Tuesday, 22 June 2010

Gone for 3 weeks and all of this happened!

It has been hectic. My birthday was the day after the previous blog post and inbetween the various celebrations (took me 3 weeks), the Soccer World Cup 2010, work and writing I did not have time to blog. But I am back.

A quick update on the writing: It's going really well. I'm making progress in leaps and bounds. I finished a chapter today and will be putting the finishing touches on another chapter tonight.

I also made time to read a book in the last few weeks. Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. If you haven't read my review, read it here. And while you're there, buy a copy, it is well worth the read.



At first when I started to read Zoo City, I had my misgivings. I mean, I loved Moxyland. It was a fun  read and captured my attention from start to finish. How does an author go about to top that? Well, Lauren Beukes did. Zoo City is more lyrical than Moxyland, it has a more poetic feel to it. The author has a way with words that is hard to describe. It went stop-start at first and I was slightly jarred by the use of the first person narrative, but that lasted all of 3 pages and I could not care about moaning about it anymore. But who cares? Zoo City is a great book and everyone should read it. 'strues Bob!

I am currently busy with Justin Cronin's The Passage and I am properly blown away. The book is friggin amazing. It's also friggin huge! Just shy of 800 pages this horror thriller is sure to set the tone for genre fiction for quite a while to come. (Authors, please just do not immitate the LENGTH of the book. I would like to finish more books quicker, and not break my back luggin them around) But I digress.



Expect an update as soon as I'm done with it (which might take a while since it is, if I haven't mentioned it, almost 800 friggin pages long!). If you cannot wait, get more info here, and here.

On a semi related note: I'm going to the Joburg launch for Zoo City on Thursday evening. It's at LoveBooks. More info can be found here. If you're going, drop me a mail and we can catch up there. Which reminds me, I still have no animal for the launch party!

Then on another unrelated note: Since Bafana Bafana's dismal performance against Uruguay last week wednesday, only one person has tried to sell me some WC 2010 memorabelia. I count that as a win! (Just thought I'd let you know!)

I also watched a couple of DVDs in the last few weeks. but I'll update the world on those later.