Robert Lukens

And so I wasn't as interested in that because all the interest in this novel to me lies in the ideas and the interesting things he's doing with that story.

And also the interesting, the subtle things he's doing with language, as we talked about in that movie between that second, you don't really notice what he's doing because it is quite simple.

It's been polished and refined down, so it's definitely not showy.

But he's doing some very tricky things, and I think that's why the more I've thought about this novel, the more I've enjoyed it, perhaps more than I did in the initial reading when I was turned off slightly by the explosions and the running around.

And the romance, to me, is neither here nor there.

I wasn't completely...

Well, I did something that I never do.

I was wandering in a bookshop and I picked up a book because I just loved the front cover.

I'm not normally a victim of that, but this is such a good cover and I'm doing a bit of a catch up.

It's Circe by Madeline Miller, which I understand people have loved over the last year and I see why.

I'm only about 50 pages into this thing and I can't swear on the ABC, but good golly, this thing is good.

It's a reimagining of the Greek goddess Circe's life told from her point of view.

And just from the first page, I had that incredible reader's feeling of being able to just submit myself to this author because I'm in such safe hands.

And we enjoyed it too, didn't we, Cassie?

Well, if you promise not to tell anyone, I think I finished writing it this morning.

Woohoo!

So who knows what'll happen to it from here, whether we'll ever leave the hotel room.

But it's something.

It exists.

How exciting.