In my humble opinion

This park behind parliament (and about 3 minutes walk from my work) has the weirdest sculptures. To me they look like a door knob sticking out of the earth, a carrot, and a lying down half moon/a banana. But look how sunny it was today! After Monday feeling like the middle of winter again, with it so cold and wet and windy that I couldn't walk to Monday night Knitting Circle, it's so nice to see the sun again.

A couple of months ago my flatmate Tui and her friend decided to start a book club; so far we've read one book I didn't like all that much and one I really enjoyed.

The Book Thief came highly recommended by a lot of people I used to work with and some people in our book club enjoyed it, but I found the narrator (Death) patronising and irritating. While there were some well-drawn characters, I knew most of them were going to die towards the end of the book (and I'm not giving anything away by saying that, Death brings it up every five minutes - lest we forget and actually start enjoying the story) so I never really got attached to any of them. I struggled to finish it.

I did, however, enjoy The White Tiger a lot more. It's very humorous and while the narrator has questionable morals, he is very charming and has the reader on his side from very early on. It's also a pretty eye opening book in terms of the India it depicts - from the state of the villages, to the Government in general, to the rigid and unquestionable family structures and hierarchy. So much corruption in so many ways. There were nine of us at the last book club meeting (they're held the first Thursday of every month) and we had a really good discussion about this book which made me appreciate some aspects of it even more.

Right now I'm reading a book I've been wanting to read for a while; it was published in 1989 so it's not new or anything, it's just that I only first heard of it last year and have wanted to read it ever since. I am LOVING it. It's the first book I've read in ages that I can't wait to pick up again and have avoided doing other things so that I can read it. I won't give away the title until I've finished and can explain why I love it so much. But a clue is, it was first published in Spanish by a Mexican author and was made into a film in 1992.