Notes on disappointing books

I am reading A. M. Homes' This Book Will Change Your Life and it's boring me. I don't like to be snobby but I think maybe I should stop reading Richard and Judy choices. I recently finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and that wasn't so great either. It was readable enough I suppose, but had a terribly schlocky death scene at the end. Apples by Richard Milward was also disappointing after the rave Guardian reviews. Probably it would have had more impact if I were likely to be shocked by the idea of teenagers having lots of grubby sex; I suppose it's just another way in which the Guardian is about 20/30 years out of date. I don't know why I read The Self-Preservation Society by Kate Harrison; it's really the sort of thing one should only read while recovering from a great emotional trauma, in the same way that in the aftermath of a nasty breakup a friend of mine found she couldn't bear to watch anything on TV except for Will and Grace.

Actually good is Mary Wortley Montagu's Life on the Golden Horn, one of those small Penguin paperbacks, an interesting but brief selection of letters she wrote from a diplomatic expedition to Istanbul in the early eighteenth century. I think I will read a longer compilation of her stuff some time. Maybe I should switch to biography and history for a bit. I need some good books! Some proper literature. Something substantial but not too indigestible. Something reliable by someone who can write.

Mooses are good at least:
http://moosefarm.newmail.ru/mfe01.htm
Kiss a lovely moose today! Also this bloke's illustrations are gently cheering. I like his portable halo here. Also the undercover pig, although I fear for said pig's future.