EVENTS DEAR BOY EVENTS
"Harold Macmillan, was asked by a young journalist after a long dinner what can most easily steer a government off course, he answered "Events, dear boy. Events". In short, politics is unpredictable."
Actually so is life and I have certainly been off course lately, and have developed almost a bloggers block. I have also not been reading that much either, which is very unusual for me.
The events that have disrupted me are numerous. Some pleasant such as the visits of my son, daughter and grandaughter, and others such as a very bad toothache extremely unpleasant. Dentists and ex-dentists never get a mild toothache, it always unbearable pain. A slightly sick laptop and the installation of a bathroom did not help my reading program, while now the weather is absolutely gorgeous here in Devon.
Riviera like! Not the weather to sit indoors with a laptop blogging away clearly I need wireless, whatever that is?
One cause of my reading block was possibly the theme of Through A Glass Darkly, pollution. I probably want complete escapism in my crime fiction, and felt that Donna Leon was jumping on the ecology/global warming bandwagon. This put me off a bit as it was only a few weeks since I hd seen Al Gore's excellent movie An Inconvenient Truth, watched the Channel 4 rebuttal, and then read the Gore's Nashville mansion used 20 times as much electricity as the average US household.
Well it was the toothache that put me in a bad mood, but now I have got well into the book. It did take about 150 pages before the crime occurred and there was not a lot of Paola Brunetti in the early chapters, so perhaps Donna Leon was as distracted as I have been.
[Review to follow shortly I hope]
Actually so is life and I have certainly been off course lately, and have developed almost a bloggers block. I have also not been reading that much either, which is very unusual for me.
The events that have disrupted me are numerous. Some pleasant such as the visits of my son, daughter and grandaughter, and others such as a very bad toothache extremely unpleasant. Dentists and ex-dentists never get a mild toothache, it always unbearable pain. A slightly sick laptop and the installation of a bathroom did not help my reading program, while now the weather is absolutely gorgeous here in Devon.
Riviera like! Not the weather to sit indoors with a laptop blogging away clearly I need wireless, whatever that is?
One cause of my reading block was possibly the theme of Through A Glass Darkly, pollution. I probably want complete escapism in my crime fiction, and felt that Donna Leon was jumping on the ecology/global warming bandwagon. This put me off a bit as it was only a few weeks since I hd seen Al Gore's excellent movie An Inconvenient Truth, watched the Channel 4 rebuttal, and then read the Gore's Nashville mansion used 20 times as much electricity as the average US household.
Well it was the toothache that put me in a bad mood, but now I have got well into the book. It did take about 150 pages before the crime occurred and there was not a lot of Paola Brunetti in the early chapters, so perhaps Donna Leon was as distracted as I have been.
[Review to follow shortly I hope]
posted by Uriah Robinson at 9:56 AM
3 Comments:
Hello, Norm/Uriah, I have been missing you and I am not the only one.
Sorry to hear about your bloggers' block. I go through similar sometimes.
I have just finished reading Stef Penney's Tenderness of Wolves, which I very much enjoyed. Before that I read Ice Moon by Jan Costin Wagner, ditto -- and it is much shorter than T of W.
Look forward to your review of the Leon. Although I think she can be absolutely superb when on form, there have been books or chunks of books in her series that I have found well below par. Maybe that is what you hit here?
Darn it! I posted a comment here last night but blogger must have eaten it. Can't remember what I said now,but definitely that you have been missed, welcome back, and I hope all is well, teeth and everything else wise.
Donna Leon-- I think most of her books are very good but she does have the odd dud, or at least, one that is under par. Maybe you have hit that here. "Through a Glass Darkly" was very good, I thought. Have not read the next one yet.
Thanks for missing me should be back on track next week.
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