2 posts tagged “confessions”

What are five books that changed your life? 
Inspired by Ms. Genevieve.

I can tell you that St. Augustine's Confessions is one tome that wont make my top five as I have been studiously avoiding it all week. Heavy going is an understatement, try dry and difficult. My own personal conversion to all things Greeky was ignited by The Odyssey; the swashbuckling tale of Odysseus and his circuitous journey back to the "white armed" Penelope.  Next up is an odd choice and I only found it through the PBS adaptation but it was so engaging that it spurred me on to read John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga which in turn kick started my interest in the classics and that lead me on to the next three: Persuasion by Jane Austen, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and The End of the Affair by Graham Greene.  Till I actually started working my way through Austen's back catalogue I had her style pegged as embryonic chick lit, I still say that her work is patchy and her best books start with "P".  Brideshead and Affair are bitter and sad, but ridiculously well written and entertaining.  It sounds cheesy, because it is, but these five left me hungry to read and study more.

I was up fairly early this morning trying to read Saint Augustine's Confessions. Monk lit like chick lit is a self-indulgent genre with much lamenting over sex, gluttony and avarice. It was not easy going and I was forced to brew up a pot of lethally strong coffee and break out the carrot and stick. For every chapter of Confessions I got to read a chapter of Live & Let Die. It pains me to report that Augustine was more of a player than Bond. In L&LD Bond is obsessed with breakfast. I swear more of the book is devoted to the ordering and consumption of breakfast than action sequences or his failed attempts to bed Solitaire. He is actually quite a wuss in this novel as he refuses to sleep with her on the grounds he has a broken finger...