The Terror of Knowing

Another Friday, another blessed end to the week. Except I’m luckier than most and only have a part time job so, really, every Friday sees me looking forward to a four day weekend until I have to go back into work on Wednesday. Plenty of time to catch up on some reading and reviewing then, since I still have pending reviews to write from the very start of the year.

Aside from hoping to finish that and get all caught up with reviewing, I expect I’ll be continuing slowly to read John le Carré’s The Night Manager, in anticipation of the upcoming miniseries. It alleges to be airing on the BBC “in February” which is delightfully vague and makes me suspect it won’t start airing until the very end of the month. Still, that would mean more time for me to actually complete the book beforehand so fingers crossed I get a good chunk of it read this weekend.

Having finished Tina Fey’s Bossypants on my train ride home yesterday, I’m also partial to the idea of taking the lighter, more humorous books onto this short commute, because their short chapters and colloquial tone really do lend themselves to the 20 or so minute bursts of time I have to read in during the days when I’m at work. So, with that in mind, my Friday Reads (and weekend reading) is highly likely to also feature Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson.

Having gone from never having heard of her to swiftly adoring her first book Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (review pending if I can ever form something more coherent than I LOVED THIS BOOK!), Lawson has caught me, hook line and sinker. If that wasn’t enough then Pan Macmillan’s Book Break (a channel run by the ever lovely Leena of Leena Norms fame) dedicated an episode to Furiously Happy and it encouraged me to finally pick it up at my local library – I suggest you do too, if you get the chance, since, from what I’ve read so far, it’s pretty damn good. And funny. And also a little sad. But it’s important because, straight from the pen of Jenny Lawson herself, the book is:

“all about looking for the light in spite of the dark parts of life that weigh us down. It’s easy to lose yourself in the fog so when you find your way out it’s important to celebrate that victory with joy so that you can remember it and carry that hope and that memory with you the next time you go back into battle.” (x)

So for each anecdote shared about anti-psychotic medication, she shares another about putting a taxidermied raccoon on her cat as though it’s riding the confused feline like a horse. It has already had me snorting with undignified laughter on the train so I have high hopes for this book and am looking forward to getting stuck into it this upcoming weekend.

So those are my likely Friday/Weekend Reads – what are you reading this weekend? How has your reading been going so far in 2016? Have you read any of the books I’ve mentioned above? Comment below – I’d love to hear your opinion.