Medieval Bookworm

It’s been another busy week over here, with lots of working, packing, and moving stuff around.  Internet in the new place got turned on Friday, so I should finally be around the blogosphere more, especially in a couple of weeks when we’ll have moved the majority of our stuff.  And now I know I can participate in the upcoming Read-a-thon and my online book club, so I’m very happy about both of those things.  My GR has been over 1000 for more than a week, so I think I’ll be marking those as read at some point – I don’t see myself finding time to catch totally up!

Yesterday I finally finished Lorna Doone, the book that Tasha and I are reading together for our Classics Month.  I really need to apologize to Tasha because I haven’t at all been reading the classics I was supposed to read, mostly because I’ve been stuck on this book.  And it puts me to sleep almost every time I try to read it!  You’ll hear more about it when we review it together after she’s finished.  In the next few days, before March is over, I’d like to read both The Wizard of Oz, which is going at a speedy pace even though I’m reading it on my brand new phone, and Villette by Charlotte Bronte.  I really wanted to read related books and watched related movies – I have been really slowly working through Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf and I recorded East of Eden to watch after I’d read the book – but I see no way I’ll manage to finish those things in the next three days.  It’s disappointing, but I do plan to do all these things eventually, so I hope you’ll stick around.

I have still been reading, but I’ve been choosing very light relaxation reads.  I’m finishing about three books a week.  This week, it was Lorna Doone, Hector and the Search for Happiness by Francois Lelord, and The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar.  I haven’t decided if this is my new normal yet but all things considered it still isn’t too bad!  Not quite the same as the book a day I was managing before but I really don’t know if that’s possible or desirable at the moment.  I do like other things besides working and reading.

Also wanted to ask if any knew about really great ereader apps for an Android phone.  I have one on there at the moment but it’s mostly free classics.  Of course I love that, but I’d also appreciate the option to buy ebooks should I really love reading on my phone!

I hope everyone has a great week!

I had some big news this week.  Namely, I actually got a full-time job!  I know, it’s a little crazy to think about, and apologies to those who follow me on twitter because they know all this already.  I didn’t mention the interview because I didn’t want to jinx anything this time.  I’m starting on Monday, but because we’re relocating, I’ll be in a hotel all week while we attempt to find and rent a place for the foreseeable future.  Things will still be a little tight while we are paying for two places (we own the place we live in and we still have to put it up for sale) but not nearly as bad as they’ve been.  We might actually be able to save money in a few months.  Hard to believe, isn’t it?

What does this mean for you, the person who reads this blog?  (Thank you so much for that, by the way!)  I hope not too much in the long run.  I expect I’ll have far fewer reviews going up, since I can’t imagine I’ll keep up my reading pace in full-time employment.  This is my first full-time job so I genuinely have no idea how it’s going to go, how stressed I’ll be, etc.  But I’ll certainly be reading.  Since we’re moving, we are probably not going to have internet for a few weeks, so I don’t think I’ll be able to comment much after this week until we have it at home.  I expect I’ll still be getting blog posts up (especially since I have most of the next two weeks scheduled except for classics reviews), since my job involves the internet and I do have breaks, but I won’t have time to go through GR every day like I try to do now.

This week (and next week) I’ll be attempting to finish all of my current library books and also continue with my last two weeks of classics, so I’ll be reading:

• Virginia Woolf, by Hermione Lee
• Woman, by Natalie Angier
• Germinal, by Emile Zola (for a Classics Circuit tour in April)
• The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong
• The Uninvited, by Geling Yan
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon
• East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
• Villette, by Charlotte Bronte
• Lorna Doone, by R.D. Blackmore
• Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope

And now I see how overambitious I am – hah!  Can I still read five books a week while working full-time?  I doubt it.  I remember how stressed and tired all of my already-working friends were when they started, and I’ve had months of virtually no responsibility.  I know it will be hard to get used to.  Luckily three of these books are already in progress and I have a couple of lengthy car rides coming up.  So wish me luck!

I think it’s been weeks since I did a Sunday Salon post!  I have gotten out of the habit of blogging on weekends; usually there is a lot more going on in my life on those days than during the week.  Overall, though, I don’t have anything new to report, which is part of why I haven’t done many chatty posts lately.  I’m back in the UK after a few weeks at home.  Still no news for me on the job front, but hubby has started his new job and is working from home most of the time.  It’s weird to have him around but busy, although I have to say it’s inspired me to new diligence in my job search.  I’m not necessarily finding more jobs, but my applications are getting done a lot faster when someone else is around working.  The lack of success is getting me down, which I know is one of the reasons I’m reading more than blogging.

I have other reasons for reading a lot, too.  As usual when I go home to the US, I picked up my ARCs and review copies, many of which were owed a review a while back because I expected to be home sooner than I was.  So I frantically got through a lot of my backlog and packed an astonishing 71 books to bring back to the UK with me, without going over the weight limit!  About 50 are my own books and I’m happy to have a much wider selection.  I don’t have space for them, so a bunch of them are adorning the floor in front of the bookshelf, but I’m not going to worry about that until our flat goes on the market.  I culled quite a few before I left and donated them to my favorite charity bookstore, so I’m actually not feeling very guilty for having more unread books.

I spent this morning reading a coffee table size illustrated history of computers.  I have a bunch of non-fiction I want to get read this week before Classics Month starts up and since this had a lot of pictures, I decided to start it first.  And now I’m indulging in some urban fantasy with Magic Burns, the second in the Kate Daniels series.  And I’m leaving the rest of the week unscheduled, subject to whim, which is my favorite way to read.

If you like classics, don’t forget to tune in during March for Tasha’s and my Classics Month (her post, my post).  I’d love it if you read a few classics along with us!

That’s about all going on over here; anything exciting happening in your lives, reading or otherwise?

J.D. Salinger’s death this week has saddened me.  He was 91, and I know we’d all be fortunate to live that long, but it’s still sad to know that a powerful voice has gone out.  I’ve only ever read The Catcher in the Rye of his works, though I’d like to read more (and always have, but somehow haven’t yet).  The rest of this post may contain spoilers, so if you haven’t read it yet, skip down to the questions in bold.

I first read Catcher in my junior year of high school, when I was a pretty good example of a teenager convinced that everyone in the world is a phony.  My best friend at the time was studying abroad in Germany for the year, my first boyfriend had got together with someone else, and in general I felt sort of emotionless, trapped in this world I didn’t really want.  I hated high school.  Holden Caulfield didn’t save me, that took college, but he brought a new perspective into my life, and as a result I loved the book.  I got a copy of my own, intending to reread it.

It took four years and a children’s lit class for me to read it again, and I was worried about my reaction.  I was older and I’d been through a lot.  In fact, my entire life changed in those four years, so much so that it was virtually unrecognizable.  My brother had died in the most horrific six month period of any of our lives, I had a steady boyfriend and spent summers in England, and I lived in a different state with different friends and different needs.  I wasn’t a teenager and certainly not one that wanted to rage against the world.  And it was from that perspective I read the book, and I still loved it even when almost everyone in the class couldn’t stand Holden and his complaining.  Why?  Because his brother died too.  His brother died, and it messed with him, and I could understand him in a totally different way.  I could see how it could change his life and make him a cynic and a whiner, because I could have slid that way myself.  I could see why he wanted so badly to protect his sister – and all children – more than ever.  I would bet that no one else in that class had ever lost a sibling and they couldn’t put themselves in the book as easily as I could then.  It astonished me that the class didn’t get it. Of course, every book is different for every reader, but no one picked up on what a difference that death made.  The book didn’t change, but I did, and the entire book became much, much more than it was.

I also wanted to say here that maybe I was wrong, but honestly, I still really believe that was the drive behind Holden’s behavior, and so I can’t bring myself to.

Has a book ever changed for you as your perspectives on life changed?  Have you ever felt radically different about a book than everyone else?