76/365: Book worm

I am off to Ragdale Hall in Leics today for a one-night stay (it's a spa) and I will be meeting up with a friend I haven't seen for at least 20 years! Exciting. A picture tomorrow :-)

I doubt if there will be any time for reading but at the moment I have a bit of a books feast going on. I was in Waterstone's recently and picked up the latest one from Paul Torday, The Girl on the Landing. While I was paying the girl asked if I wanted Marina Lewycka's new one, We Are All Made of Glue. My hand was reaching out for it involuntarily but I declined, although as soon as I got home, I ordered it from Amazon.

It amused me how Torday and Lewycka are yoked together. I guess it's because their quirky first novels came out at roughly the same time.

Anyway, I'm halfway through We Are All Made of Glue and enjoying it enormously. I love pen portraits of eccentric old ladies with secrets. The Girl on the Landing was a spooky ghost story and very thought provoking. I then ordered The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, his 2nd novel.  This one really hits you between the eyes. It starts at the present and then works its way backwards. As the tragic story unfolds, you find that the initial repulsion and scorn you felt for Wilberforce, a pathetic alchoholic, gives way to pity and sadness at the circumstances that forced him down that path.