(no subject)

I’m trying to catch up at the moment, and it’s easier to blog about the books that didn’t grab me than those that did, so bear that in mind if the next few posts have an awful lot of “not quite my thing.” Books that I do want to spend more time on, because they were very much my thing: Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland, Morris Gleitzman’s Then and Marian Keyes’ This Charming Man, all very good and all recommended; I also have pending posts on a couple of books that either weren’t quite there or annoyed me in ways that I want to spend more time on.

( Dodie Smith, I capture the castle (re-read). )

( Ken Catran, Lin and the Red Stranger. )

( Gerald Morris, The squire’s tale. )

( JM Coetzee, Diary of a bad year. )

( Dan Ariely, Predictably irrational. )

Library books

I had a tiny moment of rage on visiting the library to find that the young adults’ fiction section has two display stands, one marked “Girls’ books” and one marked “Boys’ books”. I did wonder if they were intentionally problematising this on the boys’ side by having Tanith Lee’s Piratica II and an Alex Sanchez about gay Christians (first two chapters like being hit over the head with a well-meaning brick, so I put it back), but all the girls’ titles suggested a distinct lack of irony. It occurs to me now that I should have put up my own selections, but at the time my inner seething got mixed up with embarrassment at having to pay my overdue fines with a credit card (internet banking timing problem). Maybe I'll sneak back.

( Bil Wright, When the black girl sings. )

( Lee Child, Bad luck and trouble. )

( Haruki Murakami, After Dark. )