So Hard

It's my first day back to work after the holidays and is was so hard. Besides having a few extra things to do because I was gone for a little over a week, it was as though I'd never had a vacation. Sigh. Maybe it's because I went back to work today, but I am sitting here looking at the books I am in the middle of and thinking, "I should start something new." A sign of stress or a sign of being crazy? I'll leave you to decide. I heard a review on NPR of a new book called The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. What caught, me aside from the reviewer's enthusiasm for the book, is that he described the main character as a young girl who loves to read. How can I not put this book on my wishlist? Ali Smith won the Whitbread today for The Accidental. She beat out the boys--Rushdie, Hornby and Wilson. You go girl! I have not read the book. Looks like I'll be adding that one to my wishlist too. I feel my New Year's Resolutions ebbing away already. And if you need further evidence that book publishers don't know a good book when they see it, The NY Times reports that The Sunday Times of London sent around to 20 publishers and agents two typed manuscripts of the opening chapters of two different novels. All but one of the people who received them rejected them. Turns out the books that were sent out were Stanley Middleton's Holiday and V. S. Naipaul's In a Free State. Both books have won a Booker and Naipaul won a Nobel in 2001. How sad is that?