Sunday Salon: May Check In

Sunday Salon May Check In

Oh dear, I appear to be making a nasty habit of this. It’s almost mid June and here I am updating about May. Last Sunday I was taking part in the Race for Life 5k in Glasgow. I’ll talk about that more in another update but it did leave me rather tired last Sunday. This week has been rather chaotic one way or another. Work has been crazy (when is it ever not?), my writing classes finished and there was a family emergency to take care of.

Anyway, onto the books I read in May, bringing my total up to twenty-three books read in 2012:

The Submission – Amy Waldman (Library)

Run Fat Bitch Run! – Ruth Field (Library)

Tales of the Mall – Ewan Morrison (Kindle)

This Road is Red – Alison Irvine (Library)

I do enjoy getting books out of the library but most of their stock is comprised of robust hardbacks. Obviously this is to ensure that the books last longer but they’re not good for carrying around. Most of my reading was done at home where there are other distractions. Should I be sitting reading when there’s a pile of washing up to be done?  

This month I had to travel due to work and my Kindle was a godsend. One commute involved getting the 16.49 Dundee to Glasgow that started its journey at Aberdeen. A carriage full of hen parties and offshore workers meant I was firmly plugged into my iPod and my Kindle. I spent the journey traipsing through the first book in the Game of Thrones series. Fantasy is not my usual cup of tea but I can understand why it has become so popular.

I put Games of Thrones on the back burner because the library delivered a copy of the brilliant And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson. I should devote a full review to this book, simply because I enjoyed it so much. The Scottish political scene (and elsewhere) is buzzing over the question of independence. Robertson takes readers back to the Scottish political scene in the 1970s to the present day whilst interweaving the lives of seemingly unrelated characters. Actually this book dispels the idea that hardbacks are part of my ‘time to read’ problem. It weighs in at well over six hundred pages yet I managed to finish it in a week and a half. That was without the book leaving my house.

At the moment I’m in that horrible stage of finishing a fantastic book and wondering what to read next. I may have to retreat back to an old classic like Stephen King’s Different Seasons to kick start my reading thirst again.