vivdunstan

Nearing the end of yet another reread of a favourite novel (Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens this time) and feeling that familiar sense of loss, as I step away from the characters and places in the book. Albeit knowing that I will reread it again in future. But it's still hard to say goodbye!

I'll be adding this book along with another big novel I've nearly finished to my next "Books finished in 2025" post soon. Which is due quite an update. I'm also deciding which novels I'm going to read next in place of these two.

Diving back into Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. Despite concerns with one major aspect of the plot it remains one of my all time favourite reads. Having had a series of so-so fiction reads in recent months I'd like to dive into something I will really enjoy! I last reread it 6 years ago.

Finished watching theatre performances "London Tide" and "Prima Facie" using my National Theatre at Home subscription.

The former was a valiant attempt to adapt Charles Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend" into under three hours, but for me it was unsuccessful, stripping out too much of the plot, characters and themes, and changing the ending a lot. Some of the performances were excellent, especially Bella Maclean as Bella Wilfer, Tom Mothersdale as John Rokesmith, and a quite superb young Ellie-May Sheridan as Jenny Wren. But the songs by PJ Harvey and Ben Power were an overlong distraction, generally terribly dirge like, and I'd happily have done without them.

Prime Facie sees an ambitious defence lawyer finds herself on the other side of the court, as a rape victim. It's a one woman play, with Jodie Comer playing the lawyer, and also retelling and acting out the other characters. It is an utterly devastating performance, which is horrific to watch, and I marvel that she managed to play this night after night, without even a full interval in the middle. Unsurprisingly Jodie Comer won both the Olivier and Tony awards for best actress in this role. A quite astonishing 100 minutes of acting.

Still slowly reading the script book of the current stage version of Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend. And just really frustrated at some of the adaptation choices in a recent section, which conflated/interspersed some of the most pivotal scenes in the book, meaning they all have reduced impact. On plus it makes me want to reread the original novel ASAP. Which remains my favourite Dickens novel. Though I would like to know what more of the songs in the stage show are like. Only a few are on YouTube. I’m doubtful it will go up on the at home streaming version of the National Theatre. But hope!

There's a stage version of Charles Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend" on in London: "London Tide" with songs by PJ Harvey. Unsure how well it will work without seeing staging and hearing singing, but it's my favourite Dickens, so I'm getting the script to read.

I am also crossing fingers that the National Theatre may put a recording of this on their online pay service. I'd love to see it. But getting to see the stage show in person is impossible for me. It's getting varied reviews, but I'd still give it a go if I could.

Last year I finished 60 books. In some previous years I've finished more, sometimes less. For 2024 I'm setting myself a reading target of 25 books, though will probably smash it. But I want to focus on more longer books, albeit interspersed with and alongside shorter ones.

Long books that I plan to read include rereads of Lord of the Rings and Our Mutual Friend. But I also intend to read a couple more Wheel of Time books, which are pretty chunky, and can take some time.

I'm also intending to read more books in translation, including some long ones. Will be drawing up a list of those soon. It depends which ones I can get in Kindle format, so I can read them with an utterly gargantuan font. Due to my progressive neurological illness audiobooks haven't been a good option for me since the 1990s, but gigantic font ebooks work well for recreational reads.

And of course there will be lots of non fiction books read alongside the fiction. That is already underway, and I expect to keep that more flexible.

But yup, a year of quality reading over quantity this time.

Before my book club read for August I'm squeezing in another novel. This is alongside Wheel of Time book 7 and spread out Little Dorrit reading. Plus loads of non fiction.

The Stranger Times by C.K. McDonnell has the following publisher blurb:

There are dark forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular), so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them . . .

A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable.

At least that's their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door - and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who's got problems of her own.

When tragedy strikes in her first week on the job The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they'd previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined.

And for my book club in August The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean has the following blurb:

Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.

Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.

But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.

Here are the covers of the two books:

Two more SHARP book history conference panel recordings watched. The first discussing special collections and book history teaching. Including cook book collections. Also a quite gobsmacking talk where the class was given a budget to buy things to add to the special collections - e.g. from rare book dealers etc. - and the students chose candidates and voted on what would be bought. I couldn't see that happening in many universities over here for obvious reasons! The other panel I watched was about Dickens and his readers and manuscripts. The first was a really interesting account of his reception in Australia and New Zealand in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And then a talk about how Dickens prepared his manuscripts for compositors. Which should have had illustrations of the manuscripts, but they were having huge technical difficulties. Despite that the speaker communicated the key issues well. So good stuff. I will be watching more SHARP panels later this week. I can watch the recordings until the end of August.

I’m nearly finished with the time travelling movie making scifi novel (it’s good!), so am looking ahead to what long fiction I will be reading next. Here are my main planned reads for early June 2023. Most of which are already underway. 1/ reread Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens; 2/ continue Patrick Troughton biography; 3/ continue family tale of two Tolkien brothers; 4/ continue Luther Arkwright graphic novel reread; 5/ read a rail travel book; and 6/ continue reading the large print Fall of Numenor book.