Charles Dickens – essential reading

If nothing else, I have learned the point of Charles Dickens while here in the Gulf. For those who have found the time to read his work, Dickens is an enormously rich writer. In the Victorian era, he wrote the soap operas of the time, delivered in weekly chunks to his adoring fans. Just the ticket for long, gas-lit evenings. In the modern world, an intricately plotted 800-page novel, full of asides and sub-plots, is a daunting prospect.

Boosted however by my achievement in getting through “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” by TE Lawrence (an author some people think up there with James Joyce and TS Eliot), I decided to embark on “Our Mutual Friend”, having enjoyed the TV serial. All I can say is that when you have nothing whatever to do, which is the case in this insufferably dull country, Dickens is your only man. You can relish the asides and the orotund sentences. If you don’t understand them the first time, you are only too glad to go over them again. Books that you can read in a day are not what’s needed out here.

As a bonus, if you happen to be a Kevin Myers reader, you will discover the source of his over-blown style.

Other perfect Gulf books:

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Tristram Shandy, Lawrence Sterne

A la recherche du temp perdu, Marcel Proust

The MagicMountain, Thomas Mann

Don Quixote, Cervantes

The Divine Comedy, Dante

And of course: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and Ulysses by James Joyce

PS: Anyone who thinks TE Lawrence is a great writer should read Siegfried Sassoon’s World War 1 trilogy. And you don’t need to be in the Gulf to do that….

Also helping keep me sane is the fourth series of “Northern Exposure” which I got from Amazon on Thursday. Since the television is again broken (Get someone to fix it? What a good idea! Except that like in Ireland, they don’t come…), DVDs are a lifesaver. The weekend routine here involves reading a bit, writing a bit, playing the guitar a bit and watching TV, broken up by an hour in the gym and maybe a visit to the shops once it gets cool enough to go outside.

Think positive – at most, I have only four weeks left here, though getting a flight back home is proving difficult. It’s like the last five miles of the marathon and boy, have I hit the wall.

PS: Repair guys arrived at 715 on Saturday evening. Light bulbs in bedroom blew on my second attempt to switch them on. But at least I now have BBC World back.