Time for blogging again. If only because I really am trying to keep an accurate account of what I read in a 52 week.

First off is The Yacoubian Building. Which I enjoyed. I don’t think I read enough ‘foreign’ lit. (Does anyone else feel this way?). I know there are all these authors out there writing great books but not in English and chances are I am missing them all. I liked the characters a lot. I liked the complexity of society it showed and also the corruption and what it all ended up doing to people. I am not sure there was quite enough poetic justice for me. I was saddened by the murder. A lot. But read it.

Then it was holiday time. And so I took a giant book with me to America. A giant book with little print. Neil Stephenson’s Quicksilver. It lasted me the entire holiday. I didn’t like the middle part so much. I don’t care about Jack Shaftoe. Eliza and her hatred of slavery is another matter. But my do I love Daniel Waterhouse. And do I love the descriptions of the early Royal Society. I just can’t understand why it won the Arthur C. Clarke. Cuz it seems like straight historical fiction to me. I don’t love enough to buy the other two parts of the cycle. But I am going to the library tomorrow to order them in. More big books with little print!

Towards the end of Quicksilver, I got a bit ground down by the density of it all (and my is it a dense book. With lots of characters and lots of writing styles. I could have lived without the fake restoration plays) and so I got on my flight with an airport paperback. The Ruins. Look, I had picked up the book in an airport before and been intrigued because it was written by the guy who did A Simple Plan. Now, I haven’t read that novel but I loved the film. Though it traumatised me. Maybe not as much as Requiem for a Dream. But I am haunted by it and not with happy warm feelings either. I was just horrified by the end. So the guy writes a horror film. About Ruins. (and while I was stateside the film came out so I was seeing adds). I don’t do horror films. They scare me too much. But I spent a lot of my teenage years reading Stephen King (and I have the hardbacks to prove it—I was also traumatised by Ghost Story back then. The novel not the film but that is another story). So I read The Ruins on the plane back. Blah. Nothing special. I knew the plants were trouble from the get go. And I wanted a better ruin. With something lurking underneath that was direction those damn plants. I was surprised everyone died. But I wouldn’t recommend it or stay up to watch the film on sci-fi (while I do want to see 30 Days of Night).

So last week I read The Road. Which is beautifully written. Really a work of craftsmanship. But bleak. Oh so bleak. I don’t know how I feel about the end. And surely something could grow? In special soil. In a barn. Under lights powered by the last diesel? Or am I grasping at straws. Because I am growing potatoes in my back garden come the collapse of the global economy and I don’t even like potatoes (but I don’t think I can grow rice, despite the fact that I live in a swamp).