Reading

It’s been quite a while since I posted anything here. I am still regularly updating the reading page however. When I look at what I have been reading, and what remains on Mount TBR (currently about fifty books or so) it is the usual mix of historical fiction and older ‘classic’ novels and literature, with a bit of modern crime and non fiction thrown in.

This year it is both the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, so I treated myself to reading it, which I hadn’t done before. Anyone interested in doing so could do worse than to read Blogging the Origin a most excellent blog that takes you though it chapter by chapter. I also have a couple of other books that discuss Darwin in Mount TBR and I might get around to them later this year.

I still have one Louise Gerard left in the pile from my great grandmother, and I hope to read that soon too. Aside from that there remain a couple of other 19th century romances on the pile, but they look heavy going, so I might not get there these year. We shall see!

Still fabulous: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008)

It’s not often that I do movie reviews in this blog, but since this is a special film it deserves a special mention. I was lucky enough to attend the world première of the film in Dublin last week, and as I’ve never been to one before it was quite an experience. Everyone was in their best togs but it was a bit disconcerting to see people with buckets of popcorn – it didn’t seem quite right somehow. But what a relief to see a film without twenty minutes of ads beforehand!

Aye, see him: The house with Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown (1901)

This is a classic of Scottish literature that many non Scots will not have come across. Actually, a lot of Scots won’t have come across it either. This is most likely because it was only Brown’s second book – he died the year after it was published, and the other was published under a pseudonym. It is generally seen as a rejoinder to the sickly, sentimental fiction known as the Scottish kailyard, popular in the late nineteenth century.

I could perhaps best summarise this book as Lewis Grassic Gibbon meets the Mayor of Casterbridge, to give an idea of what it’s about. It shows rural Scots society in an altogether different light from that of the Kailyard, and I’m sorry to say, it’s a portrait that I still recognise to some degree in contemporary Scots culture – all small minded niggling and ‘ah kent his faither’.

Some other book blogs

I thought it would be useful to list a couple of other book blogs which I read regularly, and which might be of interest to readers of this offering.

Quippe is as voracious a reader as I am. She is certainly much better at writing up reviews of what she reads. Covers a wide range of books, veering towards fantasy.

Corrigan doesn’t seem to read quite as much, but what he lacks in quantity he certainly makes up for in quality. A welcome addition to the list of Irish bloggers.

Kissing cousins: Next of Kin by John Boyne (2006)

Set against a background of the abdication crises of 1936, with the plot deftly woven between real events, this erudite and entertaining historical thriller has a neat twist at the end.