Am feeling abnormally pleased with myself (now - but don't ask me this at 4.30am tomorrow, when I will be feeling less chipper) because I have just re-drafted Conscience 1 - and stuck a couple of pages up on the book blog, and drawn people to them on FB and Twitter. So far, so good. Doing the right things for my tiny followership!
But I am feeling even more pleased because as well as writing in the last 2-3 weeks I have been reading even more books - FM Mayor's The Rector's Daughter, Collins's The Moonstone, William Boyd's Waiting for the Sun Rise and am nearly through Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday.
I have always not bothered with Chesterton - he's one of the Church's secular saints whom I have been happy to ignore since he was a ghastly anti-semitic Tory of the worst sort. I also dislike people being "romantic" about the Catholic church - they are usually blinkered to the truth - by all means love and adhere to the Church if you wish - but an uncritical or worse highly apologist approach just won't do. However, I did quite enjoy the Father Brown stories when I was a child and I have a couple of people in my life who admire Chesterton so I assume there is more to like about him, and that my views are partial and prejudiced.
So in a spirit of open mindedness I began to read the book - and within a few paragraphs I felt it had an ugly, gloating tone - because of course it has a narrator - and the narrator is basically a smug, toad-like fellow who dislikes the modern world and all its cultural manifestations. So the first part of the book is quite descriptive - then the action begins, and becomes more and more fast and furious - one sees what happens, his clue trail is a little pathetic, and [spoiler alert!] the idea that Sunday would be the same person as the man in the darkened room occurred to me very early on. I have not quite finished - but I think I see what is going to happen, and sense that I shan't enjoy it as much as the end of Anna Karenina. It hasn't (although I may change my mind when I finish it) made me think twice about Chesterton. The Church however, is proposing to canonise him. There seems to be an absolute mania to make saints out of unsuitable people at present.
But I am feeling even more pleased because as well as writing in the last 2-3 weeks I have been reading even more books - FM Mayor's The Rector's Daughter, Collins's The Moonstone, William Boyd's Waiting for the Sun Rise and am nearly through Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday.
I have always not bothered with Chesterton - he's one of the Church's secular saints whom I have been happy to ignore since he was a ghastly anti-semitic Tory of the worst sort. I also dislike people being "romantic" about the Catholic church - they are usually blinkered to the truth - by all means love and adhere to the Church if you wish - but an uncritical or worse highly apologist approach just won't do. However, I did quite enjoy the Father Brown stories when I was a child and I have a couple of people in my life who admire Chesterton so I assume there is more to like about him, and that my views are partial and prejudiced.
So in a spirit of open mindedness I began to read the book - and within a few paragraphs I felt it had an ugly, gloating tone - because of course it has a narrator - and the narrator is basically a smug, toad-like fellow who dislikes the modern world and all its cultural manifestations. So the first part of the book is quite descriptive - then the action begins, and becomes more and more fast and furious - one sees what happens, his clue trail is a little pathetic, and [spoiler alert!] the idea that Sunday would be the same person as the man in the darkened room occurred to me very early on. I have not quite finished - but I think I see what is going to happen, and sense that I shan't enjoy it as much as the end of Anna Karenina. It hasn't (although I may change my mind when I finish it) made me think twice about Chesterton. The Church however, is proposing to canonise him. There seems to be an absolute mania to make saints out of unsuitable people at present.
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