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Holiday Reading
Monday, January 21st, 2008 01:11 pmIn preparation for my week's holiday, I went to the library to find some non-work-related reading matter. I thought I had been a little unkind to the Novel in one of my posts, so I thought that this time, I would try to read a completely straight novel. No technological wizardry, no wizardly wizardry, no vampires, aliens, sword fights, revolutions or even murders. You know, the kind of book that starts "Looking across the cluttered breakfast table, Scott realised that the woman he had been living with for thirty years was a complete stranger." Oh yes, and comedy is cheating too, so none of those witty campus novels by the likes of Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge: if it's set on a campus, it has to be about how soul-destroying (rather than comic) it is for an ageing professor to have an affair with his research assistant.
I could not do it. Just those first lines are enough to put you off reading a book. "When Chandys arrived in London, it was with the hope of entering Art School, finding a lover and eventually hosting her own exhibition." That's YOU, that is. You should have stuck to painting, you silly twerp. "Rain was beating down on the streets of Grimsby as Agatha locked up the chippy." Oh God, another novel about poor but cheerful Northern folk. "It was a grey Monday in Peckham, and Chas was trying the doors on the parked cars, more for the sake of having something to do than anything else." Poor delinquent Southern folk. Worse.
Of course, fantasy and SF novels can also start bad and finish worse (if you get that far). If there are words I can't pronounce in the first line, I generally give it a miss ("Lady Aoiynwy looked over the plains of Thrxlynm ..."). But in the end I settled on "The mercenary captain Camran Osir reigned in his mount at the crest of the hill and swung from the saddle to stare back down the forest trail." No Great British Novels for me: I took out David Gemmel's Hero in the Shadows (the source of that line), John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar and Christopher Fowler's Personal Demons. One fantasy novel, one SF novel and a collection of horror stories. Now there's a balanced literary diet for you.
I could not do it. Just those first lines are enough to put you off reading a book. "When Chandys arrived in London, it was with the hope of entering Art School, finding a lover and eventually hosting her own exhibition." That's YOU, that is. You should have stuck to painting, you silly twerp. "Rain was beating down on the streets of Grimsby as Agatha locked up the chippy." Oh God, another novel about poor but cheerful Northern folk. "It was a grey Monday in Peckham, and Chas was trying the doors on the parked cars, more for the sake of having something to do than anything else." Poor delinquent Southern folk. Worse.
Of course, fantasy and SF novels can also start bad and finish worse (if you get that far). If there are words I can't pronounce in the first line, I generally give it a miss ("Lady Aoiynwy looked over the plains of Thrxlynm ..."). But in the end I settled on "The mercenary captain Camran Osir reigned in his mount at the crest of the hill and swung from the saddle to stare back down the forest trail." No Great British Novels for me: I took out David Gemmel's Hero in the Shadows (the source of that line), John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar and Christopher Fowler's Personal Demons. One fantasy novel, one SF novel and a collection of horror stories. Now there's a balanced literary diet for you.
