Bank holiday weekend + lots of books

It's the end of our last bank holiday weekend until Christmas, and we spent in a much honoured tradition of doing some much-needed DIY around the house. Ahem, actually, N did. I mostly just looked after Elliot and stayed out of the way. We've decided it's finally time to redecorate our house. It's been almost an entire year since we moved into our house, and we have redecorated all of one room: Elliot's. We started small, by painting the smallest room in the house - the guest toilet downstairs. Not very interesting, but it's a start. And it makes everything else in the house look so drab and tired. Definately looking forward to further progress. The entire house, except for one room is painted in this almost-white-but-really-slightly-cream colour. It's so pale it feels like there isn't any colour in it at all. I like dark colours, vibrant colours, anything but pale and neutral. We're doing the master bedroom next. Any suggestions? It'd have to match our velvet-y cream curtains.

I keep meaning to tell you what I've read lately, but I haven't been reading very much lately. It's shocking and I'm deeply ashamed of myself. Here's the list though:

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx - Wow, it feels like a million years ago since I read this. It's on the 1001 list, otherwise I wouldn't have picked it up. I tried watching the film once when I was on a plane and it deeply bored me. I'm not into atmospheric movies, I guess. The book was more enjoyable though. I thought all the references to boats and the ocean would put me off, but it's done in an approachable way. The clipped writing style almost didn't work for me, but I still got through the book quite quickly. Interesting characters.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon - This was the book I was reading which prompted my crazy-sleep-talking incident I wrote about a few weeks ago. I instantly fell in love with this book, though I did enjoy the first half more than the second. It was all the description of the comic books. I cried when I read the back story for The Escapist. I always sort of thought I could be a graphic novel geek if I put my mind to it, and this book has almost brought me to the point of trying. And also to read every book Michael Chabon has ever written. Highly recommended (I even recommended this book to my local Catholic priest, who seemed amused at the suggestion!)

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery - another 1001 book. Heard good things about it from lots of different people. It's just as good as everyone says. I loved every minute of it.

Exodus by Leon Uris - A book I've read at least 10 times. My religion classes spurred me to read this again. I know very little about the old Testament, and I didn't think I'd get much practical information from reading this book, but it was fun reading it again.

Forever Blue by Ann Brashares - The end of the Sisterhood of the Pants. Incredible series. I find it amazing how much I related to all four of the different girls. I understood about Carmen losing herself, living with strangers for family as Bridget did, I've had that 'am-I?-am-I-not?' agony that Tibby goes through, and actually, I can't remember which bit I related to with Lena's story, but I did read this book very quickly. It was very good.

The Voice of the Gods by Trudi Canavan - The end of The Age of Five. I stayed up trying to finish this and thought about it when I had to do other things like eat or watch Elliot. Will read the whole series in a row one of these days when I'm not so behind with all of my other reading...

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami - Strange collection of short stories of people affected by a large earthquake in Japan. On the 1001 list, but I'm a huge fan of Murakami's, I just put off reading this because they are short stories and I just cannot wrap my head around short stories. No exception here, but Murakami is more than slightly odd.

So that's it. Am taking suggestions for what to read next. I need something that's instantly good, not too lengthy that will keep me hooked to get me out of this weird non-reading funk I'm in. Hope everyone had a lovely weekend as I did!