Due to circumstances beyond my control, it appears that this weekend will be devoted to reading. A new tennis racquet arrived at my door, but I don't know that I'll have the strength to play this weekend. It may have to wait. But Wimbledon watching will continue, primarily in the evenings.
I've nearly finished Before the Fall by Noah Hawley, and P.D. James's The Black Tower arrived yesterday, all ready to go. So the latter will be rapidly consumed, I imagine.
But I'm also reading, chapter by chapter with rests in between, the nonfiction work by the 2015 Nobel-Prize-Winning Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. To write this book, Alexievich personally interviewed hundreds of former Soviets about the conflicts between Soviet life and the Life After. I hope to have much more to say about it later. It has received tremendous accolades throughout Europe and North America.
Europe 2024: Austria and Germany
3 hours ago
A reading weekend... what a hardship. LOL. I seem to recall that The Black Tower is very good, although it is 30 years or so since I read it.
ReplyDeleteI shall be glued to Wimbledon on Sunday afternoon too... supporting Andy Murray.
How right you are! Some people here downright mourn a rainy weekend, but I just shift into reading gear and I'm fine with it.
DeleteAnd congrats to Andy!! He deserves it!
I went through a period where I read a lot of P.D. James. This post makes me want to pick up her books again!There is nothing I love better than waking up on a weekend morning, getting a cup of coffee, and reading in bed all morning!
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, P.D. James is one of the best writers of modern fiction, let alone crime fiction. Her characterizations are breath-taking. It is her writing and her completely uncompromising examination of human frailty that make her works stand out. Her command of the English language--I am constantly retrieving the dictionary for the definition of a particularly nuanced word.
DeleteAnd of course, I am completely with you in the utter decadence of surrender to literature. When I have a lot on my mind, though, I love that time to be the mid-late afternoon until dinner.
I like to just spend a few days reading when I can. I did that a few weeks ago with my first Ann Cleeves book, The Moth Catcher, which is the 8th in her Vera Stanhope series. Could not put it down.
ReplyDeleteI did nothing else. It was very restful.
How is Before the Fall?
ReplyDeleteHi Kathy,
ReplyDeleteI absolutely know what you mean about reading all day and having a reading vacation. It is very relaxing and calming, from the inside out.
Before the Fall was all right, but I was disappointed in the conclusion of how the accident happened. Plucked right from the news without much variation. I'd give it a skip.
I read Ann Cleeves's book The Raven. Really liked it.
Judith, no email link on your blog and couldn't respond to your comment on mine about Lyme testing. I do have Lyme (tested positive about 8 years ago) but, fortunately took all the antic's in mass doses and have not had any side effects since the original ones. No mosquito bites either, I think it was something viral passed onto me by 2 sick granddaughters a week ago. Thanks for the concern.
ReplyDelete