More Reading At Outpatients

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well last Monday I was at outpatients with my mother. And as per usual there was the wait, and then another wait, and then another wait. And in the meantime I read. Some of these books were started before we went into the hospital and others were finished afterwards but they all bar the first had the outpatients reading vibe upon them.

Romance of Roman Villas (The Renaissance) by Elizabeth Champney then. When I started this read I said I didn't know what it was going to be. Now that I've finished it I can truly say nothing has changed. I wasn't really sure whether I was reading a historical novel, or a biography or art history. One moment the Borgias were being discussed. The next there were quotes from William Morris. My head hurt.

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell was the next read. The good thing about this was that it's definitely a novel. And..... well.....that's it.

Written to be published in a magazine between 1864 and 1866 whilst this was (though obviously decades later) in a Jane Austen manner it was nowhere near as good. As regular readers will know Jane Austen is for me in that group of writers that comes in that neutral "literary Switzerland" territory.

Elizabeth Gaskell is however (based on the books I've read) more moving into the D H Lawrence blog villain category. Possibly this is to do with the reputation of North and South (which I haven't read) as a social novel in the Dickension mould. Wives and Daughters is anything but. Inconsequential is the best word I can describe this....and the most kindest.

A Hero Of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is another book which I didn't like, Essentially a collection of tales with the overall arc surrounding them all I can say is that I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if I was Russian.

So now it's a biography of Robert Burns by John Sharp. Let's hope I like it better than this lot.

Until the next time