Reading Journal: Monday 5th October 2009
October 5, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Reading Journal
Hi All. OK let’s have a quick catch up on my reading over the past few days (daughter’s birthday so not a ton of reading done). First off I finished Jayne Joso’s most awesome Soothing Music for Stray Cats (Alcemi). When I spoke about it last I only had 30 pages to go, and I’m happy to say that the last 30, just like the rest of the novel, didn’t disappoint. If anything the ending was very much the icing on a rather delicious cake. I’ll submit my final afterthoughts just as soon as I can, but I can tell you even before posting these, that this is a novel that MUST be bought and consumed (I think you knew that already though didn’t you? 
).
My 31 Shots of Shock challenge marches on and although I’ve STILL to post up my reading schedule for this challenge (shame on me), I’m working my one-per-day way through the nine stories found in Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters (Canongate Books). As it stands (October 5th – 5 stories read) I think I made a bit of a mistake choosing Pretty Monsters for a horror-themed reading challenge. That said two of the stories so far had an element of horror to them (The Wrong Grave and The Specialist’s Hat), and the other three have certainly been entertaining. So it’s no big deal. As I’ve posted afterthoughts for all 5, I’ll point you to these instead of repeating myself:
- The Wrong Grave. (Rating: 3 out of 5)
- The Wizards of ‘Perfil. (Rating: 3 out of 5)
- Magic for Beginners. (Rating: 3 out of 5)
- The Faery Handbag. (Rating: 3.5 out of 5)
- The Specialist’s Hat. (Rating: 3 out of 5)
Back to today and in an effort to make serious inroads with my Totally Knut reading project, my reading this evening has been mainly focused on Ingar Sletten Kolleon’s Knut Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissenter (Yale University Press). I’m approaching half-way with the biography now and it still remains as compelling as ever. Kolleon is a writer of complete thoroughness and detail and it really is all to the benefit of this biography. I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading such a detailed biography before, especially on a figure who was born in the nineteenth-century.
My priority right now of course is to finish this biography so that I can move on to Hamsun’s novels. So I’m not sure yet if I’m going to pick up the next non-Hamsun novel in my reading pile. I’ll let you know tomorrow.
‘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)
