The Classics

It’s been quiet around here and over at the Book Blog through the winter, which means that I suspect myself of being a hedgehog through the colder seasons. Without fail I seem to retreat in to a sort of creative hibernation.  Others probably just associate me with the prickles and a tendency to roll up in to a ball when confronted with a scary experience.

That aside it is now a case of the sun showing itself more often and for longer, and so it is time to dust off the winter sleepiness and to start building up to a summer of reading, writing and general creative expansion.  My first steps out of winter and in to spring will be bearing fruit over at 1001 Books in November when a review of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is published.  I’ve long been a Christie fan, so you know the review will be a positive one.

The next step was to peruse the choices on the very long list and decide what I could ease myself back into reading and writing about.  I tossed up the option of going with a completely unknown to me author, Don DeLillo, but eventually I settled for revisiting old favourites.

I’m currently 100 pages in to a multiple time re-read of Emma by Jane Austen.  My eyesight may not thank me as I peer squinting at the tiny text of my Penguin Classics edition.  When I was a newly-minted university student I read the 428 pages of fine print over a two day period.  Unsurprisingly I found out that this was the way to give yourself a headache, and to find out that you are slightly long-sighted.  Nowadays in my dotage, I have glasses (ostensibly for long stints at a computer) and less blocks of time to devote to reading this quantity of text.  Young children are not keen on missing out on breakfast, lunch or dinner in the natural way of things after all.

So Roger Ackroyd and Emma are my stepping stones back in to regular reading and reviewing.  Let’s just sit back and see if they can do it.  If I make my way through the 300+ pages left to me, and afterwards produce something akin to an intelligible review then I think I will try out a new-to-me author before scurrying back to the Austen cannon for some well-loved shelter.

Indeed I am a hedgehog, and the Classics are my hedgerow!

What are you reading and do you have a hedgerow to return to?