Monday 1 February 2010

The one with the random purchases.

Hi all, hope you are deeply engrossed in your books!

I can't sleep (pesky M.E) so I thought I'd update my blog detailing my purchases from yesterday.

It was entirely Rob's idea to go hunting for books - he loves reading too which is a blessing as he doesn't mind if we just slump on the sofa with tea and a good book. I'm finding it hard to do much activity at the moment, so we leisurely walked into town, had a look around a couple of shops and then made our way up to the top of the main high street where a couple of charity shops live.

There are two animal based charities at the top, both of which are close to my heart as I'm a big animal person - I can guarantee if there is an advert about animals being mistreated I'll be in floods of tears; I'm a bit soft in that regard. So I regularly go up there to see if I can help out in any way (alongside a donation to the RSPCA each month) and one of the shops in particular is doing really well; sort of like a Salvation Army type in that it sells furniture too. I saw a lovely bookshelf but sadly neither of us have a car at the moment (I'm not well enough to drive and Rob doesn't drive) so there was no way I could get it back to the flat; boo.

Anyway, I spent some time looking through the book section (big) and among the various titles (there seemed to be a lot of David/Victoria Beckham autobiographies, I wonder why!) I found two books that piqued my interest. Generally speaking I am the worst bookworm - I judge a book by it's cover unless I know prior details about it (ie the classics). So far it has served me well but being a member of a particular forum now has opened my eyes to the potential books I am missing.

So, I picked up "In the Woods" by Tana French, her debut novel penned in 2007. This is going to go on my TBR pile along with about 10 other books. The other book was "My Lover's Lover" by Maggie O'Farrell penned in 2002. I think I've heard of this book before but the synopsis sounded interesting so I thought I'd give it a go.

We then trapsed towards the market for some lunch and I suddenly remembered the second-hand bookstore which resides at the back - How I forgot I have no idea, but I used to get quite a few academic text books from there in my student days. So we went along, located it and had a good browse. There were a lot of very good copies of various books - a mini book shop if you will, and I could have easily picked up about five or six, but limited to one.

I picked up "We Need To Talk About Kevin" - the novel prior to one of my favourites, "The Post-Birthday World" by Lionel Shriver. It's quite a heavy book, in terms of the prose I find slightly hard to understand at some points (I'm blaming my lack of concentration) which I found consistent with TPBW, but I thought I'd give it a read as people are somewhat divided about whether they like it or not. It's not as captivating (personally) as TPBW, but I will try and finish it. I've also got Angels and Demons on the go as I find that really easy to read and I thought I'd read it in wake of the film which I saw in the summer (which I didn't like!).

When we came back from town we watched "Stir of Echoes" featuring Kevin Bacon which we got from a bargin bin in a shop near us. I never remembed it coming out in the cinema (1999) but I realised this was because it came out very shortly after "The Sixth Sense", which consumed cinema-goers and largely eclipsed the film we watched. It was a bit predictable, in that I guessed a) the young boys "powers" and b) the fate of the girl they both saw in terms of location. It wasn't so much scary, nor psychological, but it was a good film to watch just to chill out. I don't know if I preferred the Sixth Sense or this, but I guess the former had more of a twist to it (so much so that at 14, I didn't get it the first time round!).

Rob went back home to be prepared for an early start tomorrow, so I had some dinner (a rather mediocre curry from M&S) and a very early night as I had a stinking headache - I think I fell asleep before 9 in front of Angels and Demons.

Today holds more reading if I can manage it, I may stick to A&D's as it's lighter than WNTTAK and drink copious amounts of tea. Bliss!

Happy Reading,

Missy B.

2 comments:

  1. I think you'll like 'we need to talk about Kevin'. I listen to the audiobook shortly after I read the Post Birthday World. The books are not alike at all but both are REALLY enjoyable.

    MrsM
    x

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  2. Thank you MrsM, I really like the general premise of the book but I do find Lionel Shriver hard to get into sometimes, purely as my brain isn't very good at digesting words at times!

    x

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