Oh,
how I love when this day rolls around every year, the day when we turn the
clocks back and get an extra hour! And
how I hate the “partner” day in the spring, when we lose an hour. The benefits of the extra hour seem to be
lost after such a short time, but the costs of the lost hour seem to linger for
weeks!! So I will make the most of my
extra hour today and read a bit more than I would otherwise have time to do!
This
will be a short post because last week was not a very rewarding or productive
reading week for me. Not sure why… maybe
I just couldn’t find anything to grab me in the first few days of the week, which
are my really good reading days, or maybe I was distracted. Anyway, I finished Peter Robinson’s mystery, Abattoir
Blues, on Sunday, and it was just OK.
Not his greatest book, but a quick, easy read.
Then
I started another book called A Good Day’s Work: in pursuit of a disappearing Canada, by
John DeMont. This non-fiction title
explores the disappearing jobs in our country as society changes and
evolves. It is nostalgic and melancholy,
as the author pines for the “good old days” which, according to Pierre Berton,
ended in 1967, “the last good year”, as he dubbed it. The author visits, interviews and/or rides
along with milkmen, blacksmiths, cowgirls and travelling salesmen, to name a
few of the occupations that have been lost over the past half-century. As a librarian, I fear that my chosen profession, too, may join this list of lost occupations. It was a fairly light read, one that I just
skimmed, as I found the author to be a bit too melancholy for my liking. I mean, really? Were those days truly as “good” as he
remembers them? But I think it would
appeal to many readers, so just because I didn’t love it, doesn’t mean you won’t.
Then
it was already Wednesday night, and I was still without a good book to read! Ach!!
What a dilemma! Knowing that I
was running out of time, and that I could not possibly finish a book between
then and today, I decided to tackle the book that we are discussing at my next
book club meeting, Watership Down by Richard Adams. I have never read this, but one of my book
club members recommended this as a selection, and no one wanted to read Anna
Karenina this month (I wonder why?!), so I made a quick substitution and
here we are. My paperback copy is very
old and tattered, and the print is really small, so it may only be 475 pages,
but really it’s about 600 pages if the print was a normal size! Have
you ever noticed that old Penguin paperbacks use really small print? Anyway, I knew nothing about this book before
I started reading it, except that it was about rabbits. I am having a hard time getting into it, and
can only read a few pages at a time, so it’s a good thing that I gave myself
extra reading time to finish this. I
always thought it was a children’s book, but it is far too difficult and mature for children, although maybe high school kids could read and study it in
class. In case you, too, are
unfamiliar with this classic, it tells the story of a group of rabbits who, on
the advice of a wise bunny named Fiver, believe that a great danger is about
to befall Sandleford Warren, and so form a band of roving rabbits, including
Hazel, Bigwig and Silver. The book follows their adventures and perils as this pack of brave bunnies search for a new place they can call home. I have to say, the first 100 pages
was a struggle, but I may be getting in the right mindset. I just don’t enjoy reading fables, and this
type of story seems more suited to children, although the language Adams uses
and the writing style is far too advanced for kids. I will write more once I have finished it and
we’ve had our meeting, but I have to admit that I’m not really looking forward
to it. My book club members, on the
other hand, all seemed quite excited about this selection, so it should be an
interesting discussion.
That’s
all for today. Enjoy that extra hour!
Bye
for now…
Julie
Julie
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