As I said in one of my earlier posts, the first, I believe, one of the reasons we picked Possession for this project is that it is a book both Lu and I (and it appears many others) have tried to read but abandoned after a few chapters. In fact, when I picked up my book to start this time around I still had the bookmark in it from where I abandoned it around page 50 sometime last year.
Possession isn’t an easy book to get into right away. Our opening narrator, a milquetoast scholar named Roland Mitchell, is hard to care about. And the Victorian poet he studies, Randolph Henry Ash, initially appears equally difficult to care about (especially if you are a reader like me that doesn’t especially love Victorian poetry) despite Roland’s discovery of the drafts of some letters to a mysterious woman — soon revealed as fellow Victorian poet Christabel Lamott — in one of Randolph’s books.
Search: #readbyatt
I have to admit, I haven’t been entirely surprised by some of plot twists. Without being too spoilery, I think I’ve been reading under the assumption that Randolph and Christabel did have a relationship and that the relationship was much more involved that even Roland and Maud suspected. So when certain revelations came about in Sabine’s diary, I wasn’t shocked.
Whew, section two of this read-a-long was a doozy. It was slightly more pages than the first section, and boy, did that chapter with the letters take awhile to get though.
Anyway, I liked the format from the last recap, so I’m going to use that again. (If you missed it, here are my thoughts from chapters 1 through 6). You can also catch my co-host, Lu’s, thoughts on this section here.
Woo! I’m made it through the first six chapters of Possession! This is a feat I have never accomplished, so I feel like a read-a-long winner no matter what happens next.
I’m not sure how to structure these updates, so I’m just going to meander and see where this goes. Feel free to join up the conversation in the comments or leave links to your posts there too (I’ll watch today and make sure they don’t get sent to spam).
Happy Friday! Today is doubly exciting: It’s the end of the week, and it’s the day that Lu (Regular Rumination) and I chose to announce the super informal read-a-long we’ve organized for A.S. Byatt’s Booker Prize winning novel Possession.
Why Possession? Well, it’s on my pile for the 2013 TBR Challenge, which is one appeal. But more importantly, it’s a book both Lu and I have tried and failed to read at least once before but that we really want to get through. Many readers that I know love this book, and I want to love it too (or at least give it the old college try).
Time // 9:40 a.m.
Place // At my very messy desk. I need a system for corralling paper.
Eating // Strawberries, powdered sugar donuts, and peach Greek yogurt
Drinking // Blood Orange Cinnamon tea
Reading // I had a crazy week at work, so I didn’t have as much time to read as I would have liked. I did finish Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins and the first section of Telegraph Avenue for #readchabon. Yesterday I also read a few chapters of A Chance to Win by Jonathan Schuppe, a book about a little league baseball team in Newark, N.J.
This month I’ll be co-hosting an informal readalong of Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon with the wonderful Florinda of The 3R’s Blog.
Why Telegraph Avenue? That is actually a funny story, I think (or, at least a story typical of people who love more books than they can actually read). Last year, Florinda and I both got copies of the book at an author breakfast at Book Expo America. I remember that Florinda was especially thrilled to get an ARC of the book. We both had plans to read it right away… but we didn’t.
The Finish Line
This post has gotten a little wonky, trying to do updates while also not adding new posts. At this point it’s in reverse order, with the most recent stuff at the top. Whatever. That’s not really important.
I think I had a pretty successful Bloggiesta. I ended up with 17 things on my list and managed to cross off 11 of them and partially complete another four. I’m most happy with the fact that I got my About Me and Review Policy pages updated. I also added a contact form with a plugin, which will be nice to have.
But that’s about it. I’m blogged out. Happy Bloggiesta, everyone!
Time // 8:51 a.m.
Place // At my desk in my office — I need to get out more.
Eating // Chobani Greek yogurt, peach flavored
Drinking // Bigelow Lemon Lift tea
Reading // The only book I finished this week was The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan, despite feeling like I was reading a lot. I think I got into a mode where I wanted to read All The Things and ended up reading nothing. But, I’m hoping for some reading time today to finish a couple of April releases: David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls and Mitchell Zuckoff’s Frozen in Time.
