It Might Have Been International Women's Day But Fathers And Sons Is Better Than Wives And Daughters...And Other Books

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today,

Well have been reading a few books since we last chatted. So let's start with a biography of Robert Burns by John Sharp. If this book was a meal I'd describe it as edible but nothing more. I'm sure there are better bios to use your time on instead.

You may remember a few posts back that I chatted about Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and that I didn't like it. Well in the random way I pick books to read the next book turned out to be Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (and it was random....honest!).

Whilst not perfect I enjoyed it. On the one hand you get the sons, with their youthful hopes,ideals cynicism, and disdain for their elders. Also properly discovering for the first time the mystery that are women. On the other there are the fathers. Men you feel are dissatisfied. The feeling that as their best years have passed them by they haven't yet found a certain peace within themselves.

There is more of the sons than the fathers, and as now I belong to the former I would have rather seen it the other way. Still of the books I'm chatting about today this was the best in my view.

The Angel of Terror by Edgar Wallace is one of those books that's perfectly acceptable as long as your brain is cruising in first gear. That said, Erle Stanley Gardner is better.

To be clear with regard to my criticisms of other Wallace thrillers it didn't strike me as racist and regard to sexist whilst the heroine has moments of dimness where she needs the help of men the cleverest villain is a woman. So I suppose that is some sort of equality.

Beowulf then. No one knows who wrote this epic poem but I think we can hazard a guess that it was a man, Indeed I'll go further by saying that it was not the sort of man who would wander lonely as a cloud and chat about daffodils either.

At the risk of being beheaded by the ghost of some Viking warlord what it didn't do is become one of those exceptions to my disregard of poetry. Ditto The Dalby Bear and Other Ballads by George Borrow.This time though I think this was my fault as I downloaded writers mentioned by Robert Macfarlane in his book Tracks ( W H Hudson was another) but in my eagerness to download everything I disregarded the fact that this is a ballad so probably better appreciated with music. I'll give George a pass.

Regular readers will know that there are certain writers that I describe as literary Switzerland in that whilst I don't dislike them I don't understand why they're considered great either. Anton Chekhov falls into this category and taken as a whole The Schoolmistress and Other Stories does not change anything.

There are exceptions. The title story (which is the best of the collection) and a few others make you sit up and take notice. But for the most part I just shrugged and moved on to the next tale.

In another tick off the literary bucket list the book I'm reading now is The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Can't say I'm happy with the portrayal of the villain but I'll chat about that when I've finished.

Until the next time.

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