Currently I’m at the beginning of a few books. That is because I’ve just finished reading Tangled Roots by Sue Guiney and have started more before deciding which one to read next. Usually I have more than one book on the go but I’m thinking of restricting myself to just two at once.

I’ve been reading Sue Roe’s The Private Lives of the Impressionists for several weeks now, taking it slowly. I’m about half-way into it now and I ‘d really like to finish it more quickly so I’ll be spending more time reading that in the next day or two.

Tangled Roots is such a sad book I think I need something more cheerful for a while but so far I haven’t quite found the right one. I received An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. This is a book of short stories set in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe’s regime and there is not a lot of joy so far in the first three stories I’ve read. They are stories of struggle, hardship and endurance, written beautifully and as the title indicates read like a lament for the Zimbabwe that no longer exists. I think I’ll restrict myself to reading one or two of these stories at a time – short stories are meant to be savoured  not gobbled down.

Poetry too is something I can’t read too much of in one sitting. I’ve dipped into Poems of Thomas Hardy, selected and introduced by Claire Tomalin and these seem to be quite melancholy – not quite right for my mood right now.

Another book that isn’t meant to be read through in one sitting is Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson. I am fascinated by words and how they fit together and all the problems in using them. So yesterday this book caught my eye as I was passing the bookshelf. Some of it makes me laugh –

 hear! hear! is the exclamation of parliamentarians, not here, here!

It’s full of helpful information – when I can’t remember whether it should be ‘a hotel’ or ‘an hotel’ for example. (It all depends upon whether the ‘h’ is silent or not).

I seem to be attracted to books to dip into as I’ve also started Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson, another book of short stories. Funny, amusing and inventive.

However, I really want to read a full length novel and so I thought I’d try a Barbara Vine book, never having read one before, although I’ve watched most of the TV adaptations. My library had The Birthday Present so I had a look at that this morning. The opening sentences are promising:

Thirty three is the age we shall all be when we meet in heaven because Christ was thirty three when he died. It’s an interesting idea. One can’t help thinking that the people who invent these things chose it because it’s an ideal age, no longer one’s first youth but not aging either.

But then I read the blurb and a novel “set amidst an age of IRA bombings, the first Gulf War and sleazy politics” doesn’t appeal much today. So I’ve put that to one side for the time being.

Next Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie. I started this last week and stopped so I could finish Tangled Roots (which was getting a bit oppressive). This, despite the reference to death in the title and being a murder mystery is much lighter in tone and I’m enjoying it immensely. Poirot has been enlisted by Mrs Oliver, the detective writer, to go down to Nassecombe House in Devon because she thinks there’s something wrong. And naturally she’s right. I do enjoy Agatha Christie’s books! So I’m going to read this one and finish the others later.