Still Getting Started

My Januaries are often characterised by a distinct sense of derailment as far as getting on with my reading in general terms. This January has not proved a notable exception, though in recent days I've begun to get back on track to some small degree. I suppose this might be connected to a slight easing in the demands made by the Toad, work, but it might also relate to an increased determination on my part to carve out some kind of life as the working year begins.

I've not exactly made wonderful progress in reading the work of WCW in 1939 - 40, but this is partly because I've deliberately slowed up at the translations of the Jean Sans Terre poems. To be honest, I've no idea of the French background of the series; I don't even recognise the name of the writer, but I've found Williams's versions fascinating since they are so uncharacteristic with their deliberately clunky rhymes and rhythms. Thus, instead of breezing through them out of happy familiarity with the voice of the writer, I've been pulled up short and had to read and read again, almost in slow motion, to grasp the poems. It's been a salutary reminder of just how essentially experimental WCW was throughout his career, how ready to try out forms and idioms that didn't necessarily flow from his centre, as it were.

The other book I've been making progress of a limited sort on has been Meira Chand's A Different Sky. It's a fairly mainstream popular novel of the well-researched history-cum-romance-cum-family-saga set in mid-twentieth century Singapore - the setting being the basic reason I wanted to tackle it. So far, so good, I'd say, having reached 1940, about 100 pages in. Predictable, but not in a bad way, and written with genuine craft. On a simple level, I've learnt a fair bit about day-to-day life on the island in the pre-war years, including the fact that an Englishman working in a business at that time needed no fewer than fourteen suits to keep up appearances. That's fourteen more than I possess, by the way.

I suppose my sustained reading has centred on the periodicals I got hold of at the back end of last year. Must say, I found each one very readable in its way, and a reminder of how reading the real thing in hard copy seems so much more engaging to me than the stuff I read online. I was particularly taken by the end-of-2021 edition of The Mekong Review and am seriously wondering if I should pick up the editions I missed in the months of the pandemic which are available at Wardah Books, if I'm not mistaken.