December - January (OK, I got behind)

Changing My Mind - Zadie Smith
A book of essays on random topics from war heroes to movie reviews. A good 'dip in and out of ' book.









The Children's Bach - Helen Garner
I didn't enjoy this at all. It wasn't that it was bad. I just didn't enjoy it. And what's the point of being brilliant if no one can bear to be around you?







Selected Poems of W.B. Yeats
For my english course.











The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Loved this. It gets a Star.
There's a brilliant story about a woman who tries to impress a man by showing off her housewifely skills and her cooking but she's terrible at it and in the end he proposes to her on the condition that she never attempt to cook or clean again but focuses instead on her art because that's much more important. Pure porn for women.


Call Me By Your Name - Andre Aciman
I didn't connect with this at all and it was nothing to do with the story, it was the writing. If there's such a thing as 'masculine' writing, this is it. I don't mean all action, because it wasn't, but it got so bogged down in psychological analysis it was exasperating. 'I think this but he knows I think this or maybe he thinks I think that because I said this and he thought that and I think he thinks that I think that he thinks....blah blah blah.' Very technical and quite cold.
And I love psychological detail. Virginia Woolf does it perfectly. But in a completely different way. And I've often found that men don't like the way she writes, but women do. If there's such a thing as 'female' writing, she's it. The guys should try this one instead.



An Education - Lynn Barber
This was lots of fun. The film was great too.