Monday 28 September 2009

Weekend reading

First, thanks to Gil for suggestions in Friday's comments (my own comment facility isn't working). I'll see if we've got those in the library. Thanks also to Jayne for a bag of skinny books - much appreciated.

Over the weekend I read:

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett - not boring like I had feared but existential angst in plenty.

Esprit du Corps by Lawrence Durrell - having seen Gerald Durrell's viewpoint of his brother Lawrence I wanted to see what his writing was like. This is an amusing account of the post-war diplomatic service. I must try one of his novels though.

Happy Christmas by Daphne du Maurier - a clever but rather depressing reworking of the Christmas story.

More Friends of the Doctor by Isabel Cameron - well written but very dated pre-war fictional anecdotes set in the Highlands.

High and Low by John Betjeman and John Betjeman: poems, selected by Hugo Williams - two volumes of Betjeman's verse. He is the master of evocation, using familiar objects to bring out homely settings. Clever and amusing word-play. The end of the poems often have their own existential angst, though, all the more powerful for having had such a cosy setting.

Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart - I like this author so was pleased to find one I hadn't read before. Slightly dated but not too bad and a well-written mystery. I must try reading My Brother Michael again, by the same author, but set in Greece.

Day 354; book 345