Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Quiet Times

Last night wasn't very exciting ... I did make it to Yoga tho. It was helluva difficult after having missed it all of last week. That and I had hurt my knee yesterday in a freak accident of smacking it full on while opening a door ... I was in much pain.

Anyway, other than that I started a new series, the last of the lot I got from Varen, The Lost Room. Only watched the first episode and although I started out confused it is starting to make more sense.

I'm also proud of myself after yesterday. I spent the week at the leadership course learning all about ways of improving myself when interacting with others. And yesterday, being the first day back at work, I took up the challenge (and it was) and really concentrated on tempering my gut-reactions (luckily nothing too frustrating happened!). I'm not sure how long I can maintain this demeanor in the face of abject annoyance but, for the mean time I am trying ... and that itself is a step in the right direction.

So, off on another tangent, I have some books to review. First, I finished Mark Billingham's Lazybones.

Someone - a woman or somebody pretending to be a woman, is writing to convicted rapists in prison, befriending them and then brutally killing them when they are released. DI Tom Thorne must discover the link between these killings and a murder/suicide that took place twenty-five years before; a tragedy to which the only witnesses were two small children, now adults and nowhere to be found...How can you escape a past that will do a lot more than just catch up with you? And how can Thorne catch a killer, when he doesn't really care about the victims?

This was a good read with a nice twist ending ... even tho you knew the twist was coming and I was concentrating pretty hard to figure out whodunnit, I didn't get it right.

Then, I finished Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

I enjoyed it. Not quite as much as Extremely Loud tho. I like the way both these authors have managed to capture the honest and directness of a child-like mind. Before all the pre-conceived notions of adulthood step in.

And that is as exciting as life gets ... which is apparently not very. I guess I'm in that phase of "going thru the motions". Which I know does end eventually. It's just hard to see a way out right now. But it will come, it must. This is, after all, life.

4 comments:

Phlippy said...

You could easily start a book review blog here PhillyGirl. Not so sure about movie tastes but we can work on that :-) hahahaha

phillygirl said...

What do you mean ?? I have a Book Review Blog ... and a Restaurant Review Blog and a Movie Review Blog and an Accommodation Review Blog - it's just that sometimes my life gets in the way of all these great reviews!

;)

Saaleha Idrees Bamjee said...

have you read Haddon's A Spot of Bother?
I recommend it.

phillygirl said...

@saaleha - nope, haven't read that ... looking it up on kalahari now!

I'm always up for a good recommendation :) I think people are far more likely to read books based on that than random finds ... although both can be effective!

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