Categories: uncategorized
Date: 20 October 2008 08:23:08
Forget your cruise ships and pedicures, I think Waterstones with a voucher is my idea of total luxury. (though if you offered a massage, or a weekend at a spa, I wouldn't object!). Especially Waterstones with a voucher and unlimited time for browsing. I just wish our Waterstones was a bit more spacious. It does rather take the shine off when you have to clamber over half a dozen other shoppers just to get to the shelves you want - and then follow the queue of people working alphabetically along the lines of books. Heaven help you if, half way through the T's, you realise you did actually want that J book after all.
So what did I buy? Did I manage my fourth book? Erm... (blush).... yes! Well, they were doing three for the price of two, weren't they, so I had to have... er... erm.... six! Unfortunately the sixth one was a bit of a blooper - would you believe I bought the same book twice? If you get Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men for Christmas, look for the name "Smudgie" on the wrapper. Shame we're not doing the WISE book exchange this year!
The Wee Free Men was a knee-jerk reaction from having just finished reading "The Carpet People" to the Smudgelet. It took a short while to get into it, but it was utterly brilliant. I have started reading him the Wee Free Men, but it's given him nightmares! I think I'd better read it for myself first.
On a Terry Pratchett theme, I bought myself Soul Music. I love Pratchett's sense of humour, and with not having chapters, his books will make quite good court-waiting-room reading as I can read them a paragraph at a time if I need to. I think the DEATH stories are amongst my favourites, although that's very hard to say as it then gets me wondering if I like the WATCH stories better, or the WITCH ones, or the UNSEEN UNIVERSITY ones.... er... erm.... I think they're all my favourites. This one is the one I'm reading at the moment - I started it on my train journey to see eldest son on Friday and made pretty good progress into it.
Another favourite author is Jasper Fforde (are you getting an insight into my sense of humour, such as it is?). I devoured The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book. I bought myself the fourth book in the series as I already have the third book on its way from Amazon (well, I needed a second book to get free delivery on the serious one I wanted - parenting the teenager who hurts - a marvellous book on RAD which I have lent to someone and lost and which I really want my brother to read now so that he can understand a bit more about the difficulties many adopted children face. I want to read it again too as it has a section on what happens once children with RAD break the law).
The fifth purchase from Waterstones was one of Lindsay Davis' Falco novels, a detective story set in Roman times. I love this sort of book. I love detective stories of any era, apart from the gratuitously violent and gory ones (being a lady of gentile taste!) but the historical ones like Falco and Cadfael give it that extra twist that I love. I am really looking forward to this one - probably a "read in one sitting" one suited best for a lazy afternoon in my brother's conservatory (let's hope the sun shines next week).
And of course I needed a more "sensible" book. I bought it with the twin purpose of a) reading it or b) giving it a friend for her birthday. I can't do both as it's a heavy book and I'd be bound to damage the spine or cover dropping it on my nose when I fell asleep reading it in bed. It's The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. I loved her first book and simply couldn't put it down. Somehow I can't see this book making it into birthday wrapping paper, can you?
I really must must must do some housework today. Perhaps if I do an hour's worth I can reward myself by getting lost in a good book for a while.