A long long way
Yes, it surely was. But it would be worth it.
The occasional what have you read lately? opener would be met with an un-returnable passing shot. Knowing that a brief pre-adolescent fling with a Classics Illustrated comic would no longer sum up the experience.
Last year, I determined to read, for the first time, some Charles Dickens.
Unfathomably, I chose the longest, most concrete building block-like kilo-pager, Bleak House. I started it in almost ideal conditions, a short spring break in Barcelona - sadly, a mite too short to finish it, and it got abandoned when real life kicked in again. When it came time to pick it up once more in an effort to finish it before the year was out, I realised that the 400 pages I had already read six months before had completely vanished from memory. I read them again. So I did finish it, and it was good - box ticked.
Reading Bleak House sort of overwhelmed the rest of the year, not necessarily in literary quality, but certainly in shear bulk. There were other memorable moments, book-wise, but not many.
Luckily, just coming in under the wire was A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. It is the story of a young Dubliner caught up with fighting with the British Army in WWI, at the same time dealing the Easter Uprising back home. Colm Toibin:
Best book I read in 2006, by a long, long way.
The occasional what have you read lately? opener would be met with an un-returnable passing shot. Knowing that a brief pre-adolescent fling with a Classics Illustrated comic would no longer sum up the experience.
Last year, I determined to read, for the first time, some Charles Dickens.
Unfathomably, I chose the longest, most concrete building block-like kilo-pager, Bleak House. I started it in almost ideal conditions, a short spring break in Barcelona - sadly, a mite too short to finish it, and it got abandoned when real life kicked in again. When it came time to pick it up once more in an effort to finish it before the year was out, I realised that the 400 pages I had already read six months before had completely vanished from memory. I read them again. So I did finish it, and it was good - box ticked.
Reading Bleak House sort of overwhelmed the rest of the year, not necessarily in literary quality, but certainly in shear bulk. There were other memorable moments, book-wise, but not many.
Luckily, just coming in under the wire was A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. It is the story of a young Dubliner caught up with fighting with the British Army in WWI, at the same time dealing the Easter Uprising back home. Colm Toibin:
This is Sebastian Barry's song of innocence and experience composed with poetic grace and eye, both unflinching and tender, for savage detail and moments of pure beauty. It is also an astonishing display of Barry's gift for creating a memorable character, whom he has written, indelibly, back into a history which continues to haunt us.Magnificently descriptive and brutal about war, it is also a brilliant evocation of an innocent trying to come to terms with the complicated politics of the Irish question. The book is powerfully sad - I kept hearing the anti-war songs of Eric Bogle whilst reading it.
Best book I read in 2006, by a long, long way.
Labels: books
posted by peter @ 7:12 pm
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