Booking Through Thursdays. Wake Up!

This week’s prompt:

What’s the hardest/most challenging book you’ve ever read? Was it worth the effort? Did you read it by choice or was it an assignment/obligation?

Didn’t have to think hard about this one — it was James Joyce’s Ulysses.

And I read it by accident.

I read voraciously as a kid, and it must have been summer, because it was mostly during the summer that I used to mine the Oxford town library for things to read.

And I ended up taking home this enormous book, probably because the title seemed vaguely familiar . . . and yes, I read it. Every word.

I couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13.

I had no idea what it was about. lol

I should probably re-read it . . .

(Side note — it just occurred to me —Finnegans Wake (koff) is one of those books where you don’t have to say the author’s name . . . like War and Peace or The Great Gatsby or Moby Dick . . . I wonder if there are any books written in the last 20 years that are that much a part of the lexicon?)

Booking Through Thursday: Vacation Reading

This week’s prompt:

Do your reading habits change when you’re on vacation? Do you read more? Do you indulge in lighter, fluffier books than you usually read? Do you save up special books so you’ll be able to spend real vacation time with them? Or do you just read the same old stuff, vacation or not?

For me, the breakdown is pleasure reading vs. utilitarian.

Not that I don’t read for pleasure other times as well — but vacations are about rewards, and what’s a more delicious reward than to read for the sheer pleasure of it?

Incidentally, some of my most satisfying vacation reads were when I was younger, during family vacations.

We used to meet up with various cousins on the Outer Banks of North Carolina; we’d spend a week there sharing a rented cottage (or two!)

One year I’d just discovered Raymond Chandler — so before the trip I went to the library and borrowed copies of every single Raymond Chandler novel. I read Chandler in the car, I read Chandler in the cottage, and I read Chandler on the beach — periodically turning my book upside down to knock out the grains of sand that collected in the crease between the pages near the spine.

By the time we got back to New York State, I’d read them all.

Another year I read everything I could get my hands on by V.S. Pritchett (btw if you haven’t sampled his short stories you are missing out big time).

Pure pleasure reading, and all the moreso for being immersive.

I really ought to do it again sometime soon . .

Booking Through Thursdays

This week’s question is:

If you could get a sequel for any book, what would it be?

Right now? Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, for three reasons.

  1. I enjoyed the book and would love to be able to re-enter its world.
  2. James created a character that I like, then closed the novel with an ambiguous ending. I want to know if Isabella leaves Gilbert! And for that matter, what happens to poor Pansy?
  3. Since  no sequel exists, for one to suddenly appear would require one of two things: either a dead author would need to come back to life; or he would need to otherwise project his consciousness into physical reality. And either scenario would have quite intriguing metaphysical implications :-D