Results of one month of Reading Harder

I'm currently drowning in books again, but I think it's been a successful month. The greatest thing being that I finished Mr Whicher, started The Moonstone and Orhan Pamuk. I don't think I've ever read a Turkish novel, but I've finished The Black Book and I'm in the middle of The New Life. Very different. very deep with an almost dream-like quality. I'm not sure if it's to do with cultural aspects or the way that Turkish is translated. I think I would like to go back to The Black Book as I think it's the kind of novel you could read multiple times and interpret differently.

Whicher was good, but I didn't find it brilliant. It has encouraged me to read a bit more history, however, and I am still in a bit of a French phase, particularly reading a history of the infamous diamond necklace and I've foolishly started reading the Dumas novel. No idea how I'm going to get through that and The Moonstone, I'm already suffering from the racist overtones and irritating comedy servant in Wilkie's novel. Not that you read Wilkie Collins for subtlety.

By Jebulon - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11383484

 

 A pretty hideous necklace. 

Otherwise, I am reading The Sunne in Splendour but not getting very far yet, still trying to read War and Peace and hankering after A Suitable Boy. There's something about the summer months that makes me want to read massive tomes about India but I can't do this particular novel without some sort of way to record the characters or else I get a bit lost. I'm in a bit of spate of starting lots of books then not really getting into them and I have a couple of series on the go that I know I've been neglecting (in particular the Matthew Shardlake series and I've got a bit demotivated with the old Poldark around book 5. There's 12 of them. I'm hoping I'll go back to them in time but I haven't really started Heartstone or The Four Swans so I'm giving myself a bit of a break. Sometimes I inevitable feel like I read a few too many serious books. It's great, I love it, but I could probably do with getting into something a bit more frivolous right now.