Total relaxation
I’ve been on holiday in the Cotswolds this week, so I don’t have much to say about writing (it’s hard to write with seven other people in an idyllic log cabin – boo hoo!) or publishing (a whole shiny week off work!) but, of course, I’ve been reading.
I read a collection of Chekov’s short stories, which were all good individually; towards the end of the collection, though, the stories started feeling slightly repetitive, so I think they’re probably best dipped in and out of. I also read Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, which is a novel about the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, the feminist writer he had an affair with. It was beautifully written, but slightly relentless. It was based on fact, and Horan says that she adhered as closely to her sources as she could, which was really interesting – the ‘women as property’ pointed was hammered home a little too much for my liking. I know, as a twenty-first century woman, I’m incredibly lucky that gender equality has come so far and I do lose patience with the issue fairly quickly; I should have more time for the cause, but I’ve never felt that it’s affected me directly (naive, I know).
On my to-read list this week are Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and an introduction to philosophy. I’ll let you know how I get on.
