A return to reading

Well it has been so long since I updated this that I thought I would start again simply with a list of the books Cosimo and I have read over the last couple of years and then just give a few ponderings to get this voyage on the road again (if indeed you do voyage by road) .

Cakes and Ale (W. Somerset Maugham)

The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Leave it to Psmith (P.G. Wodehouse)

Hard Times (Andy McNab ... ok, maybe not. Charles Dickens, perhaps)

Travels with a Tangerine (Tim Mackintosh-Smith)

Confessions of St. Augustine (Augustine of Hippo)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

Dead Souls (Gogol)

Inkheart (Cornelia Funke)

Hall of a Thousand Columns (Tim Mackintosh-Smith)

Songlines (Bruce Chatwin)

Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)

The Riders (Tim Winton)

The Last of the Wine (Mary Renault)

Resurrection (Leo Tolstoy)

The Once and Future King (T.H. White)

Castle of Crossed Destinies (Italo Calvino)

Right when last seen about a year ago, this blog was busy dealing with Leave it to Psmith which was frothy, fun and a bit of a relief, but then we got back to misery again with Hard Times. Ok it wasn't all that miserable - there were definite fun sections but the title has to give you some kind of clue that it wasn't all cheer and good humour. The opening though is brilliant - anybody who relies too much on facts should be forced to read it. I must admit though that I find the beginning the much more memorable than the end which has rather receded in both Cosimo and my minds.

From there we decided to fast-forward through the centuries again and actually go travelling, seeing the world through the pages of a book in Travels with a Tangerine. Our time-travelling took us in the steps of a 21st Century writer, tracking the 14th Century Arab, Ibn Battutah throughout North Africa. This was without a doubt one of the highlight books of all that we have read - by turns fascinating, informative and hilarious. I must admit, it left me with no desire to sample the Morrocan delicacy of rotten fish (you could almost smell it from the pages).

Shortly after this, our voyage ran fairly well smack into a brick wall with the Confessions of Augustine. I am sure it is a great book - but it is not one for casual reading. Anyone who has read this blog knows that I have followed a certain man of Hippo through pages of his life. Unfortunately, I never made it to the end. I hope that God had more patience than I.

Abandoning Augustine still in North Africa, I hopped across the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The sheer exuberance and celebration of the world and what it offered, of mischief and adventure, but also of humanity in everyone makes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a wonderful book (and a big relief after Confessions). OK I don't think I shall ever find Tom Sawyer anything but profoundly annoying but he is still in many ways a real person. I had been rather avoiding this book for no good reason for years and I loved it. The dialect that Twain captures is also so clever. I don't think I have ever fully appreciated his skill as a writer before.

Well that has brought our travels a bit further, I shall leave you with Huck on the banks of the Mississippi for a brief (hopefully) pause before we head to Russia in the next stage of our voyage.