainly sounds like it.
Ciao darling.
x