bookworm gossip

It was with girlish glee that I whipped the latest Susanna Clarke book off the english language section shelf at my local bookstore. And with adult cynicism that I balked at the price and put it right back. For those not in the know, she's the author responsable for the weighty tome Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell, which you've either read, think it might be a good read, heard about or are totally put out by the excessive weightiness and small printy-ness of the project (go on, read it you chicken). Anyway, it's a book I can recommend (this blogs just full of them lately) for anyone who can deal with excessive footnotes. They're good footnotes, though. There's practically another book hidden in them. It's amazing to believe it was her first work, and you get the impression of someone with a mind so ready to explode with ideas that if she doesn't get as many of them out as possible they'll be scraping her cerebellum off the paintwork.

Anyway, her latest work is 'The Ladies of Grace Adieu', and as soon as I get around to my next online shopping spree, I might be able to actually review the story, rather than its potential super-dooper qualities. 23€ for a medium sized paperback, however, is a whole other story.

tea, apples and ginger snap biscuits

Are three things I like to consume together. They also sound rather quaint when you put them all in the same sentence like that. I'm reading a book about the heritage of British food, disappearing regional specialties, canny seaweed eating sheep from Orkney, BSE and chicken tikka masala. There seems to be a certain similarity between certain dishes still current in Europe and what the Brits were eating a few generations ago. Before they got scared of germs. And started feeding meat to their cows. Be that as it may, despite the fact that you can buy a bag of powdered oats here easily enough, I can't say for sure who, aside from me and the odd Scottish expat, is actually eating them.
Monsieur has recently put in an offer for an apartment, I think that constitutes grown up news or something. We're moving in at the end of the year if all goes to plan (i.e the bank generously hands us a ball and chain to cart around). It needs some work doing, but doesn't seem to have any resident mould colonies which is quite high on my list of priorities (not damp, not damp, not frigging damp). We'll be slightly (2-3km) removed from the city centre and living in one of the nearby suburbs (Marcq en Baroeul - a name which is likely to screw up more than one of my english speaking friends when it comes time to write their Christmas cards). It's a pretty nice area with some quite amazing residential architecture. Needles to say, we are not going to be living in any examples of this amazingness. It is a first purchase, after all.