songs are as sad as the listener

'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer is one of my absolute favorite books in the world. Just saying.

Because in an effort to avoid doing all uni work I have exhausted the content of 4OD and iPlayer, I decided to go back and re-read the small selection of books I bought with me to uni.
Shamefully this plan got less and less enthusiastic as the weather down here in Pompey got sunnier and sunnier... but hey ho, I still feel the need to tell you about this book. (YES OK originally this post was intended for world book night/day but that was hmm 2 weeks ago, and I never wrote it. Blah.)

It is the story of Oskar Schell, a young hmm shall we say eccentric boy living in NYC in 2001/2002 time. His father has died in the 9/11 attacks, and after finding a key in his dads wardrobe he is on a mission to discover what it unlocks - by trying it in every lock in New York. But its not even the story, its the way its written, it is so so beautiful and touching. Some pages only have one word on, or are blank. Sometimes Oskar talks to himself or to nobody or just doesn't use a full stop for pages at a time, because thats how people talk in real life. When Oskar is feeling sad, he says he has 'heavy boots', which I think is just perfect. In fact some of my favourite phrases/quotes are from this book, including “I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.” 
Theres a character who forgets how to speak, so uses exercise books to write what he wants to say; there are some words he always flips back to though, like something and nothing, and yes and no which he has tattoo'd on the palms of each hand.

Shamefully, despite buying this book a few years ago and rereading it several times, I've still not read anything else by Jonathan Safran Foer. Hope to correct this soon!  (I study creative writing as part of my uni course and I can't tell you how much the things I write are influenced by his style.)  In the meantime I hope you all go buy or borrow this book, its a beaut.

Next on my reading list:  The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford
The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky 
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene

Lets see how long it takes me to get round to those eh? :) Are any of you reading anything good at the moment? I'd love to know!! xx