Why I keep Dreaming that I'm in the Tour de France!

In case you missed it I went to see the Tour de France this summer:

EG loved it!

So what better book to read than Le Tour by Geoffrey Wheatcroft. This book was first published in 2003 but it was updated for the 2013 Tour - so a good choice I thought. The only drawback is that I keep dreaming about the Tour de France, sometimes I'm meant to be in it but am late, other times I'm just watching. Fine, but stressful if you're late because you are being chased by an Egyptian statute that came to life when you broke into an Egyptian tomb.

Anyway in Le Tour I have reached 1935. Only a few more years to go until I see some names that I recognise. You may have seen that this isn't the only cycling book that I'm reading. What I am hoping this book will do is to help me understand how cycling became the sport that it was when David Millar turned pro. Between us EG and I have collected a number of books about Lance Armstrong and the doping scandal surrounding him. I don't want to start on reading them until I have finished this book and have a better idea of how the sport developed.

When a Hardback Really is a Hardback

Another book that I have been reading is The Prince of Thieves by Alexander Dumas (it seems to be Dumas week!) At only 126 pages I thought this would be a quick read, but several months on I am only just over half way through. This is because the publishers went for a column layout for each page. Oh and really small text. So I reckon if this was a normal book with normal layout it would be twice the size. Thus I feel justified in having taken so long with it.

When I first got the book the first two things that I noticed were the interesting picture on the front cover and the thickness of the cover. It is the thickness of a board book that you would buy for a baby.

So as anyone would do with a book I flipped it over to read the blurb. But there was no blurb. Instead an ad for lifebuoy soap, which I've just found out still exists.

Anyway I shall continue to work my way through this odd book. The storyline of the book is also interesting and definitely not what I was expecting, but that is a story for another post.

Who is Madame Giovanni?

I've been trying to read The Journal of Madame Giovanni by Alexandre Dumas. It is a travel journal of a French lady who goes with her husband to New Zealand and from there to various other places. Travel writing is not my cup of tea on a normal day, but I love Dumas so much that I was willing to give it a try.

A brilliant front cover!

As I have read on I cannot help but wonder who Madame Giovanni is. The account that Dumas gives has rings true of being not just fiction but reality. So I am wondering if Madame Giovanni was a real person, maybe with a different name.

Having pondered this for some time, it occurred to me that there might be a note or something in the book that would tell me if Madame Giovanni is real. And lo there was. A little note in the front of the book tells me that it is a record of her adventures and that she has changed her name to avoid being recognised.

So now I can continue reading, no longer plagued by thoughts of who Madame Giovanni might be.

If only I had thought to check the front of the book sooner...

What League?

For a while now I have been reading A Life's Ambition by Alexandre Dumas. This has been fun, and very easy to read, even if I am worried that my copy is about to fall to pieces! It hasn't fallen apart yet and I hold out hope. The main character M. Gustave, an aspiring actor, travels around a lot - often not by choice. I have no problem with the travelling, but I do have a problem with his travelling in leagues.

Until recently (this last week) I did not know how long a league was. It's very difficult to sympathise with a character who has to walk eight leagues or so if you don't how far that is. However, thanks to my cunning idea of reading Les Mis I have discovered that a league is just over three miles.

Hooray! With this knowledge I can read on with peace of mind. For those of you out there that have also been wondering how far a league is, I bet you are relieved to have finally found out. That is if you didn't do the sensible thing in the first place and google it, rather than waiting for the slight possibility that another book might explain it for you. Or you might not care how long a league is - in which case you can carry on with life uninterrupted by this news.

More Mountains to Climb

Announcing a preview of a challenge to come in 2015!

For my birthday this year EG bought me a book called 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs or something like that. Well next year we are thinking that we may try and do some of those climbs (probably not all of them though - that would be excessive).

I am defiantly more excited about this than EG. Training has begun on the hill outside our house. Improvement is going to be needed before we tackle the challenge. 

Oh forgot to say, we intend to eat coffee and cake with each climb - probably after the climb in order to avoid seeing the cake again.

What you get when you mix books with cycling

A book about cycling that is what you get. In case anyone has forgotten, EG and I went to see the Tour de France this summer:

Apart from the excitement of seeing Mark Cavendish (he is in the pic to the left) and of course Froome we got excited about seeing some weird stuff too:

A car in the shape of a clock. Why? Who thought that that was a good idea?

I've been reliving my Tour de France memories as I have been watching the Vuelta a Espana. I've also been reading David Miller's autobiography Racing Through the Dark. He wasn't racing in the Tour de France, but the Vuelta was his final Grand Tour before he retires. At the end of the final stage's time trial he was very emotional, understandably. I'm enjoying reading his autobiography, and although I am glad that he came back to the world of cycling after his drugs ban, I am sad that he is now going to retire.

It would be a Crime...

I've been reading The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (about half way through it) and as my first experience of crime fiction it has been a good introduction. However, it will be a tough act to follow. Galbraith aka J K Rowling is planning the Cormoran Strike detective novels to be a seven book series. The second one The Silkworm, is already out. Thankfully I have it lined up for when I finish the first one, thanks to a loan from a friend.

I've never read the Harry Potter novels, and they don't appeal to me enough for me to ever read them. So I have no idea how the writing style in the Cormoran Stike novels compares to that in the Harry Potter books. I suppose if you want to know that you will have to read them both for yourself.

One of the reasons I've never read crime fiction is because I was worried that they would not measure up to what I thought of as a good read. Well, I got that one wrong. But I have taken reading this one slow because I do have that small fear in the back of my mind that I will be disappointed.

The second half won't take me as long to read because there will come a point when I just want to know who did it. Have you read it? What did you think? Don't spoil the ending though.