Making Mum Happy.

Everyone in this house knows that if you want to make mum happy you buy her books.  I am that boring & predictable.  And chocolate.  Dark & nutty ~ or shells.  Shells are goooood!

At some point on Sunday both materialized.

I had in mind to acquire The Language of God ~ which was recommended to me by my good friend, Jeanne at A Peaceful Day.  As Cait was buying & fluey our hunting was left to the last minute & I couldn't find what I wanted.  However I do want this book.  It will just have to wait for another time.  Instead Cait bought me Philippa Gregory's The White Princess.

I have always been surprised by how much I have enjoyed this series, which is not only right out of my time period historically but in a period I particularly dislike.  It has made clear & understandable the War of The Roses.  Simply grasping that this was primarily a very public family feud made it much easier to grasp the intricacies ~ at least for me.  I'm not a fan of the Tudors, who were a ghastly lot ~ though perhaps I should blame Margaret Beaufort , who is quite one of the nastiest characters in English history & spawned this diabolical dynasty.  Being me I have made this all so much easier to grasp by reading the whole thing out of order, stating with The Other Boleyn Girl before it became well known & a rather notorious & bad film.  What is very attractive historically is that Gregory looks at all this male history through the eyes of their women.  I think she does a pretty good job of it.

I am also plodding my way through Kafka on the Shore.  This is a book club choice & not the sort of thing I would normally indulge in simply because I find the main character hugely annoying [spoilt runaway obsessed with his body. *sigh*].  Then there is all the discussion about food which bores me to tears.  I would have set it aside as completely unreadable except that 2 people whose opinion as readers I respect encouraged me to give it some time.  I am reading the mystery sequences, which are lovely & interesting & skimming a lot of the rest.  However it has grown on me & I am enjoying the writing style, which took a little getting used to but which is strangely evocative of time & place.  And I've decided anyone who reads as much as Kafka does cannot be all bad.  He just needs to grow up some ~ though I am not convinced that that is going to happen in the course of this book.  I don't have much tolerance for coming of age stories & unlike my friend Sian can find no parallels with Holden Caufield of Catcher in the Rye fame.  And I dislike cruelty to animals ~ even to animals who do not exist, who live only in stories.

Today is warmer than it has been.  The skies are blue & clear.  The sun is cozy.  There is washing on the line & cats on the beds & all is well with my world.