Sur le Continent

Looking forward to our trip to Paris via the Eurostar: just got fingers crossed that the industrial action against the proposed retirement age doesn't obstruct us too much!
To that end I have bought Jeremy Mercer's Books, Bedbugs and Baguettes set in Paris's legendary Shakespeare & Co. book shop. If I'm honest, I'm not expecting too much from it, just a warm, fuzzy, French sort of ambiance. I don't think it'll last me so I'm taking the Husband's copy of Neither Here nor There: travels in Europeby Bill Bryson, which had me crying with laughter (a rare occurrence) when I read a snippet on parking in Rome. The Husband is just moving on to BB's A Walk in the Wood which is good holiday fare. Daughter #3 has finished The Bell Jar so I got a copy of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle which provides a good contrast with Plath's angsty novel, a real feel-good book. the Bright-Eyed Boy still really hasn't found his comfort-level bookwise. Having tried Darren Shan's Demonata series, he still seems to prefer fact-based books and has made a diversion into Jeremy Clarkson and, most recently, Charlie Booker's Screen Burn. I guess he'll come round to literature-proper in the end - the important thing is to keep on reading.

I've gone a bit crazy on Amazon recently, purchasing a lot of commentaries and scholarly stuff for my studies. Most don't really rate a mention, but one that does - on account of its sheer loveliness is the third edition of Michael Holmes' Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. It's been produced in the style of a Bible, with leather-cloth cover and onion-skin paper and is a quite delightful thing to possess. As luck would have it, it arrived just as I needed to look up Clement of Rome's familiarity with the Corinthian correspondence, so out of the packet and onto the desk.
I'm currently making my way slowly through Crime and Punishment and, although I occasionally skim over a page or so, I'm actually rather enjoying it - if that's the word. It's quite uncompromisingly brutal in places and reveals well the psychological agonies of a sick mind. But what I could really do with is a glossary of characters and names - you lose track eventually as the cast increases in number, and even share patronymics!

The Horror of Reading

I can hardly believe it, but the Bright-Eyed Boy is actually starting to show an interest in fiction! And all thanks to Anthony Horowitz. The B-E-B showed a great enthusiasm for reading from an early age, having mastered the alphabet in the Noddy book at the age of three. Not having a great deal of faith in the 'see-and-speak' method of learning to read that was being championed by the nursery class that he was (very reluctantly) attending at that point, I taught him to break words down into sounds to work out what the word said. 'Cuh - A - Tuh' = CAT. I have been vindicated in this as a couple of years ago the school returned to this tried and tested method. Seems obvious to me - how can you read if you can't work out what the words say? Anyway he never had any problem reading as he had the tools to work stuff out himself, but he never showed any interest in reading stories. He is a great consumer of facts: the Guinness Book of Records, dinosaur dictionaries, the Top Gear magazine, Horrid Histories and any number of books like Why is Snot Green or How to Avoid a Wombat's Bottom.

When we undertake a long car journey I like to take an audio-book with us to lessen the tedium: last year it was a collection of Anthony Horowitz horror stories and this year it was The Devil and His Boy, a historically based novel by the same author. We all enjoyed it so much that we had to put the remaining chapter on even after we'd returned home, just to see what happened.

Anyway, I found a paperback copy of Anthony Horowitz Horror 2 in the library and, after I'd read one of the short stories out loud to him (The Man with the Yellow Face - very creepy and set in York!), the B-E-B took it upon himself to read the remaining ones to himself. Having finished it very rapidly we went along to the library and asked the very helpful assistant who wrote in a similar style to Mr Horowitz. She returned a couple of suggestions and a few minutes later we triumphantly emerged carrying a copy of one of Darren Shan's 'Demonata' series. He gobbled it up and as a result, I have just found myself buying no.2 in the series - The Demon Thief. I've promised him that when he's finished that, I'll get no.3...and so on. They seem very grisly and macabre, but I am assured by daughter #3 (all of two years his senior) that 'all boys like that sort of thing'. I admit that I was slightly worried that he'd start having nightmares, being a gentle sort of fellow, but thus far, he seems able to separate fact from fiction. Long may his enthusiasm continue.