Reader, review!

I've just watched a girl wearing fashionably tight - I think they go by the euphemistic name of 'skinny' - jeans try to pick up a pen she'd dropped on the floor. I'm afraid, as the catalyst for humour was fashion, that it was terribly funny. She managed a dip not entirely lacking in grace, had she been born a flamingo.

Speaking of fashion, I am wearing the crummiest old jumper - the library, bereft of heating (or patrons) for two weeks, is taking its time getting back to comfortable temperatures.

After Christmas, I picked up Labyrinth by Kate Mosse purely because she is speaking at a conference I am going to in June. The conference is (very briefly) on women writing history/writing women's history/the history of writing women, etc etc etc - Labyrinth is supposed to be an adventure involving 13th century Cathar France, the true grail, and some spunky heroines. The inside back cover indicates that if the prospective reader enjoyed The DaVinci Code, the Boudicca series by Manda Scott, or The Alchemist by Coelho, they were sure to love this one. It's a lesson, I reckon, in reading the inside back cover before making a purchase: I hated two of these and the other I just haven't read.

It's not that Labyrinth is so awful; it's just that it's boring, conventional, and without much interest in the characters beyond their plot function. The setting and history are fascinating but peopled by these characters, I'm just not interested. Alas. Kate Mosse is the co-founder and honorary director of the Orange Prize for fiction. I'm now quite curious to know why she was invited to the conference and what she'll say.

In the same bookstore run, I also picked up Gombrich's A Little History of the World. It has all the flaws and failings - or at least expected biases - of a history written before the second world war. But it is really rather charming and it does evince a great deal of respect for some peoples and cultures left of out of 'histories of the world' even now. It tends to treat the bible as an authoritative historical document and it's descriptions of the peoples of far east Asia would be struck from texts today as Orientalist at best, racist at worst. Interestingly, it was burned during WWII for being too pacifist.

Nasser read: James Morrow, The Philosopher's Apprentice.
Decision: crap - yet somehow compelling enough to finish. But crap. Which is too bad as I really rather enjoyed his earlier novels. Ah well. Luckily, it was £2 at a remainder bookshop in Skipton.