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Holidays = mindspace = time to read for hours at a time, what bliss:

The Riders, Tim Winton
In Praise of Slow, Carl Honore
I Believe This, edited by John Marsden
Cloudstreet, Tim Winton
Dirt Music, Tim Winton
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart, Gordon Livingston
[Yes, I’m going through a Tim Winton phase]

Currently reading: Geography of Home, Akiko Busch

And many new books from Christmas await, not to mention Mike’s books, but I just can’t keep up with him.

• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
• Light on Snow, Anita Shreve
• How to be Good, Nick Hornby (a novel not a self help)

• On Seeing and Noticing, Alain de Botton
• Short Short Stories, Dave Eggers

and, of course, our trusty Lonely Planet guidebooks (Euro, Spain and Portugal) plus the Lonely Planet European phrase book and way too many foreign language dictionaries…

It was my good friend Rachel’s birthday on the weekend, and being a lover of good novels M & I decided to buy her The Time Traveller’s Wife (as well as some really expensive transparent soap) - I’m sure she’ll love it. She tells me that the book referred to on the backcover - Lovely Bones—is very good and she feels sure that the TTW must be good if it’s claimed to be another novel of Lovely Bones’ callibre. So, next stop was the book store, Lovely Bones now awaits: the love has been given and received…

I finished The Time Traveler’s Wife last night: and the last chapter was a real tear jerker - reading a letter from the man you love after he’s gone (and I’m not just talking gone in a time-travelling kinda way) - how heart retching…

Next two books on the list: Light on Snow (Anita Shreve) & The Riders (Tim Winton), now I just need to decide whether I should start them before I hop on the plane…

By Audrey Niffenegger. Excellent read, if a little hard to work out what the hell’s going on for the first few chapters - it is about time travel after all so I suppose one should expect a little strangeness: he’s 36 and she’s 6, but now he’s 36 and she’s 28, and now he’s 27 and 9 at the same time… it just takes a bit of consideration to work out what that would mean to her, and to him. This said, it doesn’t take long until you’re part of the whole time-travel thing - the idea sounds very exciting, although Niffenegger does show some of the not-so-exciting sides of this special ‘power’ as well, which left me thinking how hard it would be to be the Time Traveler’s Wife despite how much she loves him.