Worth twittering about

I am enjoying this book so much that when I got up for my morning coffee, instead of checking my emails I read MISCONDUCT. Bridget van der Zijpp is a kiwi and this novel - her first , out last year - was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. The NZ Listener picked it as one its Books of the Year and made a fairly strong case for considering it thinking woman's chick lit.

If Bridget J has an older wild-child Aotearoa cousin, Simone is it. Saying this in no way disparages van der Zijpp. Her eye is sharper than Fielding’s, her writing edgier, her sensibility welcomingly wry rather than witty.. [The NZ Listener review]

Yes - sharper, edgier, wittier - constantly surprising, a terrific sense of the seaside town it inhabits, and a wonderful cast of characters drawn with sympathy and insight.

The publisher's blurb and more reviews here - good on Victoria University Press for taking the time to put reviews up on its website - and some interesting-looking bookclub notes here.

I am also still excited about The Blue being published in Israel. It should be in the shops there now - my translation editor, Hadas, told me Passover was the time and it was still Passover when I last checked. Two copies of the wonderful book plopped into my letterbox a couple of weeks back wrapped in brown paper. I forgot to mention it here but I don't know how I could. Holding them was a transcendent moment.

One more thing: oh yes - oh no - oh dear - I am a twitterer. Don't know how it happened - I think I wanted to read someone's twitters and ended up... well, joining... the same way I joined Facebook, really. I feel a bit ambivalent about it because I can see it's another time-consumer masquerading as a time-saver, and it is - as the pic below shows - very 'pick me, pick me'. So who knows if this is a long term thing for me. Meanwhile, down underneath my blog roll on the right somewhere are my twitters for time-being. If you have nothing else to do ...