I'm not dead, just floating...

As quoted from a favourite teen-hood Pink song. Yeah, so it's been a whole month, pretty much. Easter has been and gone and the three weeks seem like a glorious memory, now that I've been thrust straight back into both work and volunteering all at once again. I've also decided to get it over and done with and take my grade eight violin exam in June, so every minute that's not spend doing anything else, is currently being taken up with screeching away to the same three tunes in the vague hope that I can pass, and not let on the fact I haven't played 'properly' in about 3 years prior to September.

But I digress.

So that Easter reading list? I only had four books on there: Rebecca, Macbeth, The Bell Jar, and a book called All the truth that's in me, for the book club I help run for the youngest year in school. Rebecca I finished - the last post I did was a review of the book in fact. All the Truth that's in me, I also finished (I gave it about a 3.5/5 - it wasn't really my thing, but then again I am, sadly, no longer a member of the intended age group so maybe that had something to do with it). The Bell Jar I maddeningly took with me when I went to visit my family, then left there. So that did not get read. Macbeth I've been putting off for months. So that didn't happen either. Howeverrrr I did read the Hunger Games books, numbers 2 and 3, completing the series (finally). I enjoyed the books, although the parallels to Battle Royal are many and I can understand fans of BR when they accuse Collins of 'idea stealing'. I enjoyed The Hunger Games trilogy in it's own right, and without being a spoiler sport, was very happy with the ending (ifyouknowwhatimean). I also read How To Be A Woman, by Caitlin Moran. I may do a separate post outlining my feelings about that book. Far too complex to sum up here.

So that was the reading. But what do school Librarians do in the school holidays? Do we swan off and take three weeks to spend at our leisure?

No. We do stock check. A task I'm pretty sure was created by the devil.

Stock check, in brief, consists of me and CC (my boss and other half of the Library team at our school), going through all of the shelves, in all of the libraries (there are 7) ticking off on a spread sheet, which books are on the shelves and which are not. You then have to discover which of the books that are not on the shelf are on loan, and which of the ones have just simply been taken away. Basically stolen. You then have to mark the missing books onto the main library system, so that when people search for a book that's missing they don't go looking in vain on the shelves, thinking that it's there.

It's a job that takes forever. But does need doing. And to be honest, it doesn't require much brain power, so you can just crank up your favourite music, throw your shoes in a corner and zone out for a bit while you tick off all of those books. I can't believe how CC managed to do this alone for all these years. Hopefully together we did a more thorough job and it was slightly less boring because we had each other to moan about it with.

We did each take a week off, myself at the beginning and CC at the end. I spent a week with my Mum and Dad and took a day trip to Bruges with best girly friend who was awaiting uni results so needed waffles and beer pronto! I also saw JJ at the very end of the hols for three days and an old uni friend who I hadn't seen in about a year for the weekend in between. So lots of friend seeing in-between the productivity. Aside from that, when completing stock check I was obviously living back on school site. There is nothing more lonely that living on a massive school site, when there's no pupils and no staff left living there because they've all gone away. I watched a lot of movies, read a lot and daydreamed a lot in the evenings. And sometimes went to pubs for tea to a) steal their wifi and b) just remind myself that there was still human life out there and I wasn't part of some awful sci-fi plot where the only girl left alive on earth is trapped in a massive school grounds watching various Japanese anime films over and over and dreaming up various alternate realities including one where cats have taken over the earth and considering how useful it would be if humans had three arms and wondering if we'll evolve this in a couple of thousands of years (if we haven't killed off ourselves or the planet by then).

Exciting times tomorrow: I have to help interview the candidates for my job! As I leave the school at the end of this term, they're interviewing for someone to replace me for next year. Very excited to have a chat with them and give them the tour!

So for now, I need to cherish this rare morning where I technically have nothing to do...

Over and out!

Hot off the shelf: What I'm reading - 'Rebecca' DuMaurier, Daphnie

I've read one from my Easter reading list! I rated this three out of five. One one level, I enjoyed it. On all other levels it frustrated the hell out of me.

 

Why did I like it?
The writing is excellent. The language is so eloquent, yet so understandable. She tells a brilliant story and has a  genuine talent for sending shivers down your unsuspecting spine. It's creepy and haunting. So what's the problem? I'll tell you. My problem was our unnamed protagonist.

 

I understand that the novel is rooted in a time much different to our own, and that social conventions and people in general were much different than they are today. But the newly married, unnamed Mrs De Winter is so frustrating and unsure I almost gave up on the book more than once (something I have almost never done). It's like she's constantly seeking reassurance. She is always questioning herself and other people there's hardly any room for development to her character. When she marries Max in what is quite a hurried and exciting fashion, I wanted her to sustain some of that great spontaneity, it made me think her to have a certain hidden passion for adventure. This thought was steadily and continually  squashed as I continued to read. As soon as she gets to Manderley she goes back to being meek, just as she was before, as a companion to Mrs Van Hopper. She doesn't know how to behave, constantly curses her 'bad breeding' and does nothing about it. Not once does she say, hey you know what, I don't know how to play golf. Maybe I should learn, then when someone next suggests a game I could join in instead of apologising meekly to everyone and telling them I simply cannot play.

 

Also her entire survival seems to be dependent on 'he loves me, he loves me not'. Even when the biggest plot twist in the whole novel is revealed, her only thought is "he had never loved Rebecca". This is repeated so many times, parroted to the audience, it seems to be the only thing in her one track mind. The whole story had been building to this moment and all she can do is go "thank god, the guy I married, despite only knowing him for a couple of months, doesn't love his dead wife". As if it would be a huge deal if he did. She married him, knowing he'd lost a wife approx a year before. You'd have thought that if the notion he had loved another woman bothered her, she wouldn't have gone through with it.

 

Apart from this I think Rebecca was a great read. I'm trying to read several books from the BBC's top 100 books list, and hopefully will post some more reviews soon.

 

Over and out.