The Shell Seekers

Instead of lamenting all the posts which I intend to write and haven’t written, I am merely going to leave you with a short book pointer.

This, Rosamunde Pilcher’s ‘The Shell Seekers’, is a beautiful, beautiful book. I for one will be seeking out more by the same author. It is lovingly told and excellently written with real depth of character. It essentially follows the life of sixty-four-yr-old Penelope and her family but does so without being trite or overly sentimental as the descriptions on Amazon have a tendency to make it sound. It is gorgeous, light-hearted, easy to read without being trashy, and I thoroughly recommend it!

(Especially if you have an eighteen year old sister who is intent on reading Literature with a capital L for all she’s worth. I couldn’t agree more, Fi and Jenny.)

Music and Silence

One of the offerings from Father Christmas this year (or Mother Christmas, to be more precise) was a novel – Rose Tremain’s ‘Music and Silence’. I read it in Shropshire, and I have to say that it was wonderfully written and I enjoyed it a lot (go read! go read!).

But what I really wanted to post was a rather lovely, and apt, couple of lines:

“For what is truly verifiable in life, I ask you? Only mathematics!
Two plus two will always and for evermore equal four,
but how is this going to resolve what boils in my brain?”

I don’t hate my degree, far from it, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem that important in life and that’s all there is to it.

Today, incidentally, is an OK day :-)

Possession

xkcd never does fail to cheer me up!

On the lines of today’s comic, have any of you read ‘Possession’ by A.S. Byatt? If not, I’m recommending it now. It is a clever, touching, fascinating story, and does a wonderful take-off of literary academia. It’s quite hard-going in places stylistically, and probably not one for people who can’t stand poetry in any shape or form… but for people who like literature, who like history, who like a good ol’ love story with a twist, it’s a beautiful novel. To quote an Amazon reviewer, “it does need patience, which is hardly a modern virtue, but the rewards are worth it”.

(In fact I read it last summer on a campsite in France. But I was reminded of it by xkcd, and it seemed as good a time as any to refer you all on :-) )

‘ “What is it? My dear?”

“Ah, how can we bear it?”

“Bear what?”

“This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?”

“We can be quiet together, and pretend – since it is only the beginning – that we have all the time in the world.” ‘