In the Desert, Up the Nile, In the Graveyard

The Testament of Gideon Mack has been duly passed onto the husband, who whipped through Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book in double-quick time while we were away. I have eventually managed to hold of a copy of The Sisters of Sinai (blogged about some time in early spring) and, to be quite honest, am finding it pretty dull at the moment. The first part of the book is taken up with a lengthy description of the sisters first venture up the Nile and details their tribulations with their hired 'dragoman'. I have found myself caring less and less, and if it doesn't get interesting and onto the nitty-gritty of manuscript discovery p r e t t y soon, I shall stamp my tiny foot in annoyance. The 'stipend' has seen me buy a copy of Charles Puskas Jr's The Letters of Paul: An Introduction, a pretty useful vade mecum for the basic facts on the epistles - always useful - as well as a somewhat less useful (but nontheless appealing) Penguin Classics copy of The Desert Fathers : Sayings of the Early Christian Monks compiled and translated by Benedicta Ward, who is a reader at Oxford, as well as a religious. I must admit that I was attracted as much by the cover as by the subject matter itself - a medieval illustration from the Bedford Book of Hours, depicting a 'hippocentaur' (half man, half horse, but with huge ibex-style horns on its head), a monster that does not seem to make an appearance in the book of medieval grotesques and monsters that I purchased the other week.

The desert fathers were renowned for their simple, solitary and austere lifestyles, their simple faith, lack of scholastic learning and joyful acceptance of life. One of the entries tells the story of the hermit-monk Macarius, who, on discovering a thief loading his few possessions onto a donkey, assisted the burglar to load up the rest saying to himself all the while that he brought nothing into the world, the Lord provided, and now its time to relinquish it all. Hmmm. Not sure I'd be so helpful. Still, the book is going to provide some short but interesting bedtime insights. A few lines is all I can seem to manage at the moment before my eyes shut!

And On the Third Day....

We spent a wonderful couple of days in Barcelona and had the chance to 'test-drive' a couple of guidebooks that we took with us. The winner was, without a doubt, the Dorling Kindersley 'Eyewitness Travel' guide to Barcelona and Catalonia. For a city that is rich in visual treats, it is absolutely essential that any guidebook gives a foretaste of them, and this is where the Time Out guides fail to engage, despite their comprehensive information. OK if you're wanting info about Wolverhampton or Karlsruhr: just not up to the job for Rome, Venice or Barca! The simple area-by-area format allowed us to plan our routes using simplified maps and gave us an idea of the treasures on route. A concise guide to the travel arrangements, culture, food and nightlife - plus recommendations on where to eat and where to avoid - enhanced the whole trip, as did the more comprehensive street plans and index in the back. We actually didn't buy this, but borrowed it from our local library as we have found that constantly updated information means buying a new guidebook for each year/visit.

My reading book was, as mentioned in a previous post, James Robertson's The Testament of Gideon Mack. Superbly written, the prose just flowed off the page and into my head. Poor Gideon, the lonely son of distant and inscrutable parents, destined to follow in their unhappy footsteps until a devastating accident leads to an encounter that irredeemably alters his life. Or does it? The reader is never quite sure whether the book charts a real event or merely Gideon's descent into madness, and this is its utter brilliance: we feel the madness from the inside, what it must be like to think things have happened, only to have other people look at you with disbelieving horror. For what it's worth, I believe that Gideon Mack did spend three days underground with the devil: the evidence of his healed broken leg is incontravertible. Actually, I've just had a thought that the book could be some sort of biblical allegory....I mean, three days underground? Meeting the devil? Come on...! I'm going to have to go and re-read it immediately!

Travel.....and More Books...

Half term looms (again) and the prospect of a few days in Barcelona is prompting me to find a suitable travel book for the journey. And the broken nights/early mornings - I'm suffering from ruptured sleep patterns again and whilst this can be a blessing sometimes (two extra hours of academic reading before the household stirs) it can be a bit of a pain away from home, when you're already pretty stressed-out and exhausted by travelling and unfamiliar surroundings. So, as usual, I'm looking for something not-too difficult, absorbing and well-written. Amidst all the 'serious' stuff that I'm reading at the moment, I picked up a discounted copy of The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson (£1.99), not a writer I've ever come across before. Reviews seem rather encouraging, mainly highlighting the pleasing style and unusual nature of the first-person narrative (not that first-person is unusual, the narrative is...) so that might be the one for the journey. Something for the Husband needs to be bought, and having exhausted the Neil Gaiman corpus, I'm going to have to trawl around Borders or the like, as he most certainly will not have the time to source one himself. The usual online book suppliers are certainly benefitting from my AHRC funding money: only this week I have ordered The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction and A.P.Hartley's What a Word!. This last is a 1930 first edition and I was surprised at the ridiculously cheap price (only a couple of pounds). I am deeply grateful that I can indulge - yes, that's the word - my passion for books, academic or otherwise, and am all too aware that many students are nowhere near as lucky as I have been in securing funding. But neither was I - for many years, and I think I was deeply scarred by husband #1's cold remark (when I asked if I could buy a paperback) that I 'already some had books'. Call this my therapy.