Reading Journal: Sun 5th July 2009
July 5, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Reading Journal
08:00 – Managed to tick off two stories from Ox-Tales: Earth (Profile Books) this morning. Not because I was in a voracious reading mood, but rather because one of the two stories was really short. The first was Lucky We Live Now by Kate Atkinson. Set in Edinburgh (hooray!) one thing that can certainly be said about this short is it completely fills the brief of relating to the theme of ‘earth.’ Other than that it’s a bit of a bizarre and strange story, but full marks to Atkinson for her inventiveness. The second story, a piece of flash fiction from Ian Rankin called Fieldwork, includes his most famous character Rebus. The story only covers a page at most. It has a start, a middle and an ending, and that’s about it really. I’m not particularly a fan of Rankin. Does it show?
21:00 – My journey through Shusaku Endo’s Silence (Peter Owen) continues, as it will later on this evening, and I think I can say with full conviction that I’ve fallen completely in love with Shusaku Endo as a writer. He moves me in ways that so few have managed to do, and when I come to finally putting down my review for Silence I don’t think I’m going to find words powerful enough to convey my innermost feelings. Already I know I will have to read Endo’s entire bibliography, and already I know he will form a big part of my literary life. That sound like a good recommendation for reading Silence? I should say so!
‘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)
The Rankin story is online here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/06/ian-rankin-extract-ox-tales. Kamila Shamsie’s Ox-tales story is here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/oxtales-the-desert-torso-1727614.html
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Thanks for that Myrthe. There seems to be quite a lot of these stories reprinted online, which is no bad thing
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