Excitingly, M. and I went to register to get married yesterday. So it's all official! It was unexpectedly nervewracking though as they interviewed us separately and asked us questions about each other. Nothing complex like 'what brand of face cream does she use?' but stuff like full name, age, job title etc. We both got the other's job title wrong haha. We are still allowed to get married though, apparently.Book 7: The Safety of Objects by A.M. HomesI love this writer. This is only the third book of hers I've read but I'll get to them all in the end (not that there's that many, yet). One of the nice things about only getting books from the library is the emotional stew of frustration, anticipation and triumph that is getting hold of the books you want. I could go to Borders tomorrow and buy The End of Alice for example, but where would be the fun in that? It extends your relationship with a particular writer in a much more pleasing way if you have to wait, sometimes. Anyway, Homes writes bizarre, startling, funny stories about the dark heart of suburban America, and the private delusions, dreams and agonies harboured by 'ordinary' people. Evidently there is a film based on The Safety of Objects, but how it approaches the different stories I don't know. I'd be quite surprised if it features the character who masturbates into the detached head of a Ken doll, though... 10:07 . . .
I'm back from Amsterdam with all my faculties intact, just. You have to love a city where the main forms of transport are the bike (with dog on lead attached), the tram and the DOUBLE-DECKER TRAIN. Woo! Unfortunately the pleasing lack of car-type traffic didn't really reduce the noise levels outside our hotel, where they were building a new metro line or something (involved enormous drills anyway.) Another form of transport we sampled was the cheesy tourist canal boat, on which I learnt - in Dutch, German and English - why houses in Amsterdam often lean forwards and other important facts. In between coffeeshop visits we also went to the Van Gogh museum, the cinema and some crap Irish pubs, and watched Yes Minister at 5.30am (ah the novelty of hotel TV...)Book 4: Something Might Happen by Julie MyersonI don't often wish that I hadn't read a book, but this one did speak rather too persuasively to the neurotic part of me that imagines the violent deaths of loved ones about 100 times a day. Good though.Book 5: Language Play by David CrystalA study of 'ludic' language including puns, nonsense, palindromes etc. It was quite pedestrian at first, just listing examples really, but got interesting at the end when discussing children's use of language play and its - traditionally ignored - value to education.Book 6: Good Behaviour by Molly KeaneAn odd little book, but good. It's told from the perspective of Aroon St Charles, the daughter of a financially challenged aristocratic Anglo-Irish family dogged by tragedy. Its cleverness is to have a totally unreliable narrator who only sees what she wants to see, and yet still leave the reader in no doubt of what's really going on.By the way, I decided not to include books read for academic/professional reasons in the 50, so you are spared my review of An Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval... 14:34 . . .
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