Last week I finished a book my Mum lent me, which I refuse to name because it was so fucking bad. It was even in the Oprah bookclub. Anyway, I sent her a carefully worded email questioning why she had recommended it to me and she said, 'Because I thought it was really sad.' wtf? It's about a foster child who gets shot, raped, mauled by a dog, enslaved by a crazy lady and then becomes a poor artist in Berlin who makes dioramas. What are you trying to tell me, mother?
In other news, I'm reading Simon Gray's memoirs because I picked up The Smoking Diaries for a couple of dollars based solely on the recommendations on the back cover and front pages. It has no right to be so interesting, as it's basically just the ruminations of an elderly man about death, memories, tourists in Barbados and being an unrepentant smoker, but I connected so strongly with it. After I finished The Smoking Diaries I looked him up on wiki and found out he died in 2008. It felt weird to have read the journal of someone who didn't know he would be dead in four years. I'm reading the second book now, Year of the Jouncer. He dies two years after he wrote it. I'm currently reading his thoughts on his recently deceased friend and I wish he knew what was coming.