Daily Reading (09 May 2015)

[nanila]

What have you been reading today? Everything counts, from a novel-length fic to the labels on your washing!

Comments

[nanila]

Baseline social media (mostly in the middle of the night - there were multiple lengthy baby feeds) plus Guardian articles. Not a lot else since the official start of the day other than the menus at the pub for lunch!

[legionseagle]

Lucky! I went on the folk train to Hathersage and the pub lunch menus were in such short supply, the time between arrival and departure so compressed and the queue at the bar so formidable I had to gamble that they had scampi and chips (a safe-ish bet) because I had no time actually to read the menu.

[weaverbird]

Go you! I'm always impressed that you manage to find reading time, given how busy you are. Being able to read during feedings must make being up for so much of the night a little less onerous.

[legionseagle]

Just started Judith Flanders A Murder of Magpies. Shaping up to be splendidly frivolous and light-heartedly snarky murder mystery set in the publishing world:

Miranda [the narrator's assistant] is impressive. She has mastered such essential skills as getting the right address on the right mailing of proofs. (I know, but the last Amanda looked at me like I murdered kittens when I suggested she give it a try.)

[ironed_orchid]

That sounds good.

[weaverbird]

Twitter, Tumblr, LJ, DW as usual, plus scrolling/skimming about 30 pages of Tastespotting, and finally finishing A Passage to India.

[ironed_orchid]

Finishing is nice!

I've read A Passage to India. a few times, including for lit class, but it's been ages.

[weaverbird]

I'd read it before, too, many years ago, when I was too young to get much out of it. For the last year or so I've been revisiting novels I'd read (and disliked) when I was still in school, and it's been very interesting and enlightening.

Perhaps I was an especially contrary child, but being assigned a book to read was all too often the kiss of death - I automatically disliked it. I read voraciously on my own from age 6 onward, but resisted what my teachers handed me. The intervening 45-50 years have worked their usual magic in giving me the necessary perspective with which to appreciate works I had once dismissed as a waste of time.

[ironed_orchid]

Oh yes. The book I read and did not appreciate in high school was Jane Eyre, I expected something more like Wuthering Heights and so I was disappointed.

Then I read it again in my late 20s, and it was a revelation. Interestingly, Wuthering Heights has not stood up to post-adolescent re-readings.

It also took me until late 20s or early 30s to properly appreciate Jane Austen.

[weaverbird]

Oh, thanks for the reminder! Must add Jane Eyre to this list of re-reads. I shan't touch Wuthering Heights, I think. That one I *really* disliked; I could find nothing sympathetic about either Heathcliff or Cathy and therefore saw no romance at all, only misery. Given that, it doesn't surprise me that it didn't stand up for you. *g*

Ahhhhh. Jane Austen! My go-to comfort reading. No matter how many times I read her novels, they never fail to delight. Read them first in my 20s; wonder if they would have clicked with me if I'd read them as a kid? Probably not.

[kerrypolka]

Social media, including DW and LJ which I haven't read in a few weeks as I've been away. Articles online about informational interviews and adjusting career paths. About ten pages of Helen Castor's new book on Joan of Arc. Lots and lots of lefty postmortems on the election.

[ironed_orchid]

I nearly finished the novel I've been reading every night this week, but fell asleep right as they were working out whodunnit. (It's Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers, and I've read it before, so I already know the answer, otherwise I would have probably plowed on despite the fact I was so sleepy I kept dropping the book on my face.)

[weaverbird]

Dorothy L. Sayers! Isn't she wonderful? Re-reading her mysteries is something I do too, from time to time.

And hee! I know just what you mean about dropping the book on your face. :)

[fred_mouse]

spurred on by the recall notice from workplace library that tells me I have 7 weeks to return six books-I-haven't-started:

I spent a pleasant reading-in-bath session reading chapter 1 [The origins of political ideologies] of "The philosophic roots of modern ideology: Liberalism, Communism, Fascism". I am probably not going to hold more than a tenth of it in my head while I read the next chapter, and I'm probably going to remember even less later, but the bit that sticks was that ideologies don't have to be internally consistent, and that not being so can be seen as an advantage, because then the true believers just need faith, and ad hoc changes don't have to be consistent either.