Sublime to the ridiculous - Books at Movingtime

Just because I've been moving a family of five 350 miles is no excuse for not reading.

But worry not.  I haven't let you down. I have been reading.  I just haven't been blogging about it.

I started with Wolf Hall.  I had hopes of Wolf Hall, but I was also a bit scared of it.  I don't give up on books.  If I start a book, I am Magnus Magnusson-like in my determination to finish it.  In fact I can name all the books I have, as an adult, failed to finish*.  Even if I hate a book I won't put it down.

But that's not the right attitude any more.  If I am trying to ensure that I read properly, that I read for pleasure and that my reading, and the time I spend doing it, is worthwhile, whether because I learn something, or I am treated to good writing, or I just lose myself in a plot, then surely I shouldn't go on with reading something I'm not enjoying, should I?

And that being so, I was afraid I'd have to give up on Wolf Hall because  I don't tend to agree with the Booker judges.  I gave up (pause for shocked intake of breath) on Vernon God Little, I thought The Sea was really dull, Inheritance of Loss was all very well, but didn't light my fire, Life of Pi was great until the end when I got really cross and was forced to throw it across the room.  In fact, the only Booker prize-winning novel of the last ten or so years I've actively enjoyed was The Blind Assassin.

Until now.

I was totally carried away by Wolf Hall.  Which is even more amazing when you realise that you know the plot. It's about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, so of course you know the plot.  You're hardly sitting in suspense wondering if it'll all work out ok and the lovers will get married and live happily ever after.  Except that you are.  Because even though you know the history, you don't know how it's going to end, because you don't know when it's going to end.  Will Anne still be alive? Will Cromwell?  Will Henry?

But that's not why I enjoyed it (once I'd got used to the mildly irritating and confusing way she often refers to Cromwell just as "he", regardless of any others in the scene to whom that personal pronoun could also be applied) .  I enjoyed it because I was there.  I was with the child Cromwell as he witnessed a burning, and with the adult as he watched the downfall of his patron, Wolsey, or gained the ear and trust of his king, or pleaded with Thomas More to take the oath that would save his life.  I could see it, smell it, taste it.

I sort of knew this period of history: I studied it, many moons ago, for A-level, and I wrote a dissertation on A Man for All Seasons, but it took Hilary Mantel to make it come alive.

And then I picked up Fatal Revenant - The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson.  I bought this one by weight, not quality, and it was a mistake.  Partially it's my own fault because I didn't read enough of it when I bought it to realise that it's book eight of a nine book series.  But it's also, with all due respect to Mr Donaldson, who is, I am sure a lovely chap, and kind to children and animals, utter guff.  Maybe if you've read all the others you'd get into it, but coming into it cold, it was full of the self-important, pretentious, cod-philosophising that characterises the worst in fantasy.  All of the navel-gazing self-indulgence of Tolkein, without the characters and plot that redeem it.

So, reader, I gave up.  I read the synopsis of the first seven books, struggled through the next hundred pages and then B got so bored of me whinging about it that he took it away.

And I am now reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. Because I picked it up cheap and I really enjoyed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  Nearly finished actually, and then it'll be time for a bit of self-indulgent escapism as I read my Secret Post Club present.


* The Pope's Rhinoceros, Catch 22, The Alexandria Trilogy (only the first one, I never started the others), Q, Vernon God Little (won the Booker Prize, see above), and now The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant....

All book pictures from Amazon.co.uk   Thank you to them.