So, I will chat about the books I am reading right now.
Currently working on four books:
Started Portrait of an Unknown Woman earlier this week. Moving through it slowly, in bits and pieces, maybe about ten to fifteen minutes a night. It's enjoy it, and I think if I just took it and sat down to read I'd get drawn in, but it's not grabbing me all that much. So far, it's a little predictable - smart chick, who trusts women's/folk medicine, but loves a man who is a formally trained doctor (ie, thinks Galen is a god and bleeding people is good medicine), conflicted feelings about her stepfather, More, as he's getting more and more crazy religious, etc. Probably going to be some kind of crisis where she will need to stand up for herself, blah blah blah. I don't know. I thought I liked it, but the more I think about it, the less impressed I am. Just seems, I don't know, really familiar somehow. The silk merchant one was better. But I am really not all that far in, so I will reserve judgement. Not a great sign, though, that I can put it down so easily.
What I did not want to put down, on the other hand, and was very sad to find I had left at the office Tuesday, and happy to get back today, however, was the Medical Detectives book. Yay! Really, the more I read of it, and the more I thought about it even when I wasn't reading the book, I was just so impressed with the quality of Roueche's writing. It's erudite without being pedantic - an expansive vocabulary, that is mildly impressive, but not in a way that it forces itself on your attention - and he has this gift for telling a story succinctly, and moving the narrative along, but still weaving in little asides and not-super-critical moments that are great and don't disrupt the flow of the story. Roueche is also really good at letting the "characters" in his stories tell their own with minimal authorial mucking around on his point. Clearly he is writing and editing the pieces in a way that emphasizes the personalities and creates characters out of actual people, but it doesn't feel artificial or forced. You read the stories and half the time you don't even think about the fact that someone wrote it - wrote, edited, re-wrote, cut and added bits - and that its not just a depiction of exactly what happened. And then you realize the fact you didn't even really notice the author is a sign of just how impressive a writer the author is...Stephanie Barron (if that is her real name, not sure, I think maybe it's a pen name?) is kind of awesome. I seem to recall having mixed feelings about A Flaw in the Blood
(her last book about...um, something...about hemophilia and...murder? scandal? whatever), but I think I enjoyed it at the time, but I have loved the Jane Austen mysteries
she has written since I read the first one years ago - have gobbled them up - and I started The White Garden
today, and digging it. Whoops. Inadvertent and terrible pun. But it's true, so I'm leaving it in. I only took it with me this morning because the two books I was reading at the apartment were too heavy to lug around, and the Roueche was at Harvard, and I knew I might want something to read while I waited for the bus to Cambridge. Really pleased, though - considering I only brought it because it is a slim-ish paperback, I was well-rewarded. Took me a little while to get the rhythm of the writing and story, but once I did, I got caught right up in the story - the two stories, actually. It's one of those tale-in-a-tales, with an unlikely duo (because when are they ever likely) who I assume are going to bone (shout out to L, even though she doesn't read this, but if she had actually come out tonight, I would be out drinking right now, not home putting off my homework) at some point, tracing a historically important manuscript...the story of which is also unfolding. It's not high art or anything, but fun, and definitely coming from a smart person, even if it doesn't require much in the way of brainpower on the part of the reader. But it actually makes me want to read more about the Bloosmbury crew, so if it leads to some smartening, that's a good thing. And smartening brings us to our fourth and final contestant for my attention of the evening,
Richard Archer's As If an Enemy's Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution. I've been reading a little bit before bed at night, and I am liking it so far, but I have a few reservations. I think Archer is a good writer, and the history here seems solid, but I don't know...I think maybe the editing is a bit spotty? There's something about it just feels a little off, a little rough. God. Even I can't believe I am complaining about the quality of editing in a published book, when I should be doing a much-needed revision of my own work. Or taxes. Or dishes :) Anyhow, I'd better head to bed, it's getting on towards midnight, so better I call this night a wash, and get up early (hey, there's always a first time) to do some writing...
No comments:
Post a Comment