A colleague at work
asked me a while ago how many books I’d read in a year. I replied that it was
‘a lot,’ and that I’d never really counted properly before. So, these
bi-monthly entries are that attempt, a record of the books I’ve read this year
with commentary and thoughts on the patterns, the images, the styles that I
come across.
Perhaps the first
truly noteworthy piece I read in this instalment was This Year’s Ashes, a play produced by Griffin Theatre Company in November
2011, written by Jane Bodie. It had received good reviews and I wanted to see
it, but as with many things, time conspired against me and it closed before I
could get a chance to find an evening to go. There’s something about reading
plays that I find wonderful: on one level, I see them playing out as if in real
life, like a film I spose, with the scenes being cut together without the
blackout or change in lighting state and or costume that you get in theatre. On
another level, I see them as they might have been performed in the theatre (if
I didn’t see them performed, that is), and I try to imagine how they would’ve
been staged, how it would’ve all worked. And on another level, I look at how
the scenes are ordered, how the characters are written, how the play is
written, how it all works, trying to work out what makes it tick.
