i have been reading....

it seems that everywhere i looked i kept seeing this book a year in the merde by stephen clarke so i took that as a sign of a must-read title. i really enjoyed it, it's not sartre, but it seems like a good insight into the parisiens. the main character is a brit who's been moved to work in france for a food company, if you have ever struggled to learn a foreign language you can appreciate some of the humour. when i lived in spain, it was hard not to laugh a little when some spaniards would say "axe me, axe me", finding it hard to pronounce "ask". it's defintely not a year in provence, in fact, it could even put you off living in france but it's a good read. i enjoyed it so much i went out and read the sequel too merde actually by stephen clarke, which was also amusing.


one of the authors i have read a fair bit of is gregory maguire, he's brilliant at rewriting classic fairy tales with his own unique spin. if i was planning to rewrite the wizard of oz, i don't think i would ever have been able to come up with anything as original as wicked. the sequel to which is son of a witch and it wasn't a bad follow-up, maybe i was just disappointed that the story has now been nicely tied up and wrapped in a ribbon.

if you have never heard of candace bushnell then shame on you, where have you been for the last decade? sex and the city, anyway, she is an author of several novels, the latest of which is lipstick jungle. i've never read sex and the city but i did read, and enjoyed, trading up and 4 non-blondes, she's a bit of a feminist, which gets tiresome, and the subject matter is a bit one-tracked, it's a bit donald trump, lots of money and women doing it for themselves, but overall it's a fairly enjoyable read. a tiny thing that annoyed me were the characters names, victory, nico and wendy, but i still managed to enjoy the novel.