Just Finished
Okay, I must admit, I got kind of stuck with Otter Country. It was all the internal eye-rolling at the overwrought Nice Middle-Class White Lady Deepening Her Connection with Nature stuff. I couldn’t take it after I realised I had another 220 pages of it left. So I did some fun re-reading to cleanse my palate and rejuvenate my interest. In rapid succession, I consumed Douglas Adams’ The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and Margaret Atwood’s Morning in the Burned House.

In Progress
I then started Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table and got completely sucked into the autobiographical narrative. It’s an account of his crossing, by cruise ship, from Sri Lanka to England when he was eleven. His prodigious powers of observation (and diary-keeping) made it an absorbing nostalgic indulgence, written at the request of his children. The navel-gazing and bite-sized, evocative, anecdotal layout of the chapters is exactly to my taste (see: my love for DW and LJ)..

Up Next
Miriam Darlington’s Otter Country. I’ll give it one more try. I always get the sense she’s just on the brink of using the phrase “spirit animal”. If she does, I’m letting it go.

After that, it’s David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. I got this for the bloke’s birthday, thinking it was The Bone Clocks. It turns out he’s already read it. Fortunately, his brother got him The Bone Clocks!
Does anyone else remember those closed-membership LJ communities where you had to post lists of your favourite things (books, films, etc) and then be judged by the members in order to be admitted? You know, those glorified “intellectual” popularity contests that those who've been judged similarly on, say, their looks or their taste in clothing or their preference in romantic partners should probably loathe on principle?

I remember starting to painstakingly assemble a list to apply for admission to a book community that I watched in order to pick up recommendations. And then I thought to myself, “Wait. I’m a scientist. I don’t read or review literary fiction or non-fiction for a living. I read books and watch films for pleasure, and I enjoy the authors I’ve either discovered for myself or found through friends or internet reviews. Do I really need to be judged inadequate and unworthy by a bunch of people who are getting their kicks out of telling others that their tastes are pedestrian and vulgar because they happen to actually like the required reading from their high school English classes? Or because they’ve never heard of that other Bronte sister? Or because they’d rather pick up a romance novel than, say, a famously impenetrable work, probably by a dead white guy? No. No, I don’t think I do.”

Just Finished
Ben Aaronovitch’s Foxglove Summer. PC (and magician) Peter Grant gets sent out of London to go tromping through the wilds of Herefordshire in a smelly 4x4 borrowed from a gay copper’s farmer boyfriend, looking for some missing children. Highly enjoyable, although I’ve already forgotten most of the details. Full of funny little nods to pop culture, including my absolute favourite Contains dialogue - mild spoiler ). A+ would read again with pleasure.

In Progress
Miriam Darlington’s Otter Country. This was a Christmas present from 2013, embarrassingly (see: 2014: the lost year). The title is not deceptive and there are indeed many otters involved. I find myself internally rolling my eyes a lot as I’m reading it, though. I’m enjoying the factual tidbits about otter habits and otter population fluctuation in the UK and otter conservation, but the florid, breathless style of the narrator when she goes on about her otter-finding quest exasperates me.

Up next
I’m not sure. Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table was going to be next but I may have temporarily had my fill of flowery poetical styles once I reach the end of Otter Country. I might go back to sci-fi for a bit.
.

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