08 June, 2013

Book Round-Up

Of the 49 books I've read so far this year:

30 were fiction or drama, with the rest made up of biography, history, letters, essays, psychology, reportage, blogs, economics and language.

The books I'd read again would be any of the Wodehouse and Camilleri, the Racine, the Shakespeare and the Stendhal.

Authors whose other books I'm now going to look at, because I enjoyed the book of theirs that I read (there  must be a more elegant way to say that!) are (as well as those mentioned above of course): Youssef Ziedan (Azazeel), Roger Mortimer (Dear Lupin), William Dalrymple (The Last Mughal), Tim Parks (Europa), Tom Holland (Rubicon).

Authors whom I will never read again, based on their showing this time round: Katherine Boo (Behind the Beautiful Forevers - hated it, hated it, hated it! Condescending, insincere, unoriginal, coy, grating, humourless, strained), Edward Docx (Pravda - jejune. Why do people rate him?), Richard Ford (The Sportswriter - typical "big American novel writer", casually racist and sexist, parochial, faux-folksy, boring and dishonest - blecchh!).


01 June, 2013

Wedding Anniversary

It's our 17th wedding anniversary today. I fancied going out for dinner, but husband doesn't like to go anywhere further than 100 yards from our front door, so looks like I'm going to have to make a little treat for myself. Unfortunately there's nothing on that I fancy seeing in town this evening, and I have to spend all day helping Sam with his GCSE revision, so that leaves an evening spent with my Game of Thrones box set and a hot and sour soup from the Peking Garden. And if you think that sounds a little pathetic, indeed it does!