Bloodorange
I'm a GoodReads user testing new waters after the serious website changes. I mostly read fiction, usually Anglophone classics/ modern classics; I like nonfiction (mostly social and cultural history), good fantasy and graphic novels. For guilty pleasure, I read advice and how-to books.
I made at least two reading resolutions recently; 1. read less, live more; 2. read books which give me more pleasure. I have poor filters, and books I find stylistically pleasing tend to be depressing, so I need to do something about that; if you think you know a book that is very well written, but won't make me weep, please drop me a line.
The Victorians: Britain Through the Paintings of the Age
I wonder how many other passages in the book are plagiarized. Here is the one I found: Paxman, The Victorians, p. 215:
"Victoria died at Osborne on 22 January 1901 and, when the immediate shock had passed (after all, practically no one, except the very old, could recall what life was like without her), there came amid all other feelings a sense of relief, the prospect of a new sovereign and of a new century. As Virginia Woolf, emancipated from the Stephen family when she moved to Bloomsbury in 1904, put it: 'Everything was going to be new, everything was going to be different(...)" etc."
David Newsome, The Victorian World Picture (1997, p. 246):
"When the old Queen died, and the immediate shock had passed (after all, practically no one, except the very old, could recall what life was like without her), there came - according to E.E. Kellett, 'amid all the other things a sense of relief'10 - the prospect a new century, and a new sovereign. As Virginia Woolf put it, emancipated from the Stephen family home in Kensington when she moved to Bloomsbury in 1904: 'Everything was going to be new, everything was going to be different(...)"
I understand this book was "just" a companion piece for a BBC series, but I've expected more from a journalist of this stature (or his ghostwriter).
