This isn't going so well. If I want to finish all 1123 books before I die, I have to average no more than five days per book. So far, book number one has taken me 10 days. And I'm not even half-way through.
If I take 10 days per book, that means I won't finish for at least 35 years. I'm not sure I have that long left to live.
Worse, this first book, Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, is great. I'm loving it. It's dense, difficult reading with small print, tiny margins and more than four hundred pages. Very little dialogue and a lot of long descriptions.
But fantastic reading. You have to accept that Radcliffe's goal is to wring every ounce of tension from every situation but, once you have, it's just great.
And it's interesting to read something that is written about the 18th Century. I don't think the descriptions of Italy, its geography or the Catholic Church are very accurate but I'm not sure that matters either. It's a vivid, exciting novel.
I think, however, that I'll have to find something lighter for my second book before moving on to the second Radcliffe novel in our collection. Maybe a book about Gene Roddenberry?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Tell me what you think: about this blog, about the books I'm reading; about the books you're reading. Goodness knows, I need more things to read!