For anyone who has never had reader’s block, you are very lucky, and I might well hate you! For the last month I have been feeling distinctly meh, and generally mentally exhausted, with any spare energy I do have going into my search for a job, which sucks, and is incredibly boring, and I just can’t seem to get into the books that I pick up. The only exception has been rereads of Terry Pratchett books, which are the literary equivalent of comfort food to me. As it is, I have three books on the go; the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, Swann’s Way, which I am really enjoying, but just takes too much concentration, a short biography of Tolstoy, which is interesting, but written in a style which I find incredibly irritating, and a collection of Nawal el Saadawi’s writings, which is really interesting, but not something I could read all the way through.

Hopefully, though, as my life starts to get a little more organised, I’ll get my reading mojo back. Until then, however, I’m going to be using this little reading hiatus to try and get my blogging a little bit more up to date, and actually post some reviews, unless anyone else has any ideas on how to get yourself out of a total reading funk?

In place of a Wednesday Waffle, I want to point out a great post on Racialicious today on literature of colour, and I recommend giving it a read.

I personally think it’s fairly clear that the reading and writing of literature is not free from questions of race (or other political issues); creativity does not happen within a social and cultural vacuum, and expectations and assumptions inform the activities of both writers and those responding to their work.

Having read through the comments as well, I would certainly second the commenters in recommending Toni Morrison’s Paradise, which is an excellent novel touching on these themes. Having said that, I haven’t yet read anything of Toni Morrison’s that I didn’t love, and I’m still wanting more. So I think I’m going to take some time out to send a little book-love to her today. Can’t wait until I find her most recent novel in a charity shop (bookshop books are going to be out of my price range for a while)!

Courtesy of Feministing, I just can’t resist posting this video of utmost genius featuring the Bronte sisters as action powerhouses, fighting sexist oppression of the publishing industry with book boomerangs! Marvel as they take on sexist publishers everywhere!

I don’t think you can truly appreciate Jane Eyre until you’ve seen… Brontesaurus!

Well, I am shortly to be banished to Another Place for work purposes for two weeks. I should have internet access, but I will be rather more elusive than usual. So I have been making the most of the weekend while it lasts!

It was an absolutely glorious day up here in North London yesterday. So warm that I ventured out without a coat for the first time this year! I didn’t really have any pressing commitments, so I wandered off to partake of one of my favourite weekend pastimes: scouring the local charity shops for new books.

I found two things that I really wanted: Snow by Orhan Pamuk, and another A.S. Byatt (as I’ve been loving her work for the last couple of years), The Virgin in the Garden.

I already knew I wanted them when I saw them, and they seemed in pretty good condition, better than most of the books I get in charity shops, so I just bought them without really doing much more than going “Oooh!” and reading the back covers to remind myself why I wanted them.

It was, therefore, when I got home that the mayhem began. I sat down in the evening to have a bit of a flick through to familiarise myself with my lovely new books, but as I got up close and personal with Snow I discovered that all was not right…

Dun dun DUUUNNNN! Somebody has dog-eared a page. I have now remedied this poor, sad, state of affairs and have talked soothingly to the book to promise that it will never be so misused again.

Phew, that was a close one.

I hesitantly picked up the next, and I was rather taken aback by what I found. I looked again. I grabbed my boyfriend and shoved the book in his face, too.

It’s not often you find a book signed by the author in a charity shop! Look! Signed!

Ah, ’twas a day of ups and downs, but I do rather feel that the pleasures were greater than the perils on this occasion. I do love a good bit of charity shopping, you really never know what you’ll turn up.

Picture found courtesy of a wonderful blog from Booklover:

I want to go to there.

I found this letter in the latest London Review of Books to be quite amusing:

Hot Air

In his review of Ian McEwan’s Solar, Thomas Jones mentions that the incident at the start of Enduring Love involves a hot-air balloon, although McEwan makes it clear that this is not the case: ‘It was an enormous balloon filled with helium, that elemental gas forged from the hydrogen in the nuclear furnace of the stars’ (LRB, 25 March).

Hot air is the usual choice, since balloonists can simply let it cool to descend gradually, or let a bit out to descend more rapidly. After landing, they can empty the balloon completely and fold it up for easy transportation. If the balloon were filled with helium, it would be expensive to empty it partially (to descend) or fully (to allow transport). However, by filling the balloon with helium, McEwan not only gives the narrator the chance to make an in-character remark on the origins of helium: he also makes the unexpected and fateful rising of the balloon more plausible.

Paul Jenkinson
Zollikon, Switzerland

Man, that guy got told! I feel as though I have learned something on this day.

P.S. My Wednesday Waffle is not going to take place until next Wednesday. Turns out that setting up a website takes time and energy and now I think it’s time for me to put my money where my blog is, and actually, y’know, read something. I’m currently nearing the end of a quite excellent book, so more on that to come!