Follow the Light

After surgery ones thoughts turn naturally to Thomas Mann? No---more like tried and true and untaxing like something by Georgette Heyer. So I got one of the few I hadn't read, propped it by my sick bedside and waited till I felt like reading. Georgette Heyer never disappoints. Although they are "just Regency Romances" I did not feel I needed to read them under the covers since even A.S. Byatt wrote an essay in appreciation of Heyer in a collection she had called Passions of the Mind. A Margaret Drabble quote is blurbed on the front of this one, Infamous Army, "My favorite historical novelist". So it's not Barbara Cartland and is quite suitable for proud 'over the covers' reading. But sadly for me in my weakened state this is one of the few Heyers I have not read and the few I really didn't like. Too much history, too little novel. All about Napoleon, Waterloo and Duke Wellington. Yawn.

Now I am reduced to skimming Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and waiting for the UPS man to deliver some real light reading: Tina Brown's Diana. Meanwhile I like the Kingsolver, she is not too preachy or sanctimonious and she has some nice ideas. I like her point about vegetarians eating bananas from South America having more of a negative impact on the enviroment than eating a local farm raised pig. Her main theme seems to be mindfullness about what you put in your mouth and how it got there. I always thought I would like Kingsolver as a person, she seems very forgiving and un-shrill. I don't always like her books though, too cute sometimes and trying to be meaningful.