Well, this is exciting. So far, all my posts have been composed on my Android tablet, which does the job nicely though it has several limitations, one of which being the difficulty in seeing the entire width of what I'm typing all at the same time (makes proofreading a bit of a challenge), and the other of which being a difficulty with images. The interface is the same - it is after all a web page - so it claims I can insert pictures, but then it doesn't seem to want to upload them, and although my best friend, who inspired this blog, says she just copies and pastes them, copying and pasting on the tablet isn't as simple as Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V.
You didn't need to know all that. Suffice to say that, as evidenced by the picture that will hopefully appear below this paragraph, I've given in and am writing this on a laptop, thus activating all manner of shiny features.
Ta-da! So, Alice Bliss. This is one of those situations where I'm going to sound a bit mad (those who know me in real life are now raising their eyebrows at "a bit"), because I'm probably going to end up talking about Alice as if she was a real person, and referring to the character when I actually mean the book. (I maintain this is partly the author's fault for naming the book after the main character.) So, Alice is an American teenager whose reservist father goes off to fight in Iraq, leaving her with a depressed mother and a precocious younger sister. She's well-written and sympathetic as a character, so although she does some pretty stupid teenager-y things, the things that happen and the way she reacts to them feel very real. I think this was helped by the fact that although Alice's father being away is a huge part of the story, it isn't the whole story - Alice still has to navigate being a teenager while he's gone, and although the way she deals with life is coloured by his absence, her life is still full of school and family and boys and all the things that exist for every teenager. It was a really good read. And when I'd finished it, I was telling my boyfriend how good it was and what it was about, and I said how the absence of Alice's dad was a big deal because he was such a good man and a good dad, and then as I said it, I realised that although the book is written in the third person, it's really Alice's point of view, and that when you're a teenage girl, if you're lucky, your dad is the best man you've ever met, and you do idolise him, and that missing someone often means you forget all the times when they were annoyed, or tired, or frustrated. So really, you spend the whole of this book building an image of a man who probably doesn't exist, and that thought adds a whole extra dimension to the reading experience. Read it. If there is such a thing as a good Summer Read, then this is definitely it.
Secondly, to follow up on my last post and capitalise on my new-found ability to post pictures, here's the haul I got from Waterstones:
(Plus a copy of Elizabeth is Missing so I can make other people read it - it's quite difficult to lend someone your phone for 10+ hours so they can listen to the audiobook!)
I've started the Maths book. It's fascinating, very well-written and very entertaining, though I keep having to re-read pages when it starts to make my brain hurt. The book on the Greeks is also very good for dipping in and out of. Peter Jones is the author of Learn Ancient Greek, which basically got me through a GCSE in the subject (hey, it got me out of a session of PE in order to read more books), and he really knows his stuff.
All the Light We Cannot See has been vaunted as one of the books of the year, so I really wanted to read it, but I made a false start a few months back in trying the audiobook narrated by Julie Teal. I'm not entirely sure why, but for some reason it just wasn't working for me. It turns out I'm not the only one though - my best friend said she'd had exactly the same problem so had bought the paperback, which turned out to be brilliant. So I bought the paperback, and it's turned out to be brilliant. More on that when I've finished it.
Oh, and I do occasionally do some knitting as well, but at the moment I have the wrong number of stitches at the end of the most complicated row of the little tiny fox feet, so I'm summoning the peace, quiet and patience to tink it, one complicated stitch at a time.
