while you're ahead…

First up, my friend Alexander McCall Smith.

This is the first one in the long 44 Scotland Street series and it introduces all the characters and their quirkiness.  It’s a lovely lovely read.  Light hearted, entertaining, lough out loud funny in places and I’m not a laugh out loud person,  in fact I hate funny books written with the sole purpose of making you laugh… they normally don’t and feel forced.  This one made me chuckle on many an occasion.

Would be the perfect beach read and the good thing there’s plenty of more ‘episodes’ if I feel like it.

The next one is a ‘tad’ (lot) more serious:  Walden by Thoreau…

I understand many people would have read/studied at school but I didn’t and really knew nothing about it at all.  I have to confess that, yes I’d heard of it… but I mainly bought it for the cover.

Call me shallow, I don’t care.

Well… Mr Thoreau doesn’t pull any punches… a lot of what it says is still daringly and scaringly relevant… his ranting about consumerism, about having too much, about the race for more and more…. yup still going… he can be considered the father of slow living, of recycling, of the handmade…

I enjoyed the book, of course the language is a bit redundant at times and old fashioned, but it’s beautifully poetic too (not the loooooooong pages about bean cultivation though… ugh..) and it does make you want to find a cabin by a pond for a while.

The next book is AMAZING.  I’d make it compulsory reading for everybody.

I don’t even know where to begin.  I don’t want to spoil it for you so I won’t talk about the story (which in the interest of fairness gets a little lost in the middle… me thinks…) but the concept of our world being completely turned upside down and gender differences are not what we know… because when the power swap hands…?  what is gender?  what does it mean to be powerful?  Who is powerful? who is wrong? who is better?  Are men really more aggressive ?  Are women really more caring and nurturing?

So many questions in my head when I finished it…  I highly recommend it.

 

I’ve got so many books by my bedside table it’s not even funny… I’ll never get to the bottom of the pile… sigh.