#readWilkie - Whodunnit

After getting off to a roaring start with The Moonstone in the first two weeks of November, I struggled a little with the second half. Not because it wasn't interesting, but because I was on holiday in New Zealand, and my reading was basically limited to one chapter before bed. And given that I was reading Allegiant and Curtsies & Conspiracies and The Moonstone simultaneously, it was fairly slow going.

Luckily, I had an hour's flight from Wellington to Auckland and then a four and a half hour flight from Auckland to Melbourne yesterday, and took advantage of the "please switch off your electronic devices" portions of the flight to finish The Moonstone.It took me a little while to get back into the swing of things, but ultimately, I loved it. It turned out that I remembered less of the plot than I thought I did at the half way point - I remembered that Franklin was partly to blame and that he was under the effects of opium at the time, but not who the ultimate culprit was. I'm fairly certain I gasped in surprise and confused the people sitting on either side of me on the plane...

I was highly suspicious of Ezra Jennings at first, but it wasn't long before his story gave me All The Feels. Sure, the whole "let's give Franklin opium again and see if he'll do exactly the same thing he did this time last year" plan was a wee bit contrivance-filled. I mean, what would they have done if they'd given Franklin the opium and he'd just taken a twelve hour nap?? But really, it's no more far fetched than Dickens and that case of spontaneous human combustion that he put into Bleak House! 

My favourite thing, though, from the second half of the book was Sassy Betteridge. His queries in response to the way the house was to be set up for the experiment were fabulous, and I laughed throughout, particularly over the exploded buzzard, and who was to be responsible for making Franklin's room messy. Bless you, Wilkie, for creating such a magnificent character. 

In summary, I loved pretty much every second of this read-along. It was a fantastic reminder for me of why I fell in love with Wilkie Collins' books way back in 2001, and I'm going to do my utmost to reread The Woman in White before the end of the year. 

And finally, thanks to Ellie for organising the read-along! 

K xx

#readWilkie - the half way mark

Half way through November already? WHAT????

Anyway, it's time to give you guys an update on The Moonstone. I haven't read any of it in the last few days - too busy working and packing and trying to finish Sense and Sensibility before I had to leave for the airport at 5.30 this morning (I succeeded).

But I have three and a half hours of flying time ahead of me, so I have no doubt that I can fit a little Wilkie time in en route to Auckland! (You know, when I'm done abusing the free wifi at Melbourne Airport...)

As for the book itself, I'm loving it. I've just finished Miss Clack's narrative, which was fabulous. I adored Betteredge's narrative - he was the perfect rambling old man, constantly going off on tangents and making hilarious statements and generally being a good egg. Miss Clack, on the other hand, was a completely different kettle of fish. She's a brilliantly crafted character who clearly means well, but she goes about it all wrong. You can practically taste the exasperation from those around her. Her plan for providing Lady Verinder with pamphlets - or excerpts thereof - was hilarious. I kept expecting a stack of pamphlets to pop out of the chimney, like Hogwarts letters.

I'm fairly certain that I remember from my previous readings (which were probably ten years ago) the basic details of the remainder of the story from this point on, so I'm excited to see if I'm right.

I was a little surprised to find how much I've enjoyed taking my time with a book and only reading a couple of chapters per day. I usually plough my way through three or more books a week, so to have 200 pages left of a book when I've been working on it for two weeks is highly unusual for me. But I'm loving it, and may be forced to do it more often!

And on that note, I'm off to board a plane to Auckland.

K xx

#readWilkie

It's the 1st of November, and usually that would mean NaBloPoMo around these parts. But given that I'm going to be out of the country for the last two weeks of November, and will be too busy chasing hobbits having fun to blog every day, I figured that I'd do something else instead - a read-along of Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone with LitNerd!

I've been a big fan of Wilkie Collins since I had to read The Woman in White for a class on the classic Victorian novel in first year uni. I loved it so much that I immediately went out and read The Moonstone, No Name, Armadale, and whatever else my university library had lurking in the 823.8 C713 section of the library.

It's been a long time since I last read The Moonstone, and a couple of days ago I added it to a list of books I need to re-read, so it was kind of perfect that I stumbled across #readWilkie later that same day! I might end up switching to the free Kindle edition half way through the month when I go to New Zealand, but for the meantime, I'm reading the 1998 Penguin Classics edition:

Source

It's not the prettiest edition out there, but it DOES have a multitude of end notes, and I'm a sucker for a good end note. (I learnt the hard way after buying one of those $2 editions of Emma when I was 15 and struggling through it)

It's not too late to join in - you can grab a e-book copy for free from Amazon or Project Gutenberg and start reading! And don't forget to check out #readWilkie on Twitter.

K xx