January is such a blah month, isn't it? However, the weather here has been hugely cooperative (cold and grey days but not much in the way of snow...thank you Mother Nature), so I don't have much cause to complain and good books have mostly kept my mind out of the winter doldrums. I'm never sad to see the end of January come (as then we're just getting closer to spring), but I've just realized there is now less than a week to go and I've not finished a few books I had such high hopes of completing before the month runs out. It's time to crack down and get to work (okay, really it's almost all play for me when it comes to books), rather than my incessant book grazing of late.
I think I may actually be ready on time for once for the first read of Caroline's 2012 War and Literature Readalong--always good to start off the year on track with one reading plan/group read anyway. I've been enjoying Helen Dunmore's Zennor in Darkness. It's set in Cornwall in 1917. Most of the characters are fictional, but D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda feature in the story. I don't know enough about the Lawrences to know how they spent the war, but I suspect Dunmore based her story on actual events to some extent. It's always a little risky to insert real people into fictional stories, but so far it has been working for me. And then there are the wonderful descriptions of the seaside town of Zennor, which is where the story is set. Discussion begins on Monday January 30. Not to get ahead of myself, but next month's book is one I have long owned and have wanted to read so am really looking forward to, A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry.
I wish I could say I was ready for the Slaves read, also next week, which is The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen. I have a library copy of the book, and I think I would really enjoy it if I would pick it up and start reading, but it's a cloth edition, which is slightly unwieldy to carry or read at the gym. And the story is not a straightforward narrative, but has lots of diagrams and footnotes, which look interesting, but time consuming. And now I've frittered away the month. So I guess all this by way of saying, sorry to my fellow Slaves, but I think I will have to sit out of this month's discussion (hanging head in shame as my intentions were good). I think I've left it too late now.
I did finish my postal reading group book just a day or so ago. I read this book, which was a reread for me, and I loved it even more than the first time I read it more than a decade ago. I don't usually write about my postal books here as I don't like to give anything away to any readers' in the grop who've not yet received the book and might happen by, but perhaps I'll share my thoughts on Goodreads. I now, of course, want to binge on all her books.
Let's see. I've also been spending time with and thoroughly enjoying M.F.K. Fisher's The Gastronomical Me, which I might just finish before the end of the month. The essays are mainly short, but totally engaging. I've ordered three more of her books.
And at the gym I've been alternating between Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes and Missing by Karin Alvtegen. Both are perfect gym books, fast paced, suspenseful and absorbing page turners. There can be so many distractions at the gym I need a good story I can lose myself in and that's been the case with both stories. The MacInnes is reminiscent of Mary Stewart's work. It is a story of international intrigue, this time set in early 1960s Italy and Greece. Alvtegen is a Swedish author and her story features an unreliable narrator, a woman who has been living on the streets for fifteen years and makes the mistake of conning a man who turns up dead in a hotel room. It won Sweden's Glass Key Award.
And now I need to turn a little attention to my pile of interlibrary loan requests that I've been stockpiling from my library. How did I possibly end up with so many books (half a dozen so far and counting). I'm just starting Enid Bagnold's A Diary Without Dates, which is a memoir of the time she spent serving as a V.A.D. nurse. It's an interesting read. Very slim book, filled with Bagnold's impressions. It's not what I expected but not in a bad way, and the more I read the more I like it. Next up will be Blue Aubergine by Egyptian author Miral al-Tahawy and then Pure by Andrew Miller, this year's winner of the Costa Book Award. Three novels that couldn't be more different. Variety is good, right?
I had to insert the photo at the top of this post as that is what my current reading pile feels like at the moment. I guess I had better go read now and see if I can make a dent in it before February rushes in.