Words On A Page

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. In a way, it's actually been spurred on by my rediscovery of knitting - popping down to the library to check out knittng books, and scouring the catalogue online for other treasures, I've picked up the odd book there and then. And knitting in the evenings and during my breaks tends to keep my focus away from the television, which doesn't hurt. The quiet solitude that I fall into with my knitting is also a good environment to follow lines in a book.

I've always read quite a lot, but I seem to go through phases where not much is happening on that front. These days I head down to the library very frequently. I still feel a little bad that a book with NZ on spine, branding it as a homegrown work, are much overlooked by me. I do realise that if I avoid them I won't read the good one that will encourage me to read more, but so goes it for now. If you're a NZ author reading this, you might consider asking libraries not to brand your books so - I'm sure I'm not the only one unreasonably biased against you from the outset.

For the most part, I've enjoyed all of the books I've read lately. I was pleasantly suprised by Kate Jacob's The Friday Night Knitting Club (my slight distrust spurred by the knowledge that Julia Roberts will be invovled in the movie), and found that I did smile, nod, and yes, get a little teary at the actions and thoughts of the eclectic little group of women.

Lisa Gardner's Hide was pretty darn good, I thought. I am a bit of a sucker for a thriller with a psychological or criminal twist, and this story of a woman hiding from a past unknown to her has all of that. I will definitely check out other books from this author - and remark that a lot of the more gripping crime novels I've read in the last few years have been written by women, not at all the way it used to be.

The central character in Hide is Annabel Granger, and whenever I read that I struggled to remember why that meant something to me. Was this a actress, another author, a TV character, or a defendant in some criminal law case I should not have forgotten about? Googling the name, I eventually discovered that Annabel was a character in a very different story which I listened to as an audiobook last year. Nothing like hearing a name read to you to make it stitch in your head. I did like that novel (a funny romance about a matchmaker - so different from Lisa Gardner's plot), so found that the library had another novel by the same author, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, that was rather like a spin-off from that initial story, picking up with another character. Sure enough, Natural Born Charmer was just as much fun.

Next off the library shelf was The Honey Wall, which I found a little disappointing. I enjoyed the writing style, and really felt like it could have really sucked me in. But I was left with the impression that it wasn't finished, that the characters hadn't developed enough - almost as if it were a series of excerpts from a completed novel. I'd be interested to see if the author has written anything else, though. Maybe when I've cleared the next six books from my "to read" list.

Right now I'm working my way through (in addition to various knitting books), The Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory. I'd be lying if I said that historical novels, particularly those back on a semblance of a true story, are really my thing. I've never read anything by this author before for that reason, but this book was a freebie from HarperCollin's Prime Reads and so with it being delivered to me door, I had no reason not to give it a shot. And you know, I'm actually liking it. I'm about half way through, and Catalina, destined to to be Princess of Wales and Queen of England is now out of mourning for Arthur, and working her way into the sights of young Harry, now his father and namesake King Henry is dead.

I will say that I haven't been reading a lot of it in one sitting, which is my usual fashion, but I'm not sure if that's due to the nature of the book and subject, or if it's just me being tired and otherwise distracted. We'll see!