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Big books


It is truly bad to use a book for a doorstop but I needed some and a couple of big books seemed like a good choice.  I read the Alan Bennet book a year or so ago but Don Watson ruminating on the Australian Bush has just about defeated me.  It is interesting enough but is more than I have been able to take in many sittings over a couple of years.  And that leads to this week's reading which is another big book.

Do you like to read big books or shorter ones?



A book I have read recently
Grand Days by Frank Moorehouse - chosen because it was on the Australian reading list and available in the local library so I decided to tackle it despite it being 700 pages.  I enjoyed the story of Edith Campbell Berry, a wide-eyed junior diplomat at the League of Nations.  She is quite forthright and has an interesting sex life which I suspect to some extent is because she is a female character written by a man.  This is the first book of a trilogy and even though I found her intriguing I don't think I am up for any more of Edith.

Goodie gumdrops I bought another big book this week ... Les Murray's Collected Poems 2018.  Another 700 pages but I will slowly savour this one.


Comments

  1. I don't like big books. I'm using two old encyclopedias on my desk to place my laptop on and this is an excellent use of these books. The other 18 went into the bin! I do like Les Murray's poems and would certainly read that book.

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    1. I have a set of encyclopaedias from the 1930s. (From my parents home) They are amusing to dig into sometimes to see how the world has changed.

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  2. Wow....700 pages!!! No, too big for me. LOL!

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    1. Usually too big for me too. I much prefer shorter books but now I am reading classics I am finding big books are the go.

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  3. The first big books that come to mind for me are those Tom Clancy spy novels, which could get up to over 1200 pages. The quality of the books took a nose dive after The Bear And The Dragon, and he started writing with collaborators, and then died. The books written now under his name are by chosen authors, but nowhere near the same level that he had when he was at his prime. They still tend to be long, and still tend to be tech-obsessed.

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    1. I have never read Tom Clancy. Now I know not to try - 1200 pages!

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    2. He once wrote a whole chapter on what goes on within a nuclear bomb at the moment of detonation. As opposed to simply writing a paragraph centered on 'it went off'.

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    3. Crikey, I have grown to like description in the classic novels but that type of description wouldn't do me at all!

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  4. I never knew about the Australian reading list, have to check it! At the moment I'm reading the autobiography "Kangaroo Dundee" by Chris Barns and I sure enjoy when he describes places that I've been to. Pro of the kindle: you can ignore how "big" it is, it gives me the time remaining. Con... to small to stop a door ;-)

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    1. The Australian reading list is the top 50 books chosen by the abc book club. You will find the list here
      https://www.listchallenges.com/top-50-australian-books

      Reading big books on electronic devices freaks me out even more. I have started reading Middlemarch and it says it has 5152 pages!

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  5. I've Just read "Snowy" by Brad Collis. It is so interesting. it is all about how the Snowy Scheme helped changed Australian Society. It also describes the political push and shove that goes on when it comes to sharing water and power.

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    1. Oh yes lots of push and shove on big projects like that. It would be unlikely to get up today and yet some of these big things are nation building.

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  6. Love big books Joan Elizabeth, you can invest emotion in a big book, become attached to the characters. Although it makes coming to the end of the book a wee bit heartbreaking 😉

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    1. I had a feeling you would like big books. I have a little bit of a problem with 'investing emotion' because I want to keep on reading and that makes me sit up late at night or become anti-social with my hubby. Classic/literary novels don't have quite as much impact in that regard, they seem to have a slower pace that can be set aside when necessary whereas less complex novels bubble along and just demand to be read until the end.

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