This week I have finished two books, one for the Around the Year in 52 books challenge, and one for book club, which I managed to fit into a prompt for the Popsugar challenge.
This weeks AtY prompt was “a children’s classic you’ve never read” – I don’t like this type of prompt, because I’ve already read most of the classics, but realised that I had never actually read ‘Wind in the Willows’, despite owning a beautiful hardback copy illustrated by Pixie O’Harris, which I bought when my kids were little. They weren’t interested in it, though I think we started it several times over the years. Anyway, I finally read it through this week, and… hmmm, I know many people adore it, but I found it interesting but not especially charming. The characters were well-described and clearly relevant to the class differences in England at that time, and there were some amusing passages, but I won’t read it again, and will probably sell my copy as I don’t think it will be attractive to grandchildren either.
The other book I read this week was fascinating. ‘The Erratics’ won the Stella Prize this year, and I had already heard about it on podcasts and read reviews, so was looking forward to reading this extraordinary memoir. It is fairly short, so I finished it in two days, and then watched an hour-long interview with the author, Vicki Laveau-Harvie, as I particularly wanted to hear how her sister reacted to the book. The story is all about the two sisters being called home to rural Canada to look after their elderly parents after their mother falls and breaks her hip, and the father is unable to care for himself. The parents have disowned the daughters many years before, so there has been no contact, and it turns out the mother has been starving the father, who starts to come good once the sisters move into the family farm and feed him up while the mother remains in hospital. Mother has a personality disorder that has made life hell for everyone around her for many years, and this is represented with many amusing but awful anecdotes. It’s an excellent book that I recommend highly, and I’m looking forward to the book club discussion this week. I fitted it into the Popsugar challenge for the prompt “a book with a plant in the title or on the cover” – the cover has some trees in the bottom corner.
In other reading, I am still limping through both ‘Tracker’ by Alexis Wright, and ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. I have also begun reading ‘The Mill on the Floss’ by George Eliot, for this coming week’s AtY prompt – a book with more than 500 pages (my Penguin Classics edition has 691!).
Me, My Shelf and I 