Diminishing book stack

Yes I'm still reading....just not writing about it so much! After spending all day on the computer at work, I'm finding it hard to motivate myself to sit down to the computer again at night.

I've read quite a few books since my last post (not surprisingly considering how long ago that was) - I received books for Christmas and birthday, so I've been making my way through quite an impressive book pile. I won't write much / any on some them as some were too long ago to do justice to any proper review and some were purely designed for an easy beach read.

These are in no particular order (and do not include the easy beach reads!):

The Happiness Project: I really loved this book and I've tried to implement many of her ideas into my life - just to make life a little more easy and a little more 'happy'. The book is the end result of the blog written by Gretchen Rubin on trying to actively make herself happier - there is nothing particularly new or earth shattering in her discoveries on what makes people happy, but sometimes we need to be reminded to focus on these things rather than being consumed by our daily routines.

The first project I adopted was clearing out a lot of clutter - it was very cathartic and it did reduce stress which in turn did make me feel happy!

There are other little 'happiness' projects I've embarked on from inspiration in the book, but I encourage you to read this book and use it as your own inspiration to squeeze any extra happiness you can out of every day.

1Q84: What a bizarre but brilliant book. It took me a while to get into the book - written from the perspective of two quite different characters - but once I got going I thought it was amazing and I couldn't put it down.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes was beautifully written and I can see why it won the Man Booker prize. It really makes you think about your memories and your own interpretation of them. I'm sure many of my memories have been embellished or altered to fit what I would have liked to happen or how I would have liked to think I would have behaved. Food for thought.....and a great book.

Death comes to Pemberley by PD James is set in 1803 and it a nostalgic look at life in the 'big house' from the perspective of the lord and lady of the house. It is a slow, beautiful and easy read with a bit of old-fashioned mystery thrown in. There are some great characters in the book and I could have kept reading about their lives and their connections - but I can't believe that women used to think and live like the ones depicted in the story. They obviously did, but it seems so archaic and patronising. Lovely book and I think its making the book club rounds.

I am about to start an intriguing book - The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks -so off to bed I go.
Would love to hear any recommendations of books to add to the pile.....