Oh, blog, how I have neglected you. Hopefully you'll understand that it's all been in favour of (mostly) greater things: since the last post, the lovely boyfriend and I have moved house (and bought more bookshelves!), and both of us have applied for and been offered new jobs, so it's all been a bit hectic. Still, that's not really an excuse!
So, I suppose I should start with a note about the bookshelves. As is my wont, I was stressing about how to organise them - there were his books, and my books, and the books we both had copies of, fiction, non-fiction, poetry... you get the picture. Plus, to quote the lovely boyfriend, "If you take two people who didn't have enough bookshelves for their own books, and move them, their books and their bookshelves into the same house, there still won't be enough bookshelves." So whatever system I came up with was going to have to be flexible on the basis that an unknown quantity of new bookshelves would need to be added into it, and I didn't fancy reorganising the whole lot every time that happened. Normal people are probably frowning in slight bemusement at this point, but hopefully one or two of you understand the mental anguish associated with book organisation. I froze. (It had been a stressful few weeks.) The lovely boyfriend jokingly suggested that we should organise them by colour, in rainbow order (it had been a stressful few weeks for him too)... and lo and behold, for want of a better idea, that is how they've ended up. I quite like it. I like that we've discovered, through this system, that most books (or at least most of the ones I buy) are blue, black or white. I like that this means I now get really excited when I find books with a bright yellow spine. It's a bit sad, I know, but the small things make me happy.
Furthermore, now I have bookshelves and a bedside lamp, I've been reading a bit more, which also makes me happy. I finished The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, which was AMAZING. Beautifully written, exquisitely crafted, characters with oceanic amounts of depth - just stunning. Definitely one of the best books I've ever read, and very much worth the effort of getting hold of a copy. I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel, Children of God. I've even started listening to one of Mary Doria Russell's other books, Doc, on audiobook, because I loved her writing that much, despite the fact that it's about Doc Holliday (of O.K. Corral fame) which wouldn't normally be a subject of any interest to me at all. It's pretty good, I have to say (and I can highly recommend the southern accent of Mark Bramhall, who narrates it, to anyone who likes that sort of thing!).
After The Sparrow, I had a brief encounter with A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, but got bored after 100 pages when I realised that he'd already told me the plot, and I wasn't particularly interested in the characters. I might pick it up again one day. It's well written, but it probably suffered in comparison to the book I'd just finished!
When I got bored with Owen Meany, I picked up The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff (the book that they turned into the recent film starring Eddie Redmayne, which I still haven't seen). I can't say that it was on the same level as The Sparrow, but it was really interesting and well-written enough not to put me off. I know some people don't like books with film tie-in covers, but in this case it meant that I didn't think too much about the author, who I realised about halfway through the book also wrote The 19th Wife, which I didn't enjoy as much at all, and I'm glad that wasn't there at the beginning to put me off. The Danish Girl is about the Danish artist Einar Wegener, who comes to realise with the help of his wife that he is transgender, and about his struggle to live as a woman called Lili Elbe. I think the thing I liked most about it was the way Ebershoff made Lili into a completely separate character, so that when she was there, Einar was not. It really made it clear just how much Lili was a separate identity, and you understood that Einar had to "die" in order for her to live. Cleverly done. If I ever get round to seeing the film, it'll be interesting to see how they get that across.
After The Danish Girl, I indulged in A Snow Garden by Rachel Joyce, which is a collection of absolutely delicious short stories, gently linked by characters and hints of characters and themes of winter and Christmas. Utterly delightful, as are all of her books. (In fact, when I bought it, I had a conversation with the bookseller at the till about how wonderful a writer we both think she is.) It's maybe a bit too warm and sunny to get the most out of it now, but I highly recommend hoarding a copy until it snows and then cuddling up with a cup of tea.
Following that, I fell into The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I've been looking forward to reading for a very long time now - since it was out in hardback, if not before. It's about an old couple, Axl and Beatrice, in a sort of mythical Dark Ages England, where a mysterious "mist" seems to mean that no one can remember anything. I got really into this one - the beginning was excellent, and I like Beatrice and Axl as characters - but then, approaching halfway through the book, most of the story started to be told through dialogue, and the dialogue is just... wooden. I'm not going to claim this is because Ishiguro is a bad writer of dialogue, because I know for a fact he's not, but I think he was aiming for a sort of "legend in translation from Middle English" style which just doesn't work for me. I might try the audio, in the hope that someone else can put in some of the expression that I couldn't get from the text alone! I do kind of want to know what happens, but I think it's going to have to be on the backburner for now.
At the moment I'm reading The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker, which is excellent, and which I wouldn't have known was translated from French, so kudos to Sam Taylor, who translated it. I'm not finding it quite as thrilling as it was lauded to be yet, but it's definitely a good pacy mystery and I want to find out what happens, so fingers crossed it keeps it up!
Not much is happening on the yarn front, so I guess that about wraps up this post. Until next time.
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