Better reading

I decided that I needed to lay off the 3-for-2 (or £3.73 from Tesco) novels for a while, and read some chewier books which occupy one for more than two or three hours' total. I have so far read two books under this new regime, both of which are very good. A recent biography of Gertrude Bell by Georgina Howells has made me feel all inactive and silly -- she really was an amazing woman. I wish I could have met her. I wish I could learn fluent Arabic, don a jellibah, and ride into the sunset on a silken-flanked racing camel. I read a review of this book, though, which says that the author's estimate of the state in which Iraq was left after Bell's death is optimistic, and I'd like to have a better understanding of this.

Then I read a truly unusual novel, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki. This is a big shaggy dog story full of stories within stories like the Arabian Nights, or to a lesser extent the Decameron, but in spirit quite like Tristram Shandy. It's also a bit like The Master and Margarita in being a classic which ought to be as famous as Moby Dick, for similar reasons. It was written in the late eighteenth century by a mad highly-educated Polish count, who later blew his brains out with a silver bullet which he had first had blessed by his chaplain. The textual tradition, likewise, makes one wonder if the whole thing wasn't invented by Borges...