I've noticed a strange thing - when I add a book to my "currently reading" list (over there on the right) I stop reading it. Some titles have sat there for months. So perhaps I should rename it the "living in anticipation" list. At the moment my reading is largely driven by what I have out from the library, which means I am distinctly side-tracked from the bigger purpose of reading at a pace towards the book I'm writing. I need to crank things up a notch or two for this "working reading" as I call it (as opposed to reading for pleasure). Happily, they frequently overlap.

Look at this fantastic opening paragraph to HARVEST OF THORNS by Zimbabwean Shimmer Chinodya:

The day he came back, and she walked in obliviously from the shower-room with soapsuds on her hands and found him sitting in his big brown boots on the sofa, she cried so much the neighbours rushed in thinking she had received news of death; after they had gone and she could talk she looked at the ropes of dried meat hung on a strip of newspaper and fished into her long skirts to send Peter to the butcher.

Published in 1989, part of the novel first saw the light of day as Chinodya's MA thesis at the University of Iowa in the mid 80s. In 1990 it won him the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Africa Region. It has a wonderful quality to it, and I am enjoying it thoroughly as (unofficial) current reading!