Fitting the battle of life

I am a sucker for the old Waterstones 3 for 2. Especially when I’m being dragged around Norwich by my mother and sister looking at shoes all day – popping into any bookshop is frankly a relief. And I love books.

I just finished Libra by Don DeLillo, and am (and have been for some time – pesky exams getting in the way) two-thirds of the way through Underworld by the same. And yet there I am, bored out of my mind, and I’ve got £20 left in the bank. A 3 for 2 on £8 paperbacks is tempting at the best of times, but witht that little money in my account you’d have thought it would be a firm no. But the shoes were getting on my nerves…

…so I bought (for probably a lot more than I could have paid online, but hey – I enjoyed the process of buying them, because it saved me from the shoes):

• We Need to Talk About Kevin,
• Midnight’s Children, and
• No Country for Old Men,

which I might get round to reading this Summer. Maybe. Perhaps.

Well, decided to catch up on some music, literature and comedy all at the same time – god bless Amazon. This week’s deliveries (a few days earlier than I expected!):

• Underworld (Don DeLillo)
• Mozart’s Requiem
• The Flight of the Conchords Season 1 DVD

Well, apparently (according to my recently rediscovered LibraryThing profile) I only have 80 books. For a student of literature this is just appalling. I’m sure I have more, but I can’t be bothered to spend an hour going through every book I have in my room right now, checking to see if I’ve already catalogued it, and cataloguing it if it’s not already there.

Anyway, what with Easter coming up very shortly, and the fact that I’ve only got two exams this year (one’s six hours long though!), I decided to do an Amazon shop for a couple of things we (as a house) wanted to get and throw in a book. Underworld, by Don DeLillo – weighing in at a hefty 800+ pages, it should last me a little while at least. In the meantime – I went for free super saver delivery, of course, being a cheap arse student – I’ll get Iris Murdoch’s first novel, Under the Net, out of the way.

Why choose Underworld? I read Falling Man for a seminar this term, and actually quite enjoyed it. It didn’t strike me as at all amazing, but what I’ve heard of his other work he’s not a half bad writer, and rather than start meekly at the shallow end with something like White Noise I thought I should go for the big one. We shall see how it goes.