Writes of Passage

World Book Day came and went without any real impact (I thought that going to work dressed as Pressia Belze may lose me some respect in the eyes of my colleagues) other than leaving a reading list trailing in its wake.

And what a peculiar little list it is. It's fifty books to read before you're sixteen, roughly split between classics and teen fiction with a handful of books that don't really fit into either camp (Jodie Picoult and James Herbert).  On the whole the list was pretty spot on - Hunger Games; The Fault in Our Stars; The Book Thief; The Night-time Incident of the Curious Dog are all heaps of fun.  Now I'm not certain about the inclusion of some of the classics - Although I can sort of see Jane Eyre (if you don't read it as a thirteen year old girl you're never going to read it) - Catch-22 is a fair contender for my favourite book but I'm fairly sure it would have just left me bewildered if I'd tried to read it at 14.

Some of the modern teen choices (and omissions) were curious.  By which I really mean; I will fight anyone who tells me that they enjoyed Skullduggery Pleasant more than The Dead.

There's a couple of books that I keep seeing around and thinking I should read, like Wonder, which are now in my head a bit more validated because of their inclusion in a list (which is weird of me). And ashamed to say that there were a couple of books that I'd not even heard of, which is pretty terrible of me.

I've done stuff other than look at lists about teen fiction, honest. I saw The Weir.  That's a thing that a grown up would do, right? I also saw Russell Brand, I'm not certain that I can say the same about that...

Munchen Glad Rags

Happy Fasching, people.

I've had another one of those happy accidents where I've ended up somewhere foreign for one of the big party things. We're in Munich, it's Rose Monday and everyone is in fancy dress and drunk on schapps. The streets are lined with trampled confetti and the beerhalls are full of lecherous drunks dressed as predatory clowns.

Still, Munich good. It's a properly pretty city which seems designed purely as a purveyor of pig and beer - you're going to think I'm exaggerating but the main market actually sells nothing else. It's like it's been designed for my optimum weekend break.

Went to that Black Forest yesterday, to see chateaux and eat gateaux. Saw Neuschwanstein (the castle from the Country House single, britpoppers), that's one of the most picturesque things to see in Germany, right? Unfortunately it was really misty, so could see almost nothing. Rubbish.

Still, beer and pork good.