holiday reading

We haven’t had a book reading post for a while, so here’s a new one. I took the opportunity to read quite a few books over the school holidays. Many were quite forgettable, but a few made a real impression on me.

If you love the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith, you may be interested in a recommendation of one of his other series. I don’t like all of his series – the Isabel Dalhousie ones leave me cold – but I recently introduced my husband to the 44 Scotland Street series. I’d read a few over the years and loved the characters in them. My husband is not much of a fiction reader, so it took a little convincing to get him to read them too, but eventually he did, and now he loves them too. The characters are fantastic. Who could resist the completely narcissistic Bruce (in his mind, no-one can resist him!) or the terribly put-upon little Bertie and his awfully irritating mother Irene? There’s about 6 or 7 books in the series now, and Mr McCall Smith is still going strong, so there’s lots of good stuff to read there!

Another book that made a profound impression upon me was “Matthew Flinders’ Cat” by Bryce Courtenay. Set in Sydney (where I live), I immediately felt familiar in the setting. Its about a man who finds himself an alcoholic, who sets about giving up the alcohol so that he can help a young boy find his own feet. It brought home to me how terrible an alcohol addiction is, and what a difficult process it is to dry out. I felt that it gave me a new understanding of the life of homeless people in Sydney. Very thought provoking.

I was also going to recommend Mary Ann Shaffer’s “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”, but I find I did that in my last reading post. So I won’t do it again! 😉

Have you read anything worth recommending lately?

And buried down here at the bottom of the post you’ll learn that I’m famous! My little red dress has been featured on Tessuti’s blog! I’ll be visiting Tessuti’s Surry Hills store this week on my fabric and buttons trip with my friend. We’ll also be going to The Fabric Store (also in Surry Hills), who have continued their 50% sale to this week (so I was delighted to find I won’t miss out!), All Buttons Great and Small in Newtown, and a new-to-me shop, The Remnant Warehouse in Alexandria. Well, that’s the plan, anyway. We’ll see how much we can *actually* fit into our day!