a bookish affair
Wednesday 9 April 2008
I'm feeling guilty as I watch the pile of unreviewed books grow almost daily! Do you sometimes find reviewing a chore? Anyway I've actually been busy with school and have been using any free time I have to curl up with my books and go out for coffee with people I desperately needed to catch up with. Got a few books due back next Wednesday and I want to finish them so I can get more! So...
My weekend goals (not promises) are ::
- Saturday . Ian McEwan
- The Plot Against America . Philip Roth
- One Hundred Years of Solitude . Gabriel García Márquez
- The Memory Keeper's Daughter . Kim Edwards
I've recently been told by a friend about some fabulous books by Nancy Mitford. I did a bit of research and have found that 2 of her books are listed among the 1001: The Pursuit of Love and its sequel, Love in a Cold Climate. Score! I've been told they are classified as comedic tragedy and are a bit autobiographical and run in the style of Cold Comfort Farm, Waugh and Wodehouse. Double score! Apparently Nancy and her 5 sisters known collectively as the "Mitford Sisters" were quite infamous in their days running around with the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw and were responsible for frequently scandalizing polite British society. Definitely will need to get around to reading a biography on them (perhaps this one: The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters or The Mitford Girls). I also spotted during my research a published collection of letters between Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, edited by Charlotte Mosely.
All this excitement over a book makes me want to go straight to the library and get it, especially since I just checked and see that it's sitting there on the shelf waiting for me to come and get it! Can I hold out till next week? Probably not... I think I see an early trip to the library this weekend (or maybe tomorrow!). I feel like giggling like I did while reading Cold Comfort Farm and recently with The Female Quixote (which was absolutely brilliant by the way!). Oh no! I think I'll have to renew those other books again and take a moment to read these delicious new discoveries.
I also recently read a review on Albert Cohen's Belle du Seigneur (or Her Lover) which appears to be "genuinely funny" and "never fails to make [the reviewer] laugh". Also considered a 1001 contender but will have to wait as I just noticed it weighs in at 992 pages... Anthony Trollope's book He Knew He Was Right sound delicious as a "psychological study in which Louis' obsessive delirium is comparable to the tormented figure of Othello, tragically flawed by self-deception", also a 1001 but once again a big one at 864 pages. Summer reads perhaps! (along with Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and finally finishing Proust's Remembrance of Things Past - 3 books in, 4 more to go).
I guess the one thing to look forward to during this upcoming year off from school is all the reading I'll be able to do. Of course if I choose to do the MA in Classics as well as the PhD in Anthropology I'll be needing to stuff my head with Ancient Greek so I won't be behind. There's also that pesky GRE I need to study for and take by the end of the year. But I'll be trying to cram in as much reading as I can since I'm sure once I get going in my new program I will have very little time.
Some of my favorite bands/singers are coming out with new music this year and next. Can't wait! Well actually quite a few of those favs have come out with stuff already I just haven't been able to get a hold of them. On the 29th Augustana releases their new album - love these guys saw them in concert twice, Jack's Mannequin who has been on hiatus after he was diagnosed with leukemia soon after his first release in 2005 has a new album out in June. And one of my long time standing music loves, Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of the now disbanded band Bush (love!) and recent new band also disbanded, Institute (good stuff!) is breaking out with a solo album also in June. Heard the first single, liking it! His beautiful wife, Gwen Stefani is pregnant with baby #2 but has announced that No Doubt will be releasing a new album in 2009! And a bunch of other cool new music on the horizon that I won't bore you with.
. listening . you could be happy . snow patrol . eyes open .
Labels: book
posted by Ashleigh @ 19:04,
