It was quite fitting that Thursday was World Book Day when I got to spend most of last week being paid to read and occasionally answer the telephone. I managed to finish off The Third Man, Anna K., Moby D. and get 400 or so pages into Middlemarch. I have to say that I was very disappointed by the tale of the aforementioned whale. Why did no one warn me (and by no one I mean my mother) that it is a very dull read all about whaling terminology and 101 things to do with blubber. The blinking chase isn’t until the last thirty or so pages! But, I guess that my soul is feeling all the better for finishing them off and I am now left craving a nice juicy mystery novel to even out all the high brow twaddle.
In honour of WBD, and if I had been more organised it would have appeared on the right day, here are my top seven books (in no particular order of preference).
- Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
- The Quiet American by Graham Greene
- Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Earlier in the week Claire was asked to pick which work of fiction she would like to suddenly discover to be true. As much as I really want to go through the wardrobe, I would have to pick Cold Comfort Farm as Flora Post is my type of heroine.
