His Dark Materials: Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman

The first book in the series. Set in an alternate world, Lyra and her daemon find themselves on a quest to the North with the gyptians to rescue all the children that the Gobblers have stolen. While she's about it, she also wants to rescue her father from the panserborne, find the city in the Aurora and discover the secret of the Dust. This is one of the most complex, well-written children's books I have ever read.

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Tilo has been many things. Now she's a Mistress of Spices in Oakland, California. The rules of the spices are strict and their punishment harsh. But in using the spices to help others, she finds herself becoming embroiled in their lives and unable to keep her distance. She also can't resist getting involved with a lonely American, breaking the spices greatest taboo, and finally sealing her fate.

Pregnoramus

I feel like Lisa Simpson when she couldn't solve the brain teaser.

It's a clinically proven fact that a woman's brain physically shrinks in size when she is pregnant. I'm not entirely sure why. It could be something to do with hormones, fluid retention, or anything. I remember discussing this with my ob/gyn during my last pregnancy. It struck me as being rather unfortunate timing as I was in the middle of writing my thesis at the time. He seemed to think it was funny, particularly when he pointed out (rather unsympathetically, I thought) that there had been no research conducted to investigate whether a woman's brain returns to its substantive size post-pregnancy.

Well, I am currently conducting just such an investigation, based entirely on my own narrow experience. Preliminary results indicate that there must be some corrosion of brain size (and possibly brain function) with each subsequent pregnancy. It seems to be a similar (though opposite) process to post-pregnancy weight issues. (Apparently, whatever weight a woman manages to get down to when she falls pregnant again is the lowest weight that she will be able to reach after that pregnancy. Depressing, huh?)

Anyway. I had an appointment with my ob/gyn yesterday and before I left the house in the morning, I made doubly sure that I had my cheque book so that I could pay more of the fee. (I don't normally carry it around with me, so I had to go and get it.) I had my scan and my appointment and when I was making my next appointment, I started searching for the cheque book. No sign of it. I took everything out of my bag. I started to freak out slightly. I left the clinic. I sat on a park bench and ransacked every nook and cranny of my handbag. No cheque book.

'Oh Christ! I've lost it. This bloody handbag, I'm always dropping things and losing things out of it. I'll have to buy a new one. And cancel the bloody cheque book...'

I got home in the afternoon and checked the kitchen and the sitting room. I picked David up from the creche and checked that I hadn't left it in his bag or underneath the buggy. I was waiting for Conor to get home so I could check the floor of the car. And then, when I had given up hope and was pootling around looking for something else, I found it. In the spot where it's normally kept. Having purposely gone to get it and put it in my bag, I had then put it back in its place, without having any recollection of doing so. I still don't remember putting it back.

My brain is shrinking.

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Alison is a psychic who had a horrific childhood and now she's haunted by the ghosts of the men who made her childhood so awful. She's also got a weight problem and a live-in business partner, who is incredibly bitter and makes horrible comments to her all the time. The book is really well written: poignant, cruel and even funny at times. On one level, it deserves far more than its two star rating but I just found it so unrelentingly grim and creepy (and not because of the ghosties) that I can't bring myself to recommend that anyone read it.

Damn you, Dave Matthews...

I tried. I really tried. I listened to the new album ('Stand Up') several times before I removed it from my mp3 player. I wouldn't allow myself to skip through it when it cycled round again. I gave it every chance. More chances than it probably deserved. To be honest, I thought that I was even coming around to it. Maybe I had just become inured...

The upshot is that in the days following the removal of 'Stand Up' from my mp3 player, I'm finding it difficult to listen to 'Some Devil', a here-to-fore favourite.

Damn you, Dave Matthews! Damn you!

A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka

Two feuding sisters try to put aside their differences as they attempt to extricate their émigré father from his unfortunate marriage to the gold-digging (and immigration-dodging) Valentina. There was the promise of many family skeletons tumbling out of the closet, but this didn't deliver in quite the way I'd expected. An entertaining tale, none-the-less. My sympathies definitely lay with the sisters - caught between exasperation at an old man's foolishness and feeling so sorry for him because of the situation his idiocy landed him in. Valentina was by far the best character - worth reading this book for her alone!

Birthday Stories selected by Haruki Murakami

Twelve birthday-related short stories by twelve different authors.
I enjoyed this book more than the 3-star rating would imply but I have a bit of an issue with short stories. You see, I'm a greedy reader - so I like short stories because I can guzzle them down quickly, several in one sitting. Unfortunately, this means that I don't give myself the time to digest each story on its own merits, so they all end up being a big messy blur. Also, I find that short stories tend to leave me feeling a little bit dim: I'm sure that there's a meaningful message tied up in the story and I just don't get it.
So, my own feelings of inadequacy aside, not one of these stories is about a 'Happy Birthday'. The strange tenor of each tale juxtaposed against the pre-supposed happiness of their settings left me in an oddly dissatisfied and slightly depressed mood. Maybe I did get it after all?