Lots of Reading

How do we squeeze it all in? As well as the writing, there's the reading.

It was a buzz to receive the first six books from Macmillan New Writing today. They are bound beautifully - smaller than I expected, but each has a very professional jacket. The photo on the front of Across the Mystic Shore by Suroopa Mukherjee, however, does seem out of focus and washed out; I wonder if this was the desired effect? The rest of the covers are good , particularly the front of Taking Comfort by Roger Morris. I'm also not sure about having a standard look for the back of the books - each has a white box for the blurb, and the page is covered in the imprint's logo. It was interesting to see that the same person, Richard Evans, designed all the jackets, especially when you consider that they cover very different genres of writing. Now I just have to read the books!

I won't start the MNW six pack straight away though. I am just a few steps into The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. This is about how she deals with her grief after the death of her husband, Gregory Dunne, in late 2003, while their only daughter was in a coma in hospital. The start of this book pulls you in straight away and you know you're in for a sober but revealing ride. While the subject matter didn't hugely grab me at first, the reviews of this book seemed fabulous and so I decided to buy it over the Internet. I'll let you know how it goes. Can anyone recommend another Didion book that's essential reading? She's not someone I've been tempted by in the past, but I would like to read one of her novels.

Oooph. As well as the reading there's the writing. I'm in Dublin for six days from next weekend, and hopefully that will be the chance to really go to town on my current project.