You are what you read

I hope so because I am trying to read the classics. The ideas are better, the whole thing lifts you because the language is choice.  I read Dracula last week. How on earth he thought it up I have no idea but I did wish I could have lunch with Bram Stoker and ask him.  He chose - or it chose him - the most difficult way to write a novel, it's letters and journals and has many different viewpoints. The language is wonderful, the ideas awesome. Yes, vampires were known but I don't think anybody had written anything about them or nothing that I've heard of and he inspired whole generations of people who are smitten with his notions. The only thing is - nobody has made a film which is following the book and it's essentially a suspense novel. If you stick to the book it should work very well.
I watched Atonement the other day, the film I mean. I do find Ian McEwan almost impossible to read. I lose patience with him but his ideas do make great films and for this one the script writer stuck closely with the ideas from the book although they filmed it without all the coming and going which obviously seemed unnecessary  Even so it is a complex affair and an exquisite film. I also loved it because it had it its premiere in Redcar where they filmed the Dunkirk scenes. A wonderful wonderful film, a thousand extras and three hundred crew and you can tell by the film itself that everybody was enthused, I think there can be nobody with more dedication than a film crew, all that patience, all that repetition, all that time and effort and money. Well spent here I think.
Of books - I have moved on to the American by Henry James. I have listened to a version of it on audio though have no idea about the ending because I keep falling asleep but I'm very interested and it was one of his earlier books. James woos me with his meaningful prose.  There was something on Facebook today about who you would ask to dinner if you could have anybody in the world, in fiction or out of time and at any time. I would definitely have Bram Stoker and Henry James, then Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte.
I would take them to my favourite fish restaurant where we could have sea bass and dry white wine.
If I could possibly take a nice man just to even things up I think I would have David Tennant. We could talk about Shakespeare and how things have moved on and have not. I love Hamlet and Lear and it would be lovely to hear his beautiful Scottish accent amidst his and everybody's else's fine intelligence.

I have given this up

I haven't posted here since April when it was obviously chucking it down. We now have the opposite problem and are baking in the worst or best depending upon your viewpoint heat in many years.
I thought well, I must have spilled my guts by now, so having nothing to say other than fictional I have stuck to killing people off in my stories. My daughter was quite upset about the ending of the last one. I wasn't too happy about it myself but as I told her it was nothing to do with me. I don't write the stories, I just sort of tootle along with them and hope for the best. That's the Quarryman's Wife.
One of my reviewers said it was too complicated and had too many characters. Quite right. I kept getting lost off too. You think you have problems, reviewer, I had to write the damned thing, again and again and again.
I'm a book on now and that was like shovelling manure too. I wonder if it's getting harder because I'm getting older. I'll be sixty eight in two months time. I told the optician on Friday that I was seventy six. She did think I looked good for it.So I can't remember how old I am - it doesn't bode well for my marbles.
I am just trying to be a better writer. I am therefore reading what I hope are decent books and have just finished Felix Holt, by George Eliot.  I am accused of writing abrupt endings. My endings are not as abrupt as George's. One minute it's hell and the next  - I won't tell you in case you are intending reading it. I did get a lot out of it. The language was heading in Shakespearian direction for being brilliant. She doesn't plot any better than I do, I didn't know whether to be pleased about that and her agent these days would tell her to cut it by half and get rid of all those characters. Guilty again but oh, if I could write like George Eliot.
I did find her rather serious and Felix has a nasty habit of telling Esther what to do like a lot  more men in Victorian literature. I have never forgiven Mr Palliser in The Palliser chronicles, for regarding his daughter as a pretty plaything. If he'd been in Durham when my great grandmothers were around they would have hit him with a shovel. They were serving pints in bars then and running dairies and undoubtedly not taking any shit. I love this Victorian fallacy that women didn't work and that men took all the decisions. Not here, mate.
When I first found out about feminism I had to look hard at myself and everybody around me. Yes, it's true most women have had a bloody rough deal for years but not in my life then.
I know my father was horrified when I married at twenty two but that was because he didn't care for my choice of husband and almost every father alive has that problem.  He was very pleased when I got a job. And horrified when I gave it all up to stay at home and write. My mother was even worse than horrified, I'm sure they thought they had done something wrong when I announced I was going to start writing novels. Parents have a very bad deal all round.
My father was a big believer in education so it must have been awful because having sent us all to what he thought were good private schools we turned out to be academic idiots. Poor man, he must have wondered how on earth we would survive but like a lot of other spoiled selfish bastards we did okay.
I'm about to start reading Dracula so who knows what will happen in my next novel. I can't wait to find out.