I’ve made a resolution to read much more than I have been and starting at the end of last year I’ve been buying books and starting to read them in order to get back on track. I wanted to be able to finish a couple a month but I have way too many other hobbies and don’t read nearly as fast as I used to. But, before we enter March, I have finished two books. And they reminded me just how satisfying it is to finish reading a book. To get to that last page and have the last sentence wisp off into a memory as I close the book.

The two books I’ve finished are for my a University course and so I wonder if that’s really why I’ve finished them. Not pure joy of reading but more a motivated reason. Although I have been reading a lot more of the other books so it might have jump started it.

They are:

• This House of Grief, Helen Garner
• Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson

This House of Grief took me just over a month to read whereas Oranges are not the Only Fruit took me just two days.  I enjoyed both but I found that I disliked the narration of The House of Grief. I’m not exactly sure what it was but I just found her self-centred when she had nothing to do with the story she was telling. Although, that is probably meant to be an impactful feature, the fact that she had unwittingly become so involved in the story, but there were certain pages where I found myself thinking ‘I don’t really care how this affects you’. I’ve also been listening to a podcast called Court Junkie and have found that her narration of her own feelings and suggestion of how the listeners should be feeling was irritating. So it made me wonder if I just have a detachment when it comes to this type of second-hand information on ‘devastating’ crime. It made me worried for a moment that I was a sociopath but I think I just respond differently to people’s feelings, especially people’s grief. I’ve known that for a long time, since I was little, but having the book and podcast tell me I should probably be feeling a certain way and definitely not, made me a little concerned. But other than that, I liked the writing and book as a whole. This House of Grief rekindled my interest in crime writing and reminded me how interested I’d been in the courts when I had to visit for an assessment in my first bout of uni.

I only put Oranges are not the Only Fruit down when I had to go to bed or do something. I read it in between my computer games but the majority of it was read in sittings of a few hours. I fell in love with the writing. It’s been a long time since I’ve started reading something and haven’t been able to put it down of my own volition. I kept forgetting that it’s meant to be a fictional autobiography because of how well it was written (considering that many of the aspects of the novel are true, this should be the case). The novel balanced tragedy, humour and intrigue for me the entire time. It invoked quite a lot of emotion but was still entertaining. It was an innocent and honest representation of the main character and I loved her on every page, no matter what she did.

If I try to dissect the books further and analyse them properly, it will be in another post.

The book I’ve chosen to try and power through next is The Secret River written by Kate Grenville.