Wednesday, July 29, 2009

what i'm (not planning to be) reading

On Five Minutes Peace (another blog to which I contribute), Keris is sharing her summer/holiday reading list and I’m going to share mine soon, too. 

But thing about reading is that you can never make a plan. There’s always the chance that you’ll be dragged off tangent and I almost always am. Here are some of the non-wishlist books I sneaked in almost behind my back…

A Little Bit Wicked quickly shot to the top of my “to be read” list after seeing an interview with Kristin Chenoweth (seriously, isn’t she adorable?) So I bought a new marketplace copy from Amazon, saving me a good £3 (woo!), and whizzed through it in just over 24 hours. (Then I sold it on and bought something else). Anyway, I really loved it. It’s light without being vapid, and Kristin keeps a lot to herself but is emotionally honest enough for the reader to feel they know her better. She’s especially honest about her relationship with Aaron Sorkin, which is fascinating, and her lovely bubbly personality shines through, while at the same time revealing her humanity. If you’re not a fan of Kristin, musical theatre, or celeb memoirs, it’s probably not for you, but I found it a real feel-good read.

Unsticky wasn’t on my summer reading list either, and although Keris had said she really liked it, I wasn’t sure I’d make time for it. But then Keris picked it for the FMP book club, which gave me a good reason to try it. And I’m glad I did. Packaged as a bonkbuster for the 21st century and at a hefty 500+ pages, I wasn’t sure if it was my cuppa tea, but it has a LOT of heart and even more brain. I’m still mulling over whether it ended the way I wanted it to but I’ve gone into much more detail about that in the book club discussion over on FMP. 

I spotted Of Cats and Kings when I was having lunch with my mum in a teeny-tiny bookshop/cafe. Drawn in by the title, the fact it related to cats and the fact that I’d read a previous book, Claudius and I, by the same author (Clare de Vries), I grabbed it. Oh, and it was also only £1.50. Kind of an odd memoir, the conceit (that de Vries was going to Burma and Thailand to look for a new cat) was a bit flimsy – as much as I like cats, I’m not quite sure why it couldn’t have been a straight travelogue. It’s so hard to travel round Burma as it is, why make things more complicated? Anyway, I learned so much about oppression in Burma and the awful conditions there, especially interesting to me because my Granddad was there in the war. An odd read, and oddly, considering the subject matter, not a depressing one. Interesting… and it made me really want a Tonkinese (or two).

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