What I'm reading

It's fair to say I have eclectic reading taste but who doesn't? We all have varied interests and most of us can traverse between them consecutively if not concurrently. So my three most recent reads are/have been:

The Alchemist by Paul Coelho image

This is a book I have always meant to read so I eagerly borrowed it from a friend recently (swapping it for Eleven Minutes incidentally, which I loved). Not on the same planet obviously and I knew that before I started but as much as I wanted to adore The Alchemist I had to persist with it against my will. I found the tone condescending in its parable-like simplicity and the plot was not enough to distract me, until the climax in the last 20 pages or so which I did enjoy. I finished the book satisfied with the 'message' and it's final delivery but overall I was disappointed.




Next I embarked upon Other People's Diaries by Kathy Webb image

I didn't have high expectations of this novel, it was a gift from my mum by an unknown (to me) author (or authors as it turns out), and is packaged in a large (read pulp fiction) format familiar from the best sellers shelves in Target. I enjoyed it as a pick-up-put-down-20-minutes-at-bedtime-read but as I anticipated I didn't enjoy the writing; it was too plot driven and the plot was too exposed by the lack of good writing. I am inclined to think it suffered from being a (long distance) collaborative work - too much focus on the characters' stories and not enough on the words.




Right now I am reading (or trying to read) Murray Bail's Homesickness image

I adored Eucalyptus and on the strength of that I bought The Pages for myself for Christmas and enjoyed the writing immensely. So I was thrilled to find Homesickness in a thrift shop recently and eagerly paid $1 for it. The first 16 pages were a confusing blur but then it calmed down to boring and dense. It's certainly not a bedtime read and I am still in the first 60 pages so I will try to persist in daylight but the jury is out on this one.