book reading – Page 2 – don't confuse the narrator

quibbles & niggles

Having picked up Pride and Prejudice to look up Bingley’s comments on accomplishments the other day, I decided to re-read the whole book.

Along with Kipling’s Kim, it’s one of my ‘comfort books’; this time, however, I wasn’t reading it while ill in bed, so perhaps I was more critical. Certainly it struck me that it would be hard to cite Austen as a role model for good writing.
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a ‘fuller’ understanding

I have finally had time to read the copy of the TLS that I bought over a month ago. There’s a piece entitled The brick-wall moment – What is poetry about? And other puzzles, which appears in a section labelled ‘Commentary’.

I’m not sure I’d have read it with quite the same attitude if I’d realised it was an edited extract from a book, but it was a lot more interesting than the formal review in the Independent of Who is Ozymandias? And other puzzles in poetry by John Fuller.
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motivation II

The survey I mentioned yesterday also had a question that asked “What is most likely to motivate you to READ a poem?” It gave the following list of possible reasons, from which you were allowed to choose up to three:

april 23rd

Lance Tooks drawing from Sketches from Spain

And the date offers a number of reasons to celebrate:

It’s World Book and Copyright Day, it’s traditionally celebrated as Shakespeare’s birthday and the day of his death, and it’s also the day Miguel de Cervantes died.

It’s St George’s Day, too, (San Jordi) and Castile Day – not to be confused with Bastille Day, of course – or, perhaps more accurately, El Día de Castile y León.

It seems to me quite apt to celebrate castles in Spain and the world of books on the same day, and it’s also appropriate that the picture accompanying this post is taken from Lance Tooks’ upcoming book Sketches from Spain, due out in May. (Thank you, Lance, for permission to use it!)
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