Two days off work have been absolute bliss. I had so many plans: I was going to plod on with my stuck-in-a-corner editing, turn the house from the Pit of Hell into – well, the Pit of Purgatory, perhaps – and I was going to actually leave the house and be sociable. Ha. None of that happened beyond a brief sojourn into the kitchen to tackle Mount Dishes.
Instead, I’ve been collapsed alternately on the bed and the recliner, with my Kindle in one hand and the laptop in the other, with the TV blaring endless boxsets.
I didn’t even have the energy to read anything new. I’ve gone back to my standard comfort-reads, books which make me happy and I can read over and over again. Here’s what I’ve been occupied with for the past two days.
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
Pretty much a given, but I’m determined to reread the whole series – again – before I get married in August. You know, goodbye to childhood and all that. Why yes, I should have said goodbye to childhood approximately seven years ago when I actually left home, but shh. I’m such a Potter fangirl, I have the Deathly Hallows symbol tattooed on my leg and I’m pondering more Potter-related tattoos as I write. For the wedding, we’re making confetti out of old Potter books from charity shops, and it made me feel so physically sick to chop them up that Kev’s got to finish it.
If I go into the full reasoning and explanation of my Potter-love, I’ll be here all week, so I’ll just leave it as that for now.
Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell
This is probably my favourite of all the books I’ve downloaded since I got my precious Kindle eighteen months ago. I’d never heard of this author before, and I was sucked in immediately when I saw its protagonist is obsessed with fanfiction. I’ve had my moments in the world of fanfiction, and I was interested to see it portrayed as something beyond ‘freakdom’ – which, in my experience, the rest of the world has firmly decided it to be.
The book is about a teenager called Cath, who along with her twin sister is just starting college. While her sister, Wren, throws herself into college life, Cath prefers to hide in her room writing epic Simon Snow fanfiction. To keep it short, it’s the story of how Cath branches out and gets a life, while remaining true to herself and her real interests.
I really identify with this story, only I wasn’t as strong as Cath. I tried to change everything about myself as soon as I went to university, wanting to fit in and be liked. I tried to suppress my nerdiness, and tried really hard to like pop music and manicures and girly things. I had a lot of fantastic experiences, but ultimately I ended up depressed.
Anyway, that’s another story. There’s something about Rainbow Rowell’s writing that’s made me read this book again and again without getting bored, it’s like there’s always something new to notice, either in the main story or in the Simon Snow extracts (very much inspired by Harry Potter, obviously). It really is the kind of book you can just sink into and get lost, and then suddenly three hours later hear the front door go and your fiancé’s home from work and you haven’t done any of the washing you’d promised.
Incidentally, the author is touring in the UK next month, which I only realised a couple of days ago. Very annoyed I missed out on tickets for her Liverpool event, which is the closest to me, but there are still tickets for other cities if anyone else wants to go!
The Wedding Diaries/The Baby Diaries – Sam Binnie
Now we move to a little set of books that I’ve been rereading almost maniacally of late. You might be able to tell why, looking at the titles. I’m getting married in two months. TWO MONTHS. We’ve not got a massive budget – considering the national average cost for a wedding is something like £20k, we have NO budget – and I can’t stand reading books about huge white weddings more or less falling into the heroine’s hands. They’re just so… fake.
However, ‘The Wedding Diaries’, the diary of Kiki Carlow as she prepares for her marriage, comes across as no-nonsense and totally realistic. It explores a solid relationship, with a great family in the background too, muddling towards their wedding while realising that all the princessy over-the-top dreams can’t come true.
‘The Baby Diaries’, as you can probably predict, follows the same couple as Kiki gets pregnant and has a baby (I don’t think that can count as a spoiler considering the title of the book). Anyone who knows me at the moment can tell from a mile away that I’m the world’s most broody person: it feels like someone is physically tugging at my uterus when I see a baby in my shop, especially the tiny newborns that some people insist on toting around the Trafford Centre.
Throwing my uber-broodiness into the mix, I’ve read this book more than once lately. The story might be a formulaic ‘pregnancy and beyond’ story, but it works, and the characters are some of the most real I’ve encountered. Even though I’m still some way from motherhood myself, I identify with Kiki in so many ways; just off the top of my head, her horror at cutesy names for unborn children (Buglet?!) is right up there with my way of thinking (if I see one more person on Facebook referring to their bump as ‘Bubs’ I might scream).
Above all, it made me think about aspects of my own future that I’d not really considered before. Thanks to research for my own books (too much damn research) I know a lot about pregnancy and childbirth already, but I’d not massively considered the actual parenting choices. I’d definitely not considered attitudes towards my own potential parenting: there’s a scene in this book where Kiki gets more or less shamed off a bus because her baby is crying, and it made me think how I would deal with situations like that myself. More to the point, it reminded me not to be quite so judgy, myself. I’m probably guilty of quite a lot of bus-related tutting.
Sorry, I do find it hard to be particularly succinct when it comes to reviewing books – I just want to bellow “I LIKE IT IT’S GOOD LISTEN TO ME READ THIS”. To be honest, that’s pretty much what happens when I’m in the kitchen at work trying to persuade someone to read something. The point is, I’ve enjoyed these few books to the point of rereading again and again: why not give them a try and see if you feel the same?
