Books lately

Now it feels like holiday break.  I can deal with this.  Only a couple more tutoring seshes this week, almost all the Christmas shopping is done, grades are in.  This is how I like it.

First up, Dracula by Bram Stoker.  A couple of misconceptions I had about the book before reading it: Bram Stoker wasn't British, he was Irish.  The book was published in the very late 1800's and reads in a remarkably modern tone.  I had expected it to read like a classic, if you know what I mean, and that I would squint my way through it, but it was quite engaging. 

The story is told in the form of journal entries from several different - and at first, seemingly unrelated - characters.  One is a doctor who works with a particularly unpleasant man in an asylum.  One is a solicitor who is sent far East to sort out the affairs of Count Dracula and realizes that something isn't right.  One is a prominent professor who starts to take the supernatural seriously.  One is a young woman who ends up being the heroine of the book.  A weird one to read at Christmas time, I'll give you that, but it's good!

Next up is An Apple a Day by Emma Woolf, the great-niece of Virginia Woolf.  I read this book a couple of years ago during the Africa trip and recently picked it up for another go.  Emma is a recovering anorexic in her mid-thirties who has been struggling with the disorder for 14 years.  It's a fascinating peak into such a strong and destructive mental and physical illness.  I will say that at times, it's a little over the top.  She travels the world with her journalist boyfriend and there are a few eye-rolling parts where he's scouring the streets of like, Cape Town, on a rainy night trying to find a sweat shirt for her while she waits in the hotel room.  There are plenty of parts where he pulls the chef aside in whatever elaborate foreign restaurant they find themselves in and makes a plea for simple steamed veggies.  Inevitably, they arrive with butter on them and the whole dinner is a disaster.  It's hard not to be like, Oh, please.  It's hard to understand why anyone would choose to be around her.  But then, that's part of her point.  The disorder, in the end, takes everything from its sufferer and is yet almost impossible to overcome.  It's fascinating.

Tonight is Lit Society (!) so I'll have another good book review up soon, along with food pics (you know that's part of it).

Excuse me while I go make another cup of coffee and check that Lucyfer isn't chewing on our Santa Claus decorations...