What I Read During My Holidays Part 2- Why Be Happy When You Could By Normal?

Now I'm going to sound really dreadful, but I've never read any Jeanette Winterson before. I've heard of her, obviously, and I own quite a but of her, but I've never read any!
I understand this means they want by Feministy Book Blogger badge back but HA HA HA YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BECAUSE IT IS IMAGINARY.

This, her autobiography, tells the story of her life up to leaving home, then skips twenty years of finding fame through her writing, and onto the last few years of finding her birth mother. Parts were very very hard to read, dealing with depression, anxiety and abuse as they did, but parts, especially on how language and literature are such wonderful things and how the library saved her childhood, made me very smiley indeed. I also love love LOVED the description of Northern Town Life in the 1950s (even if she is from Lancashire...) and her stories of her various loves and the wonderful people who helped her along the way, this is one of those autobiographies that is mostly about other people and doesn't suffer for it.

If it wasn't so literary in places, this was be lapt up by my students, because the love 'true life' stories (because happy childhoods don't exist), but I read this in a night, and it's definitely worth a loan from a library. Parts are a bit dragging and skimable, but all in all this is a fascinating incite into an authors' world and the first half is some of the most gripping stuff I've read this year.

Holiday Reads 02 - Why be happy when you can be normal?

Holiday Reads 01 - The Luddites