Quick notice for UK readers.<\/p>\n
If you think the UK law should be changed to allow gay couples to marry, please say so in the consultation at\u00c2\u00a0Out4marriage.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n It’s essentially a questionnaire that takes about two minutes to click through. But the government will<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0use the results, so it’s important.<\/p>\n What interests me in particular is that the current Home Secretary, the right wing Theresa May, is one of the pro-gay marriage campaigners. In the past she voted against equalising the ages of consent for gay people, and also voted against the repealing of the anti-gay Clause 28<\/a>. But people change, and times change. There’s much about the current lot in power that worries me but this is at least one commendable state of affairs.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n ‘What a disgraceful lapse! Nothing added to my disquisition, and life allowed to waste like a tap left running. Eleven days unrecorded.’<\/em> \u2013 Virginia Woolf, from her diaries.<\/p>\n This appropriate quote managed to pop up in two very different books I’ve been reading: Alexandra Harris’s short biography of Ms Woolf, and Alison Bechdel’s comic book memoir\u00c2\u00a0Are You My Mother?\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Since my exam on May 22nd, which ended my first year as a born-again student, I’ve found myself wanting to get more books read.\u00c2\u00a0It’s the Deathbed Regrets test again: I imagine myself suddenly on my deathbed and think ‘if life ended now, what would I most regret not having done?’.<\/p>\n I never think, ‘I wish I’d read more newspapers and magazines.’<\/p>\n I never think, ‘I wish I’d spent more time on Twitter and Facebook.’<\/p>\n And I never think, ‘I wish I’d read more comments left underneath articles on the Internet.’<\/p>\n All of which I fear I’ve been doing too much of over the past year or so.\u00c2\u00a0What I do <\/em>think is, ‘I wish I’d read more books’. \u00c2\u00a0Particularly with the English Lit degree; it seems hypocritical to spend time reading ephemeral stuff online that I could have used on a book. \u00c2\u00a0And I’m not convinced I even enjoy being on Twitter for very long or that I’m good<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0at it.\u00c2\u00a0So I’ve been setting myself a goal of reading at least 150 pages of a book a day. For a dyspraxic reader like myself, that’s achievable. It might also help to increase my reading speed.<\/p>\n Another rule I’ve set myself is ‘one book at a time’ – no double-booking. I know many people read several books at once, but in my case it just leads to books not being finished.<\/p>\n I’m also trying to balance\u00c2\u00a0set texts for next year’s course with books for pleasure, mixing prose with comic books, fiction with non-fiction, favourite authors with unfamiliar ones, and classics with brand new releases.\u00c2\u00a0And it really works: the variety makes all the difference.<\/p>\n So since May 22nd, here’s what I’ve read, in order, with links to my reviews on the GoodReads website (a kind of non-Amazon global book group, which if nothing else helps to remind you what you’ve read).<\/p>\n Goodbye To Soho<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0by Clayton Littlewood<\/a> (memoir) Quick notice for UK readers. If you think the UK law should be changed to allow gay couples to marry, please say so in the consultation at\u00c2\u00a0Out4marriage.com. It’s essentially a questionnaire that takes about two minutes to click through. But the government will\u00c2\u00a0use the results, so it’s important. What interests me in particular is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1087,491],"class_list":["post-2799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-goodreads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2799"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2814,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions\/2814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0by Douglas Adams<\/a> (novel)
\nThe Handmaid’s Tale<\/em> by Margaret Atwood<\/a> (novel)
\nVirginia Woolf\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>by Alexandra Harris<\/a> (biography)
\nAre You My Mother? <\/em>by Alison Bechdel<\/a> (comic book memoir)
\nThe Sense Of An Ending<\/em> by Julian Barnes<\/a> (novel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"