The Terror of Knowing

Another Friday dawns, and I cannot believe how quickly this week has gone by. I swear I blinked on Monday and then somehow it was Friday already. For some unknown reason, early this week I was sat on my bed, fully dressed, ready to leave, staring at my bookshelves. Now, admittedly, I have recently furnished my room so my shelves are looking rather nice to a person who previously used the ‘stack and hope they don’t fall’ method of book organisation. However, the reason I was staring was because I realised I wasn’t really in the mood to read Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on my morning train journey, nor did I really fancy lugging around A Feast For Crows, nor was I in the mood for any of my on-loan audiobooks.

I should have already left the house, I was running late, but I had a sudden and bewildering draw to pick up Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, a book I have read before but was vaguely interested in re-reading “at some point”. “At some point” turned out to be on that morning’s train journey, apparently. I don’t know why, but it happened. So now I’m about 200 pages/a third of the way through and I fully intend to read it today and going into the weekend.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (x)

The Secret History is essentially the story of a group of clever, but eccentric students at an elite New England college. When I say “clever” and “elite”, I really mean it – the group isolate themselves from other students, studying as a group of five with their charming Classics professor Julian. All of their classes are taught by Julian and their studies focus around ancient history and philosophy (along with language-learning Ancient Greek and Latin). Because of their intent and intense focus on their studies, it’s unsurprising that the philosophy and practices they discuss actually start to creep over into their life outside of the classroom.

As a book, it’s weird – I mean, come on, it opens with the line “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation”. It’s also incredibly elitist in its references and whether that comes across as annoying or compelling depends entirely on the individual reader, I think. However, on my first read of this, I adored hating these weird and flawed characters. I’m sure that feeling will continue on this re-read!

So there we have it, that was my rather short Friday Reads.
Do you have any books lined up for today and into this weekend?
What are you currently reading? Let me know in the comments below!

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