On reading

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Date: 27 January 2008 22:11:41

Well I am glad last week is over and done with. It was rather full. This week looks like being much more civilized, including both an away day and a quiet day.

Thank you for all the advice on being a good Aunt. I will ponder and put it into practice when I next have an opportunity.

Joining in the general spate of blogging about reading, I have been having a non-fiction fest recently. I re-read part* of Salt by Mark Kurlanksy and am now reading Stephen King's On Writing. I'm not a big fan of King's stuff, but I found The Stand utterly compulsive. When he is not being too graphic, (well even when he is, but I am very squeamish and inclined to have nightmares after scary books) he is a very good writer. Yesterday, just for a break, I settled down for a morning with Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer - I do like the Artemis Fowl books, they really aren't just for kids.

During term, I don't have the energy to read new books, so I content myself with re-reading old ones. However, I do have a list of new stuff to read when I get round to it:

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke (stalled halfway through)
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick (too disorganised to reject the publisher's choice from my old bookclub)
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (started reading it on a train years ago and realised I needed a dictionary to decipher what on earth he was going on about)
Middlemarch by George Eliot

So, I really shouldn't be buying any more fiction until I've read at least some of these. Can anyone provide encouragement that they are worth persevering with?

Well I think that will have to do for now. I left the mains lead for my laptop in college so I have only 41 minutes left and some googling to do.

*i.e. started from where the bookmark was from last time I read it