Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth

Artist's impression (from the NLS site)

Is not going to be making my list of favourite books this year. Not sure if I wasn’t concentrating on it enough, but I found it rather confusing and not all that interesting to be honest. Maybe if I was around at the time or had some interest in Anglo-Irish relations I’d be howling with laughter, but I was quite glad it was so short!

The massive introduction by Anne Thackeray Ritchie didn’t help either, especially as it was about a third of the book and I just wanted it to be over so I could get on with reading the rest. Nor did the glossary. As I had the free edition I got [glossary 1] or whichever number repeated multiple times with no linking so I only got the joke or the point she was trying to make at the end.  

It was only towards the end that it started to make sense and I started to see the humour in the novel, by which time it was almost over. I could go into more detail analysing it but I think I’d prefer to move on to the next book.

Anyway, I’m sure that the rest of Edgeworth’s novels will be better so I am not going to let it put me off reading more of her work, after all, it was Maria’s first novel and it was a little like Trollope’s The Kellys and the O’Kellys.

Shopping, Seduction and Mr. Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead

I am a complete sucker for books of T.V. programs, whether they are fictional adaptations, written especially for the series or history books. So, I was delighted to find this cheap on the old Kindle. I was not that horrified to find out the amount of liberties I.T.V has taken with historical fact, after a while you get used to it and I understand that taking Downton With Shops as truth is liable to make you look rather silly. No, it’s written as entertainment and it provides that much. 

The book too, is entertaining and quite well written. You can see that it is not supposed to be ‘serious’ history in that it doesn’t really contain a great deal of analysis, but that is hardly a flaw when it has so many interesting facts and anecdotes that give you a sense of the family and the business. I loved the number of personalities that filled the pages, and sometimes it is wonderfully relaxing to be entertained by tales of rich people doing extravagant things and descriptions of crazy by-gone fashions.  The book was well researched and some of the anecdotes were quite personal. 

It did slightly nark me at times that she didn’t put references in the main body of the text, I think there is no excuse for not doing that with an ereader as it’s so easy to be able to flick back and forth between the references and the main body of the text. Also, the images and illustrations were at the end in a separate section, so I did think that they were missing until I finished the book and went ‘ah, so that’s what they looked like.’ But these were minor formatting points rather than big criticisms. 

Overall, I’m glad to have read it as it has given me a better insight into the background of the period and to a man who was such an interesting character, although in a way I am also quite sad to know how the story ends and hope that there is a happier ending for I.T.V’s Mr. Selfridge. 

What the world needs now, is hats, sweet hats

 I also enjoyed reading a little bit of history and have vowed to vary the all fiction all the time diet with some more of the historical stuff, as I know that I own a great pile of history books I haven't read either!

In a bit of a Muddle!

Pinched from my local library's Facebook page

Okay, so having finished Les Mis and decided to embark on Wuthering Heights I now discover that the Guardian’s next Reading Group project is Swann’s Way by Proust, one of the hefty tomes appearing on the BIHNR list. I am now quite muddled over what to read. I have a few options:

Abandon Wuthering for the time being, take it off Goodreads and dive straight into the Proustian behemoth with the intention of finishing the first book with the rest of the Guardian crowd then carrying on with the rest of it. Yes, I know I said I wanted something shorter and probably less French, but it would be nice to read it sort of with other people (although I am more of a reader of comments than maker of comments)

Stick to Wuthering, possibly attempting to finish it early (which is a bit of a cheat as there is so much written about it).

The ultimate challenge, which is going against the unofficial one book at a time rule and reading the two books at the same time, which will probably lead to me not finishing Swann’s Way by the end of the month and possibly turning the whole thing into a lot of frustration and toil. It’s not so much the reading that takes the time, it’s the analysis and the writing about the books so reading two will possibly slow me up so I am either writing about the books more than a couple of times of week or I have to spend a few weeks catching up with the writing afterwards. I really don’t want to turn this into a chore, that leads to abandoned books and feeling like this is more work than play!

If I am reading Swann’s Way, which format? I have the Moncrieff translation in paperback and ebook form (both were pretty cheap).  It’s lovely to be able to pencil in a book, but the same time, the two volumes are MASSIVE, bigger than even Les Mis. I doubt I will be able to take a copy to work. 

Anyway, I think on reflection I am going to leave rolling in brie for the moment and plunge into Proust. At least it will feel like a major achievement once I start crossing off books from an entire series and I am actually looking forward to it. The prose isn’t that difficult to read, it’s just extremely easy to get bogged-down with the length. I’m going to go ebook for the sake of my back and my sanity, but I can always refer to the physical book at home if I want to. 

I am also a little bit muddled with the amount of reviews and books to finish, so I am making a list of the things I aim to do shortly:

• Write a review for Mr. Selfridge
• Finish writing about the Bell Jar. I have most of the notes I wrote for the feminist part of it, but I wanted to have a look into the Freudian aspects of the book which is linked. Yes, I am rediscovering the old literary theory.
• Finish Castle Rackrent and write a short review 
• Finish My Cousin Rachel and review. 

 

It’s getting more difficult to keep up with the number of books I’m reading and reviewing, but as I am enjoying it at the moment I might as well continue.