Monday 23 January 2012

What's on my kindle?

Disclaimer:  I'm linking to Amazon a  little bit, further below.  They aren't referral links, for the record.
One Day, via amazon.co.uk
This is also the year of reading a lot more.  I used to be a bit of a voracious reader, but with one thing and another (okay, doing an MSc, running a business as well as a full time job, having a baby that could never sleep or be quiet, now a toddler that can't sit still) I haven’t read anything that requires a massive amount of attention span for a couple of years.  Now things are calming down a little and I have my lovely commute and my new kindle, I really have no excuse.  So far this year I’ve read The Help, World War Z and I’m now 14% through One Day.  One Day feels a little close to home, what with a student flatshare on Rankeillor Street, a joint honours degree in English and something else, and scruffy northern lass/over-privileged public schoolboy protagonists (in my experience, you can pretty much put all the students in Edinburgh into one of two camps – hardworking overachieving state school kids from Scotland or the North of England who couldn’t go to Oxbridge because they needed to work part time to pay their way through university, or Oxbridge rejects from public schools who simply cannot comprehend why someone with four grade A A Levels would work on a checkout on weekends when they could be at the polo, and cry when Daddy cuts their clothing allowance).  Seriously, I saw a 18 year old girl during Fresher’s Week a few years ago striding through the New Town with a genuine Dior Saddlebag.  Two fairly senior members of the royal family were in my year (one on my course) and Prince William had nights out in Edinburgh most weekends.  I knew a lot of girls called Antonia, Clemmy and Tiggy, but not many called Joanne, Sharon or Lindsay.  I had to show someone how to MAKE A BED because she’d never done it for herself before.  I only really speak regularly to one person I knew at university now, and we became friends working at Sainsburys, it was just coincidence we were both in the same year and based around George Square.  I think I’ll make a note to myself to watch the film as well, I’m sure it’ll make me feel nostalgic. I think the one thing that everyone who goes to Edinburgh to study comes away with is a deep love of the city, and I'm just grateful I get to spend a couple of days every month there for work.

Dior Gaucho Saddlebag, via www.purses.com (of course!)
Next on the reading list are some of the real actual books that I have on my bookcase to read once (or re-read one last time) then pass on.  I’m trying to reduce my book clutter along with everything else.  Then I want to have a go at the books on the BBC best 100 books list that I didn’t have to read while I was studying literature.  Because it was voted on by the public, it’s not too skewed towards the dustier classics, and you can kind of tell which ones were voted for by people of different ages and so on.  Whether I can force myself to read any Jacqueline Wilson or Terry Pratchett remains to be seen...  In fact, I may work my way through the top 200 as there are a lot more books in the second half that are more my kind of thing.

1 comments:

Y Niwl said...

" I knew a lot of girls called Antonia, Clemmy and Tiggy"

Are you sure you talking about Edinburgh or about Mountbatten?

Have you become a kindle convert then?