Well, I’m just back from two week’s holiday and back to the soulface today.
Have you missed me?
I’ve spent two lovely weeks in the sun, sitting on a terrace in the South of France watching the view and reading.
You want to know what I’ve been reading on holiday? Oh, thank you for asking.
Actually, I’ve read more on this holiday than I have in months – something that I put down to the fact that I had a new tablet with me which allowed me to read electronic books. Didn’t know how I’d cope with that, but turns out to be great.
Here’s the pages I kept turning….
- The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character (Penguin Classics) – Thomas Hardy. (One of my O Level books. Not read for years.
- Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth (Relentless, funny, sad)
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s– Truman Capote (Surprised by the advocacy of same-sex marriage in the 1940s).
- Oryx And Crake – Margaret Atwood (Strange – oh so very strange)
- Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe (Great novel about Ibo culture meeting the Western missionaries)
- Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt – Richard Holloway. (Was reading this for review in inspires)
All that and a few scraps of poetry. Enjoyed it all.
Sorry I interrupted your reading – thanks to your sage advice I was able to host the G+ hangout without tearing my hair out. (Can’t say as much for participants at HQ – lousy broadband speeds in Oban!)
I had not read fiction in English for a number of years. But when The Hunger Games came out as a movie I knew nothing about it, I had never heard of the books. Quite by chance I encountered some discount codes on the internet and was able to by the electronic version of the complete trilogy for just under US$5. I downloaded them to my iPad 2 and they became my evening and weekend reading for about two weeks. They were hard to put down and go to sleep! After I finished them I saw the movie. It was quite honest to the first book, although a bit condensed, plus I noticed a few changes to the story as told in the book. I enjoyed the books and the movie. I expect we will get two more movies as well.