ramtops

A piece of snow rested on her mouth. She licked it off and tasted the grainy, rainy, travelled taste of it.

I tried so hard to like The People's Act of Love, by James Meek. But I didn't, and I simply can't put my finger on why. It took me a long time to read, and I nearly gave up several times.

the use of language is wonderful - see above. The plot is good, the characterisation is good, the reviews are splendid (which is why I bought it), and yet - somehow - it just didn't work for me. But it has put me in the mood to watch Doctor Zhivago, which I may just go and do shortly.

p.s. perlmonger has just brought me toast and marmite. See why I love him?

I should have posted this last weekend, but managed not to get round to it - mea culpa.

Alan Bennett's Untold Stories

perlmonger bought me this last October, and it's been sitting on the "to read" heap for ages, while I ploughed through other stuff. I love Alan Bennett - his writing, and his plays, and his monologues, and I was looking forward to this enormously. And most of it I enjoyed enormously, although I found myself flagging a bit about two thirds of the way through, when he was writing about art - a subject on which I am, I fear, a bit of a philistine. But it was mostly joyous stuff, and vintage Bennett, and I could hear him in my head reading the passages to me.

but the trouble is that I've heard him parodied too much (albeit affectionately) by Dead Ringers, and when you're actually reading Bennett writing about Dame Thora, you just expect a pot of Earl Grey and a macaroon to feature in the proceedings. Still well worth a read, mind you.

after that, I mopped up Cat Confidential by Vicky Halls, which we acquired as part of Waterstones 3 for 2 offer - a marketing strategy on their part which is causing us to run out of wall space for books even sooner than anticipated.

there wasn't much in there that was surprising - after all, we run our own feline research station here (although who is studying whom is difficult to say ...) - but there were a few points which made me go "oh, I never knew that!". Written in a very chatty style, I enjoyed it as light reading, and mopped it up over last weekend.

now having a bit of fiction, reading Jenny Maxwell's blacksmith trilogy - haven't read them for years, as the first in the set went missing, but I picked up a copy from Amazon marketplace last year.