Reading

I can stop harping on about the internet and the Mac now. All fixed. It’s time to retire off the old PC and get to love the Mac.

I’ve been reading my first draft. I made the gargantuan mistake of reading Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn at the same time. Not simultaneously, obviously, because that would be impossible. During the day when I was working I read my draft and then when I’d stopped work I’d read One Good Turn. Talk about inferiority complex. I got quite depressed.

When I finished One Good Turn (particularly loved the opening scenes) I started Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. This is a futuristic, YA novel set in a dystopian US, way out of my genre but one of the blogs I read (I’m sorry I don’t know which one) recommended it as a good example of tension on every page. Son had read it and I like to keep up a bit with what he enjoys so I put it on my pile to read, not really thinking I’d get around to it. Yesterday, I picked it up and started it but it was so… well, not my thing that after a few pages I thought I’d just read a bit to have a look at the way Collins had achieved the tension … and do you know only a few pages later, before I knew it, I couldn’t put it down.

Isn't it funny how a book can creep up on you like that?

Books, books and more books

I've done my usual trick and bought too many books while I've been in the UK.

From the top, 'Writing a Children's Book' by Pamela Cleaver was a prize from Tam's blog. Hoo Rah. Very pleased to win that and thanks for sending it to me Tam.

'Rosemary's Baby' by Ira Levin: a first edition appears in my story. I want to quote a line from it (I think obtaining permission can cause all kinds of problems, but that's not a problem to worry about now.)

Three more Daphne Du Maurier books because I loved 'Rebecca.' I can't buy them in Bangkok so I had to buy them here! Honest.

'Incendiary' by Chris Cleave: because I so loved 'The Other Hand' and I saw the film of Incendiary without connecting them and that too was totally brilliant.

'The Reinvention of Ivy Brown' by Roberta Taylor. I picked this up 'blind.' I read the blurb and thought I'd like it.

'Hunger Games: Catching Fire' by Suzanne Collins is for Son. Haven't been able to buy it in Bangkok.

'The Beacon' by Susan Hill. Because I like her.

'Thin Blue Smoke' by Doug Worgul: I admired the cover at my Industry Day. Will Atkins of Macmillan New Writing said I could take it. He told me he's 'evangelical' about the book. I thanked him and told him in exchange I would review it on my blog.

'Small Wars' by Sadie Jones: I loved 'The Outcast' so I bought this without reading the blurb.

And I'm off to Waterstones again today to get some reading material for my Dad, so who knows what I'll come home with!