It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? 1-30-23

Bookshelf with text across the top reading "Speaking of Books..."

The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver

The Motion of the Body Through Space (Harper, 2020) by Lionel Shriver

Shriver’s essential bugbear is that, taken to extremes, the concept of cultural appropriation prohibits the act of fiction writing itself: “If writers have to restrict their imagination to personal experience,” she has stated, “the only option left is memoir.” The grand irony of course is that The Motion of the Body Through Space is a novel drawn from the first-hand experience of a writer who monitors her frequency of star jumps and has been on the receiving end of a pasting for her views on diversity. Certainly it’s problematic – but few authors can be as entertainingly problematic as Shriver. — The Guardian

Currently Not Reading

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

The Last Samurai (Miramax Hyperion, 2000) by Helen DeWitt

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt was my first book of 2023, but I had to set it aside temporarily last week, because I was too close to the end to pack it for a trip to England, but too far from the end to finish it before I left. (Writing this post in the airport, totally exhausted, waiting for the return flight to Boston, so please forgive any mistakes!

We had less than one full day of sightseeing in London, where The Last Samurai is set. We did ride the Tube a lot, though, and a number of scenes are set on the subway trains and in the stations of London’s Underground.

On the Tube!
We found our way back to the airport hotel from this area.

We didn’t have time for museums, libraries or bookstores because London was just a brief stop on our trip to Blackpool. Someday I’d like to go back and do a walking tour like this one suggested on the A Lady in London blog:

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