Four books in four days!

Whilst marooned in Fiji, cowering in my bure with cyclonic winds threatening to blow the thatch roof off, I managed to read four books in four days. I don't think that I have read four books in four days since my student days (usually during swot vac, trying to avoid study!). I finally read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and am particularly sad that I missed this book club. I would have liked to have heard what you all had to say about it. Some bits of it particularly resonated with me - eg the metaphor about the fig tree. How I wish that I had at least nine lives! What a shame that Plath only wrote the one novel and that her demons haunted her to her death. I also read White Tiger by an indian author (? - won last year's Booker Prize - loved it!), Ian Townsend's The Devil's Eye (not a patch on Affection - looks like he wrote it in a hurry after doing some terrific research on the pearling industry off the Cape in the late 1800s and life at TI and in Cooktown around this time....he seems to have picked up all sorts of grants to write the book and I couldn't help thinking how much fun it would be to get paid to spend time in the library doing research about some interesting aspect of Australian history) and Life, Death and Marriages by Georgia Blain. Denise gave me this book to read a while ago. It is one of the best books that I have read in a long time. Blain's mother was Anne Devison (spelling?) and her father was also a radio journalist. Her eldest brother had mental health problems and died when he was in his early 20s. The book is simply about her life and what is was like living with her family - and Georgia Blain writes the way that I wish that I could. Russell read it after me and I was surprised at how much he enjoyed the book (he also commented on how well she writes). Oh - also just finished One Fifth Avenue by Candice Bushnell, who wrote Sex in the City. Despite its trash value (I couldn't put it down once I started.....and even dreamt about the characters!), Bushnell has an amazing ability to write about what we sometimes think but wouldn't dare say or act out. I think that she is brilliant! Perfect beach read. Rusty read the Edgar Sawtell book that I put on the holiday reading list and said that it was crap!