Balzac and Zola, and other things.

Firstly, I have to say, I am bitterly cold. I do not believe for a second it is only one degree here, as the BBC are saying. Apparently, over the weekend, we're due for even colder weather: Sky News tells us that "No One in UK Safe", and includes a picture of a man scraping the frost from his car with a mournful caption "Scenes like this will be all too common". A whole four inches is predicted, though, that said, it is usually enough to drive this country to a halt. It shall be interesting to see what will happen.

But enough of snow predictions. Zola. My fourth Zola has arrived - The Conquest of Plassans, and I have been waiting for it for what seems like an age. It is this book that has my Zola progress so slow: I got the first three Zolas back in July or August, and was savouring them so I wasn't left with too long a gap before I was able to start the fourth. But it has arrived, and now I have all but three of the 'Rougon Macquarts'. The last time I read a Zola was early December: The Belly of Paris. It's been a while... Truth be told, I'm a little nervous. What if I had extraordinary luck with Germinal, The Fortune of the Rougons, The Kill, and The Belly of Paris? What if I don't like this one? I was concerned about the translator, too: what if Ernest Alfred Vizetelly did a dreadful job? How would I even know, not being able to read in French? I looked up E. A. Vizetelly and found he was the son of Henry Vizetelly, who I read had been prosecuted in 1888 and fined for his translation of La Terre (The Earth - the fifteenth in the 'Rougon Macquarts'), and, in 1889, fined again and imprisoned for reissuing it. We'll see how it fares. Has anyone else read a Zola translated by either of the Vizetellys?

Another bit of information I found interesting, and something I really ought to have known by now: I read in the introduction of Old Goroit that Honoré de Balzac is best known for his 'La Comédie humaine' (I have admitted before I know next to nothing about Balzac, and only knew the name for so long because of the Blur song - "Reading Balzac and knocking back the Prozac"), some ninety or a hundred works depicting life in Paris between the Fall of Napoleon in 1815 and the Revolution of 1848. Of course my immediate thought was of Zola's 'Rougon Macquart' cycle, which is an account of the Rougons and the Macquarts living during the Second French Empire. I hadn't realised that Zola was so heavily influenced by Balzac. As I say, I perhaps should have done, and I bet this isn't news to the majority of you! But, for me, it's a new perspective and a new avenue to explore, so it's quite exciting! And because of this, I intend to read a lot more Balzac in the coming months!

And, in other news, I finished Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I feel bad, not liking it, or perhaps not "getting" it. It left me cold, and vaguely confused. It's odd, reading so so many positive reviews and being so intrigued, and then left, still, outside even after reading it. But there it is! It's the 88th book on my 100 Greatest; this project is starting to draw to a close. I think I'd like to read A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving next for this one.

But not tonight. Tonight I plan on finishing Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (very much enjoying, and hopefully will be posting about tomorrow). I'm still reading and enjoying Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, but, once I've finished Meditations I'm going straight to Zola! Big C is having car problems, so not entirely sure when he'll be home, but I suspect I'll be waiting up for a good few hours yet...