Today's saved by the 3 books I bought from the "am-I-back-again?" bookfair. They're Ian Penman's Vital Signs (essays on music, movies and other manias), Jonathan Rosenbaum's Placing Movies (the practice of film criticism) and Rose Tremain's 1999 Whitbread winning novel Music & Silence (the title alone clinched it). Woohoo. Happy happy joy joy. :)

Pupi asked me previously how I would know what book to buy. Well, there are the books which have won awards or are well received by critics. But what I prefer are those I get from gut feel. Like if I flip through the book and a line jumps out at me. Or if the book has a hefty solid weight (please, no jokes about phone directories or the like; and yes, I've read my way through encyclopaedias before). Oh yeah I believe in heavy books... it means there's more for me to read. When queuing up behind kids with huge thin picture books in libraries, I often fight the urge to ask them to go read some REAL books instead.