For the next week I'll be staying in sunny Palma with a friend, and for me, one of the essentials for any trip abroad is reading material. These three should be plenty for the week, because I'm sure we'll be doing lots of sight-seeing and exploring too. Perhaps when I get back I'll do a little book review to pair with this blog post. First of all though, I'll share with you the reasoning behind my choices.
An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by Georges Perec: This little book was something that I was recommended when I was doing my dissertation. I looked at it briefly but never really got a chance to go through it closely, so now's my chance. I do know that in 1974, Georges Perec spent three days in a part of Paris, observing his surroundings and taking detailed notes. This little book is an English translation of these notes which detail everything from people that passed him by to the behaviour of pigeons on the street.
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris: I've been wanting to read this for a while, but I've been saving it for this holiday. I'm a fan of the television show 'Hannibal' which is based on this book. As with any good television show or film that's been adapted from a book, I started getting curious about the source material. So let's see how the show and book compare!
Heat Wave by Richard Castle: I find this amusing because Richard Castle is actually a fictional character from the TV show 'Castle'. In the show, his character is a writer living in New York. His latest, extremely popular, book series is about a NYC police detective called Nikki Heat. So in connection with the show, these books have been released and maintain the idea that Richard Castle is a real person. I mean, they even have his photo on the back cover. Having read a sample (the first ten pages or so) it looks like the writing style is very true to the character's voice in the show, so it should make for some fun reading. I find the whole idea rather clever, but I have to wonder who really wrote the books?
