Snowbound

We are now reestablished in our Singapore home and gearing up for the dull but lively reality of an imminent Monday morning. I was hoping to get a lot of reading done over the break but I've had to compromise on this to some degree. The Drama Camp was so busy that the most I could do was dip into a book of poetry. Previous experience of such events has taught me the value of the slim volume and this time I plumped for something by Andrew Motion, Dangerous Play Poems 1974 - 1984. I bought the collection back in the late eighties but never really got into it in a big way. This time round I found several poems. possibly the majority of the collection, to be highly accessible, especially the longish Independence. However, there are still a number of pieces which seem irritatingly opaque, to the point where I wonder is it me or them. The problem is, it might well be me.

The big book for the break was undoubtedly Orhan Pamuk's Snow which I finished today. Now this was extremely accessible and instantly rewarding. The obviously remarkable thing about this novel is the sheer number of themes it encompasses: at one and the same time it's an exploration of political Islam, a treatise on the nature of poetic inspiration and an extremely complex love story. And that brief list is just skimming the surface of what also manages to be a highly entertaining, often gripping story. It was only in the last fifty pages or so that it flagged slightly for me, and this was specifically in terms of the relationship be between the main character Ka and the woman he falls in love with. Something about this didn't quite ring true, at least for this reader. Everything else convinced, in a big way.

I also read a little book by William Doyle in the Oxford Very Short Introduction series, this one on The French Revolution. This time last year I was ploughing my way through Carlyle's epic of the same title, more out of a sense of duty than pleasure I must admit, and found myself realising just how much I didn't know about a central event of European if not World history. So I suppose I'm trying to do a bit to put that right and, as usual, the books in this series make great places to start when battling one's ignorance of a particular topic. Anyway, I'm contemplating some bigger reads on the subject and maybe history in general in November/December.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get hold of Gaiman's Stardust in KL, but I kept my graphic juices bubbling with a couple of TinTin collections - yes, really a sign of second childhood. As also was my reading of Betsy Byars's The Cartoonist. Not in the same league as her classic The Midnight Fox, but she's too much of a craftsman (should that be craftswoman?) to ever entirely disappoint, and her observation of what we would now term dysfunctional families is bracingly honest (and funny.)