My Week In Books VI.....

So, yes, I've left this particular one a little late, but here it is, a quick run down of my week in books....

This week is all about getting excited for, and preparing for my favourite weekend of the year, Clunes Booktown!  "What are a book addict's preparations for such an event?" I hear you mumble with feigned interest... well, they consist mostly, in my case at least, of getting excited about my partner enforced book-buying-ban being lifted! 

This is somewhat akin to telling an alcoholic they can't have a drop to drink for a few weeks and then you're going to let them loose in a brewery, then a distillery, then take them to a winery to recover....

I've actually tried my best to simply avoid bookstores altogether, which has kept me clean... just four more days....

Reading, has, of course, not been banned! That would result in divorce!! ;-) I filled a few hours on the train this weekend, and a lunch break today, in polishing off another Penguin, The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. 

Now I'm not going to lie, for today's general readership tastes this little ripping yarn is very much old hat. It's plot line is stretched so thin you could see clean through it. The characters, from the hero to the villains and the ensemble of bit-players are about as believable as the average politician's expenses claim. It's got anti-semitism, it's got jingoism, it's got the most amount of ridiculous coincidences one could squeeze into just one-hundred-and-forty-eight pages! But it has something else too, it has excitement. It's fun to read. And you could probably do so in the toilet over a period of a week without extending one's usual duration of stay. One of the most bizarre things about this story is that, in the huge number of movie adaptations that have been made since it's first being published in 1915, not a single one has used the same thirty-nine steps mentioned in the title! So if you've seen any of the movies, you still don't know the book ending!
I'd suggest you give it a go, just for a little delve into a nostalgic world that I doubt ever existed outside the heads of a few middle-class members of the early twentieth century population.

"What else?" I hear you cry, accusingly, like a fork-bearded, top-hatted villain about to tie me to the railroad tracks for some inexplicable plot device.... well, 
I've spent some time putting little bits of ribbon through holes in bits of card, as part of the production line for our free bookmarks we'll be giving away to anyone who cares to take one, at Clunes this weekend. Not the usual line of work for someone who earns his real living in demolishing commercial buildings... but we each have to have a hobby:-)