Snapshot: 30 January 2020

These are the posts I'm thinking of doing when I don't have any reviews or longer posts in the works: just a quick look at where I'm at and what I'm reading/up to. If I hate them or you don't find them interesting, I won't do them! I do love improvisation.

Currently reading: La Septième fonction du langage, by Laurent Binet

This is my first Laurent Binet book, although I've got another one of his on my TBR shelf (the one that won him the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie française last year) and every time I read the blurb on the back of one of his offerings in a bookstore I'm tempted. This one is steeped in the 'high literary' circles of France in the 1980s and is poking fun at just about everyone and everything, which I'm very much enjoying. It's told through the kind of ridiculous story of the murder of a semiotic expert, Roland Barthes, who had presumably articulated 'the seventh function of language' that has been stolen by the Russians. The French President gets involved in getting his research back from the people who killed him. It's all very ridiculous, but very funny, and it's proving to be a quick, enjoyable read even though the plot and the writing can be a bit dense.

Currently drinking: Verbena tea. It's a herbal infusion I bring back with me every time I visit my grandmother in France, and I have a cup of it every night before bed - I find it very soothing and it helps me start slowing down for sleepytimes.

Currently in my online shopping carts:

Foyles: Race of Scorpions and Scales of Gold, books 3 and 4 of the House of Niccolò series; Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth

Waterstones: pre-order of Weather by Jenny Offill; Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica trans. Sarah Moses

Fnac.fr: Au service secret de Marie-Antoinette books 1 and 2, L'enquête du Barry and Pas de répit pour la reine, both by Fredéric Lenormand

Come on payday!

Happy reading,

Amélie xx