Autumn reading!

September 4, 2012 by chestnutbookblog 3 Comments

I’ve had a wonderful Paralympic week, culminating in a session at the Athletics last night. It was absolutely awe-inspiring – the achievements of these athletes come across even more poignantly in person than on television. I had to bite back a  lump in my throat several times. The noise and colour of the stadium was also overwhelming – my pictures can’t really tell one thousand words here but give just a flavour of the magic:

Paralympic Athletics 3rd September 2012

Olympic Stadium 3rd September 2012

So I’ve been waving my Union Jack frantically over the last week rather than writing my blog. However, I settled down on Saturday with The Telegraph’s Review supplement (all reviews here) because there was a rather tempting special on the literary treats that Autumn has in store! So far, I’ve added Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth, Zadie Smith’s NW, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, Restoration and Merivel: A man of his time by Rose Tremain and Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford to my must-read list.

When I’ve not been at the Paralympics, I’ve been glued to Parade’s End on BBC2. I’ve never read or really noticed Ford Maddox Ford before, but I am enjoying this adaption so much. I also watched the documentary about Ford after the first episode. I would recommend it highly as it helped set the context of the novel for me. I really love the fact that Christopher, the hero, is such a man of principle. Honour is a quality often lacking in real life I think and I like reading about it. The documentary explained that in reality, Ford was a rather unscrupulous character and so he wrote Christopher as the man he rather wished to be. I think if I were ever to try to write something, I would also create a character who was everything I wished to be. It would be interesting to explore the consequences of that!