charles barrow's writing

November's theme, on BookTube and the like, is Non-Fiction. Non-Fiction November. It's got a nice ring to it. However, I always have a non-fiction book on the go (currently Wintering by Katherine May) so I decided to stay alliterative but go off piste and, indeed, go 'no nonsense' by reading two of the biggest books on my shelves. I'll admit that I do suffer a bit from Big Book Fear (it's a real thing) so these books represent a real challenge for me. The two big beasts in question are; Ducks, Newburyport (2019) by Lucy Ellmann, and The Count of Monte Cristo (1846) by Alexandre Dumas. These are real chunky tomes. Ducks is 987 pages long, Cristo is 872. And they couldn't be more different in style. Ducks is set in C21st America, its style is  ultra modern  stream-of-consciousness,  and its USP is that it's written in one, very long, sentence (in reality it's about 8 sentences) but the author frequently uses the phrase 'The fact that..' where o...

 #Victober continued So I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, as my attempt to get involved in this year's Victober. And you'll know if you read my last entry that this wasn't the recommended book, for the group read. In fact, I've not followed any of the rules, as laid down, so far, but I'm not too bothered tbh. I really enjoyed Jane Eyre, it's stayed with me for the past few weeks. Funny isn't it? You finally get around to reading these classics and you realise why they've lasted the course and have the reputation that they do. And why millions love them. Well, that's probably true for Jane Eyre, but not for all the classics, though I'm sure you'd find an advocate for any that you cared to name, if you searched hard enough. Anyway, back to Victober. I still had two weeks left of the month and felt I should continue in the vein that I started; by not recognising any of the rules - read a book by a British author, written during the reign of...

As mentioned in early September, October is all about Victorian literature. In a theme tagged #VicTober on Youtube, where I first learned of it, readers are encouraged to read books written during the Victorian period - 1819-1901 if you wanna get pedantic. Furthermore it has to be by an English writer. BookTubers are reading Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as a group read, but I decided to skip over that as I read a Hardy recently (Under The Greenwood Tree), and had my heart set on reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte instead. I thought I must have read this book before, at school maybe, but no. I didn't recognise large swathes of the story. I definitely knew that I'd seen a film or TV adaptation because I remembered a crucial, very cinematic, plot point that comes right near the end. Anyways, I enjoyed it. It was slow going at times, as classic novels can be. Some of the language is overly flowery - why use one word when you can use ten. Some of the religious and...

This post is an update, a follow-on from my last entry.  So I've spent the month of September focussing on the reading of short stories. Short stories aren't my usual go-to choice of reading material. I don't know why, I think I may be secretly prejudiced against them, which I'll have to spend some time (in therapy) unpacking. I have read some great ones in the past, but I just don't reach for them when I need something to read. That may change now, however, following this exercise. My intention this month was to read as many as I could. I aimed to read 20, because I didn't want to overcommit myself, so I was surprised when I just totted up my list and found I'd read 47, and I'm secretly delighted about that. I also wanted to read widely; work by lots of different authors, some I'd never read before, and in different genres, some I don't usually favour. That kind of happened, but the collections I had in my possession tended to focus on dead, whi...

It's Short Story September- at least it is in my house. I'm getting into the idea of themed reading weeks/months. I'm already geared up for VicTober (Victorian October) next month - I came across the idea on Youtube, where several Booktubers are already talking about it. But more about VicTober in October. This month I'll be diving into these collections. I also have further collections on my Kindle, Murakami's Men Without Women, and Bolu Babalola's Love in Colour particularly peak my interest. I always love the idea of a short story, but don't very often find myself reading one. And since I'm increasingly drawn to writing some more short fiction, I figure I ought to read a whole variety from different genres and time periods, genders, ethnicities and sexualities. These below, skew white and male, though the ebooks balance things out a little, and I intend to visit the library to find a more diverse range of authors that I don't currently have any wo...

I've been dipping into AirBorne over the last few days. It's a massive free airshow in the skies over Eastbourne that's been running for the past four days. Luckily for me, I live only a ten minute walk to the seafront, where the whole spectacle takes place. I had some family come down to stay, and we made a day of it on the beach with a picnic both yesterday and on Friday, and I wondered down again today to catch some highlights. The variety of aircraft and talent on display was incredible. We'd no sooner finished applauding the stunt pilot, when the paragliders leapt from a plane and coasted down to land on the beach in front of us. We'd only just waved off the wing-walkers (hats off to those insanely brave women), when we had to jamb our fingers into our ears to stop from being deafened by the Typhoon jet. The Battle of Britain Memorial flight, brought a Lancaster bomber and a Spitfire jet into view, and a tear to the eye. There was a Chinook helicopter, and a co...

My summer tbr* shelf.  I set these books aside in June *to be read over the summer. I will often do this, choose a handful of books to be read in the coming months, and I am often spectacularly unsuccessful at sticking with my choices. Earmarking, or, bookmarking, if you will, five books to read in succession, patently ignores the fact that there are shops out in the world dedicated to selling me more books. And it also assumes that I have the willpower to avoid buying said books, and opening one of them instead of one from my existing, carefully curated, selection. What I'm trying to say is that there is very little chance I will actually read through this selection over the summer, and that there will be other titles, not pictured, that I will choose to read (on a whim) instead. This is the quandary of every reader. There are too many books in the world, all vying for our time and attention. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Also, despite knowing all of the above, in th...