Just as I suspected, Jeremy Mercer's book Books, Bedbugs and Baguettes was a bit Meh! (how can a book successfully be both self-deprecating and self-regarding at the same time? Dunno, but it is!) but being in Paris, I read it anyway and enjoyed my pilgrimage to Shakespeare and Co. Would that it could have been a longer visit, but it was not to be, for reasons documented in one of my other blogs parablepsis.
Arriving home, I tucked into the remaining chapters of Crime and Punishment and, having finished, scratched my head as to its overall message. Did Raskolnikov really consider himself to be a man apart, above the law and punishment? Was he testing out this theory when he bludgeoned the old pawnbroker and her sister, or was he intent on digging himself out of debt and providing for his studies so that he could help mankind? Was he just deranged? Sick (he spent a lot of time in delirium)? Laden with moral qualms or totally amoral? He seemed to dance around the possibilities in turn, without settling on an answer, and his decision to hand himself in to the police (when he patently didn't feel guilty and had the opportunity to totally get away with the crime) was bizarre and in the end seemed to have less to do with the flaky transparent Sonya than his own perverse nature. He didn't actually seem sorry he committed murder. Naturally he hated Siberia, and seemed to hate the faithful girl who tagged along with him. Nasty piece of work.
I was in the Oxfam shop the other day and stumbled across the second part of Karen Armstrong's autobiography The Spiral Staircase that documents her difficulty in re-engaging with the world on leaving the convent that she had entered aged just seventeen and the various trials (suspected mental health problems) that she underwent before being finally diagnosed as an epileptic. She is one of my favourite biblical scholars (her work is a model of clarity and interesting insight) and I was vaguely aware that she had been in holy orders, but unaware of the whole story, or what she had been through. It is fascinating, and I recognise much of what she writes about (especially the ordeal of producing a doctoral thesis - the descrition of its failure at viva stage is gut-churning to read) and I have ordered online her Through the Narrow Gate to pad out her past as a nun. I picked up The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley, also from the Oxfam theological book shelf. I've been looking for a copy of this out-of-print book for ages, having heard it nominated as the 'best travel book of all time' and appearing to have a bit in common with Sisters of Sinai, which I read with interest last year. Happily it's just the sort of weather (wet, cold and windy) to snuggle up with a book. Since the Husband and Bright-Eyed Boy are out tonight, I shall do just that!
I was in the Oxfam shop the other day and stumbled across the second part of Karen Armstrong's autobiography The Spiral Staircase that documents her difficulty in re-engaging with the world on leaving the convent that she had entered aged just seventeen and the various trials (suspected mental health problems) that she underwent before being finally diagnosed as an epileptic. She is one of my favourite biblical scholars (her work is a model of clarity and interesting insight) and I was vaguely aware that she had been in holy orders, but unaware of the whole story, or what she had been through. It is fascinating, and I recognise much of what she writes about (especially the ordeal of producing a doctoral thesis - the descrition of its failure at viva stage is gut-churning to read) and I have ordered online her Through the Narrow Gate to pad out her past as a nun. I picked up The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley, also from the Oxfam theological book shelf. I've been looking for a copy of this out-of-print book for ages, having heard it nominated as the 'best travel book of all time' and appearing to have a bit in common with Sisters of Sinai, which I read with interest last year. Happily it's just the sort of weather (wet, cold and windy) to snuggle up with a book. Since the Husband and Bright-Eyed Boy are out tonight, I shall do just that!
