Skipped another Sunday
I didn't blog yesterday, I was too tired. I'm still sick with a cold, and yesterday my friend came to visit me. I only hope she doesn't catch this thing, because it's no joke. This is the kind of cold that doesn't make you sick enough to stay in bed, only sick enough to have a head full of phlegm and feel tired. There's nothing to do except be patient.
The next book on my 100 books list is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I just finished rereading it today. By the way, it's a great bonus of this particular meme, that I have to reread all my old favourites to be able to describe them. I read a lot these days, I can tell you.
Anyway, The thirteenth tale is a story of a young woman, Margaret Lea,
who loves books and reading, and who gets the opportunity to write the biography of Vida Winter, the most popular writer in Britain. Miss Winter has told many stories of her life to various reporters, but all of them have been lies. Now she is terminally ill, and she wants to tell the truth at last. Margaret interviews her and is drawn into a world of twins, secrets, questions of identity and ghosts. She has to come to terms with Miss Winter's story, as well as her own secrets. There is another story always in the background, Jane Eyre. You don't have to have read it before reading The Thirteenth Tale, but it adds to the experience.
What I love about this book is the familiarity of it. There are the family secrets, there are ghosts (of a kind), there is reading, there is a governess, there are old and young women, looking at life from their own angles. And more than anything else, there is a love of literature, and familiar descriptions of what it's like to read. An excerpt:
All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes - characters even - caught in the fibres of your clothes, and when you open the new book they are still with you.
I do know that feeling. I think it explains why, after reading something poignant and realistic, it feels impossible to go back to reading light romance or comic novels. There's a feeling of foreboding in the background, not caused by the new novel, but a residue from the previous one. It's like the horror movies, where there is an innocent scene with scary background music, or vice versa, a merry-go-round music background to a murder...
Although there is a familiarity of the themes in The Thirteenth Tale, it doesn't feel clicheed. For example, the main characters are unmarried, and romance plays hardly any part in the story. The women are shown to be resourceful in their own right, not as passive objects. The story also plays with the usual conventions of novels. Margaret declares that she loves old books, because they have proper beginnings and ends. In the story she tells, there is also a clear beginning, a middle part, and an ending. But the back story, the story she slowly uncovers, isn't as clear. What exactly happened? As a reader, I was left to puzzle over whether the story was a happy or an unhappy one.
I finished another shawl, which I had the yarn for, and now I'm between things to knit once more. Also, and more importantly, I finished the proofreading job, and now I get to write another bill, and get some more money. That's always nice. And it's great to finally start to have something of a good reputation. I'm getting work from people who have been referred to me by previous clients, and I don't even have to advertise. Who knows, maybe I can actually start my own firm one day. Until then, I will continue as a freelancer and active blogger:). See you tomorrow!
The next book on my 100 books list is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I just finished rereading it today. By the way, it's a great bonus of this particular meme, that I have to reread all my old favourites to be able to describe them. I read a lot these days, I can tell you.
Anyway, The thirteenth tale is a story of a young woman, Margaret Lea,
who loves books and reading, and who gets the opportunity to write the biography of Vida Winter, the most popular writer in Britain. Miss Winter has told many stories of her life to various reporters, but all of them have been lies. Now she is terminally ill, and she wants to tell the truth at last. Margaret interviews her and is drawn into a world of twins, secrets, questions of identity and ghosts. She has to come to terms with Miss Winter's story, as well as her own secrets. There is another story always in the background, Jane Eyre. You don't have to have read it before reading The Thirteenth Tale, but it adds to the experience.
What I love about this book is the familiarity of it. There are the family secrets, there are ghosts (of a kind), there is reading, there is a governess, there are old and young women, looking at life from their own angles. And more than anything else, there is a love of literature, and familiar descriptions of what it's like to read. An excerpt:
All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes - characters even - caught in the fibres of your clothes, and when you open the new book they are still with you.
I do know that feeling. I think it explains why, after reading something poignant and realistic, it feels impossible to go back to reading light romance or comic novels. There's a feeling of foreboding in the background, not caused by the new novel, but a residue from the previous one. It's like the horror movies, where there is an innocent scene with scary background music, or vice versa, a merry-go-round music background to a murder...
Although there is a familiarity of the themes in The Thirteenth Tale, it doesn't feel clicheed. For example, the main characters are unmarried, and romance plays hardly any part in the story. The women are shown to be resourceful in their own right, not as passive objects. The story also plays with the usual conventions of novels. Margaret declares that she loves old books, because they have proper beginnings and ends. In the story she tells, there is also a clear beginning, a middle part, and an ending. But the back story, the story she slowly uncovers, isn't as clear. What exactly happened? As a reader, I was left to puzzle over whether the story was a happy or an unhappy one.
I finished another shawl, which I had the yarn for, and now I'm between things to knit once more. Also, and more importantly, I finished the proofreading job, and now I get to write another bill, and get some more money. That's always nice. And it's great to finally start to have something of a good reputation. I'm getting work from people who have been referred to me by previous clients, and I don't even have to advertise. Who knows, maybe I can actually start my own firm one day. Until then, I will continue as a freelancer and active blogger:). See you tomorrow!