How disappointing. I love travel books, and I love travel books about the UK above all, which is why I was looking forward to reading A Fête Worse than Death by Iain Aitch, however, the book was a bit of a disappointment. I’m hard pressed to put my finger on exactly why Aitch’s writing is not engaging. He includes liberal amounts of anecdotes, enough dialogue to please me and visits precisely the sort of events whose description I’d be likely to find interesting. He even travels the way I would, by public transport or by convincing people to give him lifts. And still I continually found my attention drifting. A pity, really.
Is this still from your personal collection, or from the library?
I’m not interested in this book in particular, but have noticed quite a few gems mentioned here lately. If it’s from your personal collection, I would be much obliged if you spend a full week with Martin and leave me with the kettle. If it’s from the library, I need to move to a bigger city. My local library has a nice collection for the reading impaired (it’s quite close to the local nut farm, err, home for the mentally disabled/challenged), but only one or two shelves of English language books, and most of those aren’t interesting, anyway. Although they do have The Color Purple, which is still on my To Read list. Well, so are half the books I’ve got in my own collection, and that’s not counting the books I want to re-read. Can’t even seem to keep up with the magazines these days. That’s the only thing I miss about the train: plenty of time to read magazines. Of course, the train left me no time for anything else, since it took such a bloody long time. Need to get myself together.
With the exception of the two where I’ve explicitly stated that I’ve borrowed them from Theresa, all the books I’ve read lately I own. In fact, it’s been a year or so since I last borrowed a novel from the library. The library here in Oslo isn’t very good, either – at least they never seem to have what I’m looking for, so I stopped looking.
Hm. There I was, thinking Oslo being a bigger city it would have a bigger library, thinking that would be better than my local, which fits into an elementary school classroom. Well, almost.
So the question one needs to ask oneself: is one a collector or merely a reader? Must one own all the books one reads? Until not so long ago, I never reread any books. Not so long ago being «before HP4 was published over a year after I read HP1-3, and I decided I wanted to read the whole story». Similar thing applied to Salmon of Doubt, obviously. And then while I was at it, I just reread H2G2, which I almost but not quite finished on a previous read. And then I just decided it was time for another round of BJ. No new «chapters» needed. Will this be a trend, I wonder? I mean, there are books I think of re-reading, but will I?
i believe you are mistaken to be disappointed in mr. aitch’s rather excellent book. You found your attention drifting? Then concentrate! It’s typical of your sort to let your thoughts just waft away, when in front of you lies a wonderfully entertaing book of the first rate, detailing interesting events, unusual people and practices obviously above your dullard’s cavehead.
My sort? *giggle* So on the basis of the fact that I disagree with you on the merits of one book you’ve decided that I’m a complete airhead? I’m sorry, but I find it very hard to take you seriously. Had I claimed that Shakespeare was drivel, you might have had some foundation for calling me a dullard, but I must admit to being somewhat fascinated by your indignancy at my criticism. It’s not as if I called Mr. Aitch’s book «bad», «horrible», «not worth the paper it was written on» or anything of the sort, I just pointed out that I was disappointed because it did not quite live up to my expectations.
We are amused.
Great book, I found it a brisk walk through a barmy summer.