Reading Journal: Monday 15th March 2010

This week I’m keeping myself more off the Net than on, in order to concentrate more fully on the important soul-nurturing task of reading and writing in an undisturbed environment. That means less Twittering, less web surfing, less checking my email every 10 seconds. And although I’m sorely missing the opportunity of connecting with friends and fellow readers so readily (apologies ‘connectees’, I’m not being ignorant), my time away from the Net is beginning to pay off huge dividends. Not only am I getting through my prescribed reading a lot less effortlessly and a lot quicker, I feel more settled within myself, as though I’m keeping more to the path that I set myself on. And stepping off the whizzing roundabout that is the Internet, I’m beginning to feel already that my soul is getting a lot more of the nourishment that it needs in order to flourish. So today I’m really happy that things seem to be going in a better direction, or at least that I’m getting to the destination a lot quicker .

Of course with less time spent mindlessly surfing and more time given back to my reading, you’re probably expecting this journal entry to be something spectacular. Haha…well I wouldn’t go that far because ‘spectacular’ isn’t even in my repertoire of writing skills. But hopefully, from now on, my journal entries are going to be a little more colourful, and a lot more contemplative.

So how did my Monday’s reading go then? Well, I always open the week now with Maupassant Monday (to ensure I keep chipping away at my Devouring De Maupassant reading challenge), and after a brief sidestep last week in order to sample a particular Maupassant story (you can read more about that here), I continued my journey once more through the Oxford University Press collection of Maupassant tales – A Day in the Country and Other Stories. The two stories that I scheduled were A Railway Story and Our Chum Patience, and as I’ve already written up and posted my afterthoughts for both (A Railway Story HERE, and Our Chum Patience HERE), I won’t dwell on either story, other than to say that one of them turned out to be not that enjoyable at all. Shock! Horror! A Maupassant tale that Rob didn’t like? Yep it had to happen one day I suppose .

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Determined to finally work my through Christopher Golden’s Zombie: An Anthology of the Undead (Piatkus), I took up the second story in the collection, What Maisie Knew by David Liss. All I can say is Wow! You may remember in my reading journal yesterday I proclaimed the opening story of the collection – Lazurus by John Connolly – to be something a bit special. Well, I’m happy to say that the second story in the anthology stands up as being just as good.

What Maisie Knew centres around an alternative reality where scientists have managed to preserve the dead in some pacified state of living. The reanimates, as they are called, ‘live’ to serve man. The narrator of the story is one such man and he faces a problem that comes with one of the obvious downsides of reanimating the dead i.e. bumping into someone now reanimated that was once alive. On the face of it, it doesn’t seem to be a real problem – the reanimates have no thoughts or feelings, or memories of the past – but uniquely, one reanimate in particular is showing a glimmer of recognition for the story’s main character. A real shame then that the main character has a secret to hide, and his situation isn’t helped much by the fact that a reanimate can have memories of the past flooding back to them, and these memories are projected in a very vocal way. This can happen when a reanimate is subjected to pain or sexual arousal (yep some sickos use the reanimates to satisfy certain needs and desires), and this reanimate in particular has a very sexually-orientated job.

OK enough about the plot for this story because I don’t want to spoil anything. I’ll just finish by reiterating that Liss really has turned out a very readable, and enjoyable story in What Maisie Knew, and it’s one, given the number of moral issues that are explored, that comes with a fair amount of depth. Story Rating:

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Thankfully I’m now motoring along with Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart (Constable & Robinson). I’m past the half-way point and finally I’m finding myself getting dragged along by an utterly compelling storyline. I’ll admit that it has taken me a while to hook into this one (the culprits have been Mukherjee’s overly poetic prose and an ever shifting storyline), but now I’m on the right wavelength the reading of this novel has become more of a joy than a chore. I just hope that keeps up until the end.

::Tuesday’s reading plans::

• It’s Chekhov Tuesday so two stories lined up – Love and Easter Eve.
• I keep my closet zombie fires burning with the third story from Golden’s Zombie anthology. This one is by Stephen R. Bissette, and it’s simply called Copper.
• It’s Neel Mukherjee all the way, and hopefully (and somewhat regrettably) I’ll get closer to closing the door on A Life Apart.

‘Reading Journal’ provides an unedited, on-the-fly record of the bookish highlights in Rob’s reading day.