Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 August 2007 20:45:46
I've been reading on the train. Short stories are easier than novels because you can fit them in between stations.
Yesterday I started The Mark of the Beast and other fantastical tales which is a collection of Rudyard Kipling stories edited by Stephen Jones, and published in the wonderful Gollancz/Orion "Fantasy Masterworks" series. Its volume 50 and so far there aren't three duds among them. The companion "SF Masterworks" series is almost as good. They do what they say on the tin. These are the books you ought to have read if you want to have read the books you ought to have read.
Yesterday I flicked through it and read The Man who would be King and The Bridgebuilders and a couple of other stories based in India some of which I'd read before. All very good. This morning on the train to work I read The Gardener as recommended in Neil Gaiman's introduction.
Last week I read or re-read all of the Harry Potter books and finished the last one on Monday. They were OK. They made me laugh a few times. I don't think they made me cry at any point. This ten page story by Kipling, which I read on the train between Lewisham and Waterloo, had tears in my eyes by the fifth page. I just about managed to control myself until I read the last line of the story (the last word really) and all but burst out sobbing hand had to get up and walk down the train so as not to disturb the other passengers.
So if there is anyone else writing blogs about odd people they see or overhear on commuter trains in London: I was that soldier.