Taking the 'meh' out of reading

Image from www.woodstockwardrobe.com

I don't know whether it's the general blahdom of having been sick or that when I was sick, I literally couldn't read (my eyes were blurry), but I just cannot find a book to light my fire right now (and I don't mean literally, fellow Melburnian winter-sufferers). Unfortunately I am not one of those diligent folk who can plough on with a book when it's getting a bit boring. It has to speak to me or forget it. I need colour and movement...!

So it is that I am part way through A Game of Thrones, part way through Bring Up the Bodies and part way through Dead to the World and nothing is doing it for me. I can read a few pages but then...meh. 

Tell me - please - what are you reading and loving right now?

She-Wolves

Matilda of England (1102-1167)

Image from Wikipedia

With what I suspect would be described as my 'monkey mind', I am flitting from one book to another at the moment when I settle down to read. I am reading She-Wolves by Helen Castor pretty steadily, though. It tells the story of 'the women who ruled England before Elizabeth' - Elizabeth the First, that is. It is very accessibly written, providing one doesn't get too bogged down in exactly who was related to who and goes with the overall flow of the tale.

I have several degrees in history, but my focus has always been on modern history, so I am really enjoying visiting another era altogether - the early Middle Ages - and times very different in many ways to our own. As we swelter through yet more humid weather here, I am also enjoying imagining myself in the vast landscape of cold castles that sets the scene! I know, I know...the draughts and the damp and the general horribleness...but just allow me to dream as the air here buzzes thick with heat and insects!

What are you reading right now?

When the wind is blowing

The Dorrit family, as depicted by the BBC. Image from http://thebookchild.blogspot.com/

Dear Amy Dorrit. Image from http://bbc.co.uk

Why don't more men wear top hats? Little Dorrit's Arthur Clennam. Image from http://listal.com

The original Little Dorrit cover, not in glorious technicolour. Image from http://dickenslit.com

When the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books...
~ Charles Dickens

Our lovely Spring weather seems to have taken a little holiday. High winds are swirling dramatically around today and it is getting cooler every hour. Apparently thunderstorms, rain and cooler weather is on its way. All this has put me in mind of doing some more reading. I have lately resolved to read more for the sake of my own creative writing efforts and even - dare one say - to improve my mind lest it be permanently corroded by the dross on TV. So I am thinking that I really need to wrap my head around the classics. As I may have mentioned before, I studied English Literature at high school and uni but always in that studenty-how-much-can-I-skip-and-still-get-by kind of way. Especially when I was faced with Victorian-era novels. Dombey and Son. Middlemarch. Oh my.

But now I want to read them. Yet where to start? I love period dramas on TV (and I especially loved Little Dorrit) but...the books never seem to be like the series! I know! Sacrilege! Clever people, I know, always complain that ~sniff~ the series was nowhere near as good as the book. But I must just be a very visual person. Or a very unimaginative person. But I very rarely find that that very life that a good period drama seems to bring to these historical tales can be found in its original pages. Or perhaps I am just a complete drip. That's a possibility too.

So where should I start, do you think? I have Vanity Fair, Great Expectations, Middlemarch, Little Dorrit and Jane Eyre waiting for me on my bedside table. I'd love your recommendations. If you're in the middle of something, why don't we read it together and have our own little book club, even.

Desperately Romantic Teaser

I got this idea from the wonderful Sullivan McPig over at - http://thetravelsofsullivanmcpig.blogspot.com/ It should really be played on a Tuesday since it's called Teaser Tuesday but since I have started reading this great book on the weekend, I thought I would play it today. First, you post two 'teaser' sentence from a random page in the book you're currently reading and then the book's title and author. Want to play along?

"I was thinking of you and your brother, and wishing that I could see you and hoping so much that you were better: then I began to wonder how our three lives would run on together, and then, all of a sudden, I felt so strange!"

Page 257 of Desperate Romantics by Franny Moyle. It's about the Pre-Raphaelite art movement and I thought it would be a bit dry but it's really engagingly written. It was recently made into a tv series (as you can see from the book cover above).