Do you ever feel like there are too many books and too little time?

I started devouring my way through Pride and Prejudice and laughing a lot to myself – well, smiling – only to find 2 weeks later I’m still at the same indent about 100 pages in.  What’s that about?  There’s so much to do, I want to spend time on my blog, go to the gym, watch movies, see friends… EAT!

This one is also on my list, recommended for when I finish.  You know when you just want something really light?  I’m thinking of keeping this one in my desk as a lunchtime read.  As part of my ‘work life balance’ discipline of taking a lunch break and sitting in the park when it’s sunny.  Plus, just realised this is the story they recently made into a film and I LOVE a good romcom.  Have to read first and watch in that order – or it just ruins it for me!

I have, however, managed to read two books this summer – both in one week!  I was proud of myself for finishing them, and completely soaked through my mind, I felt like something of a wave of a different world and a whole richness of inspiration swept through me just for having read fiction.  Which I don’t normally read at all – usually I prefer to learn about things, or just don’t have the time to read anything beyond my college syllabus.  But I can see why people do – it’s fanciful, whimsical, inspiring and it exercises your imagination.  And reading it in such a compressed space of time, it really absorbs you.  I will tell you about them both later, I will say that The Help was my favourite of the two; although I read The Other Hand in a few days I didn’t like it.  My determination to read a book fired me through it and it was gripping but I didn’t ‘enjoy’ it – harrowing and disturbing, it lingers with you and leaves you feeling it between reads.  Still, I would like to know what anyone else thinks – I have a friend who we share similar tastes in art and I think she might like it, or she might feel like I do.  I don’t know – I might give this to her… it’s good to pass on a book right?

More about this one later – I will say that they are making it into a film, which I’m looking forward to seeing.  Didn’t like the casting of the lead part I really thought they were going to go for a wispy beauty like Claire Danes or even would have settled for a dressed-down Gwyneth Paltrow but they have chosen someone unknown who’s playing it as a bit of a ‘comedy’ act, from what I saw of the trailer, which seems a shame as I read her as a kind of melancholy role.  Still, I will reserve judgement.  Really excited to see the lead parts of Aibeleen and co, they are amazing stories and I am so proud to see that black cinema is coming to the fore finally.