After reading Matt's review of Sarah Waters's Night Watch, I decided it is finally time for me to pick up a book by her as well. I also have Night Watch and am looking forward to reading it, but long have I said I was going to read Fingersmith, so Fingersmith it is! To start with anyway. Maybe I will work my way through all her books this summer--if the first 60 pages of Fingersmith are anything to go by--I like her work very much. I think the sheer length of the book is what put me off (nearly 600 pages). I was looking at it completely wrong, though. Six hundred pages in the hands of a masterful author is not a slog, it is a pleasure. Maybe 600 pages will seem like nothing in a few days (as I don't think it is going to take me long at all to read this novel!). So far I have been introduced to the Dickensian-like world of Susan Trinder. Brought up in a household of thieves, she agrees to work as a lady's maid to a young woman that a fellow con-man, by the name of Gentleman, hopes to marry and lighten the burden of the young lady's inheritance. So, to those who urged me to read this--sorry to have waited so long. And to those who haven't yet picked it up...I have a feeling you might want to.
Speaking of Dickens, I have gotten back into a chapter (more or less anyway) a day habit of David Copperfield. I like David very much. Life has been much better for David since he came to live with his aunt Betsey Trotwood, who I have come to like very much as well (her initial appearance in the story didn't impress me). I'm curious where he'll end up and what other interesting characters we'll meet along the way. I haven't been reading Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Shuttle daily, but I easily could. I love seeing England through the eyes of young Bettina Vanderpoel. She's a sharp, intelligent heroine, and I suspect she is going to give the story's villain (her sister's husband!) a run for his money (then again, technically it's the Vanderpoel's money, since we all know why he married Rosalie!). I have been keeping up with my chapter a day of Don Quixote. I take him with me on the bus every morning. I am about a week away from finishing book one. At the moment I am in the midst of the second interpolated story, and poor Don Quixote is off somewhere in the background. Actually, now that I think about it, he is hanging by the wrist from a window, his feet not quite reaching the ground. I wonder what will happen to him in book two?
I'm halfway through Markham Thorpe by Giles Waterfield. It has turned out to be an enjoyable, light read. It reminds me of Gosford Park. You get a sense of what it must have been like to work on a large country estate. The story is told more from the perspective of the Downstairs inhabitants, but you aee the 'Quality' through their eyes. Sometimes that is more telling. There is some twist to the story. Goings-on have been alluded to, but I have not quite worked out what's what. I guess that is the pleasure in the story--watching events unfold. I have been dipping into Daphne Du Maurier's The Castle Dor (one of my summer challenge reads). I am feeling so-so about this one. I loved Frenchman's Creek that I read earlier this year, but I am having a harder time getting into this one. It is a retelling of the Tristan and Iseult legend. The novel was actually started by Arthur Quiller-Couch. Du Maurier was asked to finish writing it. It is set in 19th century Cornwall, and the story is told by the local doctor. Linnet, married to an older innkeeper has obviously fallen for Amyot a Breton sailor. I think I just need to devote a nice big chunk of reading time to the story. Maybe it is the perspective that the story is told from. I'm having a hard time warming up to the characters, but there's still time!