Force of Habit

I've been reading Simone de Beauvoir's Force of Circumstance and, to tell the truth, I'm finding this volume of her autobiography slightly dull. Starting at the end of the war, it concentrates on the period of her literary heyday, her strange relationship with Sartre and her many political and social connections. And I think this last is the main problem: I've never heard of most of them, but she takes it as given that these faceless names mean something to the reader. There's also a lack of personal reflection (at least as far as I've read) that made the previous two volumes interesting. I don't care who she knew - I want to know what she thought. As it is, it reads a bit like a meeting schedule. It may improve, but it had better do so pretty damn soon!

I've also been trying to bone up on the basics of linguistics, and to that end purchased a Hodder 'Teach Yourself' linguistics book. It is utterly fascinating -no, it's better than that. If I was going to do another degree, this is the subject that I'd study. The book is by Jean Aitchison, although I didn't realise this until just now, when I looked for the author's name (not very prominent). This is the linguist recommended to me by my doctoral supervisor as being clear and accessible - and I have to agree. It's rivetting stuff.

Before long I'm going to have to sort out a 'holiday book' again. As I'm anticipating doing a lot of wine-soaked lazing about in the sun, I want something not too heavy, amusing but well written with enough pages to keep me going throughout the whole week. If I get the selection wrong, I stamp my tiny foot, pout and sulk, so I had better start looking soon! I must also get over the temptation to take anything scholarly with me: I'm pretty good at pretending to read the heavy stuff, i.e. moving my eyes over the page at a convincing rate, but actually thinking about something entirely different (and usually banale). Usually food.

Temptation - but not a book this time!

Solved my holiday literature problem by trawling the 'net for books set in Venice, reading a few reviews and deciding, almost at random that 'The Dante Trap' by Arnaud Delalande would probably fit the bill quite nicely. Phoned the library and got them to reserve me a copy to pick up in the next few days. The library is ideal for this: there are very few novels that I really want to own, and holiday books are definitely of the most ephemeral sort.

Now that Lent is drawing to an end I am really fancying a glass of wine, a nice chilled sauvignon blanc, particularly as it is the school holidays. Nuff said! A little voice keeps telling me "Go on. Have one. You've made your point." It sounds so reasonable doesn't it? And that's the way temptation works: we don't do bizarre or out-of-character things when we give in to it - on the contrary it's just an extension of our innermost nature, our untrammelled σαρξ. But I know it's the thin end of the wedge. If I give in now, there is no point to my having started in the first place, and next year I may not bother at all. No, I shall resist. What could be better than the anticipation of a reward for a job completed and done properly?

Christmas Books Past and Present

Christmas usually brings me at least a few books. Whenever quizzed about what I would like for Christmas, my list is ever-simple: good espresso-ground coffee, wine, dark chocolate or a book. I'm easily pleased. This year I already know that I am getting the second Loeb volume of Epictetus (books III & IV, plus the Enchiridion). Hurray! I love the Loeb series: the handy-size, the small, neat font, the air of studiousness that they give out. I strive to collect them and have serendipitously bought a number from charity shops which tend to price them cheaply (best buy: 2volumes of Aristotle's Historia Animalium; £7 for both. I use small chunks to teach Greek to The Boy). With Christmas books I generally have to make specific requests and direct the purchaser to the most appropriate outlet. I remember one year asking for 'Spartan Women' by Sarah(?) Pomeroy and saying that it could be bought from the classics department at a certain bookshop (I'd actually seen it on the shelves). However I got a story back that it wasn't in stock, they'd never heard of it so they couldn't order it. All patently untrue. I sulkily took myself in, the week after Christmas, picked off the very shelf where I'd last seen it and bought it for myself. Not sure what happened there.

I often ask for easy reading at this time of year: Stephen Fry's 'The Ode Less Travelled', 'Pistache' by Sebastien Faulks, Alan Bennett, that sort of thing. Last year though, my Christmas reading was the New International Greek Testament Commentary on the Gospel of Luke by I.Howard Marshall. Fascinating.

I have finished 'This Breathing World' by Jose Luis de Juan, purchased last week. It was well-written (or at least, well-translated) but I'm not really sure what was going on with the plot: two parallel storylines nudge up against one another, but there is no satisfying unifying denouement (which it cries out for), just a low-key trailing off. I was (and still am) running a temperature whilst reading it, so it was all a bit vague and fever-dreamlike. I should get on with some serious reading: Constantine Campbell, Stanley Porter and Bernard Comrie, but I think I'll wait until I feel better for those heavyweight guys.

I'm going to start my Hardy novelette ('The Well-Beloved') either today or tomorrow, if my eyes stop aching. It always takes me a while to get into Hardy's idiolect, but I do love his writing so.

The annotated Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass was a revelation: so interesting, and Lewis Carroll's wordplay breathtaking. It can be savoured so much more as you get older. Sometimes I think that childrens' books are wasted on children!

I am trying to resist the newspaper book supplements: there are always so many books that I fancy reading at any given moment. I used to note them down for future reference, but the backlog is now just getting ridiculous. My dog-chewed (as opposed to dog-eared) notebook must remain firmly closed for a while.