so a week away on a mountain outside Groux-les-Bains in S France has
been about books books books, water colour landscape painting (yes!) good food and
calmness - so Satin Island - Tom
McCarthy I loved this conspiracy of ideas oozing from the pages. Great James Street - Don Delillo a
glorious excessive verbal tide of drug fuelled rambling. Red Shirts - John Scalzi clever premise where nonfiction meets the
future in fiction - maybe. Clothes Music
Boys - Viv Albertine a window into a brutally honest version
of events. Norwegian Wood -
Haruki Murakami a tale of beautiful loss told beautifully - if you can't be
bothered to read the book the film is a winner. The Illusion of Stillness - Simon Van Booy sweet, stilted but
fractured attempt to be overtly clever. Purity - Jonathan Franzen an intelligent
wide sweeping intergenerational novel which sucks you in with some extraordinary
dialogue.
