What Are You Reading? Feb 07

[suedonim]

So what are you reading, to start the new month? I'm reading 'Notes On A Scandal' by Zoe Heller. I found it hard to get into but am doing a bit better now. It won't be on my list of all time faves unless something amazing happens, though!

That's why I like them- border line unbearable. What about James Thurber then? My Life and Hard Times. Or the nearly unheard of Betty MacDonald.

Ashamed of Wodehouse habit???
Eh?
You are mad woman!

Ashamed?? Wodehouse is a genious, one of the reasons I fell in love with England when I was a teenager...

All my DSs have Woosterish nicknames.

All mine have silent P's.

Except little finknottle

Also LOVE Wodehouse! Nothing to be ashamed of!

Message withdrawn

Best ever Wodehouse quote;
"it is never difficult to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and a Scotsman with a grievance."
I love him.

No, no! It's,
"life is just one damn thing after another."
He was wise, as well as hilarious.

LOL

Oh well, I finished Notes On A Scandal. There's isn't anything to like about it, really. I'm disappointed. Surely the film will be just as unsatisfying?

I'm now onto Disgrace (JM Coetzee) years after everyone else. This I am engrossed in, I lay in bed reading it for far too long last night.

I've just finished Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigaleta (not sure about spelling).

It's about a thirty-something woman trying to make sense of her life in a small town in Virginia. All the characters are people you would like to know in real life.
About two-thirds of the way through lovely things start happening to her and from then on I didn't stop blubbing till the end. At one point I was sobbing out loud with happiness.

Definitely the best book I've read so far this year.

Has anyone read My Best Friends Girl? Real good book.

I now feel it necessary to do a health warning on that Simon Ings book - falls into that trap of novel can only be Serious if featuring some shockworthy combination of sex/child/degradation. Ugh, but worse than ugh, snore - it's such an unimaginative vogue

'Until I find you' by John Irving.

Not sure yet if I like it or not.

just finished The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, Sjowall/Wahloo (60s Swedish police procedural, one of a series, and there's a nymphomanic in every one)
Before that loved Last Curtsey, Fiona McCarthy's memoir about the last Season
Currently reading some minor but enjoyably unsettling Patricia Highsmith, got an owl in the title

Aha - have come back to this to find out who was the clever person who suggested Trollope as my jury-service reading.

RosaLuxembourg, thank you!! Not only is it (I'm just getting to the end of Can You Forgive Her, must get to the library soon for my next helping) a nice fat teeth-getting-into read, making the downtime fly past; but also it's so exactly appropriate - all that earnest picking-apart of motive and morality, and making thinking about such things feel so important. Which is of course what I've been doing this week.

The Commitments (is that what it is called ???), big thick book. I am very tired at the moment so not exactly motoring through it.

the soprano sorceress - l.e. modesitt jr.

quite good, fantasy obviously but very good so far considering i'd never realy noticed this author before.

The latest paperbackk lady detective book - blue shoes and happiness. Much the same as the rest...

The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant. I've never read any her books as when she first began writing they got panned. But this seems to eb more highly regarded. Am only a few pages in so it's too soon to comment, really.

It's The Corrections not The Commitments, I knew I had that wrong.

Can I join in? I'm reading The Night Watch by Sarah Waters and loving it, can't wait to go to bed (my only reading time)