Land Of A Thousand Dances

Well it’s been two weeks since I got home and I’m slowly coming back down to earth, and settling into a new groove of work, home, family, friends and hobbies. It’s a wet, blustery Saturday in Paekakariki so I thought I would sit down and write a proper account of what it’s like to come home.

(Well, it feels good, for a start)

Of course you’ll be dying to hear about the new job. Well I’m Communications Advisor at the New Zealand Productivity Commission, which is in one of those buildings with two faces inbetween Lambton Quay and the Terrace. I’m responsible for running all aspects of their comms, from the website, media, publications etc. Basically everything I was doing for green growth at the OECD. The Commission is only 18 months old, but they had some great communications tools already in place, thanks to my predecessor Jenny, who also did a stellar handover in the three days that we overlapped. The team all fits on one floor, so there’s a nice atmosphere, and I think I’m finding my feet. It is a little disconcerting to be new somewhere again, after being so thoroughly immersed in the OECD. But it’s good for me, keeps my brain working.

Everything feels new and familiar at the same time, which is a bit disconcerting. I’ve never commuted into Wellington by train before, so that’s a new experience. The views are extraordinary indeed, but I have renewed sympathy for my old coastal buddies from NZTE, Mike and Chris, whose daily routines were governed by the tyranny of the train schedules, and especially /for the occasions when Tranzmetro would throw a spanner in the works…

I have to say things have been running pretty smoothly so far, but the other morning we stopped at Kaiwharawhara (the last stop before Wellington) and did not start again. After a few minutes another train pulled alongside, but our doors did not open. One of the lovely conductors walked through the carriage saying that she would check with the driver whether ”we would be able to “detrain” you. I was wondering if the logical next step would be ”retraining” us, but was taking nothing for granted. Eventually they opened the doors, and I was one of the few people who got out and stood in the sunshine, pondering the merits of walking or waiting. After a few minutes, a train did indeed pull up, at which point everyone in our train decided to get off and board the new train. If this was Paris, there would have been pushing and shoving, but being New Zealand it was all terribly civilized. People on the new train even stood up if they thought people needed a seat.

Anyway, enough about public transport. What about the coffee! Well as you would expect it is reliably good, but after five years living in France I am soft and out of conditioning, and so a standard double-shot flat white will blow my head off. I have to handle with care. Saturday mornings Dad and I do the shopping at Pak’n’Save Paraparaumu, and the little Streetwise coffee cart next to them provides my weekend fix. (Fairtrade, Sprout, you’ll be pleased to hear.) Last weekend the sun was out and I was inspired to buy one of these KeepCups which you see everywhere here. As you can see, it holds approximately a gallon of coffee.

(Just kidding, it’s a small). Although today, after getting my pre-shopping fix, I did make the mistake of coming home and having two cups of plunger coffee, which generated so much nervous energy that I had to do ninja vacumning just to calm down…

Second week back I surprised myself by starting swing classes! A dear friend, and my partner in crime, is coming down to Wellington in two weeks for the Windy Lindy swing weekend, and I want to go to the dance on Saturday night. The theme is air raid - I wonder if a jaunty beret and a neck scarf will allow me to pass for someone in the Resistance! But more importantly, the footwork for lindy hop still eludes me. So last week I trekked up Cuba Street on a blustery Monday night and found myself back in a beginners class for the first time in about 7 years, and a good 22 years since my first ever rock and roll class, back at Margaret O’Connors on Cuba Street… seems like a lifetime ago now! It wasn’t as painful as it could have been. I sympathise with the guys learning to dance for the first time ever, and I admire their courage. I have to say it was rather gratifying when my turn came around to dance with the teacher, and he congratulated me on how fast I was picking it up… ah, small pleasures.

Am rather slowly working my way around the long list of friends who I have been eager to see since I got back. Commuting, and then swimming at lunchtime does rather cut down the available slots I have to see people, but most of all it’s not even knowing where to start that has induced a sort of social paralysis. And the fact that my new phone has imported all my contacts three times over from different sources, resulting in a confusing list of duplicates…

Some efficiency gains have been made by joining two book groups which involve more than one friend in each! And at the same time I get to brush up on my French, as one of them is the Alliance book group. They are currently reading Les souliers bruns du quai Voltaire, by Claude Izner, a detective book set in Belle Epoque Paris. Looks intriguing. The same week, Paul and Ruth’s group are discussing The Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy. The meetings are in 10 and 11 days time so I’d better get cracking!

And once I’ve finished those, I have one hell of a reading pile awaiting me, courtesy of two of my favourite readers, Mum and Dad. I write the titles down here to remind myself not to succumb every time I pass Unity Books (of all the retail temptations in Wellington, it is the most dangerous).

• Dear American Airlines, Jonathan Miles –one man’s complaint letter gradually encompasses his entire life, a long semi-incoherent poetic rant.
• Italian Shoes, Henning Mankell - Scandinavian bleakness
• The Perfect Summer, Juliet Nicolson – pre-war England seen through the lives of artists
• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel – England under Cromwell
• Chopin biography by Adam Zamoyski
• … that’s enough to be going on with!

Movies I want to see, if anyone’s keen, include:

• Looper
• The Sapphires (even more for their cover of the song title at the top of this blog)
• Where Do We Go From Here?
• Pitch Perfect (Glee meets Bring It On!)

Now, of course the big question, am I missing France? Well when I left, I knew I wasn’t going to pine for it. After all, five and a half years was enough to have a beautiful love affair with Paris. I’ll always have the experience of having lived there, and I am so incredibly grateful for that. But it was well overdue time to come home and reconnect with life in New Zealand.

There’s a long list of reasons I’m glad I came home, but some of the top ones are:

• Watching All Blacks matches on the sofa with Dad
• Being able to go to things like Wearable Arts with Mum
• Sunday morning walks on the beach (above)
• Catching up with old old friends – and their kids!
• Running into people on Lambton Quay
• Really really outstanding double-shot flat whites from just about any café you care to name.
• The view from my office window – Post Office Square and TSB Arena across to the fountain in Oriental Bay.
• Coming out of the Johnsonville tunnel on a stunning day and seeing the ferry pull out of Wellington harbour. 
• People saying "Thank you driver" when they get off the bus
• Being able to shop at Max, and Farmers, and buy Minx shoes, and merino tops!
• Vogel’s bread, Sanitarium muesli, Rush Munro’s icecream, feijoa juice, the Embassy theatre, the list goes on, and on…

So no, I don’t miss Paris. Not the city itself, not in the sense that you pine for someone who is far away… The one thing I do miss is the friends that I made there. We shared some unforgettable experiences which I will always treasure, and I know those friendships will endure. But, as Hemingway said, Paris is a moveable feast, you take it with you. He may not have known how true that was. I find myself starting sentences with “When I was in Paris…” or “In France they…” more often than I would like. Am hoping that wears off quickly as I don’t think anyone is interested. But more than five years away does change your perspective slightly:

• Who turned the temperature down? Oh that’s right, no insulation or central heating. And it’s mid-October and I’m still wearing thick tights, hats and scarfs.
• What, you mean I have to look up a train timetable? There isn’t one every three minutes?
• Oh, I have to go up and pay at the counter, they don’t bring you the bill…
• It’s strange to hear Kiwi accents everywhere, in the office, lifts, streets. In Paris my head used to snap round anytime I heard those distinctive vowel sounds, I could even spot an Australian at 100 paces. But here it is commonplace.
• People are so friendly! Cafes and shops, everyone says hello, how are you today? And they seem pleased when you tell them! And waitresses smile! Although if I was missing French café life, I just have to go into Simply Paris (as I did the other day) for a dose of that “we know better than you, and we’re still going to ignore you and forget your order”. No, ok that’s not fair, for the most part the service in Paris was perfectly fine. Perhaps it was the French staff afflicted with their own version of homesickness, which results in them descending into a parody of the worst café behaviour.

There is almost an oversupply of French venues in Wellington, where you can get any French wine, cheese, crepes, or magret de canard that your heart, or stomach, might desire. In fact, Dad took me for a “Welcome Home” meal in a French restaurant the other night which consisted of seven courses of duck, theme and variations. So no risk of my tastebuds missing l’Hexagone. Except for, of course, the bread. No matter how hard they try, not even the best French bakers here can replicate the sublimeness of a baguette tradition fresh from the oven. Bread is so simple, but the flour is different here, even the water is different, and there’s nothing to be done. But I have learnt in life that you don’t necessarily get to have everything at once, and you just have to enjoy what you’ve got. In the words of the immortal Rolling Stones: “You can’t always get what you want  But if you try sometimes, you might just find, you get what you need”.

Speaking of food, time for a brief interlude while I go and start dinner. On the menu tonight are slow-cooked lamb neck chops with white beans and a kumara and parsnip mash, to go with a rather nice merlot I picked up in the Hunter Valley, followed by quince and blackberry crumble… Thanks to Dad’s pile of recipes for inspiration, the quinces preserved by Dad last autumn, and the blackberries picked by him in the park at the north end of Paekakariki.

… Spoke too soon, I just found a bookcase of Dad’s I hadn’t inspected yet. As well as the above, I have now acquired a new pile including:

• Then We Came To The End, Joshua Ferris
• Fierce Pajamas, an anthology of humor writing from the New Yorker
• Man On Wire, Philippe Petit
• The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins (although I gather he has kind of made his point by about halfway through)
• And the assorted works of Nigel Cox (or at least the ones I haven’t already read)
• Plus the remaining Fred Vargas books I haven’t read, which I was faithfully lugging all around France this summer, but kept being given/loaned fascinating books that I just couldn’t pass up.

That should be enough to even stop me speculatively going into the library - apart from their fantastic selection of CDs and DVDs.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check on dinner…

Exit, pursued by a hare

My aunt and uncle very kindly bought me The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal, for my birthday. If you haven’t read it, it’s the story of a collection of miniature Japanese carvings (netsuke) owned by his ancestors. The story of the collection is really the story of his family, as they purchase the carvings in Paris, send them to Vienna, and then through various wanderings they end up in his possession in London. I won’t spoil the story for you, as it has many twists and turns, but de Waal retraces his family’s steps through Europe and even to Japan.

The story proper starts in Paris, when the netsuke first come to the family’s grand house on the rue de Monceau. Today looked like being a beautiful day, so I took some notes from the book and went off on an adventure.For the full photos, see the album.

Shortly after Leo and Minna Ephrussi moved to Paris, their daughter Betty fell ill and died. So the family had to buy space in the Montmartre cemetery. 

The cemetery is in an old quarry, previously outside the city walls, but Paris has encircled it and in some cases run right over the top of it.

 I went searching - all I had to go on was that the Jewish quarter was on the Eastern side of the cemetery.

Hmmm, maybe I'm getting closer.

 Louise Cahen d'Anvers was the married lover of Charles Ephrussi, the son who bought the netsuke, so this might be her family tomb. It was very dark inside so I couldn't make out all the names.

Then I came across this tomb - Jules was another of Leo and Minna's sons.  Betty's daughter married Theodore Reinach, so Paul must have been one of their sons.

I wandered around for a bit after this, getting sore feet on the cobblestones and getting quite hungry too. I was just about to give up when I looked up and there it was:

The lighting is not good, but it says "Ephrussi Family". Inside are inscriptions for Betty and Minna. There are other words carved, but they are not in French and is worn down by time.

I didn't find where Charles was buried, or his father. Maybe they left Paris. I'll have to read the book again. I wandered around the cemetery a bit longer and saw some of their famous neighbours.

 Had lunch in this little park. Not sure how Hector would feel about being surrounded by a children's playground.

 81 rue Monceau, the home of the Ephrussi family.

 Apparently the ironwork represents double 'E's

 Further down the street is this very beautiful museum.

This has a very sad story. The owner, Moise de Camondo, spent years furnishing this house with beautiful things for his son. However the son, Nissin, was a pilot in WWI and was killed in aerial combat, so the father gave it to the French Government in his memory. The father died in 1935, and then his daughter, her husband and their children were all deported to Auschwitz in WWII. The house is exquisite, but so sad that the family is all gone.

 An entire room just for the porcelain...

Of course the room for the books is my favourite.

 The father's brother lived next door in this house which is apparently just as sumptuous.

Gates to the Parc Monceau.People doing what they usually do in Paris parks on a sunny Saturday - ignore the "Keep off the grass signs"...

 Graffiti on a nearby construction site.

Metropolitain book club

“My grandfather always says that’s what books are for, […] to travel without moving an inch.” – Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake.

When I first moved to Paris, nearly five years ago now, I felt immensely conscious of the vast continent of Europe spreading out around me. Airports and train stations seemed like the gateways to adventure, the start of the magic carpet ride, and I think I’ve made the most of the opportunity to travel while I’ve been here.

Lately though, staying put has been much more appealing. Packing a suitcase, running for the train, trundling around different towns, all seems like such a hassle. But the metro-boulot-dodo routine has been much enlightened by some virtual travel – in space and time. I loved most of my recent reading so much that I am on the verge of grabbing random passers-by by the lapels and telling them, “go and read this book”. Some of these are borrowed, but all of them will remain in my mental library.

Untold Stories – Alan Bennett. Through some oversight I have never read or seen any of Alan Bennett’s work before. But I am an instant fan based on these funny, self-deprecating, fascinating memoirs. He talks at length about his mother’s mental illness and decline into dementia, his time at Cambridge, and the creative process. He also includes essays on works of art and excerpts from his diary from 1996 – 2004, capturing his take on Blair’s Britain, Princess Diana and the second Iraq war. Also visits an enormous number of old churches, despite being an atheist. Stoked my Anglophilia something chronic.

The Fry Chronicles – Stephen Fry. Number two in an occasional series “Tales of a gay man in Thatcher’s Britain”. Might be time for me to track down some Alan Hollinghurst while I'm at it. This book covers his time at Cambridge in the 1980s where he found his calling as a writer and comedian. Fascinating as much for his brutal self-examination as for the tales of theatre and revels with Emma Thompson, and meeting the young Hugh Laurie – a match made in heaven.

Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain. Self-deprecation of entirely another order as he shags and shoots up his way through his early cooking career. Hilarious tales of debauchery and derring-do, some of it even involving food. If Keith Richards had picked up a meat cleaver instead of a guitar, he could have written this book.

There is actually a lot of lyrical discussion of food –being raised on French cuisine via his father’s side, and then coming to appreciate Italian cuisine later in life, plus huge insights into the underbelly of the New York restaurant world. I warn you though, once you have read this, you may not want to eat in a restaurant ever again!

The Prestige – Christopher Priest. The book that the 2006 film was based on, with Hugh Jackman and Christina Bale. The story plays out slightly differently, with a modern element I find a bit jarring, but the core story is just as gothic and thrilling. Good if you’re fascinated by Victorian Britain.

The Moment – Douglas Kennedy. Epic love story set in 1980s Berlin. The main character, a young American writer, got on my nerves a bit, but the ambiance of the divided city feels authentically gritty and is vividly written. As good as being there if not better.

Embers - Sándor Márai. A classic novel given to me by a Hungarian friend.  It’s a story of love and loss, but above all, nostalgia for a bygone era. Beautifully written, slim but dense, this is a book I will read again and again.

Travels with Herodotus - Ryszard Kapuscinski. Voted journalist of the 20th century in Poland, Kapuscinski dreamed of taking a train just to be able to pass over the border of Poland and into a foreign land. Instead, he found himself on a plane to India, with a copy of The Histories by Herodotus. For the next 40 years, Herodotus would be his travelling companion and sometimes guide as he explored far-flung corners of the world. Excellent for his observations on possibly the world’s first ever foreign correspondent, which travelling in some of the same places, two and a half thousand years later, as well as insights into what it means to be a foreigner.

The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri. And finally, the book I’m still reading now. I discovered Jhumpa Lahiri through her short story collection “The Interpreter of Maladies”, thanks to my friend Amy, a woman with impeccable taste in books as well as quilts. Most of the stories deal with the culture shock of Indian immigrants looking for a better life in North America, but never feeling like they belong. This novel covers similar ground, in meticulous detail. Gogol Ganguli has been named after his father’s favourite author, but chafes against his conspicuous name – neither Indian nor American, but Russian. The plot is rigidly linear – first he is born, then he grows up, goes to school, college etc. But the delight is in the detailed observations of his family’s life in America, the recording of the immigrant experience and her insights into the divided self this creates.


I seem to have read an awful lot in English lately. This is not a conscious choice - but books in English are such a rare commodity that I am even more compelled to pick them up when I come across them. I have a number of favourite French authors I want to get to while I am in France, but that will have to wait for another post.

If you have run out of things to read, I hope you enjoy something from the above. Happy Reading!

March 13 2011: A Mighty Wind

So my Amazon parcel turned up the other day, as the result of a birthday voucher. I don’t shop online very much, so when I do get a delivery, it’s like Xmas.

Neil Gaiman: Neverwhere and the Graveyard Book. Hilary Mantel, A Place Of Greater Safety (about the French Revolution). Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings – 100 Days, 100 Nights. How I survived 3 years without this album I do not know.

Aaaaaand: Ministry of Food, by Jamie Oliver, fulfilling a life-long (ok, month-long) dream. Wheeee! Off to the kitchen for more adventures.

The challenge will now be to match a Jamie recipe to one of the random ingredients I get in my organic panier. It’s not the best time of year for interesting fruit and veg. There have been a few too many apples, oranges, onions and potatoes in recent baskets. But I am persevering, in the hopes of brighter days ahead. If I skip a week, who knows what I might miss out on?

But I could have skipped the other week, no problem. I opened the paper bag and saw three purple knobbly things lurking in the bottom. Oh no, Jerusalem artichokes – what do I do?

Jerusalem artichokes have a certain underground status here – literally, as they were one of the only things that Parisians could grow in their basements to eat in the long years of the German Occupation during World War II. But they have a nasty side-effect, affecting approximately 50% of the population: they induce terribly powerful wind.

Perhaps due to one or both of these factors, there is an entire generation of Parisians who will not eat them, and so they fell out of favour. Which is a pity, as they have a delicate nutty taste, and go well with a lot of things. But the only two times I’ve eaten them, one was at an expensive restaurant, and the other was at the house of someone who really knows what she’s doing.

So how to cook them? I check the newsletter for this week, which usually provides helpful recipes. Raw Jerusalem artichoke with citrus and mint? Do they know what temperature it is outside? This was before my new food bible arrived - so I google Jerusalem artichoke recipes, and Gordon Ramsey comes up trumps. Apparently the thing to do is simmer them in milk for 20 minutes, drain off the milk, and then puree the results, adding back enough of the milk to achieve a smooth puree. Delicious – but I suppose anything tastes good if you add enough butter, milk and cream.

But what of the after-effects, I hear you cry? Well let’s just say that sleeping alone has it’s advantages

It’s very rare that I get the same vegetable on different weeks – but it’s late winter, so there is not much choice out there. I pick up my next panier tomorrow night.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

February 19 2011: A Partridge in a Pear Tree

There's a new man in my life... and his name's Jamie. Surname Oliver, to be precise. Yes, I know he's already married, but for once I might bend my principles and declare my undying love.

It's all Tsar's fault. I was looking for something to read with my morning coffee and so I picked up 'Ministry of Food'. I sneered at the patronising introduction where he exhorts people to pass recipes on, like some kind of gourmet 'Big Society' - and then I started reading the recipes.

Simple, easy to follow - for the first time in years, a recipe book made me think "I could make that right now." Within about five pages, I was hooked. I started reading bits aloud to Tsar. Perfect roast lamb! Banana tarte tatin! And then I got to the vegetable jalfrezi and jumped up off the sofa - I have to buy this book!

And yes, I know you can get recipes online. But I'd much rather spill curry sauce on a paper book than on my laptop keyboard... and I am actually one of those old fashioned people who is rather attached to books. The more people talk about the digital revolution, the more of a forcefield I exert on the printed word, before it feels like books are just falling out of the sky...

Ok, so this has been exacerbated by the fact that my birthday has just come and gone. 9 out of 10 presents were books, and very welcome they were too. Here's what's on my bedside table right now:

• Marie Antoinette (biography) - Stefan Zweig
• Big Weather: Poems of Wellington (thanks Dad - very subtle!)
• Cats in Books - A Celebration of Cat Illustrations Throughout The Ages
• Se Croiser Sans Se Voir - Jean-Laurent Caillaud - letters sparked by an In Memoriam plaque (looks fantastic)
• The Help - Kathryn Stockett - black servants in the American South
• Finest Years - Max Hastings - Winston Churchill, 1940-1945 (thankfully for my bookshelves, this is a loan).
  
• The Book of Salt - Monique Truong - the imagined story of the Vietnamese chef of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. I started this on the Eurostar and am 3/4 way through it... food! Paris! What's not to like?
  

Crikey - and I have a suspicion there are more yet to come.

Fast-forward to Saturday, and Emma, Miles and I are paying a visit to their local butchers. This is exactly the kind of old-fashioned neighbourhood butchers you would expect Jamie (look, we're on first name terms already!) to drop into for three pounds of organic mince, with a camera crew in tow of course.

[Incidentally, vegetarians may want to look away now]

There are three men behind the counter, but no-one is in a hurry, so we wait patiently, reading posters extolling the tastiness of wild venison, welsh lamb and their free range chickens.

I have a recipe in mind which needs three quail. I tried it at Christmas with poussin (essentially baby chickens), but I want to spread my wings, so to speak. I inspect the freezer, and there are some little birds nestling in their own individual wrappers, but I want some for tonight. Have they got any fresh?

No quail today, unfortunately, but they have partridge.I know what the recipe says, but I like hearing from the experts, so I ask him how long he reckons they should cook for. A beardy chap with glasses behind us in the queue pipes up "15 minutes, tops, if you sear them in the pan first". Typical. Everyone's bloody Jamie Oliver these days.

So I take three tiny partridges home with me and marinate them lovingly in olive oil, garlic and lemon juice. Then I go out with Emma. Shopping ensues.

I come home several pairs of shoes later and carefully plan the whisky risotto, green vegetable sides and partridge to all be ready at the same time. I pull the partridge out after 15 minutes and poke it confidently. It runs a rosy shade of pink. I blanch. Not wanting to poison two of my best friends in the world, I call Miles for a second opinion.

Hmmm. We stand around and think. WWJD - What Would Jamie Do? Eventually Miles prescribes popping them back in the oven with foil over the top. Another 15 nervous minutes pass before they are pronounced cooked. Bloody amateur Jamie Olivers, I mutter, as I pick at my over-cooked asparagus.That's the last time I listen to a beardy guy in a butchers (who isn't actually wearing an apron).

But a good pinot gris cures many ills, and the setback is soon forgotten. It is agreed I have outdone myself with dessert - thinly-sliced pears (what else?) on flaky pastry, with an orange marmelade glaze drizzled over the top.

Ooh la la, I hear you say. How Frainch! Confession time: I got the idea from Mum. I never would have bothered until she showed the way - but it's an incredibly simple dessert and you can use just about any fruit at all. If you're at all nervous about the outcome, buy some rum and raisin icecream as a backup... easy peasey!

January 23 2011: On The Shelf

So I’ve been back in Paris for two weeks and four sets of visitors. Wuh? It’s January, people, haven’t you heard it’s freezing here? Well, actually, it was incredibly mild the week I got back, which only added to the trippyness of jetlag. All of this to explain why I’m a bit behind on the blogging lately.

Anyway, before I catch up on the Heaphy or any other adventures, I simply must tell you what I’ve been reading lately. My book addiction has flourished over winter, with all the extra time available for loitering in bookshops to keep warm. Plus I went to the Xmas fair at the American Church in Paris and made the mistake of starting in the book section. Oh dear god. So now I’m multi-streaming books more than ever in a desperate attempt to free up shelf space, by returning various books to their owners or foisting ones I own on unsuspecting friends. “Here, you must read this, you’ll really like it!”

Recent reading:

• Theatre *** - Eric Emmanuel Schmitt. Three plays, one set in a 19th century theatre, one set in a waiting room, and one set in an apartment – all about love and relationships, essentially. EES is most well-known here for writing “Oscar et La Dame Rose”. Brilliant writing, excellent characters and some very nice observations about men and women.

• Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi. I started reading this with a certain amount of foreboding. The flowery style was over the top and not to my taste, but I persevered because I thought it was an “important” book to read. And now I’m hooked. Nafisi relates her experience of living in Iran – the repression, the totalitarianism, the sheer paralysis – through her books, illuminating both the books and us in the process.

• Room – Emma Donoghue. I found this a bit disturbing, certainly, but above all so beautifully written, and the voice of five-year-old Jack is completely credible.

• The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Always beware any book sold with book club notes in the back. I found the magic realism less well executed than Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Louis de Bernieres, but it was still absorbing enough, and made me nostalgic for Barcelona.

• The Olive Sisters – Amanda Hampson. Escapist froth set on an olive farm in rural Australia. Lazy chick-lit.

• She Was Nice to Mice – Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy, aka Ally Sheedy. Yes that’s right, before acting, she dabbled in writing – this was published when she was 12! It’s a portrait of Elizabeth 1 seen through the eyes of a palace mouse. The target audience is children, unsurprisingly, but it’s charmingly written and illustrated.

• Juliet, Naked – Nick Hornby

Different books deserve different times of day. There are the books which are possibly a little bit difficult to start. If you try reading them at home, something else always catches your attention – the dishes, email, or maybe another book. These ones you take with you in the metro, so that they become the more attractive option compared with the gray morning faces of your fellow Parisians.

There are the books which are peaceful, soothing, and don’t need much concentration, so you can dip in and out of them at bedtime without losing too much sleep. And then there are the books which you know automatically will be so satisfying, so engrossing, that they either deserve a long plane ride, a day at the beach, or a whole Sunday afternoon set aside to read them without interruption. In this category I would put Neal Stephenson, Terry Pratchett, Christopher Brookmyre, and Nick Hornby.

I love Nick Hornby, possibly to the point of irrationality. But I don’t want to marry him and have his babies. No, I want to marry the music-addicted Rob, or possibly the football addicted Paul from Fever Pitch. I consider High Fidelity the definitive insight into the male psyche, although considering that I am nearly 36 and still single, this could be a rather naïve misconception.

I loved How To Be Good because it contained sublime, heartbreaking lines of beauty, perfect observations of the best and worst parts of the life of a couple. I now love Juliet, Naked. I fell in love with the opening line, which has to be one of the best opening lines of all time: “They had flown all the way from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet”. I started the book this afternoon and I am forcing myself to blog about it so I don’t eat it all at once.

Reading the jacket blurb, I thought “ho-hum, what a coincidence that the woman gets involved with the reclusive musician with whom her boyfriend is obsessed.” But as the story unfolds, it is really surprisingly credible. I won’t spoil it for you, but for heaven’s sake go out and buy a copy. Or I’ll lend you mine, depending on which hemisphere you’re in. But first of all I have to finish it. So if you’ll excuse me…