Solace of the road

Now, when I started reading this book, and I noticed the name of the author, I started getting this running commentary in my head for how this entry would go. And then I read the blurb at the back where it said she'd died from terminal cancer in 2007 and set up a trust in her name through her publishers ... and I thought I wouldn't post anything in such poor taste (except this: Siobhan Dowd, when you were alive, you had an amazing first name. Bet you got a lot of grief with it too)

Solace Of The Road was a good book, though at first I had my reservations (that's what you get, I guess for picking up a book just because you share a Christian name. Although, Holly, the main character, sounds a lot like my Lamb.) Holly, the girl in it, is a foster child, and the book's basically about her being taken in by foster parents, rather than at a home, and her then running away from London to Ireland to try and get to her mum.

You do feel for the girl, even if she is a little nuts. She reminds me of a few girls I know. I was in tears by the end, when she's about to throw herself off a boat in the middle of the Irish Sea. She stole a wig from her foster mother before running off (who had cancer and wore this wig, but hated it. Holly loved the wig) and she used it to imagine an alter-ego while she was running away, but by the time she's on the ferry she can't convince herself like it anymore and ... yeah, you have to read it. I'm almost tempted to read Bog Child because of it, though that book never really grabbed me.

I'm halfway through The Girl Who Could Fly now, so I'll write about that in a day or so. And then maybe I'll carry on with This Bleeding City/On The Road, or maybe I'll start the Carrie Diaries. Who knows.

In other news ... sorry for not blogging much. I've slept every opportunity the last few days. I'm getting bruises and purpura too, on my chest. I'm making myself paranoid again. Dr Scully's in my head, constantly telling me the chances are still remote, but still ... I may be out of it for a little while. Don't be surprised if I don't blog much. I'm in my own head. Doesn't help that I'm doubting my writing ability, having read through about half of Uprooted now ... I need to make more changes. Sigh.

Slice of the Good Life

I won't be blogging over the weekend, I warn you now. I'm going away for the weekend.

My father's part of a few freemasonry lodges (they're nothing like the Dan Brown books ... they stopped cutting people's tongues out in 1985 at the latest ...) and one of them goes to Bournemouth every April/May for their Ladies Night (when all the men make a fuss of the women. Yes, it's archaic and masogenistic ... but 7 course dinners, dressing up, raising money for charities and being given a free gift just because you have boobs is actually pretty fun. Also, having some loud-mouth announce you to the room ...) Apparently it's stopping the Bournemouth tradition after this year, but this is also the first year kids are allowed, hence why I'm even going. I went a few years ago with my then-boyfriend, that was pretty cool. We got him a Kaiser Chief's tie to wear from the Carling Live 24 gig we'd been at the night before, but in the photo's the 'kaiser cheif' bit just looks like stripes.

So yeah, will be interesting. Won't be able to do the 'let's walk into Bournemouth city centre at 1am in tux's amongst the clubbers to get some chips/kebabs' tradition with my boy in tow ... but the shakeaways the morning after is a definite. I love shakeaways (and Millie's cookies. Both are in Lakeside, where I'm going tomorrow just beforehand. Hmmmmmm!)

And since you're so obviously wondering - I'm taking 'This Bleeding City' and 'The Girl Who Could Fly'. Plus my laptop, for proof-reading during naptime/boy's downtime tomorrow. And then, I'll be sending copies out - and if you haven't already read my atrocious writing (I do make Stefenie Meyer look good) and you want to ... comment on this post and I'll let you have the drivel too.

Suggestions?

So, after finishing 'Crazy in love' I started reading a book I just got, 'Dreaming of Amelia' about a ghost or something? But it's not really very good, so does anyone have any book suggestions? Or any topic they want to see me cover on here?

Or, if you're stuck for ideas, pick on of the list at the end of this blog for me to read next, and I'll r&r it. Burned isn't out for another few weeks. The next book in the Private series has another month. I need more material, lol.

In other news - finished the first rough draft of Budding last night. The last chapter's crap, but I'm giving it a rest and typing up some stuff written in notebooks/on my laptop in third person. I'll go back to it in a week and edit, then send it to whoever wants to proof-read/Cassie and Joanne.

The options I have to read at the moment (starred books I've read a little of already):

The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ - Phillip Pullman
Revenge - Sharon Osbourne
On The Road - Jack Kerouac*
Dreaming of Amelia - Jaclyn Moriarty*
This Bleeding City - Alex Preston
Dracula - Bram Stoker*
The Girl Who Could Fly - Victoria Forester
City of Ashes/Glass/Bones - Cassandra Clare
The Host - Stefenie Meyer

City Boys

So, I read this book ages ago, Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich, about these city boys who dealt in the Japanese stock markets. Because of the system in Japan, they had to live in this one city to do trades, and were responsible for causing skews in the market, netting themselves billions. They took on Japanese stock traders, some mafia-like family ... two of them almost died in a motorcycle accident. It was a good book actually, and I learnt a lot about trading from it.

Anyway, I was in waterstones today, procrastinating from the task of finding a present for a three year old girl I've never met (hello Tinkerbell tea set) and came across a book called This Bleeding City. It was written just before the stockmarkets in the UK took a fall apparently, and the guy who wrote it was a trader and therefore is probably writing from experience. I've had a peek at the preface, and Oh My Word. I may leave the 50 book list just to read it (in the preface, the protagonist has left his son in the car a moment to do something in the office, gotten sidetracked, and hours later, realises his son is still in the car. It's a hot day and the kid's barely a toddler, so he's running into A&E with this kid who's feet are bruised from burst blood vessels. Did that really happen to Preston's nephew? Jesus ... oh yeah, it's Preston's brother who wrote it, apparently, but it doesn't mention it in the book because he obviously wants to make a name for himself/have nothing to do with someone so blah. If the rest of the book is like those three pages, I have no doubt he'll do better than his brother. Well, he should.) ... speaking of the 50 book list by the way, picked up like, 9 more of the list! Thank you works, for having a sale on poor yet legible reprints of The Great Gatsby, The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, Don Quixote, Moby Dick, Gulliver's Travels and Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (and War And Peace, since I'm curious) ... got Catch 22 and The Grapes Of Wrath from Waterstones too .... and a few other less impressive texts (Sharon Osbourne's first novel, and another Twilight Spoof called New Moan which is funnier and less off on a tangent than Nightlight, though it does reiterate their view of Bella as a narcissist far too much for my liking) because I'm not exactly WonderWoman.