Wary

I love this description of being in an unfamiliar house from Elizabeth Bowen's The House in Paris: It is a wary business, walking about a strange house you know you are to know well. Only cats and dogs with their more expressive bodies enact the tension we share with them at such times. The you inside you gathers up defensively; something is stealing upon you every moment; you will never be quite the same again. These new unsmiling lights, reflections and objects are to become your memories, riveted to you closer than friends or lovers, going with you, even, into the grave: worse they may become dear and fasten  like so many leeches on your heart. By having come, you already begin to store up the pains of going away...

A modern thought

I'm reading - and loving - a second-hand copy of The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen. Pages 17 and 18 fell out when I first opened it and I shocked myself by thinking: This wouldn't happen with a Kindle. I got over my e-moment and sellotaped the pages back in. Since I  still have no desire myself  to read on a Kindle, I really did surprise myself - I guess I was just having a modern thought. And delighted that The State of Me has been in top 100 Kindle literary fiction for 12 days now. This is longest it has sustained a position there and I'm very pleased, it usually dips in and out. I know the 99p bargain must be something to do with it, but the  point is the book is finding new readers and hopefully people are recommending it. Thank you, e-book technology!