The Book Thief

I know, I know, it's been ages again since I wrote anything here. I have no excuse except that I've started this new job (I mentioned it in the previous post - it's temporary and only a few hours each week, but as it's an academic job it's demanding and I'm enjoying it).

I'm reading a great book at the moment - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It's a story set during World War Two in Germany. It tells the tale of an ordinary German family living in Munich who hide a young Jewish man. It's very much a cross between the Diary of Anne Frank and the film, The Pianist. It's also unusually told by Death. This morning I was sitting in a cafe reading a chapter over a coffee and it had me in tears with the following moving passage....


"On June 23 1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison, on Polish soil....



Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their French words. I watched their love-visions and freed them from their fear.

I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it. In complete desolation, I looked at the world above. I watched the sky as it turned from silver to grey to the colour of rain. Even the clouds tried to look the other way.
Sometimes, I imagined how everything appeared above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye.



They were French, they were Jews, and they were you."

Yes, I know it's very sentimental but personally I adore sentiment and strong feelings in writing - I want to feel the heartbreak of the characters or their passion, their fear, their joy - I'm not happy to simply read a clinical or cynical take on events. In fact in my opinion this writing isn't sentimental at all, but instead the huge events taking place are handled very gently without overblown baroque outpourings.

If only I could write that way myself...unfortunately I tend towards the baroque at all times in my writing.

Happy New Year

January is a depressing month I think. It's the depths of winter and here in the South of England we get wind, rain and grey, grey skies. It's cold and damp. No snow, no startling blue skies just turgid miserable weather.

I feel unbelievably tired - I'm getting a good 7-8 hours each night, I'm exercising regularly (climbing at least twice or three times a week and even some cycling in there too) yet I feel that I could retire to bed for the next month or so. Hibernation looks inviting.

Despite all my feelings of sloth I'm actually going through a really good period in my life right now - new friendships and relationships have developed, a new job has been started - even if it is temporary and with very few hours, nonetheless, it's an area in which I wanted to work. So things are good right now, much better than they've been for a long time.

Yet.

If you can imagine the slightly dreamy way you can sometimes feel when you've had a couple of drinks...no drunkenness but a sort of heightened awareness and increased sensitivity. That's sort of how I feel right now - a bit spaced out I guess, and tired.

Maybe it's because a good deal of my life is beginning to finally settle. I do feel a little like a giant snow-globe - I've spent the last year being picked up and shaken frantically and now, finally, everything is settling and becoming clear. No wonder I feel tired...and very probably a little seasick.

Alternatively I could simply be coming down with a cold.