"If God made each minute last six months I'd be middle aged by breakfast and
dead by the time I got on the school bus"
I'm currently reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I had been eyeing the book for quite some time and finally got it...well nicked it, more like. It's so shameful, I know, but I just could.not.resist. Not when it comes to books. I'd beg, borrow and steal.
Actually, it wasn't my first, either. In my student days, I would "borrow" books from the school library and not return them. People would lend me books, and if I really liked them (like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird), I would keep 'em. So yeah, don't lend me books, people. Ever.
Actually, in my defence, I also decline from borrowing other people's books even when they insist. I don't want to be tempted to keep them and be banished from friendshiphood with my best buds.
But Black Swan Green was just calling out to me from this apartment show unit I was at...they had so many copies of it lying around as "decor" I knew nobody was going to read it...or miss it. So I just...slipped one into my bag and sauntered off innocently.
I think of it as my good deed to Mitchell. He is an excellent writer. Again, like my previous read, this, too, is about childhood. Specifically, Jason Taylor's in the 80s when Brit punk rock ruled (the story starts out with Human League's "Don't You Want Me" thumping out dead loud from sister Julia's room, can't you just hear it!).
There is anguish about being a social retard, about wanting to be cool without looking like you're trying too hard, about denying your love for poetry because you're afraid people will think you're gay, and yes, there's also that teenage lust...
"His fingers undid the buttons up her lavender dress one at a time
from her knees to her sunburnt neck."
Oh, and that Danish pastry episode out in the field with Dawn Madden was steamy!
David Mitchell should be read -- not just be made into living room decor! So there!
