bookgazing | I am Returned!

Portugal was awesome, the UK can suck it (just for this week, I will get back to loving it next week). It was not a disaster holiday! We did have quite a bit of rain towards the end, but we had five days of beautiful sunshine and one day where we spent time at and left the beach before the rain came down. I'm sorry I don't have better pictures, but all the main ones are on my friends camera so you'll have to settle for a picture of our hotel pool that I took on my phone as she dips her toe into the freezing water (I am brave and did a whole width later in the week). Possibly more photos soon.

We got dressed up and had a posh meal in the old, beautiful part of Albufiera (which we travelled to the tourist way – on the land train). We went for cocktails on the strip twice. We visited the zoo marina and saw the world’s oldest bottle nosed dolphin. The rest of the time we spent relaxing, reading books, drinking ridiculously large gins (oh bar people in Europe we love your use of the swish and drizzle style of pouring spirits), enjoying our own private pool in the mornings (other people were way more morning excursiony than we were) and eating SO much foooooood. Algarvian chicken – I do not even care if that is not a real, traditional food, it was soooo good. The only blip was, well, guess which UK airport we flew back into and guess who flew back alone for the first time.

This is the quickest holiday update ever because it is November and that means it is Women in Sport month here at Bookgazing. More on that tomorrow, as well as more on my super special involvement in an end of year project that lots of you know about anyway because I asked you to be involved. For now just a brief buzz on what I read before I went away:

‘Anila’s Journey’ – Mary Finn: Really enjoyable, if you don’t think too hard about how the plot works (I only started noticing plot holes after I’d finished, so it was very enjoyable to read). Loved the main character and the descriptions of India. This book has also sparked a post idea about writing historically exceptional characters.

‘Speak’ - Laurie Halse Anderson: WuOooow. Quite a painful book to read and perhaps I’m over estimating how good it was technically because it cut down so deep, so easily into my emotions. My gut instinct tells me this was a well written book. Cass, maree, you were right I did have to step back at certain points.

While I was on holiday I read:

‘In for a Penny’ – Rose Lerner: So much fun. I giggled throughout. There were some small issues for me (and if there’s a related sequel about the cast off mistress and the stiff, rejected suitor I might find it very hard to believe), but I was very, very pleased about many things, especially that Amy, the mistress survived. No modern writer should be casually writing conveniently dead mistresses into their historical fiction – good going Rose Lerner.

‘A Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman’ - Friedrich Christian Delius: Probably not the ideal holiday read, because of it being written as one long sentence, but the writing style is technically interesting and the character portrait of a young woman in a foreign country felt very true. Expect me to spend lots of time talking about how the author works to distance his character from Nazi Germany, without making her and exceptionally liberal member of German society – masterful and yet also slightly troubling.

‘A la Carte’ – Tanita S Davis: Thanks to everyone who recommended taking this book as it was just right for holiday. Not quite perfect like Mare’s War, but I’m digesting whether the issues I saw were in there deliberately, as teaching moments, or whether they just crept in and added a bit of meta to the novel. One of those books where the first person voice is spot on and fun to read along with.

‘The Comedians’ – Graham Greene: I’m half way through this and reminded of how awesome Graham Greene is (although I think this is the first time I noticed Greene being racist). I am a huge Greene fangirl and this is my fourth book by him.

More about all of these books in December hopefully. Now on to theme week :)

Did you all have lovely weeks wherever you were? What have you been up to? I’m on a catch up spree, so hopefully should be by a few blogs even if I can’t leave comments. Speak soon everyone.