Recently, I started reading three new novels.
One of them I came across on a table in Waterstones, a new historical novel set in early medieval England, a period I’m very interested in. The cover is beautiful and the back cover is full of commendations for this wonderful new work of literature, praising not just its good writing but its insight and depth. Good to look at, something that would impart wisdom. I paid out my valuable money for it.
I did not finish the novel; I’m going to put it in recycling. I don’t even want to give it to charity because I can’t see the value in letting anyone else read it. Some of the praise on the cover was true: it was indeed well written, in the sense that the descriptions are vivid, it makes good use of the English language, the thoughts are well-phrased. This is indeed high-quality literature. The problem was, it was just disgusting.
‘People are... difficult to live with and bothersome’
I have been watching videos by Cecilia Blomdahl, a woman who lives on Svalbard, a Norwegian island in the Arctic …