I'm trying to figure out what to put on my reading list for the next two or three weeks. The big Hughes's Collected is on-going, so that's a done deal, but I'm blank on the fiction front having completed reading all the books I was given on Teachers' Day. I don't think I would have actually chosen to have read any of them, but they were all rewarding in different ways. Actually I forgot to mention the first of them I read, an off-beat novella entitled The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman, a translation from the French-Canadian writer Denis Theriault. One of the students I went to Japan with last year, Priya, got me this, I think because of its employment of the writing of haikus as a central feature of the plot, and general reference to Japanese aesthetic thought. I'm glad she did (though all my students please do note that giving books as presents goes way beyond expectations and is to be discouraged) because it's a nicely crafted, appealing text, which, I'm guessing, has brought the writer some success since he's now written a sequel. The writer has a gift for deploying post-modern artifice in a light, almost fluffy manner, which is a lot more enjoyable than the usual 'look-at-how-clever-I-am' approach.
Anyway, having this and the other two novels that made their ways to me meant I didn't make a visit to the bookshop that I'd intended and now I find myself thinking I should continue to put that visit off and get on with a whole bunch of plays sitting on the old bookshelves alongside some serious reading I've been setting up for the final months of the year. But I'm also hankering for a good murder and a good frightener (King-style) so I'm feeling oddly undecided as to exactly what comes next.
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