Skip to main content

Reading report, 16 January 2017


It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week."

Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week.
--



I have only finished two books in the last week. The time that would have been spent reading or listening to a couple of other books I instead used to listen to a number of podcasts. In the last few months I have been exploring the BBC website and finding podcasts to listen to and I have discovered some that I like and others I am ready to like but haven't listened to enough to decide if I do.

Among the former are iPM, a program where listeners are interviewed, often revealing extraordinary stories; More or Less, where statistics are discussed and sometimes set right; Woman's Hour, a long-running program for women where everything and anything of interest to women is discussed; and Elements, where the role of the elements in the world's economics is explained.

I already enjoyed listening to Excess Baggage, a travel programme that was cancelled in 2012 (I still have some episodes to go before I finish it, and as a matter of fact, I'm in no hurry), and Thinking Allowed, a program on sociology.

iPM is the only one I have caught up with, so I still have plenty of episodes to catch up on, which is just as well because I am running out of audio books to listen to while I do my crocheting.

Ah, yes, crocheting. I went through my projects and finished several that I had put aside while I finished a bedspread I made for my mother for Xmas. I tried to upload some photos, but Blogger wasn't having any of that, so on the the books:

The books I did finish were: 

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. I'd forgotten how much I like Hemingway's prose. This is the first non-fiction book of his I read, and it is definitely going on the keeper shelf.


Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie. Audiobook read by Hugh Fraser. A fine standalone detective novel.

In the next week I expect to finish Marco Polo's Silk Road: The Art of the Journey, a sumptuous edition of Polo's Travels, based on two 19th century English translations, and also a reread of Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie, a ghost story that shows us (possibly) how The Turn of the Screw might have ended if the governess in that story had had some sense...
Labels:

Comments

Reading with Jade said…
I read A Moveable Feast a couple of years ago now and quite enjoyed it, although I didn't think it the kind of book I'd return to so wasn't a keeper on my shelves. I hope you have a great week, and happy reading!
January 16, 2017 2:02 pm
Beth F said…
That Marco Polo book caught my eye.
January 16, 2017 2:16 pm
Greg said…
I've always been fascinated by Marco Polo's journeys sothat one sounds interesting. And so does the Christie. I'd like to listen to more podcasts too, I haven't gotten into very many but there are a few I've enjoyed.
January 17, 2017 12:08 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...
9 comments
Read more

Meme: Top Ten Tuesdays: Top Ten Book to Movie Adaptations

This meme is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish . To see more favourite book-to-movie adaptations, head over there to see which movies the other participants have nominated. I am going to cheat and interpret ‘movie’ as ‘film’, so I can include television adaptations. Oscar and Lucinda , from the book by Peter Carey. Apart from the changed ending it is an incredibly faithful adaptation, with every character perfectly cast. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , from the book by Stieg Larsson. This one actually improves on the book, which is well plotted but badly written. Cold Comfort Farm , from the book by Stella Gibbons. Perfect casting and quite faithful to the original. High Fidelity , from the book by Nick Hornby. Moving the story to America didn’t hurt it one bit. Fried Green Tomatoes (at the Whistle Stop Café), from the book by Fannie Flagg. Perfect casting and faithful to the story. Pride and Prejudice from the book by Jane Austen, the latest BBC adaptation. Incredibly f...
16 comments
Read more