It does seem typical, doesn’t it, that just when I’ve made some new friends, life recrudesces and I must go away and be a decent human being for a few days. I know not if I shall be able to post – after all, people don’t get broadband so their visitors can lock themselves in the study with the computer and reduce their friendly interaction to bellowing requests for more tea through the keyhole. I will be back on Saturday or possibly Sunday, depending on the vagaries of the British workman and/or ASLEF member.
The conviction is growing upon me that I am not doing as many book reviews as I had always meant to. I have only done one so far. It is not a wondrous record. I think the problem is that I enjoy reading too much.
[Long pause while the Gentle Reader considers the bizarreness of that last statement. As do I - Ed]
I blame my parents. [Oh, really.] Very well then, I shall blame Organised Religion. Or in my parents’ case, Disorganised Agnosticism With Excess Childhood Scarring. Both my parents read a great deal and encouraged reading. My step-father, however, was suspicious of books and tended to jibes and sarcasm. My mother’s side of the family, being Catholic, view doing anything for the sheer love of it with disfavour, unless of course you happen to be suffering a great deal and your love has a martyred and self-sacrificing flavour. My father got into the habit of mocking my taste in literature and trying to force me to read Dostoevsky [She still hasn't read Dostoevsky. Nice one, Dad]. Friends and boyfriends were almost universally resentful of the amount of time I wanted to spend clearly enjoying myself all on my own without any help or input from them. While I am indeed a bloody-minded and selfish person who still jolly well insists on reading lots, I can’t quite shake the feeling it is bloody-minded and selfish of me to do so [I would have put her down as door-mat-like to the point of being exceedingly irritating]. How idiotic that I could have got to the grand and magnificent age of thirty and still feel I need a mystical permission to spend my free afternoons as I damn well please.
[What she really wants is for you all to beg her to do more book reviews. I wonder what she'd do if you all begged her not to?]
