Stories that make sense
I am pleased to say that we are in fact up to date with the rent. But it is rather dispiriting to consider that, Cambridge property prices being what they are, we will probably be renting for some time yet. I believe that this was not – for a variety of reasons – something that Gwen Raverat had to deal with.
If I’m put on the spot about my favourite book (for example, here), I almost always go for The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s very long, it simultaneously plays to and undercuts Gothic tropes, it has a ton of moral ambiguity, and there is a lot of early nineteenth century opera and a lesbian elopement.
Stephen Fry, regrettably, omits the operatic lesbians, but I really can’t complain about such an affectionate, funny, adaptation as The Stars’ Tennis Balls. He isn’t just thinking of The Count of Monte Cristo, he’s thinking of it with real fondness.
I’ve got a rather long (and probably you-had-to-be-there) anecdote in which I tried to explain one of the jokes to my brother in the driving rain on the Camino Inglés. You might see it in a month or so, when I’ve got round to writing up the journey.
After posting a poem about taking three ‘slim volumes’ walking with me, it seemed only appropriate to include the third (the other two are here and here).
And while I’m on the subject, I’d like to wish all pilgrims a very happy St James’ Day, and hope that anybody currently on the road has ready access to plenty of shade and water.
This was one of my absolute favourite books when I was a teenager, and I still love it. It’s a riotous, anarchic story where the characters are refreshingly and unapologetically flawed (and wandering through a gentle alcoholic haze most of the time in a way that would horrify the morality police). Nothing much happens, but everything changes.
It’s just right for these sultry summer days when you never quite know what the weather’s going to do next. Or, if it comes to that, what you’re going to do next.
I’d been meaning to make another excursion into the spy thriller genre anyway, and had managed to lose The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (it turned up on Saturday morning, in a plastic bag in a cardboard box of things I’d cleared off the sofa bed). And then the work book club decided to read this. I enjoyed it: some effective twists on a number of tropes that needed a bit of refreshing, and the proper sense of just-because-you’re-paranoid-doesn’t-mean-they’re-not-out-to-get-you.
Yes, more Spanish mystics. I’ve been thinking a lot this year about what it means to be human and live in a body, and the incarnation, and things like that, and St John of the Cross fits very well into all of that.
This was one of the three books I took to Spain with me.
I’m a bit suspicious of all these nostalgic paperbacks that are trying to look like 1930s railway posters. Simpler times, what what, with nothing to worry about except the rise of fascism.
And yes, Madensky Square is definitely nostalgic. But it’s set in 1911.
See, I do occasionally read worthy non-fiction appropriate to my day job. (I recommend this one. It’s very readable and makes a lot of sense. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?)
Interesting how the world seems to be become absolutely terrible a decade or so after the turn of every century, isn’t it?
Kathleen Jowitt 