Back online

Hooray – we are connected to the world again! Can’t quite believe how bereft we all felt. We live in a digital blackspot and don’t have satelite TV so we were limited to the usual 4 channels (can’t get Channel 5 because we live too near France and the wavelength is used by a French channel) so the boys couldn’t watch lots of the stuff they normally catch up on online.
For me it was the sheer inconvenience of not being able to check stuff (as well as not being able to blog). And I did feel cut off. Although I refered elsewhere to blogging and reading blogs as being the solitary writer’s equivalent of water cooler conversation, I hadn’t realised how much I needed the human cyber-contact until it wasn’t there.

Still, I am hoping that a week of having to do his homework without the accompaniment of Facebook and MSN might convince the Bassist that this is a viable alternative form of work and that his output might even improve as a result. OK, as I hear the derisive laughter of parents the country over, I have to defend myself - I did say might.

I have now officially finished work – ie writing – until the 29th of December which is when the extended family which has begun to arrive chez Bizarre will depart. I’m connoting this positively and hoping that stuffing myself with unnecessary amounts of carbohydrates, alcohol and fats will somehow induce a spurt of creative energy which will induce the final few chapters of the work in progress to write themselves, instead of dragging their wordy little feet as I try and rip them out of my subconscious.

Meanwhile, I’ve been wondering about my best books of 2008 list. I realised I’d left out Sebastian Faulks’s Engleby which was an amazing read…sure I’ve left out lots of others too.

What about everybody else? What are your best reads of 2008?