Reading Journal: Sat 4th July 2009
July 4, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Reading Journal
07:30 – Started the day off with another short from Ox-Tales: Earth (Profile Books), and this story, Boys in Cars by Marti Leimbach, is another absolute cracker. The story is based on a single mother’s relationship with her autistic child, and it’s a story which turns out to be both tender and endearing. Sob..sob..and who said Rob didn’t have a heart somewhere in his cold, unflinching chest?
08:30 – Know what I’ve just realised? I’ve not read any Chekhov for a while. Ekkk….time to put that straight with the short – Mari d’Elle (available online HERE). The plot of this story is centred around a ‘kept man’ bemoaning his lot to his celebrity opera singing wife. It turned out to be an OK story, but pretty much standard fare for Chekhov. I like to holler BRILLIANT when I’m done with one of Chekhov’s stories, but with this one I just sniffed and mumbled, ‘Yeah that was OK!’ Certainly a story that’s been well constructed, but I know Chekhov can do a lot better than this.
22:00 – Saturday’s never good for reading during the day. Nevertheless, I have managed to continue my journey through Endo’s Silence (Peter Owen), and I’m still loving it as much as I was yesterday; perhaps even more. I’m discovering that Shusaku Endo is a magnificent writer. Not only is he conservative with his words, the words he does use are so utterly appropriate to a scene, or a character, or an emotion, that reading him makes my heart pound (and I’m not exaggerating). I’ve not long finished reading one chapter of Silence, and it’s a chapter which describes the martyrdom of two ‘friends’ of the principle character, Father Rodrigues. This chapter has to be one of the most beautiful yet sorrowful things I’ve ever read. What a journey so far, and as cliched as it sounds, I don’t want it to come to an end.
‘Reading Journal’ provides an unedited, on-the-fly record of the bookish highlights in Rob’s reading day.
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Rob, a self-confessed bibliophile, is without any hope of rehabilitation. He gets unnaturally excited over anything book-shaped, and if book sniffing were a crime then he would have been locked up years ago (which wouldn't bother him in the slightest provided his cell were lined with books)
