The Reader part 2

Well... holiday time is over and it was back to work for me this weekend.
Hopefully it will also mean back to some blogging.
Weather-wise it was a pretty disappointing break. Most of the time I seem to have succeeded in avoiding any glimpses of sunshine that may just have fallen on the British Isles the last couple of weeks. I was in a number of places in England and Wales, including Manchester, Hawarden (more of which in a moment) Bristol and Buckinghamshire. And wherever I happened to be at any given moment, the sunshine was usually somewhere else.
In fact the photograph above is a little bit misleading in that there is actually quite a lot of blue sky showing. An hour or so after that moment, however, there was yet another monsoon.
Having said that, the main aim of my holiday break was not affected in any way by the weather, for I had decided that what I wanted to do most was some reading. Nothing too taxing or demanding. Nothing too 'useful' either. This was to be reading as a form of escape and relaxation.
I had intended (as I said in my last blog) to start with Jonathan Coe's "The Rotter's Club" and in fact I had begun reading before I left home.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take the book with me and for the moment it remains unfinished.
However, I had managed to pack a few others and over the course of the two weeks I read the following:
1. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. Actually I finished this just before I went on holiday. Excellent story, well-written. Definitely to be recommended.
2. The Rotter's Club by Jonathan Coe. Interrupted in mid-read by my all-too-common forgetfulness- so no final judgement on this one - though I really was enjoying it.
3. One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. Very well written crime/detective novel set in Edinburgh. Interesting and (mostly) believable characters and an intricate but well-controlled plot line. Another good escapist read.
4. Enigma by Robert Harris. Some years ago I saw the film of this fiction, set in wartime Bletchley Park, and I thought I might find reading the book pretty boring, but it certainly wasn't. Actually I find the true story of Bletchley Park exciting but there is enough of the real historical background in the book to make it work. Having visited Bletchley Park itself a couple of years ago it was very easy to visualise every location in the novel. Another recommended read.
5. Out by Natsuo Kirino. I'm not sure exactly why I chose to buy this particular book. It is not the kind of story I would normally feel attracted to. It is certainly not one for the faint-hearted. But it was the highlight of my summer reading- though highlight is a particularly ironic word in the context. Brilliantly gritty and disturbing, this 520 page novel is a descent into the darkness of the human psyche and it leaves you wondering what any one of us just might be capable of doing, and what boundaries any of us might just cross if the circumstances were right (or should I say wrong?) Probably what makes the story most disturbing is that the circumstances in question amount to little more than boredom and hopelessness. But you'll need to read it for yourself to see what I'm talking about.
6. Steal You Away by Niccolo Ammaniti. Another story populated by low-life characters; this time in Italy. I didn't find this novel quite as enjoyable as Ammaniti's first book "I'm Not Scared" but it had its moment.
7. The Two of Us by Sheila Hancock (My Life with John Thaw) I haven't yet finished reading this biography/autobiography but it is certainly much more than you average showbiz biog. Very well written and interesting, especially the structure of the two lives side-by-side.
8. Flights of Love by Bernhard Schlink (author of The Reader) This is really a collection of seven different stories. They are slightly longer than the average short story, all written in the same cool, understated but poetic style as The Reader. The stories are not connected with each other on the surface but the title Flights of Love indicates a shared theme, explored in many different ways. It ends up as a pretty uneven collection, though. I think some of the stories try to do too much in their attempt to deal with Germany's historical past but there is also some pretty good pieces of writing in the midst all of this. Unfortunately, I don't think it quite reached the heights of The Reader.
9. Raids on the Unspeakable by Thomas Merton and
10. The New Man by Thomas Merton.
These last two books I borrowed from and read in St. Deiniol's Library in Hawarden (pictured above) where I stayed for two nights.
It was a trial visit, scouting out a possible location for some study leave next year. The library's website advertises it as a place for "bed, board and books", but it is also a place to meet some really interesting people, most of whom were engaged in much more intellectual pursuits than I was, writing dissertations for postgraduate degrees or books for publication and so on.
I think I will be back.