My name's "Various" and I'm a bookaholic

Or - to steal a clever term from a website - I suffer from fiction addiction.

Spent today in blustery Dun Laoighaire - wandering around all it's bookshops. We hit the second hand store first, got some cheap Theodore Zeldin, Paul Theroux, and AM Homes, (the discovery of the year - more on her later). Then spent an agonising hour walking around the Huge and Huge best book shoppe in Dublin - with it's great categories, loads of quality, all laid out in tempting, colourful surroundings. Managed to evade temptation there, had a coffee instead, while reading a bit of the latest book I've started, "Reefer Madness". Then went upstairs in the shopping centre, and found a way around my ban on buying new books, since I simply had to buy a present for my ma, who's birthday is coming up really soon... and the fact that she might then pass em on to me, that's hardly my fault. Home after that, and finished reading "Bad Day in Blackrock" - a brilliant first novel from Kevin Power, just launched, and getting a nice bit of well deserved publicity - it's really really good - one of those books that has a real point to it. After that, had a bath, while reading a short story from Tobias Woolf's "Our Story begins", it ended a bit abruptly but was amusing all the same - the story - not the bath. Then had my drying hair read - a book I keep by the hairdryer, at the moment it's AM Homes' "The end of Alice", a very disturbing, but also astounding read, you can't help reading on altho you sometimes don't want. AM caught my attention from reading her short story collection "Things you should know", and during the week I was chauffered to and from work by her "This book will save your life" - another quirky and amazing little gem, but not one for the car really, her writing is really good - but doesn't work on the road - it's too dense, you want to rewind every few seconds - lucky I still have a hard copy - another second hander - to peruse sometime - maybe while on my upcoming great big sunny holiday....

I'm reading Haruki and Kurt Vonnegut, as well as Haileys' "Wheels" - will keep you posted on them when I finish - I need some help -

Best book title seen today "If you liked school, you'll love work"