Listless

[caddyman]

I seem to be going through one of my periodical unable to settle with a book phases. I have a large number of books on my reading list and at least three on the go at the moment – though I think that I may have run out of steam with Kate Fox’ Watching the English about two thirds of the way through. What seemed funny and informative at the beginning now seems drab and repetitive. Back to the shelf with that one, I think.

Somewhere in the living room – on the shelf near my chair, I think – I have the half-read Eleanor of Aquitaine by Allison Weir. Considering the lengths I went to to get it (I seem to have purchased it between print or distribution runs), I really ought to plough on with it. The trouble is, it’s just that at the moment: plough. It’s not badly written or anything, though she does make a lot out of relatively thin contemporary documentation, but my mind set isn’t quite right for a learned tome right now and it is a rather poorer book than McLynn’s Lionheart and Lackland, which inspired me to look it out.

That brings me to the book in my bag at the moment. A novel that I started about ten days ago. I am on page 23. I was on page 23 ten days ago. The theory was that I should read it on the Tube in to work and again on the way home, but as it transpires, I just want to doze on the way in and I do the Times sudoku on my way home. At home I play Civ or watch the telly. Or doze.

Past experience suggests that this phase will last another two or three weeks and then suddenly all my reading buds will perk up again and I’ll be off…

Comments

[failing-angel.livejournal.com]

I've found that dipping into collections of short stories can help.
Of course this assumes that you feel that you should be reading again.

[ysharros.livejournal.com]

Ealeanor of Aquitaine -- I have this one also (easy enough to find here second hand, it seems), and I really tried to finish it. I think I'm two-thirds of the way through.

The nice assessment: it's so damned dry you'd find more moisture in the Sahara.

The blunt assessment: it's dull, dull, DULL.

Pick up Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" if you haven't already read that. I'm still looking for her other books (though mostly I keep forgetting to actually LOOK).

I dunno if it's your kind of thing, but you can check out Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series too. I'm currently re-reading the Niccolo series, which I got impatient with back when I had to wait for the new ones to come out. Now that they're all immediately available, it's easier (still, the Niccolo series is a liiiiiitle drawn out, but I love Dunnett anyway).

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

The Lymond series was good but the nicolo series just wore me out by book five and I stopped reading. It just seemed like she was deliberately stringing it out to make it into seven books and I just couldn't be a***d to play the game. Eleanor of Acquitaine I flew through but It was when I was in a read-anything-with-letters-even-in-a-foreign-language-that-I-don't-speak phase