ALAN BENNETT "I've often wanted to be bolder"

You know how I was telling you about Smut? Here's a comment taken from an interview published in the Guardian (click here to read it) where he talks about one of the stories published in the book.

Never more so than in the beautiful and filthy short story, The Greening of Mrs Donaldson, written for a recent edition of the London Review of Books. Mrs Donaldson, a widow in her late 50s, has a part-time job at a medical school acting out cases to the students to test their diagnostic skills. She takes in two students as lodgers, and when they run short of rent money they suggest a lubricious transaction that involves voyeurism, a threesome of sorts and sado-masochism.

WHAT DID YOU READ OVER THE CHRISTMAS BREAK?

Let's get intimate and share our December reads and a short opinion. Come on! It will take no more than 5 minutes. Here goes my list:

In English (first, as usual):

- Smut - two short stories by A. Bennett, who we'll be reading shortly. These stories are rather different from The Uncommon Reader, but they preserve his wittiness and irony while exploring the topic of sexuality, hidden character, and deceptiveness. VERY EASY TO READ and it's in our library in Ribeira.

- Bits and pieces of other T.Williams's plays like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie and Suddenly Last Summer, because reading A Streetcar again made me want to re-read the parts I had underlined about 9 years ago.

- Jane Austen Made Me Do It - short stories as well (see older post).

In Galician:

- Cincuenta asasinatos breves e un prólogo. I strongly recommend it! It's really easy and quick to read (short stories) and some of them really ironic and with that Galician realism that is a part of our everyday lives. "Os visitantes" and "Domingo de parricidio" are especially good. They reminded me of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.

- Amor en feminino. Antoloxía das poetas galegas. There had to be some poetry, you know that!

In Spanish:

- La mano de Fátima. I had read La catedral del mar previously so I've been wanting to read this for a long time. I enjoyed it but I'm also a little tired of the way Falcones really "tortures" his characters. Have you read it? Do you agree? What do you think?

- Asesinos sin rostro, by Henning Mankell. It's the third book I read by him and I didn't particularly enjoy it, especially the way he hurriedly solves the mystery at the end.