What are you reading?

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Have just finished "The Housekeeper + The Professor" by Yoko Ogawa. When I was tossing and turning with the night frights at 2 am, I sank into its sweet leaves. After a chapter, I was able to close my eyes again, and drift off in a contented sleep for another couple of hours, until the alarm woke me.

Sweet story about the friendship between a housekeeper, her son, and the former maths professor who she keeps house for. The professor has been in a car accident, and, as a result, can only retain the previous 80 minutes in memory. After 80 minutes, he remembers only the long-term memories he had at the time of his accident more than thirty years ago. He loves the housekeeper's son and calls him "Root" because the top of his head is flat just like the square root sign.

On "First Tuesday Book Club", Marieke Hardy gave the book a less than complimentary review, saying something to the effect that it attempted to make maths look like fun, but she didn't buy it. I did, although I hated the subject at school, and was greatly relieved when I didn't have to study it as an undergraduate at uni, only to despair again when it reared its head as statistics in more recent courses. "Standard deviation", I can remember, at least the name, if not the definition. And "fishing trip", and "sample size", but not much else. But the novel, and its maths was fascinating.

Cover of Half of a Yellow Sun

I have been quite busy over the last couple of weeks with my photography course, and so I haven't read as many novels as I like to. Began "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but I found it hard to continue. Quite cold, somehow, the prose. I didn't feel for any of the characters. I think I should give it another go. (It got great reviews.) I should try again to crack this imaginary world and taste it. I think I have read Chinua Achebe, a fellow Nigerian and a mentor for Adichie, but, unfortunately, unless I have someone to talk to about the books I read, I forget a great deal about them. Sometimes I even forget the titles and borrow them again from the library and about 20 pages in, I begin to predict quite accurately what will happen.

So many books, so little time. I can't afford to be reading too many books twice.