Unauthorized version of me

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Durham, United Kingdom
An avid bibliophile who all too often uses the words of others in place of the incredible difficulty of creating new ones that will not carry half the depth. Putting to use my degree in 'yeah, but what are you going to do with that?' with a minor in 'it cost how much!'

Monday 17 January 2011

The Night Bookmobile,Audrey Niffengger


 I don't read many graphic novels.  I generally stopped reading when they stopped calling them comic books and adding collectible pogs, I was really bitter about that.


Aside from the pog thing, I don't relate as much to graghic novels. There are, after all, very few graphic novels about bookish women who don't want to be super heroes, but would rather sit in a bath reading Austen.
  
Except that's exactly what The Night Bookmobile is about.  And it's lovely.  It also has the closest vision of my heaven in a book.

Alexandra takes us through three points in her life where she boards the night bookmobile which has every book, periodical, letter, and even cereal box that she has ever read.  

From the first experience as a young woman, she structures her life around reading and finding the elusive mobile library that has all that she has read.  When finally she finds it through extreme means, she's happy but I'm left to wonder if the sacrifice was worth it.  Are books more important than family,friends, or life itself? Probably not.  Although if you found a library that could magnify the feeling of home and comfort that an old, loved book has into every book,would you ever be able to leave?

The author, Audrey Niffenegger,also wrote The Time Traveler's Wife and maintains a very similar voice in this. Slightly wistful,and bittersweet.

Sunday 2 January 2011

Reading 100 + books this year and a chalange to keep me motivated

I can't promise to blog about them all, but this will at least keep me recording the books I read, I hope. I might also find some similarly minded books and blogs people.

If you want to play too, go here and also here

Sunday 24 October 2010

Where Robin Hood Has Coffee


Durham to Exeter is almost a complete spanning of the country. I would drive farther and faster in the US, but I never saw anywhere near as much.

This is exactly what it says on the bottle, the coffee shop at the edge of Sherwood forest. The cynical part of me expected it to be a Starbucks, but in reality it is an adorable family place with a three layer chocolate fudge gateau as thick and rich as I imagine Sherwood forest was when Robin Hood was head chef.