Wednesday, August 01, 2007

not a book blog either

I have just finished reading Trollope. Not the old gentleman, Anthony, but a distant relative and contemporary writer, Joanna. Her big, boisterous novel The Taverners' Place chronicles the Taverner family from the mid-19th century until England's entry into WW II. This novel is worthy of her literary inheritance; big family, big house, big ideas, big social upheavals, big losses, big changes. My next big read, after re-reading Anne Rice's Cry to Heaven, prompted by my recent reading of Kingsley Amis' The Alteration, will be by the original Trollope. I will attempt The Pallisers, a six-volume novel about the politician Plantagenet Palliser and (in all but the last book) his wife Lady Glencora. The plots involve English politics in varying degrees, specifically in and around Parliament. I may get bored silly after one or two volumes of these stuffed shirts and their addlepated side kicks, but thought I'd give it a try. If I can't bear it all, perhaps I'll try Barchester Towers instead. That series is about the clergy. Knowing a bit about ecclesiastic politics as I do, these novels could be even more boring than the Pallisers.

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