The evenings are getting quite chilly (well, chilly for south east Queensland) and we’ve been lighting the wood stove, much the cats’ delight as they lie as close as they can to the heater without actually bursting into flame.

I recently raced my way through Mira Grant’s Blackout, which is the final book in her Newsflesh trilogy. The trilogy is a near future where a virus brings the dead back to life as zombies. Both Feed and Deadline, the first two books, have been nominated for Hugo awards, which I find a little bit inexplicable. Perhaps not for Feed, as I thought that was a really good tense political thriller, but Deadline certainly veered into far more pulpy, mad science territory. Blackout continues as more of the same, and had too many flaws for me to rate it highly, despite the fact I really enjoyed reading it.

I also recently finished The Attachments by Rainbow Rowell, which was a cute and funny romance, and in a completely different vein, The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, a rather long and sprawling epic set in North Korea which I think could have done with a little editing, and suffered a bit from “ooh, look how weird North Korea is”.

I’m partway through a couple of memoirs/books of essays on motherhood – Anne Enright’s Making Babies and Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother. While I’m finding them interesting, and Anne Enright’s is amusingly enjoyable, I think pregnancy is the wrong time to read them, just because I think you need to have experienced motherhood in order to appreciate them. What I’m looking for, I think, is some sort of indication of what it’s all going to be like – but I get the feeling that’s something you’ve got to discover for yourself. I think I’ll stick with my more practical books – I have enjoyed Kaz Cooke’s Up the Duff and Kid Wrangling, and after reading the recommendation by Karen on Far Flung Four, I’ve ordered a copy of Robin Barker’s Baby Love. (“Is that a whole book about how to love a baby?” asked the husband.)