This was a nice four day work week, as January 6 is a national holiday in Finland. The week between New Year and Epiphany is usually rather quiet at work, no meetings, less e-mail & phone calls. This year was no exception, but start of the new year also brought an organizational change and instead of being a head of one department I am since January 1 the chief librarian, which means more responsibilities. I am very much looking forward to the new challenges, though, and I am very lucky in that I have a very good staff working in our library.
On the reading front I started the year with the Christmas present from my Dad: All Clear by Connie Willis. As I've mentioned before I read Blackout in November and enjoyed it very much. All Clear continues where Blackout ends and it was every bit as enjoyable as the first part of the story, even though it did turn out to be more tragic than I thought beforehand. These two novels are no funny romps à la To Say Nothing of the Dog.
Read my review of Blackout here.
Read my review of All Clear here.
After reading all four of her time travelling novels I think I should add Connie Willis into my list of favorite authors.
Earlier this week someone tweeted a top ten 2011 fiction list by Foyles' web editor Jonathan Ruppin. I just love Foyles flagship book store at Charing Cross Road in London. It was love at first sight when on one of my earliest trips to London I first visited Foyles and the store has kept its place as my favorite bookstore outside Finland ever since. It used to be a tie between Foyles and the women's bookstore down the street from it, but later the women's bookstore was incorporated into Foyles. Anyway, Mr. Ruppin's list included some very interesting novels and I immediately put on hold the two that interested me most. I got both the next day. The novels are:
-History of a Pleasure Seaker by Richard Mason
-The Godless Boys by Naomi Wood
I have been really itching to start with my 2012 challenges and as soon as I finished All Clear I picked up a book that has been patiently waiting for its turn for quite some time now: Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen (=Karen Blixen). This was my first Blixen book, but I have known for years that eventually I will read her & love her writing! To learn how I knew that read my review of Seven Gothic Tales that will be up in a couple of days.
This week I also ventured on a totally new endevour: to read an e-book! I don't own a separate e-book reader, but have the laptop version of Kindle. I have uploaded quite a few free e-books onto it, but have not got around in reading any of them. I simply prefer paper books. However, Girlebooks had available The White Ladies of Worchester by Florence F. Barclay for free. I uploaded it and am determined to make it the first novel I've ever read as an e-book. We'll see how it goes...
All in all this was an enjoyable week. Let's hope the next one is a good one, too!
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