It’s nearly time for the Costa awards, which are a brilliant competition, dedicated to books you would insist on pressing on someone else rather than some hi-faluting idea of boring art (my views on the Booker are here). I am utterly delighted that Maggie O’Farrell is finally being noticed for the wonderful novelist she is- The Hand That First Held Mine has won its fiction category. It’s a marvellous book, about childhood, though my favourite remains The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which is startlingly brilliant.

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… is a ridiculously late entry, actually. I thought  Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, which is totally terrifying and quite amazing, would swing it- then last week I started Andre Agassi ‘s  Open.

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Well, of course I managed to hold on to my kindle for about 10 days before this happened:

Okay. If you drop them, you’re screwed, which is not normally the case with a paperback. Annoying for two reasons; 1, I knew this would happen and was waiting on a safety case to be delivered, and 2, they can TOTALLY make rubber screens now, they just choose not to. Oh, and 3; I’d already discovered I couldn’t live without it, and I had to go straight out and buy another one. Fortunately my husband doesn’t read my blog and will NEVER KNOW :)

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Cor, I am having to stop myself going completely insane and buying EVERYTHING until I’m sure I’m going to use it all the time. There are real bath/ take off and landing/ battery- based drawbacks, and I’ve been trying it out with easier things. But the sheer impossibility of being in a french airport, reading about the guys who started facebook, and downloading Ben Mezrich’s book on the subject ten seconds later, was just incredible, like magic. The weird thing is though there aren’t any page numbers, so you never know how far along in the book you are- when it came to the end, it was a complete shock. Made it a bit odd. Will be interesting to see how it works for more serious things. Mezrich’s book is good though- interesting about how huge success changes people; about how things change depending on the POV and the generalised selfishnesses of the young elite. The fact that it all took place about ten minutes ago is frightening too. Anyway, definitely made me glad I have (mostly) hopped to Twitter!

Anyway. Here’s a quick review of The Wilt Inheritance from the Guardian, and I am about to dive into the new Jilly Cooper, the new Lee Child and the new CJ Sansom (ooh big books- Christmas must be on its way) which are not in the least bit interesting to blog about- but tons of fun to read,

Happy reading,

Jenxxxx