The Mantel was such tripe that I abandoned it. Shame on me. I will now never know the details of the French Revolution. Ah well.
I'm now reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It's dramatically verbose, but perhaps that's a result of the translation rather than the text itself. I've also been dipping into True Tales of American Life, edited by Paul Auster. Gorgeous vignettes submitted to Auster who then read out the choice pieces on NPR. And Best American Essays 2003, collected from periodicals over the year. Not strictly beach material, but good for tube journeys. American periodicals do such a good job of encouraging almost literary non-fiction prose. They give real space to these sorts of pieces in magazines that are harder to locate in the UK (if that's not too contradictory). Tho' Zembla's doing quite a good job.
I'm now reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It's dramatically verbose, but perhaps that's a result of the translation rather than the text itself. I've also been dipping into True Tales of American Life, edited by Paul Auster. Gorgeous vignettes submitted to Auster who then read out the choice pieces on NPR. And Best American Essays 2003, collected from periodicals over the year. Not strictly beach material, but good for tube journeys. American periodicals do such a good job of encouraging almost literary non-fiction prose. They give real space to these sorts of pieces in magazines that are harder to locate in the UK (if that's not too contradictory). Tho' Zembla's doing quite a good job.
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Hi
This is a bit like the Amazon message..if you like x, you will like y.
Well, you might like Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas-not sure of the name of the translator but it is just out in paperback in English. When it was first published in Spain it was a wild success-it deals with the Civil War and the silence about it that is/was typical in Spain. (I think we find it hard to imagine what a Civil War does to a country, but that is for a different conversation. Anyway, this book is about an author called Javier Cercas and a book he is writing called Soldiers of Salamis and from there the story unfolds to be about spain and heroism and ordinariness. I could not put it down.
I really didn't appreciate how much you read.....and I live with you!
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