More books!

Felt it about time to update my reading list. Have just got back from our church conference in Brighton, which was amazing, and my grandpa's 90th party, which was fun, but can't be bothered to describe these just now. Harry Potter mania is taking over my life, as I try to read the first 6 books in 2 weeks in preparation for the new one, so books are more or less all I can think about right now. So since I last blogged about books, I have read:

So Many Ways to Begin, Jon McGregor - I think this book suffered because I was comparing it to his first one, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, which I raved about before, I think. It is the story of a marriage and of 2 people's lives and also the search of the husband for his real mother. It shared the same immediacy of writing as the previous book, which draws people and their actions so clearly that I could see them, but it doesn't have quite the same poetic feel and so many intertwining stories. Still enjoyed it though.

The Bookseller of Kabul, Anne Seierstad- I found this book interesting, but was not blown away by it. It is a true description of an Afghan family that the author lived with for a while. It does give an insight into family life and the way people think, but I don't feel it changed my life much.

Blue like Jazz, Donald Miller - this is a fascinating, honest and funny account of one young man's journey towards true Christianity (or as he prefers to call it, Christian spirituality), in a postmodern world. He looks at topics like community, people's perceptions of Christians, sex and singleness, the mix of politics and religion in America, in such a simple, down to earth, what-we've-all-been-thinking-but-were-too-afraid-to-say kind of way, that I couldn't put it down. He also includes cartoons, and his hallucinations of Emily Dickinson. I'd recommend it to Christians or anyone who's interested in Christianity.

The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (R) - I re-read the whole series. Genius taking of a silly idea and stretching it to the point of lunacy and hilarity. I am an old fashioned happy ending lover though, and can't help preferring the end to "So long and thanks for all the fish" to the ultimate end of "Mostly Harmless".

The Undomestic Goddess and the Shopaholic books, Sophie Kinsela - Ok, so I don't normally read this type of book, but I borrowed one while having a bath at my sister's house (long story, I only have a shower in my house at the mo, and I need my baths), and found it unputdownable. They are very light and did not enlighten me in any particular way, but they entertained me a lot and were readable in about 2 hours each. I thought maybe I had been converted to chick-lit, but then I borrowed...

Watermelon, Marian Keyes - this was dull.

The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins (R) - the earliest English detective novel. The story of a cursed diamond which is left to a young girl on her 21st birthday by her dastardly uncle and the consequences when it is stolen the next day. Still gripping even though I've read it lots of times, atmospheric and spooky.

The Pull of the Moon, Elizabeth Berg- this was one I picked up almost totally at random in the Oxfam bookshop, and was intrigued by the synopsis of the story. It's a bit of a feminist treatise - middle aged woman leaves husband and goes off driving around America, discovers her cervix and sense of self etc, but I found it quite moving and it struck true with me as the inner world of a woman.

Doctor at Large, Richard Gordon - this is a random old book I also picked up in the same trip. It's a James Herriot type true but probably over-embellished account of the author's first few years as a qualified doctor in the first days of the NHS. He struggles to find a job, a car, to look the part, to get on with his seniors and to sleep with nurses without having to marry them. Found it fascinating just because of the contrasts and similarities to today.

The Once and Future King, T H White (R) - I love this book. It's a retelling of the Arthurian legends, mostly sourced directly from the Morte d'Arthur by Malory, but retold in a vastly human, comic, tragic, grotesque, sympathetic, historically accurate and wildly inaccurate way. Please read it.

Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton (R) - Ditto - also brilliant, also please read it. This is a story of an old priest in South Africa in the days before true apartheid came in. He goes to Johannesburg in search of his sister and his son, who went there and never came back... It is about racism, but also about industrialisation, justice, loss of community and forgiveness. And it's beautifully written and will make you cry.

I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (R) - this is a gripping story of a young girl living in an old castle with her eccentric family and her attempts to escape upper-class poverty and find true love. Vividly evokes an imaginative adolescence.

Friday's Child, Georgette Heyer - Ok, so Georgette Heyer is chick-lit that I was already into, but it's all set in the Regency period, which makes it feel slightly more intellectually acceptable. They are generally your classic rom-com type plots with lots of balls, dresses, horses, scandals and elopements thrown in. The characterisation is generally very funny and they always make me feel good. Say what you like - I don't care!

Life isn't all ha ha hee hee, Meera Syal - a bit soap opera-like, but also a good insight into what it's like to be an indian british woman.

Harry Potter 1,2 and 3, JK Rowling (R) - I am racing through them, but also picking up tiny details I haven't noticed before in my attempts to work out what's going to happen in the last book. I'm so excited! My sister has borrowed book 4 and I'm sitting up waiting for her to drop it back to me...

a rest in the wild country

Mr me and I have returned today from a week in Northumberland with his family - ie his mum and dad, sister and sister's boyfriend. Fortunately I get on very well with the Me's (as they could be called), so except for a nasty cold at the beginning of the week, when I wasn't much company, we had a fun time together. Generally I am very relaxed with them and there's not much I feel I can't say in front of them.

Feel relaxed and chilled out now, but tired, as it seems to have been a surprisingly active week. There were leisure facilities on site, so we swam, trampolined and played tennis, as well as walking, playing beach cricket and horse-riding. All a bit drastic for me! But the peace of the setting and the general desertedness of the county have made me relaxed anyway.


We pottered around castles, wandered among rhodedendrons, marvelled at the steam rising like mist from the nearly empty beach, drank Lindesfarne mead and ate fish and chips by the sea. The horse-riding was very exciting too, as I've never done that before.



One of the best pleasures for me was the bookshop mr me took me to this morning before we came back. It is called Barter Books, it's in Alnwick and it occupies the whole of a redundant Victorian railway station. Apparently it's one of the largest second-hand bookshops in Europe. It has a minature train that travels around the top of the bookcases. It has loads of beautiful old books, folios and early editions. It has tea, coffee and chocolate for 25p a cup and lots of places to sit and enjoy it. I could have spent a week there quite happily. I bought - two tiny old volumes - 2 parts of translations of the story of the Holy Grail from the Morte d'Arthur ( I recently re-read "The Once and Future King", so I'm interested), Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer, Life isn't all ha ha hee hee by Meera Syal, A Passage to India by E M Forster and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. All for less than £20! I have that rich luxurious feeling I always have when I have several new books lined up.

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.