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A friend mentioned naps and I went into ecstacies remembering last evening.
I was feeling very tired and sleepy, so I left work early (~5.30) and trundled home, hoping for a pleasant evening in the hammock with a book.
Well, that was not to be. I was in my hammock for all of five minutes before I fled from the Mosquitos Banditos. Six bites the little buggers got in on me before I shifted.
I abandoned my book, got another one, and headed upstairs in hopes of using their screened porch. It was quiet, shady, and unoccupied, so I staked out the arcmchair, extended the footrest, and proceeded to nap, chat with nearby housemates, and read for the next hour or two. With the big ceiling fan, it is ever so comfortable. All the pelasure of being outdoors on a fine summer evening with none of the bitey things and with a permanent cool breeze. Lovely!
The book I abandoned was one of Sharon Kay Penman's medieval mystery novels. Maybe I haven't read any of her historical novels in a while and my memory of her is more favourable than it should be, or maybe her writing has gotten worse, but this was excerable. I stopped after getting about halfway through; I found it simply too awful to go on. I keep meaning to join the "fifty books" theme (I'm sure I read at laast 50 books a year, and it might be fun to write reviews), but this will not be one of the ones I list. It's clumsy, heavy-handed, appallingly overwritten and pretentiously wordy. No noun escapes without a torrent of adjectives, no verb without an outpouring of adverbs, and no thought or action takes place simply but must be embroidered, emphasized, and elaborated upon. All the characters are ready-made, stamped from the thinnest cardboard available to Central Casting and painted with a stroke or two of brilliant, florid colour before the author moves on to the next. The attitudes are pure 20th century; no reader will be taxed by trying to imagine the social strictures, mores, of attitudes of an earlier and unfamiliar age--if you've seen any Hollywood movie set in "the Middle Ages", you'll be right at home with this story.
So instead I started reading Alan Furst's "The Polish Officer"; this is the second of Furst's novels that I have read (the first being "Kingdom of Shadows"). I enjoy his books tremendously; the characters he creates are more than credible, they seeem like familiar people almost as soon as you meet them. His stories draw you in, his descriptions of places and events unfold as if they were happening before your eyes, with the added richness of the emotions and thoughts of the characters which he communicates subtly but clearly without belabouring his reader.
Furst writes the way I would like to think I could. Penman's novel is what I'm afraid I might produce.
And here it is, midafternoon, and I'm sleepy again. Sheesh!
I was feeling very tired and sleepy, so I left work early (~5.30) and trundled home, hoping for a pleasant evening in the hammock with a book.
Well, that was not to be. I was in my hammock for all of five minutes before I fled from the Mosquitos Banditos. Six bites the little buggers got in on me before I shifted.
I abandoned my book, got another one, and headed upstairs in hopes of using their screened porch. It was quiet, shady, and unoccupied, so I staked out the arcmchair, extended the footrest, and proceeded to nap, chat with nearby housemates, and read for the next hour or two. With the big ceiling fan, it is ever so comfortable. All the pelasure of being outdoors on a fine summer evening with none of the bitey things and with a permanent cool breeze. Lovely!
The book I abandoned was one of Sharon Kay Penman's medieval mystery novels. Maybe I haven't read any of her historical novels in a while and my memory of her is more favourable than it should be, or maybe her writing has gotten worse, but this was excerable. I stopped after getting about halfway through; I found it simply too awful to go on. I keep meaning to join the "fifty books" theme (I'm sure I read at laast 50 books a year, and it might be fun to write reviews), but this will not be one of the ones I list. It's clumsy, heavy-handed, appallingly overwritten and pretentiously wordy. No noun escapes without a torrent of adjectives, no verb without an outpouring of adverbs, and no thought or action takes place simply but must be embroidered, emphasized, and elaborated upon. All the characters are ready-made, stamped from the thinnest cardboard available to Central Casting and painted with a stroke or two of brilliant, florid colour before the author moves on to the next. The attitudes are pure 20th century; no reader will be taxed by trying to imagine the social strictures, mores, of attitudes of an earlier and unfamiliar age--if you've seen any Hollywood movie set in "the Middle Ages", you'll be right at home with this story.
So instead I started reading Alan Furst's "The Polish Officer"; this is the second of Furst's novels that I have read (the first being "Kingdom of Shadows"). I enjoy his books tremendously; the characters he creates are more than credible, they seeem like familiar people almost as soon as you meet them. His stories draw you in, his descriptions of places and events unfold as if they were happening before your eyes, with the added richness of the emotions and thoughts of the characters which he communicates subtly but clearly without belabouring his reader.
Furst writes the way I would like to think I could. Penman's novel is what I'm afraid I might produce.
And here it is, midafternoon, and I'm sleepy again. Sheesh!
