Time Travelling Reading

Tania reminded me today of a great book I read in South Africa at Easter - The Time Traveller's Wife. She described it as "totally mind blowingly amazingly beautifully funny and melancholy all in one!"((c) La Scania 2005) And it is. It is a completely different book, unlike anything you will have ever read before. I read it really quickly lying in the sun in South Africa (I know, I know, but I just had to get a bit of that in too! I'd quite happily be back there right now!) and it really was a page turner. I was stunned by it then, and I'm stunned again thinking about it now. I meant at the time to tell people about it when I got back (although I gave my copy to Charlotte, my travelling companion, who assures me that she was equally as impressed), but, I didn't. Must have been the back-to-work effect making me forget or something.

So I'm glad that Tania has reminded me of it so that I can have a quick rave about it on here and spread the word a bit more. It's the kind of book I would consider reading again, and I don't usually say that, if ever. Once they are read for me they are done, pretty much. Especially with most of the rest of the BBC Big Read list to work my way through. My progress through the list was hampered for sometime by my slow reading of The Two Towers (which I found boring, but not quite as boring as the first volume of Lord of the Rings), now finished, and War and Peace, not finished, but also not boring. The problem with this one is that the print is so small that I can't read it before bed because I can't concentrate on the print, and I can't carry it around with me because it's a bit big (941 pages and at least two and a half inches thick!).

At the current time, I've read 12 and 4/6 of the Top 21 (as Lord of the Rings, and His Dark Materials, both trilogies, are counted as one entry, and I've read the first and second volumes of each) and 33 4/6 of the Top 100. So not too bad, but it is going slooooooooowwwwllllly!

I love reading, but I always feel like I don't get enough time to do it. I can get through books really quickly (although not as quickly as some, such as Marty who finished the latest Harry Potter within hours of getting it!) if I have the chance to sit down and concentrate on them (which most often occurs at home in Jersey, the beach seems to help for some reason, although it does make the joints of the book a bit scratchy!) but on the whole, reading on the journey into and out of work is a bit spasmodic because of changes etc, and I'm usually too tired to read at any length before bed. Sometimes I think I should wake up earlier and read before I get ready for work... but I just don't think that would happen on a regular basis. And I am already in danger at times of existing on Margaret Thatcher levels of sleep, which is never good!

Phew. Now that I've got all that off my chest, I'm going to go home (as I'm still at work)... and probably not read because I'm shattered!