Outside in the Sunshine

I've not been here for a while.

Which is to say I've been outside in the sunshine reading books and wearing shorts and dark glasses and wishing I somehow had nice socks, rather than ones that inexplicably make me look colourless and middle-aged. Maybe the socks aren't the issue. Maybe it's the legs.

Anyway things are up and running again. I've read some interesting YA, a razor-sharp sci-fi pirate adventure and a neat shenanigans-in-the bush thriller. Though readers expecting edge-of-your-seat pornography from that last description will be disappointed to discover I'm referring to the Australian outback:

I've also torn through Michelle Paver's Dark Matter, had a blast with Sally Green's work, and a great treatise on class by Lynsey Hanley called Respectable.

Respectable, incidentally, is precisely what I haven't been this summer. Mostly it's the fault of the socks.