bookgazing | Back and Blogging

It has been both relaxing and manic and I am now returned. Thanks everyone who wished me a good holiday, Nice was so lovely, with the food, the sun, the sea, the apartment, the tourism and especially the 100 flavours ice cream shop (beer ice cream, rhubarb, lavender – take lots of people with you if you go so you can try all different flavours). I went from the plane back from Nice into a French restaurant in Birmingham (because my mum could not quite cope with leaving, or with the idea of cooking again). Then Friday I was at work and Saturday morning I travelled down to Plymouth to see a friend from college I hadn’t seen in about a year (again wonderful sea, sun, food, best cocktail bar ever and ooing over gorgeous house renovations). Also was really excited to hear that she enjoyed ‘Magyk’ which I sent down a month ago for her to read and she’s bought the whole series. Got home about ten last night and have spent the day fighting the urge to sleep on my desk.

I feel like I have not written a review in weeks, but I have three books I’m ready to rave about (Sherri L Smith’s ‘Flygirl’, the opening book of Michelle Paver’s ‘Chronicles of Ancient Darkness’ and ‘The Post Office Girl’ by Stefan Zweig )so just hang on a bit and I’ll get the critical cogs going round and review some notes I made.

Until then please enjoy the picture of the book pile I came home to on Friday:

I talked about buying most of these in previous posts. However you can see a couple of fantastical romances that I scored off Bookmooch at the top, ‘Sleeping with the Fishes’ and ‘Garden Spells’. I almost never check my email in time to pick up books offered there, so two novels is a really satisfying haul for me.

This group of books pretty much illustrates my random book tastes. At the bottom are some serious literary contenders; Booker nominees and a prize winning non-fiction book, then there are young adult novels whose subjects range from ice hockey to gay school clubs, above them are literary books that are a little bit older, a selection from a fantasy series, a French classic (in English unless anyone should get the idea that my French extends beyond the ‘ca va’ conversation) and then some romances top the pile.

My taste is not at all focused and specialised like the bookshelves of my friend in Plymouth, whose boyfriend (navy man, with a war studies degree) is working his way through books about war from the Peloponnesian conflict to Afghanistan. It must be wonderful to have so much focus and his bookshelves are fascinating to look at, you just want to dive in even if you’ve never found the history of war interesting before. I’m never going to master that much discipline, I like to flit too much, but I would miss my random book piles if I had more concentrated interests.

I hope you’ve all been having wonderful times, can’t wait to hear how Kathleen’s time in France was especially (I hope you weren’t caught in the storms parts of France had) and I’ll be catching up on everyone’s blogs throughout the week.