What I'm reading ...

I have started Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. The author is well renowned and I have enjoyed her work before. Here’s the blurb:

A powerful story of two families brought together by beauty and torn apart by tragedy, the new novel by the Orange Prize-winning author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder is her most astonishing yet

It is 1964: Bert Cousins, the deputy district attorney, shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited, bottle of gin in hand. As the cops of Los Angeles drink, talk and dance into the June afternoon, he notices a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. When Bert kisses Beverly Keating, his host's wife, the new baby pressed between them, he sets in motion the joining of two families whose shared fate will be defined on a day seven years later.

In 1988, Franny Keating, now twenty-four, has dropped out of law school and is working as a cocktail waitress in Chicago. When she meets one of her idols, the famous author Leon Posen, and tells him about her family, she unwittingly relinquishes control over their story. Franny never dreams that the consequences of this encounter will extend beyond her own life into those of her scattered siblings and parents.

Told with equal measures of humour and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a powerful and tender tale of family, betrayal and the far-reaching bonds of love and responsibility. A meditation on inspiration, interpretation and the ownership of stories, it is Ann Patchett's most astonishing work.

Born On a Blue Day - by Daniel Tammet

This was an excellent book and a very enjoyable read. I always like to get insights into other people’s lives and, when it is someone as remarkable as this author, it is a particular pleasure. The book is well written in a very simple style, that I like. One of my strongest reactions to the book is my familiarity with some of his idiosyncrasies; nothing like the level that he experiences, but confirming that I’m somewhere on the edge of “the spectrum”. Before I finished reading this book, I had ordered a copy of his next one.

What I'm reading ...

I have started reading Born On a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. I had heard of this book before, but it was the recommendation of it by a good friend, who himself experiences synesthesia, that motivated me to buy a copy. Here’s the blurb:

'I was born on 31 January 1979 - a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like the number nine or the sound of loud voices arguing.' Like the character Hoffman portrayed, he can perform extraordinary maths in his head, sees numbers as shapes, colours, textures and motions, and can learn to speak a language fluently from scratch in three days. He also has a compulsive need for order and routine. He eats exactly 45 grams of porridge for breakfast and cannot leave the house without counting the number of items of clothing he's wearing. If he gets stressed or unhappy he closes his eyes and counts. But in some ways Daniel is not all like the Rain Man. He is virtually unique amongst people who have severe autistic disorders in being capable of living a fully-functioning, independent life. It is this incredible self-awareness and ability to communicate what it feels like to live in a totally extraordinary way that makes BORN ON A BLUE DAY so powerful.

Pythagoras - by Kitty Ferguson

I have abandoned reading this book. It is unusual for me to do this, but I see no point in continuing with a book if reading it is a chore; that is not the place for reading in my life. I thought that this book might be interesting, as I like biographies - learning about other people’s lives. However, I just found this book hard going. It started out by explaining that very little is actually known about Pythagoras. This made me wonder what the next 350 pages would hold. The answer is snippets of information, anecdotes and speculation. So, after 50 or so pages, I gave up.