Book Chain, weeks 23 & 24

#25: Read a book that was acquired or added to the TBR before the previous book.

A tricky one, since the previous book had been languishing unread on my shelves long enough that I don't have a record of when I acquired it. I read a couple of books for other challenges while I thought it over, and in the end I went with A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens; I'm not entirely sure that I've owned this specific copy since my youth, but in any case I've been meaning to read it since then.

A classic, which meant that I went in knowing the famous quote at the beginning and the famous quote at the end and almost nothing of what happens in between. I enjoyed Dickens's narrative voice and many of the characters, but felt that some of the bits that were probably supposed to be most dramatic didn't really land for me.

(I was inevitably reminded of the Doctor Who episode that includes a homage to the ending of the novel, but not just for that scene: the same episode includes a notoriously clunky bit of dialogue in which someone is described as being "as truthful, honest, and about as boring as they come", a description which might also serve for the central character of the novel, who is honest and upright and mostly serves as a catalyst for the actions of more interesting characters without becoming interesting himself.)


#26: If the previous book had an odd number of pages, read a book with an even number of pages, or vice versa.

I wasn't entirely sure if my copy of A Tale of Two Cities counted as having an odd number of pages: it did if you go by the last numbered page, but not if you ignore the scholarly appendices and went by the last page of the main text. I decided to cover my bases by picking a book which also had scholarly appendices and worked as a counterpart either way.

So now I'm reading Ghost Empire by Richard Fidler, a non-fiction account of the rise and fall of Constantinople interwoven with a visit to present-day Istanbul. It's not quite gripping me yet, but I'm enjoying filling in the gaps between the bits of Constantinople's history that I knew before.

Week in review: Week to 23 August

. I reached a milestone in 750 Words: one year since I resumed keeping a journal and began what has become by far my longest streak. Though the streak count (which goes by days when I actually wrote an entry) only just reached 300 days, which gives you some idea of how shamelessly I've been exploiting the generous allocation of vacation days on the occasions when I haven't found time or haven't felt up to stringing words together.( Read more... )

. Sunday was the first meeting of the new committee since they were elected in the AGM. ( Read more... )

. On Monday, I woke up while it was still dark. As I lay in bed, I found myself singing a riff on "Morning Has Broken" that started by observing that morning had not yet broken and ended with the conclusion that this might be a good opportunity to do some productive work done before the day started and distractions arrived. I did not in fact get any productive work done, because when I got up I went on the internet to look up a rhyming dictionary and try to improve one of the rhymes in the song, and from there I was perfectly capable of distracting myself.


. This week at the board game club I wound up on the casual card games table and played Monty Python Fluxx, UNO Show 'Em No Mercy, and Flip 7. ( Read more... )

. I've been listening to a fair bit of classical music this week. It started when I watched a video about The Shawshank Redemption and then decided to listen to the full version of the Mozart aria that's featured in one scene, which led to Youtube suggesting other bits of Mozart to listen to. I also, unrelatedly to that, saw a post with a linked video about a violin piece by Bach which is designed so that it can be played both forward and backward and that if it's played forward and backward at the same time it forms a pleasing duet.


. The week at work has been interesting, with several challenging projects that were stressful to be faced with but satisfying to have completed successfully.


. Parkrun went well. ( Read more... )

. I've started another jigsaw puzzle.