Norman Draper's Blog

Since my last, somewhat mournful blog, I'm pleased to say I've had a string of successes in my reading. Start off with Mark Helprin's "In Sunlight and In Shadow." Typical Helprin tome, coming in at 700 pages-plus. Big and heroic, a bit like something that might have been written generations ago. It's a quick read for a book so long, and lacks Helprin's usual mastery of a magical way of writing like no one else's. Occasionally, it lapses into bathos, but, on the whole I'd highly recommend it. I thought of Thomas Hardy's "Woodlanders" when I read it.

Then came a Joyce Carol Oates novel, which was okay, and a string of hilarious books by satirist Matt Haig, Christopher Moore, and, one of my favorites, the inimitable P.G. Wodehouse. So good to be back on a reading roll again!

False starts on three books. They failed to hold my attention. Sad to say that Barbara Kingsolver's "Flight Behavior" was among them. The other two were highly regarded in literary circles. Oh well, I couldn't make it past the first chapter of "The Sound and the Fury" either.

Here are a couple of books that hold out much greater promise: "Shadow Country," by the great Peter Matthiessen. and "The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories," by Saki. I had read "Killing Mr. Watson," by Matthiessen, before, but not his two successor novels. Mattiessen then cobbled all three together (and rewrote) to make the current epic.

Those fans of P.G. Wodehouse might enjoy Saki, whose fiction is more absurd, and has more satiric bite.