I keep track of the most popular posts from month to month to get a better idea of what you want to read about. This month, the results were somewhat surprising.

The baby stirs, opens her eyes, sees us standing there looking down at her cot, and her face puckers, poised between crying and smiling. ‘Guh,guh.’ Then little dimples appear in her cheeks.
‘Ah!’
She is beautiful. She will make her own life. Nothing that has happened before is her fault.
– Nadia in A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka.

My female friends had told me that giving birth was like shitting a watermelon. They lied. It’s like excreting a block of flats – complete with parios, awnings, clothes-lines, television aerials, satellite dishes, backyard barbecues, kidney-shaped swimming pools, gazebos and double garage extensions with the cars parked outside.
– Maddy in Foetal Attraction by Kathy Lette.