The university has managed to give me nearly twice as much teaching as I was supposed to have, so I barely breathe and eat, and I dive into bed as soon as I am done writing lectures.



I am. More or less. I still haven't finished the Western and the Surrealism ones, but I have started them. I think those are the only two I have left. And the Vargas Llosa book as my foreign language novel. And possibly another biography.



Now I am going to have to think. Hmm.


Quicksilver (review)


Pretty Monsters (I enjoyed it because it reminded me of the styles of Borges and Gaiman: it does strange things with your expectations.)


Murder of Roger Ackroyd (I enjoyed this because of the originality of the twist, although I knew it was coming. More of an observation game than a full blown reading experience, I suppose.)



I suppose you could count The Pillowbook of Sei Shonagon (review)here. I am reading my way through Michael Slater's Dickens-biography as well, however.


Born to be Gay (review)


Brideshead Revisited (review)


Heart of a Dog (I would probably have enjoyed this more if I knew enough Russian to take the puns in without having to go via outside information about the book. But it was an enjoyable satire nonetheless.)

I think I enjoyed all of these. To be fair, I mainly chose books I would probably have read anyway; I just moved them up the list. So they were books I was expecting to be good.



Mno. But as I said I chose carefully. I am not a great fan of the Western book I am currently reading, although it does have some redeeming qualities. I'll try to review it before the end of the year (but no promises).



Yes.



Western, most definitely. Not my genre.
And I tend to shy away from horror books.



Well, the Kelly Link book was not as scary as I had feared, so that was no problem. And the western book... well, as I said I am not a great fan. But it turns out to have been researched, at least (which in my prejudice I did not expect), and while the language is odd, it is not terrible.