It’s just a quick reading journal entry this evening because I’m keen to get back to Vann’s Legend of a Suicide (Penguin Books). I’ve made some progress on it today, but not as much as I would have liked (terrible weather took away any chance of grabbing any valuable ‘walk reading’ time) . Legend is still grasping me like a vice and at this point I have no idea where the story is taking me too. Regardless, it’s a hell of a ride. Hopefully I’ll have the whole thing finished by tomorrow evening’s journal entry.
::Chilling eloquence from Alfred Noyes::
This morning started with my 31 Shots of Shock read – Midnight Express, a 1935 chiller from Alfred Noyes. Was it really a chiller? Yeah I think it was. It was more than that though. Noyes is eloquent in his prose. Check out this extract from the opening paragraph:
His own room was a little isolated cell, in which, with stolen candle ends, he could keep the surrounding darkness at bay, while everyone else had surrendered to sleep and allowed the outer night to come flooding in. By contrast with those unconscious ones, his elders, it made him feel intensely alive in every nerve and fibre of his young brain. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall below, the beating of his own heart; the long-drawn rhythmical ‘ah’ of the sea on the distant coast, all filled him with a sense of overwhelming mystery; and, as he read, the soft thud of a blinded moth, striking the wall above the candle, would make him start and listen like a creature of the woods at the sound of a cracking twig.
Isn’t that beautiful? I thought it was. Anyway you can read my official afterthoughts on the story HERE. Now, are you going to go and read the story? Right now while it’s dark? Go on you know you want to! *evil grin*
::Reading planned for tomorrow::
Well as I said above the main priority is getting Vann’s book done and dusted. It is after all officially released on Thursday, so it’ll be nice to get my ‘afterthoughts‘ posted before then, or at least on release day. I’ve also got the next story in my 31 Shots of Short challenge to read. And it’s one from Irishman Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the ghost story demi-god of the nineteenth-century. The story is the snappily entitled An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street(1853), and I’m led to believe it’s an archetypal ghost story. Thrilling, chilling times ahead I hope.
As far as any other reading goes, I’m not sure. Amongst other things I really need to crack on with my Totally Hamsun reading project, and really want (need) to start diving into Mysteries (1892). But I’m not sure how jumping into this will affect my closing out of Legends of a Suicide. I may just settle for a couple of Chekhov or Maupassant shorts instead. We’ll see.
Right I’m out of here. Island ‘adventures’ await…..
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