2025 Readings 33

 As I mentioned earlier, as part of this project to track my readings for 2025 I'm also forcing/allowing/encouraging myself to read authors or genres that aren't normally on my list. I do think I fall into the habit of reading an awful lot of novels, especially novels from certain authors, and works on religion, whereas I could/should broaden my focus and include new authors or works on, say, history, which is an odd thing for a historian to say. However, after saying that, I suspect that I usually have a more diverse palette than most folks, even before this year's effort. For instance, when I'm at Northshire in Manchester I'm likely to pick up a book or two from the new fiction or staff suggestions section. With that in mind, on my recent visit to Northshire I picked up Jayne Anne Phillips's Night Watch, which I finished last night. Obviously, she's a very good, and rightly celebrated, writer, although I don't think I loved this particular novel. It seems to me that you can think of an interesting story, but that doesn't mean that you necessarily tell it in an interesting fashion. The story rotated between events in 1874 (at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum) and 1864 (covering background events during the Civil War), before finally summing things up in 1883. Sometimes when authors try to achieve a level of mystery they can end up just being needlessly opaque, and thus more difficult to follow than is merited by the interest of the characters. The end felt a bit rushed and convenient, sort of like some Dickens novels where hidden connections are suddenly revealed that tie things up but not in a convincing or satisfying way. This all sounds more critical than I intend, because I did like the story. I do want to read Phillips's Lark and Termite, which I hear is excellent.