Reading Recovery

The first two days of covid, I was too sick to read (or even listen to podcasts) which was the greatest tragedy! But feeling much better now and stuck in two really good books, and may even get a chance to catch up on some blip diaries. Thanks everyone for all the well wishes.

Here’s our fellow covid patient Shadow taking an interest in my museum book club read “Empress of the Nile”, which is a very engaging account of a pioneering French female Egyptologist, with lots of interesting background on more recent Egyptian history and WW2 French resistance. I suspect the club will be very condescending about it since there is a dearth of footnotes, although they will applaud its feminist perspective.

My other read is “East of Eden”, which I’m finding thoroughly addictive. I’ve been playing with the idea of joining the Hardcore Literature bookclub for some deeper reads this year, although it will be quite a contrast with my standard fare (think Han Kang). I’ve been wanting to read “The Master and the Margarita” forever but before that we have two American classics I managed to skip despite studying American novel at university. In fact, I can’t recall which texts I did study apart from “Absalom Absalom” (my reason for selecting the course) and “Tender is the Night”. That course had a very mediocre lecturer, where Chaucer was inspirational! Anyway, really enjoying my first Steinbeck, who I had an uninformed prejudice against.