Books with a Difference #4: Circuses

Both these books are about circuses.  I am not a huge fan of circuses, but they can certainly lend an air of the whimsical and outlandish to a story that wants to be a bit different.  Which is precisely what is achieved in these two interesting books.

Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This book was discovered by my New Zealand friend, who gave it to me for Christmas one year, knowing full well what I would think of it.  She was right.  I loved it. However, I do feel this is a book you will either love or hate.  Rather like marmite.

The Sun is Inside You

How quickly I forget the summer.  We are officially only halfway through it, but the last weeks have been filled with intermittent rain and grey cloud, and the last three days have seen persistent heavy showers with leaden skies and frigid temperatures.  Only in the UK.

But what amazes me is how, when the sun is out, and the days balmy and evenings light and long, I always think to myself, 'Well, this will keep me going for weeks, for months, for the whole of winter.'  And it never does.  It usually keeps me going for about three days.

Like retreats, or spiritual breakthroughs.  How liberated and light I feel, how convinced that this change wrought in me will last forever, how impossible to forget what I have seen or felt or experienced.  Give or take a few days of continual stress at work, conflict with someone, or perhaps a bad cold or stomach bug, and you feel you are back at square one.