Suddenly Sunday!

Svea at Confessions and Ramblings of a Muse in the Fog has created this new weekly event and invites anyone to join in and leave a link at her blog.

How very quiet it is this morning! After four days in the company of three young and very active grandsons we waved them goodbye yesterday with much regret for they bring so much fun and laughter into our lives.

Four computerless days but I'm ignoring Google reader - what is gone is gone and I'm not wasting today trying to play catchup. My apologies for not replying to those who have visited and commented while I've been gone .

Not much time for reading either although I did manage to finish The Swan Thieves. I can't remember a time when I've had to say I only read one book in a week but it sure doesn't happen often. Although I can probably add one other. We took the boys to a store sale and gave them a few dollars to spend on whatever they liked and I was delighted when the eldest asked if he could look at books..........he's 9 and has definitely inherited his mother and grandmother's love of reading. He took his time choosing and was very serious about the whole process and finally came away with two of this Wimpy Kid series. When I asked why he chose them he said because they're funny and sometimes it's good to read something that isn't just words on a page.  So of course I had to check them out and they are funny and the format is original with the sketches and cartoons.

The only other book related event I noticed this week was The Commonwealth Writers Prize winners for 2010 had been announced last week.

Winner of Best Book: Solo by Rana Dasgupta (India/UK)

 A blind man approaches his one hundredth birthday in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. Frail and introspective, he spends his time musing on a magazine piece he read some years ago, before he lost his sight: explorers had come upon a company of jungle parrots that still spoke snatches of the language of an extinct society. The birds were then captured, caged and sent home, in the hope that linguists might begin to piece together the lost language from their puzzling squawks and screeches. But the birds died on the way back, taking with them the last remnants of a disappeared civilisation. The parallels are all too apparent to the blind man: he fears that he too carries within him only a shredded inheritance, and that he is too concussed, too remote to pass anything on. Wondering what wisdom he has to leave to the world, he embarks on an epic armchair journey through history, memory, and prophecy that he writes up in the Book of Life and the Book of Daydreams

Winner of Best First Book: Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest (Aus)

The Commonwealth Writers Prize judges praised SIDDON ROCK for its rich cast of odd characters and blending of the everyday with fantasy. Behind every door in town lurk secret desires and wild imaginings. The novel, they concluded, deftly delves into the hauntings and disjunctions of settler Australia, and in its fable-like quality captures the laconic mannerisms of the Australian outback.

The book shows how magic, fantasy and creativity can burst out in the most apparently mundane of lives and places.

Looking  to the week ahead my focus will be on reading and reviewing. I'm choosing the smaller books in my pile to read in the hopes of drastically reducing it in the next few days - lined up I have
My Lady Judge - Cora Harrison
Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay
The Long Song - Andrea Levy
Still Alice - Lisa Genova

They all sound good to me!

Whether it is Saturday or Sunday in your part of the world I hope you're having a wonderful weekend!