What I'm reading ...

I have started Pontoon: A Lake Wobegon Novel by Garrison Keillor. I was in the US and wanted to line up some easy reading. Being in the States always makes me think of Garrison Keillor, The Prairie Home Companion and The News from Lake Wobegon, so this was an easy choice. Here’s the blurb:

In Lake Wobegon lives a good Lutheran lady who wishes for her ashes placed inside a bowling ball and dropped into the lake. Meanwhile, a wedding between a veterinary aromatherapist and her boyfriend Brent is set to take place aboard a pontoon boat. A delegation of renegade Lutheran pastors from Denmark has come to town, and there's Raoul of the cigars and tinted shades, come to visit his elderly lover. All is in readiness for the wedding - the French champagne, the flying Elvis, the giant duck decoys - and then something quite unexpected happens . . .

Words And Rules: The Ingredients of Language - by Steven Pinker

This is a serious book and not an easy read. There is lots of detail from an author who really knows his subject. Although there were long stretches of detailed discussion that I found hard, I just did a bit of speed-reading. Overall, the effort of getting through the book was well worth it. I learned a lot. Lots of questions were answered and there were new questions posed and answered too. I will never thing about language quite the same. To give an example: I went to the opticians to get new lenses in my glasses; I told someone that I was going there to get them “relensed”. I am sure that this word does not exist, but I could create it without any effort [thinking] and be quite sure that the listener would understand.

If you have an interest in language and how it works, this book is a must read.

What I’m reading ...

I have started Words And Rules: The Ingredients of Language by Steven Pinker. A friend read this and was looking for someone with whom to discuss it. It looked like just my kind of book, so I thought I’d give it a go. Here’s the blurb:

How does language work? How do children learn their mother tongue? Why do languages change over time, making Chaucer's English almost incomprehensible? Steven Pinker explains the profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple single phenomenon and examining it from every angle. That phenomenon - the existence of regular and irregular verbs - connects an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities: the history of languages; the illuminating errors of children as they begin to speak; the sources of the major themes in the history of Western philosophy; the latest techniques in identifying genes and imaging the living brain. Pinker makes sense of all of this with the help of a single, powerful idea: that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules.

Dead Like You - by Peter James.

As usual, this book fulfilled my expectations and and was a good read during a long flight and in down time thereafter. I did have some idea who the perpetrator of the crimes was before I got to the end, but, of course, I expected a twist and was not disappointed. As usual, it is very tempting to just forge on to the next book in the series, but I will resist.

What I'm reading ...

I have started Dead Like You by Peter James. I wanted a book that would be easy to read, but I could get my teeth into and this author has form.

Bring Up The Bodies - by Hilary Mantel

I started this book with some trepidation, as long historic novels are not really my thing. I was prepared to give it a go because many people have spoken highly of it. I read it for quite a while - 4 weeks perhaps - but only managed to get through about one third of the way through. Although the quality of the writing was very good - the author’s way with words is quite exceptional - I really could not go on. Life is rather too short. I identified a number of issues:

• this far through the book and nothing much has happened yet
• there are lots of unfamiliar words, most of which are not useful additions to my vocabulary [except possibly for Scrabble]; I was thankful for my Kindle’s easy access to a dictionary
• everything is written in the present tense, which I appreciate is not a unique style; I just wonder why
• I was often uncertain of whose actions were being described
• I did not feel I had a good picture of most of the characters, which added to my confusion when I forgot who the text was talking about at a particular point

All in all this was a shame, as it is quite an interesting period of history, but this book did not usefully contribute to my knowledge of it.