So we’re off to Phuket on Sunday. Need to pack some books to read on the beach. But what? Cal and I combed our shelves for unread tomes, and pulled down a big stack. We need to whittle it down some. But what to choose?
I don’t know that some of these are entirely appropriate for the beach, either. Pooh to that.
Here’s the shortlist, subject to amendments. To help us decide I’m including excerpts from the most negative Amazon reviews!
Madame du Pompadour (Nancy Mitford) – “If Madame De Pompadour was this boring, why did Louis put up with her?” (one star)
The Impressionist (Hari Kunzru) – “I tried very hard to find something redeeming in this book, a reason to continue reading. Finally, I thought I had, but it was only a spider crawling across the page.” (one star)
Catherine de Medici (Leonie Frieda) – “superficial and shallow” (two stars)
A Guide for the Perplexed (Jonathan Levi) – “The tanscendent power of a story” (five stars – there were only three reviews! But I’m eager to get some tanscendent power going on. Awesome.)
To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf) – “To the Lighthouse” is a rambling monotony, a lifeless droning. No matter how loudly the literary lemmings scream, that will always be so. (one star)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) – “It make “Tess of the D’Urburvilles” look like a fast-paced romp.” (one star)
Neuromancer (William Gibson) “Absolutely unreadable; I couldn’t force myself farther than 100 pages into this morass.” (one star) (this one’s a re-read, but I haven’t cracked the cover for 15 or 16 years)
The Best of Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories (Katherine Mansfield) “Reading these stories was a deeply enriching literary experience.” (five stars, clean sweep of the seven customer reviews)
Letter from America 1946-2004 (Alistair Cooke) – “a remarkable collection of essays” (five stars in every review, another clean sweep)
Good News, Bad News (David Wolstencroft) – “The good news is, I finished reading this book. The bad news is, I can’t believe I paid $8 for it.” (one star) (I don’t even know where this book came from, it seems to be a thriller of some kind, but it’s on the shelves and could be the most beach-appropriate book of the lot)
Advice and opinions welcome. Thanks to other advice I’ve already cut Peake’s Titus Groan and Thackeray’s The Virginians from the list. Utter foolishness.