Reading Horizons, 10 April 2019

What are you currently reading?

I have three books on the go at the moment.

Zola and the Victorians by Eileen Horne

In 1888, the works of Emile Zola were denounced in the House of Commons in London as “vile” and “diabolical”. Zola’s novels were – according to Samuel Smith of the National  Smith – sold to “young girls in low bookshops”, leading directly to prostitution.  Zola’s British publisher, Henry Vizetelly, was subsequently prosecuted and imprisoned, his health suffered and he was ruined financially.

Horne’s book reconstructs the events using  court records, Hansard transcripts, letters, journalism. It’s a fascinating topic but I so wish Horne had done a better job of creating dialogue between the various members of the Vitzelly family.

One Woman Walks Wales by Ursula Martin

This is an extraordinary account of Ursula Martin’s decision to walk through Wales to raise awareness of ovarian cancer.

She initially set out to do a route that she could cover the six months between hospital appointments for check ups after her own treatment four years earlier. But she miscalculated and ended up walking around 3,700 miles. It took her 538 days on her own most of the time. Camping in the wild most nights (without a tent). Without equipment to make a hot meal.

I’ve reached only day two of her journey and already I’m thinking she must be crazy. But also far braver and more determined than me.  I know she made it because this year she was trekking through Romania. In the snow.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

This is my book club selection for April. I wasn’t jumping for joy when I heard this had been selected. Not that I knew anything about the book, it was just the title that was off-putting.

But I’m pleasantly surprised by this tale of a couple whose life together is severed when he is accused and imprisoned for a crime they both know he did not commit.

This was an Oprah Book Club title in 2018 and apparently one of Barack Obama’s best books of 2018.

I enjoyed Alys Conran’s debut novel Pigeon (see my review here) which won the Wales Book of the Year award in 2017. Her latest novel Dignity which was published at the beginning of April, is I think just as good.

It’s a tale of three women: Evelyn, an engineer’s wife in British India; Magda, an old lady stuck in an empty house; and Susheela, a young English carer of Bengali descent in a British seaside town on the verge of collapse. Review coming soon……

What do you think you’ll read next?

 I had this idea last week where I would identify the categories of books I like to/want to read, and then make my next reading choice based on a cycle of those categories.  So I’d read a classic, say, then a book in translation, followed by a Welsh author, a prize winner, crime fiction or a ‘new this year’ book.  I didn’t include non fiction since I tend to read those simultaneously with a work of fiction.

This sounded a good idea at the time but then the doubts began to creep in. Does it feel too rigid, not spontaneous enough. What if I’m not in the mood for that particular category?

And then I challenged myself: who says you have to stick 100% to that cycle? It’s your plan so you get to make up the rules.

Rule number 1: if I don’t feel in the mood for a particular category at the time, I can skip to the next category in the sequence. For example if I really don’t fancy a translated book, I can skip to a Welsh author……

Rule number 2: There isn’t one. There is only one rule. No sense in making this a burden.

All of this is a long winded answer to a simple question: what am I thinking of reading next? I don’t know exactly what I’ll read next. All I can say is that since I’ve just read a book in translation (Emile Zola’s The Kill), and then a Welsh author (Alys Conran), it will either be a prize winner or – if none of those take my fancy, a crime novel….

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