How Thomas Hardy Beat Bryan Adams

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I've oftened felt that where I differ from a lot of people is not in my likes or dislikes but in those things I'm neutral about. I've chatted before in this blog about the problems of being literary Switzerland regarding F Scott Fitzgerald, Anton Chekov and Jane Austen. But I can expand that further, the almost religious love for Star Wars is something that's passed me by, entertaining that it is. And as for The Simpsons? Clever, funny to an extent but not something I'm bothered about recording.

Musically speaking I realised that Canadian soft/hard/easy to chew over rock person Bryan Adams comes into my Swiss roll of neutrality. People seemed to like him or hate him. For me it was but a shrug.

Yesterday however he was challenging my reading.

I was working the afternoon/evening shift at work so the morning was free. And there was to be honest nothing to do. So I decided to spend the time reading.

Our friend whose house we're living in decided however decided that the morning was going to be spent cleaning the house and that she would listen to music to entertain her as she did so specifically the work of Bryan (and for the record I did offer to help but she turned that politely down - when you have a system someone else is a distraction).

Now let me stress something before I go on. Our friend has very kindly opened the doors of her home for us whilst we're purchasing our next one. Her house her rules. It was up to me to deal with it and adapt.

So I sat down and continued reading The Mayor Of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. Would I be put off from the novel by the Adams Family of tunes he's produced? Well you can guess from the title that I couldn't stop the thing I started.

The Mayor of Casterbridge is truly masterful. Slowly but surely Hardy maps out how a man, capable of emotional cruelty but rather flawed than evil, faces the consequences of his actions. All the characters are well rounded and multifacted. There are no simple heroes and villains in this novel.

Needless to say I was swiping the page oblivious to the life's work of Bryan. He didn't stand a chance. It might have been the 1812 overture and I wouldn't have noticed.

At their best books can do that.

After I finished that the next book was Summer In The City State by Eamonn Sheehy. An account of his time in Morocco. It was finished quickly. To be honest it was just an essay than a book and it was just too short. Really needed to have been longer.

And now the book is an omnibus edition of three crime Inspector Montalbano novels from Andrea Camilleri. Already I've finished one, The Shape Of Water and now am The Terracotta Dog. I finished the day at eleven pm pretending that I was the good inspector by eating spaghetti whilst reading in Bari. Even though the spag bol was frozen and I was in Barry. Ah well.

It was a good day for reading.

Until the next time.