A Question Of Momentum

I've lost a bit of momentum in my reading over the last few days, largely as a result of having to adapt to a whole new way of working. Plus trying to keep up with the latest news with regard to the pandemic has occupied a fair amount of what free time I've hacked out.

I'm still moving slowly through WC Williams's poems and Moody's Pound biog, which is an appropriate way to read both. And I've made surprising progress in a sort of anthology of Singaporean Lit edited by Gwee Li Sui entitled, Written Country - The History of Singapore through Literature. It's helped that most of the pieces therein are short and can be read at one go in those odd moments here and there. It's cleverly arranged in chronological order, starting in 1942, and I'm up to 1985, getting close to the year I arrived on these shores.

But it's the novel I'm currently reading that has caused me most excitement. To my embarrassment I need to confess that I've never read any Balzac before, I suppose constituting the biggest gap in my reading regarding the major figures of western writers. I'm now thoroughly embarked on Le Père Goriot (Old Man Goriot in my Penguin translation) and it's a blast. Tremendous energy in the writing. You might guess that Balzac was strung out on coffee when writing it, if you didn't already know of the writer's addiction. The thing is, though, that I've only really been able to get down to serious reading late in the day, usually when in bed, and my energy doesn't quite match that of the novelist.

Fortunately I've got a bit of a break this Easter weekend so I'm hoping to immerse myself in the Paris of the early nineteenth century. It's a fascinating place to be.