What with upgrading RobAroundBooks over the past few days I’ve not really had the chance to post my daily reading journal entries, or even compile them as I would normally do. Despite being busy I have of course managed to fit reading in (hell would have to freeze over before I didn’t 
), so I thought before I start a new week and resume my daily journal entries, I should round up my reading for the week.
It’s probably a bit cumbersome presenting a five-day reading ’round up’ in chronological order, so for one time only I’m going to present the highlights in a bulleted format.
- I managed to tick off the last three stories in the Mary-Ann Constantine’s short story collection The Breathing (Planet). Two of the stories were OK i.e. The Growth of Stone (about a guy who’s a bit of a connoisseur when it comes to stone), and Crossing (which focuses on a son trying to fill the gaps in his memory, following the death of his Alzheimer’s-suffering mother), but the second to last in the collection – Noise, was incredible – intense and sublime. For a long time the short Nettles was my favourite in this collection but Noise surpasses that story easily to take the title of ‘best in collection’. I won’t reveal too much of the story, as it would only spoil it, but the story follows a nineteen-year old single mother, as she tries to juggle a job with looking after her demanding baby son. Expect my ‘afterthoughts’ on the collection to be posted in the next couple of days.
- I’ve now completed all of the stories in the first volume of the delightful Ox-Tales collection – Ox-Tales: Earth (Profile Books), so expect my ‘afterthoughts’ soon. My last journal entry left me with three stories still to read. The first, Long Ago Yesterday by Hanif Kureishi didn’t really engage me to any great degree. I found it to be a bit of a strange story, and definitely not my ‘cup of tea’. Although only a longish extract from a novel-in-progress, the second story, Telescope by Jonathon Buckley, read as an encapsulated whole and was actually really good. The last and longest in the anthology, The Death of Marat by Nicholas Shakespeare is both stunning and incredibly well engineered. It’s story which centres around Edvard Munch’s painting ‘Death of Marat‘. It includes a story thread which explores the lead up to the actual assassination of Marat, alongside a story thread with a modern-day connection. Superb!
- I trialled a new strategy when reading the city-lit guides from Oxygen Books, and I’m glad I did. Previously, with city-lit:PARIS I was dipping into one or two extracts at a time until I got through a section, which was working out fine, but I wanted to see what it was like to read through a section in a single sitting. I read the section in city-lit: PARIS which focused on Parisian cuisine (titled ‘Le Menu’), and it ended up being rather a sublime reading experience, offering both a flavoursome and colourful taste (pun intended) of the subject. Definitely the right way to take in these guides.
- Given my love for Endo’s Silence (Peter Owen) it’s probably difficult to believe I still have to finish it, but the fact is I have. It’s one thing grabbing snatches of shorts while I’m really busy, but to close off this phenomenal novel in a few snatched sessions? It just wouldn’t be doing it justice. So I left off finishing it until I could dedicate the time. So you know that my first reading task of the new week is to finish off Silence, and then I can bask in its glory.
‘Reading Journal’ provides an unedited, on-the-fly record of the bookish highlights in Rob’s reading day.
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