Pacific view

Monday, April 30, 2012

Time slips

Don't know what happened to my blogging. February went by in a rush of making travel plans to go to Israel, and travel is what we did. Then spring seemed to seep into everyone's bones and people woke up and started calling me to do garden work. So that took up all of March and April. I did do some reading during this time but very little writing (other than emails and Facebook posts!) and no blogging.
Books I read: Toni Morrison, "A Mercy"; Sylvia Townsend Warner, "The Flint Anchor"; F.M. Mayor, "The Rector's Daughter" and "The Third Miss Symons"; Julian Gloag, "Our Mother's House". My book club is reading "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China" by Jung Chang, and I'm trying so damn hard to finish it but it's long and repetitive, and although it's inherently a gripping story, it is recounted in the driest possible manner.  Of everything that I've read, only the Toni Morrison stands out as a brilliant piece of literature. I'm going to finish Eliz. Gaskell's "North and South" and move on from there to Maugham's "The Painted Veil" and maybe next to Elizabeth Bowen. I'm curious about Bowen, don't know how I'll like her.
I've decided to only keep the books I love and give away the ones I feel lukewarm or ambivalent about. That should thin out the bookshelves. I got rid of so much when I moved, creating loads of space at the time. But that was two years ago, and by this point I've accumulated as much as I ever had, if not more.
I need to exert some willpower and be ruthless about weeding out the chaff.