Read/reading: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, a giant Instapaper queue

I’m still reeling from this book. It’s definitely cemented Eugenides as one of my favourite writers - he writes characters so finely detailed that they leap off the page, and is so invested in his world that he can make the most mundane situation seem utterly invested in magic. This was heartbreaking, and brilliant, and at once hilariously and painfully relatable, and it makes me absolutely furious that he’s only written three novels. (I still haven’t read The Virgin Suicides, but it’s on my wishlist.)

Maybe because this was so fantastic (and anything following it would be diminished), or that I’ve more or less exhausted my work’s library, or that I’m fighting off the urge to plunge into the ASOIAF series so soon after reading the first book, or the fact that I’m going to be in America for two weeks and probably won’t be reading as much, but I’m taking a break to plough through the huge reserve of articles I’ve saved in recent weeks. With any luck, I’ll come back with renewed vigour. Or something.

Seriously, read that book.

Read/read/reading: Stardust by Neil Gaiman, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad by Dan Kennedy, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.

Stardust was lovely - criminally short, but fantasy at its best in that sense, leaving enough to the imagination and defying convention without seeming aggressively counterculture. I might even watch the film, now. Also: it’s struck me that I consider myself a huge Neil Gaiman fan, even though I’ve only read two of his books (this, and American Gods). That’s probably important.

Rock On was a bit lacking in substance - any ode to a lost heyday tends to be that way - but riotously funny, nevertheless. I came to this from The Moth, which is definitely worth listening to, and while there are probably much better books out there, this is a lot of fun.

The Marriage Plot will be my second Eugenides book (after Middlesex - I haven’t read The Virgin Suicides). I’m very excited.