IWhat I’m Reading is in support of WWW Wednesday hosted by Sam at Taking On a World of Words. it’s actually a weekly meme but I choose to do it just once a month. Um except I haven’t been — doing it monthly I mean. I knew I hadn’t written a What I’m Reading post for a while but was astounded to find that it’s nine months since I last wrote one. Oh dear. I guess that means I get to stand in the naughty girl’s corner again…. I promise to do better in the future.
What I just finished reading
Apparently there’s been a lot of noise about Glorious Exploits, the debut novel by irish author Ferdia Lennon. It’s been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and is a nominee for the British Book Awards (also known as The Nibbles). The first time I heard of it however was when it was chosen for our April book club read.
The first 100 pages failed to hold my attention; in fact I found it rather dull and was thinking of marking is as DNF. On the morning of our club meeting I decided to read just a few more pages and suddenly found I was enjoying this tale set in Syracuse, Sicily, during the Peloponnesian War. It’s a highly unusual novel about a plan by two unemployed young men to stage a performance of Medea by Euripedes, using Athenian prisoners as the cast.
What I’m reading now
I’m close to the end of the latest book in the Chief Inspector Gamache crime fiction series by Louise Penny. The Grey Wolf is book nineteen and the eleventh I’ve read in a series I discovered while killing time during a boring work trip to USA. A number of Goodreads reviewers have commented that they found this latest episode disappointing because most of the action doesn’t take place in the small community of Three Pines. That was a plus for me because it meant I didn’t have to endure the foul-mouthed duck that Penny loves to feature presumably because she thins its quirkily charming but I find deeply annoying. This novel actually ranges far and wide geographically— from the Vatican to a monastery in Rome and a tiny settlement on a Quebec lake accessible only from air or sea — as Gamache and his team try to head off an environmental disaster.
What I’ll read next
I could make a start on Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennet which was the book I landed in the last Classics Club spin. According to the “rules” of the spin I should have read this by the 11th but I was too distracted by Reading Wales Month to even think about the book. Clearly I’m not going to get it read in the next two days so I can either forget about it and find something else or read it even though I’ve missed the ‘deadline.”
My other option is to read one of the books I’ve accepted for review. Secrets in the Water by Alice Fitzpatrick, is a detective novel set on a Welsh island and was inspired by the author’s visits to her family in Pembrokeshire. I’m also looking forward to The Interview by J David Simons. I thought his earlier book An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful was outstanding so I’m really looking forward to this new one which features a disgraced TV talk-show host who sees the death of the US President as a way to revive his career. The Interview is scheduled for publication in late August.
So what do you think? Which of these books would you read next if they were resting on your bookshelves??