The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde

I finished this book while sitting on the train squished between my mother and a woman who kept looking at my hands and smiling at me. Kinda like a leery maniac does in a dark alley. After about a minute after she started, I realised that she wasn’t going to stop. I also figured that, if we were in a fight, I would probably win, so I put up with it for the duration of the trip. As I was getting ready to battle the masses for some walking room on the platform, I made one more realisation: looking at my hands she was not. It was the book that was in them that had taken her attention.

I have that book on my shelf at home, she leered at me. I haven’t managed to finish it.

I just looked at her. Smiled. Then nodded. I couldn’t possibly agree with her. I was, in fact, speeding through that book that she was discussing at me. I didn’t have time to run away from a strange woman staring at me on a packed train and encroaching on my personal space. I had literary crimes to solve! I was completely and utterly drawn into this world of Tuesday Next and I seriously do not think I have ever read a book so fast. Ever. Not even did the last Harry Potter manage to inspire me to consume a book so quickly.

Chronicles: Volume One – Bob Dylan

You know that man on the stairs of the local town hall? The one bellowing Mr Tambourine Man at the top of his lungs with rag doll in hand and wearing a lilac jumper, pungent with the aroma of ten-day-old sandwich? Most of us would call him a beggar, a tramp, a hobo; Bob Dylan would say that he had just stepped out of a folk ballad.

Blink – Malcolm Gladwell

Holy crap. What an ugly irrelevant book cover. I know my mother always told me that I should never judge a book by its cover, but – heck, I’m not gonna even try to lie – I would never have even considered picking up this book if my boyfriend had not waxed friken lyrical about this book. And went to the bookstore. And bought it for me. And put it in my handbag. And then continued to wax lyrical about it.

Yes. He possesses the wonderful faculty of open mindedness to look past minor blemishes such as the fugly blue glitter spots and see the wonderful substance within. He also owns the original beautiful white hard cover version that makes you think of intelligent scientific papers and not of self-help books and the finger painting exercises that come from it. That is why he is totally ok with the book, I told myself. That is why he likes the book so much. Right? Wrong. The beautiful white cover is not the reason why said boyfriend liked the book so much. It might have been the reason why he picked it up in the first place, but the fact of the matter is that it actually is a really good book.