The snow is bucketing down outside and I’m under a blanket. I’ve got Salman Rushdie’s new novel besides me and, while I am supposed be going to the football this afternoon, this sounds like a much more attractive proposition. Being back at work changes my approach to reading as, naturally, I have less time. Tiredness as much as anything means I read less during term time. Finding space is a priority. However, I’m getting through the Christmas books with a vengeance.
There was time when I was deftly jumping through Magic Realism – from Rushdie to Garcia Marquez to Eco – throwing paperbacks behind me. Confidently debating the merits of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ or ‘The Satanic Verses’. Unfortunately recent reading has caused me to think that my brain is turning to mush. I have to keep flipping back when I find myself lost in a world I’ve no idea I’d entered. While set in New York, Rushdie’s book was less familiar to me than the plague ridden streets of Shakespearean London.
Book Three
Shakespeare’s Restless World – Neil McGregor
This book is a blast: fascinating from start to finish, it, like no other book I’ve read, prepared me for teaching Shakespeare in a better way than ever. By telling the stories of objects discovered from the period, he paints a beautifully frightening image of what it was like for those who may or may not have gone to see the plays of this young upstart that everyone was talking about. Through the political and the social history of the time, we are taken on a journey which is at times terrifying and at others mesmerising.
It ends with a wonderfully moving story from Robben Island, during apartheid South Africa. A rogue copy of the collected works of Shakespeare was circulated amongst prisoners. The inspirational quotations they highlighted to each other will bring you to the point of tears.
Book Four
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Days. – Salman Rushdie
It’s been many a year since I’ve dozed off, dribbling, on a train. Lost in the magical world Rushdie has created – and I mean lost. Not in a good way – I’ve struggled through this one, not really knowing what the hell was going on. Number three in Danial Pennac’s the Rights of the Reader is ‘The right not to finish a book’ and I was seriously tempted on many an occasion with this one. Then I would be sucked into some beautiful prose, pages long. And then the blur; and the sad reality that I’m not the man I used to be. As much as I loved and lived ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’, I could care no more for Magic Realism. Thank you, Salman, you’ve been great.
I’m not even sure that I’m pleased that I persisted. I should live by Pennac’s list more truly.
Next time: It’s funny when you create a pile of books, with a specific order. The nature of other people’s recommendations mean you’ll never stick to it.