My plan for this summer (which failed miserably) was to read a bunch of classics of English literature, with maybe a couple of Russian novels thrown (I was thinking Dostoevskij) because admittedly I haven’t read many English classics, and practically zero Russian novels. I did download some free books from Project Gutenberg but I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet.
I’m currently reading Dicken’s Great Expectations, which I actually started in October but had to put aside once uni started to focus on other things. A Tale of Two Cities was also on my to-read list after I listened to a great BBC radio adaptation (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018gzm8#programme-broadcasts) of the novel (which I recommend if you’re into radio dramatizations) but I highly doubt I’ll manage to read it now. As for novels I’ve recently read: I was really excited when John Irving’s In One Person and I finally bought it last month (I only read The Cider House Rules and I’ve been meaning to read more books by the same author). I have to say I was a bit disappointing. It wasn’t a horrible book but it left me a bit… meh. Shoddy characterization - writers writing about writers has been done to death, and I couldn’t bring myself to really care about any of the characters. So not as good as I was expecting. My mother bought Mozart’s Last Aria by Matt Rees for me, thinking I would like it since I went through this Mozart-obsessed phase. I wanted to like it but I didn’t. I read it mostly because my mom would be disappointed if I didn’t. Maybe the Italian translation didn’t help, I don’t know (some sentences sounded a bit funny?) but the plot was slightly ridiculous at times. I haven’t been reading only disappointing books, though! I claimed Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke in a book giveaway and I quite liked it. Have you read it? What did you think of it?
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I’m currently reading Dicken’s Great Expectations, which I actually started in October but had to put aside once uni started to focus on other things.
A Tale of Two Cities was also on my to-read list after I listened to a great BBC radio adaptation (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018gzm8#programme-broadcasts) of the novel (which I recommend if you’re into radio dramatizations) but I highly doubt I’ll manage to read it now.
As for novels I’ve recently read: I was really excited when John Irving’s In One Person and I finally bought it last month (I only read The Cider House Rules and I’ve been meaning to read more books by the same author). I have to say I was a bit disappointing. It wasn’t a horrible book but it left me a bit… meh. Shoddy characterization - writers writing about writers has been done to death, and I couldn’t bring myself to really care about any of the characters. So not as good as I was expecting.
My mother bought Mozart’s Last Aria by Matt Rees for me, thinking I would like it since I went through this Mozart-obsessed phase. I wanted to like it but I didn’t. I read it mostly because my mom would be disappointed if I didn’t. Maybe the Italian translation didn’t help, I don’t know (some sentences sounded a bit funny?) but the plot was slightly ridiculous at times.
I haven’t been reading only disappointing books, though! I claimed Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke in a book giveaway and I quite liked it. Have you read it? What did you think of it?