This book has kept catching my eye in the shops, and today I picked it up as one of my neighbours left it in the post room.

17.08.10 Reserved for Tamsine once I've read this.

Well I must admit that I found this disappointingly arduous. As I'm living by the river I was expecting lots of interesting history and anecdotes relating to the river that I would find particularly interesting. The tone is so dry, and the attempts at poetic sensitivity fell flat on their face for me, with stilted, overly short sentences - so dry! That's the last of Peter Ackroyd I'll be reading, sans doute. I didn't much like the fiction I read of his either. My husband is a member of Poplar Rowing Club and also dipped into it, but I'm not going to suggest he read the whole thing. Here's an article that I enjoyed much more.

I hope this book's future readers enjoy it more than I did!

I posted this to Tamsine on Saturday before I went away.

what a surprise ! A nice Christmas-gift indeed. I have read several of Ackroyd's books and am not mad about his novels, either, but I rather like his non-fonction books. I now am reading his biography of Shakespeare. It is dense and I must admit, I sometimes skip a paragraph here and there when it gets too longwinding. Still, it is interesting. I expect this one to be similar. Thank you very much for remembering I wanted to read it.