Return of internet

Hooray! The internet is back! Apologies (again) for another prolonged silence - the internet at home went away and I had to talk to the nice phone people to get it back, but back it is. And hopefully won't be going away again anytime soon.

I've decided I need a break from reading books which make me think (very pathetic of me; clearly my brain is disintegrating since graduation!) and have retreated to the world of Louise Bagshawe. Most of you probably won't have heard of her; she is a British chick lit author, but more of a thinking girl than a lot of the other chick lit writers, from what I can gather - she's really the only one I read. Personally, I think she's like a modern day Jilly Cooper, with the intricate plots, forays into the worlds of the super rich, and the ability to mesh the stories of a number of characters together to produce surprising twists. I'm re-reading Sparkles, her latest offering, which is centred around an exclusive jewellery house in Paris. I'm something of a magpie, and while in Paris drooled over the crown jewels in the Louvre for quite some time one evening and resolved to buy more sparkly jewellery for myself, although possibly not diamonds as big as my fist. Reading about characters in books wearing and buying sparkly things is almost as good as buying them, provided it is well written as Louise Bagshawe's work is, even if she does have a bit of a thing for canary diamonds. (Why canary? Pink is clearly the way to go.)

On a random note, I discovered I own something by Ha Jin already (I bought Waiting the other day) but have never read it. It is a collection of short stories called The Bridegroom, which I will have to investigate soon. I'm going to postpone some of my African works I think and move on within the next week. I have Octavio Paz and Gabriel Garcia Marquez waiting, not to mention the three books I bought the other day from my newly discovered independent book shop. And the books I bought in Paris. Sometimes I could just cry at how much time I don't have to read all the books I have.