Crying in the car park

Yesterday I couldn't help myself, being about 30 pages from the end of "The Time Traveller's Wife" I had to take it into work with me. I started trying to read it in the doctors' common room at lunch time, then realised I wasn't going to be able to focus on it properly, so I took my lunch out to my car and sat there and read to the end and cried a little bit. The fact is that recently my bookaholism has had a bit of a resurgence. For anyone reading this blog who doesn't know me - my name is doctor/woman and I'm a bookaholic. When I am hooked on a book it makes me turn up late for work with my hair not done properly, it makes me stay up late when I'm tired, it makes me unable to engage with my normal life because I'm lost in some little dream world with my book people and then as soon as I've finished I want another one.... Fortunately I read books lots of times, otherwise my out of control appetites would cost me lots of money as well, and who knows what kind of junk I would be reading just to find something new?

The recent rekindling of my love affair with books started I think with getting some new ones for Christmas, then with reading the whole of Watership Down in 1 day when I had a nasty cold back in Feb, and then continued with a trip to the old Oxfam bookshop where I used to buy all my books as a teenager when I was back in liverpool with my sister. Thought I might just make a note here of what I have read so far this year. By the way (R) means I've read it before - like repeats in a TV book

The Time Traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffeneger (R) - oh yes this book is sooo good. as I may previously have mentioned...

Duncton Wood, William Horwood (R) read this when I was a teenager. Book about moles - my reading this year seems to have gone along a bit of a talking animals theme! It's a good storyline - this is the first book in a series - some of the later ones were a bit weird if I remember rightly, but this one is a good read, although not earth shatteringly good.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson - hadn't read this before - found it in the Oxfam shop and was intrigued to read it, as the theme is about a very well-respected doctor finding an outlet for the darker side of his personality, which is kind of what I'm doing here. Not the dark side exactly, just the unprofessional, ranty, emotional and independent side. Maybe I had better be careful my blog personality doesn't take on a life of it's own!

Girl Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen (R)- thought would be interesting to read this again when starting psychiatry - it's the account of a girl who was a psychiatric inpatient for 2 years in the 60s. Interesting read - makes you look at things from a different perspective and deconstruct them a bit. Also makes you think about things from the patient's point of view.

Surprised by Joy, CS Lewis (R) - biography by CS Lewis of how he became a Christian. Interesting because he makes lots of very logical deductions from the fact that he experienced this feeling he calls Joy, which led him to his faith in a very intellectual manner, but the feeling he is deducing from is an emotion - the feeling of longing for beauty and fulfillment which is experienced as a sharp pleasure. I'm not very good at explaining it, but he is always very good at explaining things, so read the book if you want to know what I'm waffling about. Also interesting because when he wrote it he had not yet met his wife, who was called Joy.

The Heroes of Asgard, E & A Leary (R) - Norse mythology. Read it because CS Lewis talks so much about it in above book. Can't say it really does a lot for me. My favourite mythology is Tolkien's, which is not a real mythology but an invented one. Also love Arthurian legends. Are legends different to mythology?

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor (R) - Another book I really love. The story of different people's lives running parallel on a terraced street in a northern city with really beautiful prose that is almost poetry. Everybody should read this one. I've just bought his new one - So Many Ways to Begin.

I dared to call him Father, Bilquis Shah - Autobiography by a Muslim-born woman in Pakistan who became a Christian.

Outcast of Redwall, Brian Jacques - Read this because people who read Redwall as children kept telling me how amazing it is. It was ok, but I think it might be one of those things you had to read as a child to love it.

Watership Down, Richard Adams (R) - I always forget just how powerful and wide-reaching this book is. I started it because I was ill and wanted something easy to read, but it's one of those books that completely hooks me every time and I read it all in 24 hours. I love the fact that the rabbits have their own mythology, which adds this other layer to the story.

Have I bored you now? Maybe I should start a book blog as well, but everyone's got one - I would feel a bit unoriginal.