If I’ve scheduled this correctly (and I don’t always do a very good job of that sort of thing), it should be going live at noon on 1st July. In other words, halfway through the year 2021. As we’ve reached this point in the year, I figured it was good time to look back on my progress. Let’s have a quick look at some stats.
April should be easy I thought. I’ve already got a few options for most of the letters. It’s really nothing to worry about. To be fair, it wasn’t. At least it wasn’t until I got to “i”. I’m pretty sure that I don’t own any books that start with that letter but I also know that I owned a copy of I Capture the Castle at some point. I never thought I’d find something that I wanted to read but, with no time to spare, I managed another month. Here’s how I did it.
I love the idea of a 4-day working week. Starting working on Tuesday was a lot less stressful than it will be tomorrow. Although, I can’t say that it’s been a good week but that’s mostly because the other guy in my role was on holiday. That means I was doing the work of 2 people over a shorter period. Friday was a particularly rough day and I was glad to see the weekend. I really need some time off. I can see things only getting busier over the next few weeks. So, I’m also getting ready for my reading to drop off dramatically too. I’m already struggling to read and am having to resort to audiobooks to get me through. I’ve got nothing against them but I’m not exactly concentrating on them as much as I should. I’m about to tackle our super short book club read, which I hope will get me out of this funk. But we’ll see.
It’s not very often that I watch a film adaptation after just reading the book, so I normally don’t get as good a sense of just how much is changed. I mean, yes, I have an idea but it’s never quite as vivid as it was this week. I watched The Remains of the Day the evening after I’d finished reading the book. That’s pretty damn fresh in my mind. As such, I was probably a little more annoyed by the changes made to the original story. Well, after you’ve read something as perfect as Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, how can a film adaptation ever be as good? Still, I knew that I couldn’t let this get in the way too much. I don’t want to be one of those book fans who always pretend the book is massively better than the film.
As much as I enjoyed Klara and the Sun last month, it did leave me with a great desire to reread this beauty. I read a fair few reviews that described the ending of Ishiguro’s latest novel was the most heartbreaking of his career. Yes, it was sad but the most devastating ending? He’s an author who doesn’t think twice about leaving you on the edge of an emotional precipice but I found Klara quite tame in comparison to his earlier work. Particularly this one. I honestly believe that The Remains of the Day has one of the saddest endings I’ve ever read. Yet, it’s a sad ending with hopefulness. This really is quite a book and it was definitely about time that I reread it.
Happy Easter folks! I hope you’re all having a fabulous Easter weekend. As expected, I’ve spent barely any time this bank holiday reading. I’ve managed to have a good time though. I managed to see a friend that I’ve not seen properly for ages and then we’re having a small family get-together today. It’s nice that things are slowly getting better in the UK. Fingers crossed that we don’t end up in another lockdown in a few months. Although, maybe that would help my reading stay more consistent?
I try not to pay too much attention to literary prizes. It’s mostly because I like to decide what I read based on my own parameters. I don’t agree with lists that offer you a list of books that everyone should read. Who is to say which books everyone should read? Wo has the same taste as everyone else? It all goes back to the canon and who decided which books were deemed appropriate. I won’t go into it all again but I’m not the kind of person who automatically picks up an author because they’ve won a prize. However, I was super excited to get my hands on Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. There was an awful lot of pressure on him to create something great and it did concern me that he was writing about AI. After all, we’ve seen literary fiction writers crash and burn when they attempted science fiction. Although, at least Ishiguro has previous.
