Wednesday 14 August 2013

Joe Sacco, Margaret Atwood, Filippe Bologna - & the difference between gulls

I've had to spend half of the last week in bed so, it was lovely to get to the book festival - literally a hop and a skip from me by taxi - to see Joe Sacco, so charming and interesting. I was given Palestine as a gift ten years ago, I still dip into it. I opened it last night and a bookmark my nephew had made a few years ago fell out (that is the loveliness of a paper book). The festival has deckchairs in the garden with authors' quotes: I liked Margaret Atwood's from The Blind Assassin: 
 'The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.'
I've finished Filippo Bologna's The Parrots, a shortish book, harder to tell on Kindle, but I was stopping and starting in my usual way, so it took me a couple of weeks. A long time since a book has made me laugh out loud so much. And I feel like David Attenborough as I can now tell a herring gull (pink legs) from a lesser black-backed gull (slightly smaller, darker, yellow legs) from watching the birds in the garden.

2 comments:

Crafty Green Poet said...

ah but you can only claim to really have Attenborough's skills when you can tell the young gulls apart....

nmj said...

It took me ages to work out the difference, was so pleased when I finally did! It was seeing two at same time other day that nailed it for me. I'd have no chance with young gulls.