Between books

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the state of being between books is extremely disquieting to some of us. Well, to me. And maybe it's only acknowledged by the handful of people who know me well enough to know that I get very twitchy when I am, as I say, between books.

 Even worse, I am realizing, is to be between books after having read a couple of what might be called, more or less accurately, "stinkers." Oh, Beatrix Lehmann's Rumour of Heaven probably wasn't really as bad as all that. It just didn't so much hold my attention, and I tended to fall asleep while holding it in the evening. That could have been because I've been tired lately. But it doesn't go on my list of favorite books read, no matter how long such a list might be.

 It would, however, fall somewhat higher on that infinite list than The Mitford Mysteries which book, thank god, I got from the library. I'd read a good review for it."I like Nancy Mitford and I like mysteries," I said to myself. "This is the book for me!" Alas, I was so wrong. I'd forgotten that what I liked was a decently crafted mystery. You can't declare at the end of chapter 1 that "no one saw her alive again" and then have the victim weakly waving as she is carried off the train and then slowly dying in a hospital some chapters later. No, you cannot. One might also ask how a laundress's daughter who picks pockets to get by gets hired as a nursery maid in a decent family. Oh, Ms Fellowes is maybe related to the man behind Downton Abbey, but has she never seen the first act of My Fair Lady?

 So I'm feeling a little skittish picking up the next book. I thought briefly about Moby Dick, a book that Scott loves and that I've never read, but I'm worried that it will also disappoint and that would be bad. I realized I want something less challenging, and with less on the line, so to speak. I said, in fact, that I wanted a nice book about cats. (I may have been talking to Gradka at the time.) And then I went into another room and had a look at the shelves. I determined that I didn't have any unread Trollope (and wasn't I disappointed to learn, immediately after finishing The Duke's Children, that there is now an unabridged version of that book out? It seems Trollope's publisher insisted he cut some 65,000 words  from his 200,000-word manuscript before it could be published. A few years back some enterprising person restored all those cut words. The full-length version is supposed to be quite good. But I'm not about to reread that volume quite so soon, even in a restored version. I digress). But a few shelves over from the Trollope is Antonia White and, when suffering from writer's block, Antonia wrote a 120 pages of fluff called Minka & Curdy. Tagline: "The enchanting story of a writer and her cats." There are illustrations. I think it's just the thing to get me through this traumatic period. Then maybe I'll go whaling.