On The Book Piles - January 2016

(Prepared in advance, for holiday cover. Many of these books will be finished in the thirty hours of travelling!)

I'm not here right now. This is a projection from the pre-Miami days, before everything became Spanish-based and I changed my name to Pablo. This is the beginning of a probably intermittently recurring feature about what's on or in the - gasp! - piles of books in progress right now, and how exactly they're going. So, let's go.

'A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court' by Mark Twain

This novel is taking forever to read. Now, at far more than halfway through, it feels as if the same hammer of satire or criticism has been wielded far too many times on the same topics. Yes, it is at times funny, but there's not enough story there to have kept it going for so long. Perhaps it will pick up as I go into the finale.

'Jamaica Inn' by Daphne Du Maurier

I'm only a few pages in, and worrying that the Hitchcock film may have spoilt the whole thing. It's got to better than that movie, at least? Hopefully, it will be better than the Hitchcock of  Du Maurier's other famous novel, 'Rebecca', which was so dismal and overly long for its story, that it became interminable. This novel seems far better, in its stages.

'Journey To The West' (Volume 2) by Wu Cheng'en

Following on from volume one, what lies in story in volume two of this epic? Will Monkey finally be redeemed? Will the other questers Xuanzang, Friar Sand and Brother Pig make it to distant lands to bring back the Scriptures? Will the jokes be as good? Only time will tell.

'Armadale' by Wilkie Collins

The third of Collins' four great novels, and the novel that I was reading on my Kindle before it self-destructed. Will the saga of the Armadale family conclude in a better way than I think, or does manipulation and scandal await all?

'Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat' by Ernest Bramah

A LibraryThing recommendation, and one which promises much. Is it as funny and witty in its opening pages as 'Bridge of Birds'? No, not quite, but perhaps this patchwork of stories will culminate in something entirely different?

'Dean Man's Cove' by Lauren St John

A recommendation from a dear friend, which is very promising in its early pages. A young adult novel, a mystery, and it might have some similarities to the beginning of 'Jamaica Inn'? We will see.

'The Complete Peanuts: 1955-1956' by Schulz

Schultz in his early pomp, where Linus forms his attachment to his blanket, Schroeder reached full Beethoven worship, and Lucy becomes the full fussbudget. Charlie Brown plays space alien.

'Jokes And Their Relation To The Unconscious' by Sigmund Freud

It's fascinating that Freud devoted so much attention to humour and jokes, but halfway through this novel it seems as if they do have some interesting connections to the unconscious. Many classifications of the types of jokes, and the

'The Voyage Of The Beagle' by Charles Darwin

Another one of the books that have hung around for ages, due to book blocking. Darwin's account of his legendary voyage is fascinating both for the political and social history, as well as the natural sciences he was famous for. Want to know about South America? This one place to go.

'The Archetypes And The Collective Unconscious' by C.G. Jung

Longest standing non-fiction book on the piles, whis was abandoned at some point, but will be picked back up when Freud's joke book is done. Jung certainly knew what he was doing, but is very dense and difficult to read...

'Histories' by Herodotus

The legendary first history book in existence. Herodotus recounted tales from his own recent and classical histories. More stories than you can count, and one of the source materials that underpins classical history as a whole.