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What Are You Reading (Not On A) Wednesday
Jun. 12th, 2014 09:05 amMy usual fortnightly WAYRW post would have been LAST week, but life happened. With prejudice.
What Are You Reading Wednesday:
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What Are You Currently Reading? The best thing about my current reading list is that it NO LONGER CONTAINS HIGH SCHOOL EXAM TEXTS. It does have quite a range of leisure reading that I've been puttering along with for weeks or months, including 'Best Australian Poems 2013', 'Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage' and 'Visit Sunny Chernobyl'. The most recent and most fun addition is Diccon Bewes' 'Swisss Watching', which is providing me with MANY MANY FACTS. The average swiss person eats 12 kg of cheese per year! And 10-ish of that is domesticly produced cheese.
What did you recently finish reading? Where 'recently' means 'in the last three weeks'...
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I actually quite liked this, although I wasn't fond of the semi-mythological set-up. I'm not sure how to feel about whitedude Steinbeck writing about native south americans, but in many ways it seems to me that he afforded them more dignity than the poor white dudes in Of Mice And Men.
The Statement by Brian Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
( A thriller about an elderly anti-semite with hate crimes to his name, what fun. )
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I admired the *artistry* of this, but I didn't enjoy it. I usually quite like bleak rural stories, but in this case... eh. I'd rather Annie Proulx.
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'm sure this would be brilliant on stage (of course, it's Wilde), and in many ways it's a more complex play than Lady Windermere's Fan, but I liked the latter better anyway. This play takes on quite seriously the question of how to be a good man, Lady Windermere was more concerned with what constitutes a good woman. The two use some very similar plot devices, but I felt Ideal Husband lost something for not investing Mrs Cheverley with the same degree of complexity as Mrs Evelyn in Lady Windermere.
Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
( Book I really liked! )
Cal by Bernard MacLaverty
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Look, this was well-written, and emotionally pretty demanding. But why spend all that effort getting you emotionally hooked on Cal and Cal alone when you could've had a novella about Marcella, or a longer novel alternating their PsOV? I want an ending that acknowledges that Marcella has been really, thororughly screwed over. Your husband is shot, you're living with your inlaws, and you finally start letting yourself recover by having it off with a farmhand. Then said farmhand is arrested and you find out he was in the IRA cell that shot your husband. WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU DO FROM HERE?
What do you think you'll read next? I'm going to try to knock a few items of my currently reading list first... Then I have a Melissa Lukashenko book to read, in aggravating Adobe Digital Editions format. I also ordered 'Muriel at Metropolitan', by Miriam Tlali, which I think might be the first novel by a black south african woman - to wash my brain out after some very worrying readings of white south african lit encountered while marrking exams.
What Are You Reading Wednesday:
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What Are You Currently Reading? The best thing about my current reading list is that it NO LONGER CONTAINS HIGH SCHOOL EXAM TEXTS. It does have quite a range of leisure reading that I've been puttering along with for weeks or months, including 'Best Australian Poems 2013', 'Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage' and 'Visit Sunny Chernobyl'. The most recent and most fun addition is Diccon Bewes' 'Swisss Watching', which is providing me with MANY MANY FACTS. The average swiss person eats 12 kg of cheese per year! And 10-ish of that is domesticly produced cheese.
What did you recently finish reading? Where 'recently' means 'in the last three weeks'...
The Pearl by John SteinbeckMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I actually quite liked this, although I wasn't fond of the semi-mythological set-up. I'm not sure how to feel about whitedude Steinbeck writing about native south americans, but in many ways it seems to me that he afforded them more dignity than the poor white dudes in Of Mice And Men.
The Statement by Brian MooreMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
( A thriller about an elderly anti-semite with hate crimes to his name, what fun. )
Of Mice and Men by John SteinbeckMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I admired the *artistry* of this, but I didn't enjoy it. I usually quite like bleak rural stories, but in this case... eh. I'd rather Annie Proulx.
An Ideal Husband by Oscar WildeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'm sure this would be brilliant on stage (of course, it's Wilde), and in many ways it's a more complex play than Lady Windermere's Fan, but I liked the latter better anyway. This play takes on quite seriously the question of how to be a good man, Lady Windermere was more concerned with what constitutes a good woman. The two use some very similar plot devices, but I felt Ideal Husband lost something for not investing Mrs Cheverley with the same degree of complexity as Mrs Evelyn in Lady Windermere.
Lucy by Jamaica KincaidMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
( Book I really liked! )
Cal by Bernard MacLavertyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Look, this was well-written, and emotionally pretty demanding. But why spend all that effort getting you emotionally hooked on Cal and Cal alone when you could've had a novella about Marcella, or a longer novel alternating their PsOV? I want an ending that acknowledges that Marcella has been really, thororughly screwed over. Your husband is shot, you're living with your inlaws, and you finally start letting yourself recover by having it off with a farmhand. Then said farmhand is arrested and you find out he was in the IRA cell that shot your husband. WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU DO FROM HERE?
What do you think you'll read next? I'm going to try to knock a few items of my currently reading list first... Then I have a Melissa Lukashenko book to read, in aggravating Adobe Digital Editions format. I also ordered 'Muriel at Metropolitan', by Miriam Tlali, which I think might be the first novel by a black south african woman - to wash my brain out after some very worrying readings of white south african lit encountered while marrking exams.