Nov. 28th, 2011 09:57 pm
Long winter nights
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuckIt's time to admit to myself that Henry James isn't for me, at least not at this time, and take The ambassadors out of my bag. It seemed a natural follow-up to Edith Wharton, but where her writing was easy and smooth once you got used to turns of phrase that were rather ornate to our crude modern ears his was, well, it reminded me of nothing so much as reading 19th-century German. Is that what English translations of Thomas Mann read like? I shudder to think.
Of course, my evening reading is Laxdæla saga, which could equally benefit from some severe editing. The prose is beautifully straightforward, but there's the usual epic problem of getting every new character's complete genealogy--in both directions. At least the author seems cognizant of this as she has a delightful habit of announcing when someone you've been following for over a page is leaving the story (at least in those few cases where this hasn't been made obvious by their grim termination).
But that book's too fat and heavy to drag on the shuttle, so maybe I will go ahead and dive into Carey's Jack Maggs. From the sample I read, he seems to have a handle on making the prose suggestive of Dickens without being as much of a strain to read. It also occurred to me this could be a good time to pick up O'Hara's Appointment at Samara, since what put me off before was the Christmas setting. But it's a bit early, given that the season only started yesterday. All we have up so far is a bare wreath with four burgundy candles, although I suspect more will go up this coming weekend in preparation for St Nick's.
Back to books: I made an exciting find at Amaranth today. Ever since I read the first title Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy I've been cursed by an inability to find the second volume that's been as persistent as my refusal to give up on looking for it in second-hand shops. At last, bloody-mindedness had paid off! And after a mere four years! Why, that's less than a tenth of my time on this planet so far!
Of course, my evening reading is Laxdæla saga, which could equally benefit from some severe editing. The prose is beautifully straightforward, but there's the usual epic problem of getting every new character's complete genealogy--in both directions. At least the author seems cognizant of this as she has a delightful habit of announcing when someone you've been following for over a page is leaving the story (at least in those few cases where this hasn't been made obvious by their grim termination).
But that book's too fat and heavy to drag on the shuttle, so maybe I will go ahead and dive into Carey's Jack Maggs. From the sample I read, he seems to have a handle on making the prose suggestive of Dickens without being as much of a strain to read. It also occurred to me this could be a good time to pick up O'Hara's Appointment at Samara, since what put me off before was the Christmas setting. But it's a bit early, given that the season only started yesterday. All we have up so far is a bare wreath with four burgundy candles, although I suspect more will go up this coming weekend in preparation for St Nick's.
Back to books: I made an exciting find at Amaranth today. Ever since I read the first title Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy I've been cursed by an inability to find the second volume that's been as persistent as my refusal to give up on looking for it in second-hand shops. At last, bloody-mindedness had paid off! And after a mere four years! Why, that's less than a tenth of my time on this planet so far!
Tags: