What I read on my holidays

Date: 19 August 2007 16:07:04

About a month ago, I was getting ready to go on holiday and deciding what books to take. Since I was travelling with my sister (an English teacher and therefore keen on books and reading and suchlike activities), we agreed to take books to swap.

We were away for a week. I read so many books that my eyes started to hurt, a wonderful feeling, but not one to be repeated too often.

First up was Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris. Now I haven't really enjoyed Joanne Harris books before. Chocolat was ok, but too short to get in to properly. G&P was a wonderful book, quite how wonderful only becomes apparent towards the end and I won't spoil it by revealing why. It is a split narrative, dealing with two separate time periods at a minor public school. There is an element of thriller, but the characters are what stood out for me. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have realised what was going on long before the end. A book to be read carefully and savoured. Incidentally, I bought this for a pound at my local Amnesty bookshop.

At this point in the holiday we were still on the plane and not yet landed in Croatia. While we settled into the apartment and got used to the heat, I decided to tackle a non-fiction book. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson was, (if I remember correctly which I am now not so sure that I do), a birthday present that I saved for holiday. Some of Bryson (Notes from a Small Island, Notes from a Big Country) I find laugh out loud funny, some I find merely amusing. His autobiography of childhood was, for me, merely amusing. Perhaps it is because I have few reference points to 1950's small town America, it just didn't seem that good. Make no mistake: it was a good read and I am glad to have put aside the time, but I won't be reading it again.

Now we come to the real treat of the holiday: Priestess of the White, by Trudi Canavan. Have you Australian wibloggers heard of her? She is an Australian fantasy writer whose first trilogy, (The Magician's Guild, The Novice, The High Lord), I read earlier this year and really enjoyed. P of the W is the first book in a different trilogy, set in a different, though similar world. Told from the point of view of various characters from different races, this is the start of a war between the Gods and their mortal representatives. I'm looking forward to the next in the series, but Mr F gets first go at it. What sort of fantasy is it? More Robin Hobb than Tolkien, better than Raymond Feist (particularly his later stuff). Trudi is not as mean (yet) to her main characters as Robin Hobb, so I found it much easier to read.

I had one novel of my own left to read, but at least three more days of holiday. What was I to do? Our intention was to spend a lot of time doing nothing and then resting. Croatian tv was pretty awful, although they were showing a Miss Marple every morning (one of the new ones with Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple). I started on my sister's pile of books. I think this was the day that she spent fifteen hours asleep so I read quite a lot and the next two books sort of blurred into one.

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon. Funny book about a disfunctional family.
So many ways to begin by Jon Mcgregor. Serious book about a disfunctional family.

That is a bit mean of me actually. They were both really well written, well observed and compelling. However, when I read novels, I read to escape, preferably into a fantasy world or into a nice happy real-life situation. They just weren't the sort of book I wanted at the time.

In order to stop me reading all night, I had been restricting myself to non-fiction in the evenings. As I have mentioned before, last year at Greenbelt I bought God's Politics and it has sat by my desk or by my bed ever since. I managed to read about half of it while we were away and I really should finish it since it is very good indeed and has some sensible, essential even, things to say about faith and politics. The gist of the book, or at least an introduction to it, can be found if you download Jim Wallis's talk from Greenbelt last year.

Getting a bit desperate for reading matter at this point. The available options included Hamlet (my sister is teaching it next year and had brought it to work on while I was doing some Greek revision) and Middlemarch, but I really don't like reading Shakespeare and George Elliot felt a bit too worthy for holiday reading. I opted instead for The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald since it was one of the ones on the BBC Big Read list from a few years ago that I am still to read. (Middlemarch is on there too, but sshhh). At least it was short. Seminal it may be, ground-breaking even, but it did not appeal at all. The characters were mostly monstrous and I just couldn't bring myself to care what happened to them.

Finally, the last day of the holiday and I had saved some supreme chick-lit for the final morning by the pool and the flight: A Sense of Belonging by Erica James. I like Erica James's books, although there is not usually a huge amount of depth to them. This one was set in a new, exclusive housing development in Cheshire (not far from where I grew up, so it has the feel of home) and deals with the new residents getting to know one another, falling in and out of love, dealing with tragedy and so on. Not particularly true to life (how many people these days even bother getting to know their neighbours?), but cosy and undemanding.

On the train on the way back from my sister's house I read a Maeve Binchy: Whitethorn Woods. I shouldn't have bothered, it was one of those ones where she introduces a new character each chapter who all turn out to have something in common: lack of depth being one of those things.

There you have it, holiday by reading matter. Since I have returned, I have finished off Forest Mage by Robin Hobb, reread a Susan Howatch and probably done a few more things.

This is what I was looking out at while reading by the pool. In the distance you can see Dubrovnik.

Incidentally, I notice that I completely forgot about my first anniversary of blogging here, but today is a year and a month since I started. Somehow it seems much longer. It has been lovely.

Congratulations on getting to the end of one of my longest posts ever. Go and have a cup of tea.