Things I have read recently.

I read an awful lot. I should read more - this is true for everyone, after all - and I try to read a wide range. I study literature full time (I am taking this degree) and it would be so easy just to stick to the Victorians. But that would be naughty, so I do try to read around a bit.

Over Christmas I read Graham Swift's Out of this World, which I thought was just wonderful. I, like every right thinking individual, love Waterland, so I was excited to see this one for sale for only one pound at Housmans bookshop! (A review of this store will follow in due course.) Out of this World grapples with the same themes as his most famous title, such as family traumas and the difficulties of representing histories, and I thought it was excellent. He's so insightful and painfully accurate.

I followed that with another family saga. The Corrections, by Jonathon Franzen, was recommended to me by a friend. It has the line 'Mum loved Christmas the way other people love sex', the sort of pithy observation that litters the novel. It was pretty good. Certainly he's a wonderful writer: the plot was sewn together beautifully, and I was genuinely affected by some parts of the narrative. The final part of the story, which deals with Parkinson’s sufferer Albert’s rapid decline in health, and subsequent death, was excellently written. But I think the work as a whole was probably lost on me. The tone suggested some sort of crisis in contemporary American culture, and, not knowing a huge amount about America, I think some of Franzen’s observations went over my head. The power of the pharmaceuticals companies, for example, informs the backdrop to the main story, as concerned son Gary attempts to strike a deal with a nasty corporation who have screwed his dad over. It’s also a staggeringly long novel, at over 700 pages. Definitely one to look at again.

For my course, I’ve read a huge amount as usual. Lots of theory (Foucault and Freud, mostly) which I tend to dislike. Also some obscure Victorian fiction, which, though it does nothing at all on the page, is actually fascinating. We studied it alongside Darwin’s Origin of Species, and came to some interesting conclusions! Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is short but perfectly formed. A seriously amazing story. I saw a reader full of her stories for sale at the Calder Bookshop the other day, for three pounds – I wasn’t quite sure, so decided not to. I may treat myself tomorrow morning, perhaps, as I wander past on my way to the library.

Coming up over the next few weeks: George Gissing’s The Other Women, Collins’ The Woman in White, and Dracula. Looking forward!