Been Reading

So back to life as normal ... Tonight was Home Night with Loulou. She was feeling creative so opted to cook. She whipped up areally good Asian Stir-fry with noodles and crumbed aubergine on the side. Thumbs up :)

Anyway, so as I said I took a fair number of books along with me to Moz. And I finished two of them ...

The first was Jonathan Safran-Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father's closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace.

I loved it from the first page. The 9-year old Oskar's internal voice was written so fabulously and I could hear it perfectly. He is a fantastic character. It's not a particularly complicated story, but it does get confusing in bits (esp. the grandfather's pages that are completely illegible). I also loved the crazy layout of the book. Not confined to the expected norm. But with random pictures and pages with just 5 words on them. Brilliant, I'm sure I will read this again one day.

The second was Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner's collaboration, Freakonomics.

Cult bestseller, new buzz word..."Freakonomics" is at the heart of everything we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us daily: from parenting to crime, sport to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams. Asking provocative and profound questions about human motivation and contemporary living and reaching some astonishing conclusions, "Freakonomics" will make you see the familiar world through a completely original lens.

Well, I couldn't really have picked a more different book to follow with and I like to do that. I really enjoyed Freakonomics and have added their blog to my listing on the side. It was interesting and made me think. Although the Abortion-Crime debate seems to have taken much flak (as with a number of the other ideas they raised), I like it. And I'm hoping we'll see a similar curb in SA's crime in 10 years when our Pro-Choice law turns 20. Anyway, it's interesting reading and I recommend it ... if you can't get you hands on it, start on their blog in the mean time :)

And that's about as exciting as it get's here on a Monday Night. On with the rest of my Tuesday ...