20 books to read

So - back in those heady days when I could get out and about for more than half an hour at a time, I once went along to a festival in Ennis, the book club festival to be precise. I'd won a golden ticket giving me free entry to all events thanks to a piece of writing (we had to write about our imaginary ideal book club) anyway it was a great weekend at the time... One of the events was called 10 books you have to read - and we had two people presenting, so all told got 20 recommendations. I list them below. I'm in the process of making my way through some of them now on kindle - one hand reading is a godsend when you've a hungry baby in the other paw. I'm putting an X against the ones I've already read so if there's any of the others that ye really think I should give a miss to - please let me know...

From Herring Mankel's crime novels I picked a prequel - a collection of short stories, it was funny to find two of the baddies committed suicide at crucial moments to finish off the story, save the hero and solve the crime all in one, so may have been as well off without that one... Anyway - comments welcome, as always, in the comment section. :-)

Marion Coy's List
1. Mark Dote/ Dauchet - Atlantis - poetry book
2. Lorna Sage - Bad Blood - memoir X
3. Pat Barker - Regeneration - story of war hospital in scotland
4. Philip Roth - The Plot against America - Thriller - what if
5. CP Snow - The Masters - 40s/ 50s american science scene.
6. Albert Camus - The Plague - Rats in Algeria X
7. Doris Lessing - The making of the representative for planet 8 - sci fi
8. Hering Mankels - Crime novels set between sweden and africa X
9. Joan Didien - A year of Magical Thinking - story of mourning
10 Raymond Carver - A new path to the waterfall- poetry

Fintan O Tooles
Collected poems of johnathon swift
Thomas Lynch - the undertaking
Wislava Simborsca - polish poetry
Primo Levi - The drowned and the saved X
Marcel Proust - The prisoner, The fugitive - 2 books
Alistir McCloud - No great mischief
Jeff Torrington - Swing Hammer Swing - bag of bees imagery
Charles Nicol - the reckoning
Elizabeth Bishop's poetry.

You know there's a new baby in the house when

1 Your once beloved and regular blog becomes severely neglected, comments even taking several days to respond to

2 Laundry is now a daily occurance

3 (Related to 2) You no longer have the biggest collection of clothing in the house

4 You take an hour to pack for going out to the shop for milk

5 You don't know how it got to be Thursday again

6 You really enjoy the projected stars and moons on the ceiling and the lullaby music that goes with it

7 Music takes on a new meaning "A change will do you good" refers to nappies, "I got a feeling that tonight's going to be a good night" means that you believe you might have more than 1 hour sleep at a time

8 You have hundreds of visitors

9 Strangers smile at you when you're out, but they're not really smiling at you

10 Yoghurt gets in your hair and it makes absolutely no difference

Happy Thursday everyone!

The Curious incident

So, baby only wakes twice at night, which is pretty good going, but each time spends between 1 and 4 hours awake, he's the creative type, experimenting with time, challenging the accepted norms of what we treat as daytime, and how we conventionally behave at night...

Anyway, during on of these wakenings in recent nights i took a sip from the pint glass of water beside the bed (a pint glass that used to be present for very different purposes, staving off hangovers etc) Terrifyingly, I felt between my lips - along with the refreshing liquid - something small, hard, and definitely unwaterlike. I hadn't been awake enough on picking up the glass to know for sure what was in it, so I spat - only to find a sad little "dead of natural causes" earwig sinking to the base.

When Mr VC awoke in the morning I told him of my ordeal, holding up the glass itself for proof if proof were needed

"This earwig was in my mouth last night" I said

"Wouldn't that be a mouthwig then?" he asked