Should Be Reading – Miz B – hosts this weekly event. Pick a couple of sentences from the book you’re currently reading (without spoilers, of course) to entice you to read the book.
I’m still reading Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky. This week’s teaser sentences are from page 169 (which is exactly where I am in the book). It’s over two sentences but I wanted to quote the whole passage:
I desperately want the insanity we’re living through to end. I desperately want what has begun to finish. In a word, I desperately want this tragedy to be over and for us to try to survive it, that’s all. What’s important is to live: Primum vivere. One day at a time. To survive, to wait, to hope.
I saw this on Jo’s blog and wondered who I would be. She’s Alice In Wonderland and I can’t believe who it came up with for me! Apart from being protective of my family I don’t think I’m anything like Lady Bracknell.
A while ago I saw this on several blogs and I agree with this one – I am a Dedicated Reader!
What Kind of Reader Are You?
Your Result: Dedicated Reader
You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead – they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.
They enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation – qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.
Well, I don’t live in the present moment and I do like to plan ahead. The rest is OK – I hope I’m friendly and I don’t like conflict at all – that was hard when I was a Rights of Way Officer because that job was all about conflict and confrontation and I did it for years!
Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about book stores…
How do you choose what to buy from your local bookstore? Do you have a list, or just browse? What is the selection in your book store like? Do you find what you’re looking for? Do you feel pressured to buy the kind of books the store makes prominent?
There is only one independent bookshop near me, about 8 miles away. Waterstones and W H Smiths are nearer and I visit these more, mainly because they’re where I usually shop. The trouble with bookshops like Waterstones is that they’re usually the same wherever you go, with the same books on display. Waterstones has a branch very close to where I used to work and I used to go there most lunchtimes when I wasn’t in the library. Sometimes I went looking for a specific book and other times I just browsed.
Further afield in Oxford, I like to visit Borders and most of all Blackwells, my favourite bookshop of all. It’s book heaven.
I’m trying to resist buying any more books until I’ve made some inroads into my to-be-read piles and so I don’t often go in bookshops these days as it’s almost impossible to come out without a book once I’ve gone in. It’s not that I feel pressured by the displays but because there’s usually one or more books I want to buy whether they’re on display or not.
My son found this blog Great Bookshops, which is great if you live in Scotland (he does, I don’t) because most are in Scotland but some are south of the border. To quote them this blog is:
dedicated to the best independent book shops. Not those that are part of a large national chain, but those that are much more the one of a kind, kind; shops that offer readers enthusiastic and knowledgeable advice, ones that are run by people who are passionate about books, not product.
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Samuel Johnson 1709-84
This week I’ve been reading where my inclination took me. I’ve been tempted to re-read old favourites through thinking and writing about the books I read five years ago, particularly the Iris Murdoch books and then looking at books on my bookshelves set me off again.
But in the end I concentrated on my current reading and finished The Hidden by Tobias Hill. I need to think about it more before writing about it. I also read a bit more of both Suite Francaise and The Various Flavours of Coffee, and also started Tartan Tragedy by Antonia Fraser, although I’ve not read much of it yet. This is set on a remote island in the Scottish Highlands. There is a forbidding stone house, a family feud, Scottish nationalism and a couple of suspicious deaths. Jemima Shore, on holiday is drawn into the mystery.
From Scotland I moved to France, reading the opening pages of Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier in preparation for the discussion on 14th February over at Cornflower’s book group. I haven’t managed to get the same edition as Cornflower’s as I’ve borrowed the book from the library. There were several copies held in the County Reserve stock (kept in the basement of the building next door to the library), one in French. My copy is a Penguin Twentieth Century Classic, published in 1966 with no introduction. From the back cover:
A classic of immaturity and adolescence … told with lucidity, grace and even magic.
The only novel by a brilliant young man who was killed in action in 1914 at the age of twenty-seven, it is a masterly exploration of the twilight world between boyhood and manhood, with its mixture of idealism, realism and sheer caprice.
I was wondering about “Meaulines”, not sure what it means or how to pronounce it. “Le Grand Meaulines” is what the boys called Augustin Meaulines. Fortunately there is a footnote on page 18 by the Translator (Frank Davison), explaining that he has not translated the title because no English adjective conveys all the shades of meaning of “grand” which takes on overtones as the story progresses. It could mean the tall, the big, the protective, the almost grown up – even the great Meaulines, or “good old Meaulines” and it is pronounced like the English word “moan”.
Here’s a coincidence: the front cover of this book shows a detail from Small Meadows in Springby Alfred Sisley, who I had never heard of until last Thursday at the first of a five week WEA course on the Impressionists. Sisley was influenced by the Barbizon School of painters. He moved to Moret-sur-Loing next to the Forest of Fontainebleau in 1880 and painted Small Meadows in 1881. It’s now in the Tate. Sisley, a French landscape painter born in Paris of English parents was one of the founders of the Impressionist School of painting. A definite French trend seems to be going on here – first Suite Francaise, then Le Grand Meaulnes and now the Impressionists. This could be a distraction from my current reading as I want to know more about the Impressionists now.
I’m wondering where my inclination will take me next week – my intention is to read more of Suite Francaise and Le Grand Meaulines and to finish Tartan Tragedy, but maybe I’ll be tempted into starting something completely new, looking at the lives and works of the Impressionists, or I’ll be drawn back into reading an old favourite.
Should Be Reading – Miz B – hosts this weekly event. Pick a couple of sentences from the book you’re currently reading (without spoilers, of course) to entice you to read the book.
The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead – they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.
Musing Mondays is hosted by Rebecca from 
and I used to go there most lunchtimes when I wasn’t in the library. Sometimes I went looking for a specific book and other times I just browsed.
BooksPlease 