Dear Reader

Dear Reader,

Have you read a good novel lately?  

Lately I have read some good non-fiction, including

When I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me? : Montaigne and being in touch with life, by Saul Frampton, about the French Renaissance philosopher Montaigne.  The author’s main claim is that Montaigne was ahead of his time in much of his thinking.  He also suffered from kidney stones.  I am adding Montaigne’s Essays to my reading list for some time in the future.

The rise and fall of the Bible : the unexpected history of an accidental book, by Timothy Beal.  This book is not so much about the demise of the Bible, but about how most Americans have come to view the Bible as a rule-book for life, when in fact the Bible is more a “library of questions” as the author puts it. It's also about how the Bible is marketed these days. I like the author’s viewpoint, but think that the publisher went for the attention-getting title just to get some people riled up.  Riling up equals readership, in this day and age. 

But it is now time for some fiction.  At a friend’s suggestion, I looked at the BBC Book List in the hopes of picking a couple books to read this summer.  I was enthusiastic, without even looking at the list, thinking that the BBC list would include lots of 18^th century British novels devoid of bodily dismemberment,
 s e*ual crimes, and awful things happening to children.  I find it difficult to read those in a work of fiction. 

The first thing I discovered is that the BBC Book List is hard to find.  I couldn’t find it on an official BBC web site, but it has been internettily bouncing around.  Maybe it is not actually from the BBC.  To see the entire list that I was working from, go here.

I picked a few from the list.  I admit I partly picked books based on their length.  For instance, I rejected Middlemarch by George Eliot because it clocks in at 904 pages.   Maybe I'll read that someday, but not this summer.

Here’s my short list:

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (240 pages)

Watership Down by Richard Adams (476 pages)

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (256 pages)

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (464 pages)

So what are you reading lately?