Which writers - novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets - working today do you admire most? Mandela must be turning in his grave at the corruption and incompetence of the regime that succeeded him. I read two novels and Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom,” which is a book of such courage, determination and hope, it left me feeling wretched. The last time I managed that we went to the Seychelles, and we must have read for most of every day - in bed, on the beach, at the bar. Or to manage to go on holiday with all work done, with an “out of the office” message on all devices and with a heap of books. Then I could lie in bed all day without a conscience, just reading. My idea of heaven would be to be just sick enough not to get up, but not so sick I couldn’t read. So, the challenge is not to read The Week, The Spectator or The New Yorker, but to save that time for a book. I cannot go to bed without half an hour’s reading. I’m unable to say no, so find myself working on my laptop in planes, trains and the back of taxis, so I never read a book in the day. But I confess I only read the first one.ĭescribe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how). Well, I think the obvious example of rather clichéd writing selling like hot cakes is “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Frankly the story and the sex carry you along and you somehow don’t mind that this is hardly literature. Can a great book be badly written? What other criteria can overcome bad prose? And the pictures of the plantation owners’ pampered life before the Civil War, and the devastation after it, are wonderfully vivid. But she’s intensely real and you cannot but root for her. On the contrary, she is vain, foolish, spoiled and selfish. Of course, it’s dated and attitudes to slavery have rightly changed, but it’s still an amazing love story, with a heroine who is far from anodyne. I’m not sure you’d classify “Gone With the Wind,” by Margaret Mitchell, as a classic novel, but I read it recently and found it just wonderful. Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time? Proudie, the bishop’s wife, are absolute gems. The portraits of Archdeacon Grantly, more concerned with the quality of his dinner than the welfare of his flock, and (in “Barchester Towers”) of the aptly named Mrs. “The Warden” and its sequels in the “Chronicles of Barsetshire” series tell the story of a modest gentle man, trying to do the right thing in a toxic atmosphere of snobbery and smug church hierarchy. I love all those Victorian writers like Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontë sisters, but Trollope is, I think, the best. It’s been my favorite book for half my life. I reread “The Warden,” by Anthony Trollope. It’s a complex and fascinating subject and Engelhart writes with intelligence and compassion. “The Inevitable,” by the journalist Katie Engelhart, follows the experience of dying people in jurisdictions where assisted dying is legal. I campaign for the right to get help to die if you are terminally ill and living a horrible life. Then there’s “The Inevitable,” a really beautifully written book about a difficult subject: assisted dying. I liked “Where the Crawdads Sing,” by Delia Owens - a charming story of a wild girl child growing up alone in the U.S. My husband accuses me of slavishly buying any book that is well reviewed and any book anyone at all recommends. So I’ve finally aborted my attempts to read “Ulysses” (I bought a crib for it and found I preferred the crib to the book), and abandoned half a dozen self-published books by friends hoping for an endorsement (sigh!) and one or two books I’d started but somehow run out of steam on. I’ve recently been forced to cull a few because I couldn’t see over the pile and there was no room for the mandatory mug of tea.
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