Waterland | 
pickI have read two Graham Swift novels in a row! First Mothering Sunday now Waterland. What a marvellous writer he is!
This book is complex yet very readable. It‘s a family saga told by a school teacher to his history class. He tells his family history with all its grief and tragedy. And it tells a story of water, specifically The Fens in England, referencing historical events. I will look out for his other books 📚 #literature
pick***** An extraordinary book which takes its time to reflect upon history and how it is intersected by curiosity and made up of stories. A painful retelling of the past through war incest sexual misadventures murder and disaster Swift makes us see that history is a process of making unmaking and remaking and that the past can only be buried for so long. Before it re-emerges from the silt. Loved it!
My humble model for progress is the reclamation of land Which is repeatedly, never- endingly retrieving what is lost. A dogged ,vigilant business. A dull yet valuable business. A hard inglorious business. But you shouldn‘t go mistaking the reclamation of land for the building of empires.
Children,there is this thing called civilisation. It‘s built of hopes and dreams. It‘s only an idea. It‘s not real. It‘s artificial. No one ever said it was real. It‘s not natural. No one ever said it was natural. It‘s built by the learning process; by trial and error. It breaks easily. No one said it couldn‘t fall to bits. And no one ever said it would last forever.
Yeah, I've had more successful reading months for sure. I did finish one other book that was started in March. My #bookspin will get finished off this weekend. And I'm off for a masked raid 😷 of my local independent bookshop 📚before making up May's list as I think ebooks are just not doing it for me at the mo! I feel that dead trees 🌳🌲are required about now (though sustainable ones hopefully).
so-soThis was fine but I‘m a bit a a loss for why it was included in the #1001books list. I liked the structure of it and the way time slipped around but it mostly felt like fairly average historical fiction that got a bit melodramatic for me at times. I feel like there has to be some level of meaning I‘m missing cause I didn‘t really get anything from this.
pick#readingenvysummerchallenge Why did i leave it so long to read this wonderful story about the English fenland (definitely a place i want to visit). Mixing history of the area with an intimate story of a man, a teacher, from his childhood with his widower lock keeper father and damaged br as he explores sexual feelings to his later years as tragic events in those early yrs impact on his and his wife's life. Beautifully written and fascinating.
What i love about rdng challenges is exploring new bks + also digging out my pile of books bought but unread and languishing unloved. So for #readingenvysummerchallenge category swampy i found this book and wow it is so far a brilliant read, set in the fens i am loving the story, the history and the writing. And for anyone who kindly liked my #booked2019 dilemma i looked in that pile for genre busting and found Rivers of London Ben aaranovitch.
A novel I'd never heard of, by the author of the incomparable Mothering Sunday.
so-soWhat a weird book. I liked the concept of the History teacher telling stories to his class. I liked the description and history of The Fens (a place in England I had never heard of) and I liked most storylines which all came neatly together in the end.
I just wonder if Swift needed all of them, if the story wouldn't have been just as powerful with a little less of, well, of everything. #booker #1001books #manbooker
panCame home from a fancy French birthday lunch for my mom to find the yard flooded and the water meters submerged in an oil-sheen muck that there's no way I'm reaching into. Utility guy, get here, stat!
While the rest of athletic readers were clocking time, I was celebrating my wedding anniversary at Doe Bay on Orcas Island. I read some, hiked/clambered/strolled/wandered some, soaked a little, ate a lot and read a little more. Waterland presents a new landscape to me, totally unlike the Pacific NW, and Graham Swift presents a style unlike any author I've read. He speaks to reader, as if he was a teacher lecturing about the value of history.
