Reflections of a Fine Book Connoisseur

So Long, Farewell

2009-01-03T17:21:00.002+11:00

I've decided not to continue on with my blog anymore. I've always struggled to keep it updated and frankly I can't be bothered any longer. I have too much else going on to be able to dedicate enough time like I wanted to.

So...adieu, adieu to you and you and you (I think that may be overstating the number of people who read this blog!) I'll still be checking into other blogs and commenting occasionally.

So long!

The Gem Collector by PG Wodehouse

2008-12-07T22:20:00.000+11:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 1909
Number of pages: 208

Started: 19 August 2008
Finished: 28 August 2008

Summary (taken and edited from Wikipedia):
Sir James Willoughby Pitt, baronet, a former jewel thief who was expelled from Eton and has since inherited wealth, is in London and bored with life. Seeing a stranger in need in a restaurant, he comes to his aid, and so befriends Spennie Blunt. He later encounters Spike Mullins, a former American criminal associate, who has fled to England and fallen on hard times. Pitt takes him in.

From there on it's a typically Wodehousian romantic farce, set at the stately Dreever Castle, overflowing with imposters, detectives, crooks, scheming lovers and conniving aunts.

Comments:
A reasonably short story and very enjoyable. Wodehouse is terrific and I've been building up quite the collection of his works of late. This one is actually an earlier, serialised version of a story that became the longer A Gentleman of Leisure.

A terrific read; light and funny. Recommended.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

2008-12-05T22:15:00.002+11:00

Rating: 7/10

Published: 2005
Number of pages: 413

Started: 15 August 2008
Finished: 21 August 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognises that his daughter has Down's syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own.

Comments:
This book is quite a downer. It's hard to feel sympathy for any of the characters. Although I understand the reasons behind David's decision, it's still hard to comprehend. And he had so many opportunities to rectify it, but he chose not to. It's very frustrating and depressing to read about these people living their sad and difficult lives because of one man's decision.

I read the book so long ago that the details are a bit hazy. Despite my gripes I apparently thought highly enough of it to give it a 7, so it must have had some good qualities. Interesting to see how one decision can so deeply affect your own life and that of everyone around you.

The Most Brilliant Library Ever

2008-12-05T22:13:00.003+11:00

Check out Jay Walker's library (puts my humble library to shame).

Recently Acquired Books

2008-11-18T17:14:00.004+11:00

Been a while since I've updated. I have a stack of reviews to do but life is hectic and my reading has come to a virtual standstill. I've managed to find time to buy more books though!

JG Ballard: Empire of the Sun

Pearl S Buck: The Good Earth

Peter Biskind: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Alexandre Dumas: The Last Cavalier

Gregory Maguire: Mirror, Mirror

Scott Westerfeld: Specials

PG Wodehouse: Carry On, Jeeves

PG Wodehouse: Money for Nothing

PG Wodehouse: Right Ho, Jeeves

PG Wodehouse: Something Fresh

I have another stack of Wodehouses on their way to me, and I bought a box sest of the Complete Sherlock Holmes, which incorporates:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes
The Valley of Fear
A Study in Scarlet
The Sign of Four
His Last Bow
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Recently Acquired Books

2008-10-25T00:20:00.002+11:00

Today I picked up:

Kyril Bonfiglioli: The Mortdecai Trilogy

John Brunner: The Sheep Look Up

Raymond Chandler: The Lady in the Lake and Other Novels

TT: Favourite Bookstores

2008-10-22T18:00:00.005+11:00

(From 12 August 2008): What's your favourite bookstore? Is it an online store or a bricks-and-mortar store? How often do you go book shopping? Is your favourite bookstore (or bookstores) listed as a favourite in LT? Do you attend events at local bookstores? Do you use LT to find events?
I must admit that I'm fan of big bookchains. In Australia, they're represented by Dymocks, Angus & Robertson and Borders. All 3 have huge stores in Sydney which I frequently visit during my morning tea and lunch breaks (although A&R is currently shut due to the redevelopment of Pitt St mall).

Borders is probably my main haunt, largely due to the fact that they cunningly send me vouchers every week for a certain % off books and most weeks I can't resist heading in to pick up a bargain. Both Borders and Dymocks have a pretty good selection of books.

I've also recently discovered Kinokuniya - they have a great range of books and are very good value, plus their website can tell you if they have the book you're searching for currently in stock AND it will provide you with an exact map of where the book is located in the store. Very cool! And it works: I tested it when I went to buy A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr.

There are quite a few secondhand bookshops that I love too. Too many to list here, but I've found a lot of great stuff when browsing through those shops.

BTT: Gold Medal Reading

2008-10-21T17:50:00.006+11:00

(From 14 August 2008): Do you or have you ever read books about the Olympics? About sports in general? Fictional ones? Or non-fiction? Or both? And, Second: Do you consider yourself a sports fan?
I have a book about cricket (the greatest sport ever) that was written by a guy at my work. I didn't know who he was at the time - I received the book through a mutual friend - but I've now moved into his department and see him daily. I haven't actually read it yet, but I'll get to it one day...And I have another book about cricket called No-Balls and Googlies by Geoff Tibballs. It's a terrific little read full of interesting facts about the history of the game. I read it in a day or two while watching the cricket on TV. Pure bliss!

As for sport in general, I don't watch a huge amount. I see a little bit here and there, but if it's not cricket, I'm generally not interested (I'm especially not interested in soccer!) As far as cricket goes, I've been known to take multiple days off work in order to sit home and watch it. In fact, the next lot of holidays I have coming up (3 whole days) were chosen specifically because there's a test match on that I want to watch.

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

2008-10-20T17:44:00.002+11:00

Rating: 9/10

Published: 1957
Number of pages: 160

Started: 8 August 2008
Finished: 14 August 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Timofey Pnin, a St Petersburg bourgeois until the age of twenty, has had to struggle most of his life - with foreign languages he can never get the better of, with foreign transport he always misses or arrives several hours too early for, and with foreign people whom he invariably misunderstoods, and who usually misunderstand him. But his principal protagonist is modern, gadget-ridden America, and the love-hate relationship between Pnin and his adopted country is the main theme of this very funny book.

Comments:
Pnin is the second work of Nabokov's I've read, after Lolita. I find that Nabokov is not an easy author to read; despite the short nature of Pnin, it took me a week to get through it. Nabokov needs to be read slowly in order to appreciate the true brilliance of his writing.

Timofey Pnin is a wonderful character; one of the best I've read in literature. As a Russian professor living in America and bumbling his way from one situation to the next, it's hard to know whether to pity him or think he's a fool. Either way, you can't help but love him in all his quirkiness and foibles. Sheer brilliance!

Thank You, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse

2008-10-20T17:42:00.002+11:00

Rating: 9/10

Published: 1934
Number of pages: 275

Started: 31 July 2008
Finished: 8 July 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Thank You, Jeeves is the first novel to feature the incomparable valet Jeeves and hist hapless charge Bertie Wooster - and you've hardly started to turn the pages when Jeeves resigns over Bertie's dedicated but somewhat untuneful playing of the banjo. In high dudgeon, Bertie disappears to the country as a guests of his chum Chuffy - only to find his peace shattered by the arrival of his ex-fiancee Pauline Stoker, her formidable father and the eminent loony doctor Sir Roderick Glossop. When Chuffy falls in love with Pauline and Bertie seems to be caught in flagrante, a situation boils up which only Jeeves (whether employed or not) can simmer down...

Comments:
Ah, the joy of discovering a new author! Wodehouse's brand of humour is right up my alley and I thoroughly enjoyed my first taste of Jeeves and Wooster. Since finishing this book a few months ago, I've gone and bought a couple of dozen other works of Wodehouse. If that doesn't tell you how much I enjoyed this book, nothing will! A light, entertaining read and highly recommended.

Charlotte's Web by EB White

2008-10-20T17:24:00.003+11:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 1952, 1946, 1970
Number of pages: 530

Started: 19 July 2008
Finished: 1 August 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Charlotte's Web
This is the story of a girl called Fern who loves a little pig called Wilbur. And of how Wilbur's dear friend Charlotte A Cavatica, a beautiful grey spider, saves Wilbur from the usual fate of nice fat pigs, by a wonderfully clever plan (which no one else could possibly have thought of).

Stuart Little
Stuart Little is a fascinating character. A debonair, intelligent mouse, game for every kind of adventure, and always managing to overcome any difficulties.

The Trumpet of the Swan
Louis is a trumpeter swan without a voice, a swan of great character not at all deterred by his handicap. With the help of his friend Sam beaver, Louis learns to read and write, but his main problem is still how to woo the elegant Serena. And so Louis learns to play the trumpet.

Comments:
I loved Charlotte's Web when I was young and was looking forward to revisiting it as an adult. The story has lost none of its charm and wonder for me and Charlotte and Wilbur's friendship is beautiful to behold.

Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan were equally charming stories. Highly recommended.

Recently Acquired Books

2008-10-20T17:20:00.002+11:00

Picked up the first three Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer for a song today.

Artemis Fowl
Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident
Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code

I already have the second one, but it's a used copy and I never liked the cover much...

Recently Acquired Books

2008-10-04T15:37:00.002+10:00

Found a couple of good secondhand bookshops today!

Clive Barker: The Thief of Always
Lois Lowry: The Giver
John Updike: Rabbit, Run
Dorothy Wall: Blinky Bill

I haven't updated my 'books bought' for a while, so here's the rest of what I've been buying, all for the month of September I'm afraid (and already posted in the other thread):

Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End
Jack Kerouac: On the Road: The Original Scroll
Walter Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz
Vladimir Nabokov: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

And from a bookfest:

Douglas Adams : Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Virginia Andrews: Flowers in the Attic
Isaac Asimov: Foundation's Edge
Isaac Asimov: Prelude to Foundation
Isaac Asimov: Rest of the Robots, The
Isaac Asimov: Second Foundation
Isaac Asimov: Stars Like Dust, The
Isaac Asimov: Foundation
Isaac Asimov: Foundation and Empire
Clive Barker: Everville
Clive Barker: Galilee
Ray Bradbury: Day it Rained Forever, The
Ray Bradbury: From the Dust Returned
Ray Bradbury: Machineries of Joy
Ray Bradbury: Silver Locusts, The
John Brunner: Squares of the City, The
Frances Hodgson Burnett: Little Lord Fauntleroy
Orson Scott Card: Ender's Shadow
Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
Agatha Christie: Taken at the Flood
Arthur C Clarke: Cradle
Iris Rainer Dart: Beaches 2: I'll Be There
Philip K Dick: I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon
Philip K Dick: Divine Invasion, The
Philip K Dick: Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The
Philip K Dick: Transmigration of Timothy Archer, The
George Eliot: Mill on the Floss, The
Michael Ende: Neverending Story, The
William Gibson: Neuromancer
Ursula Le Guin: Dispossessed, The
Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure
Dashiell Hammett: Thin Man, The
Harry Harrison: Deathworld 1
Harry Harrison: Deathworld 2
Harry Harrison: Deathworld 3
Harry Harrison: Stainless Steel Rat, The
Stanislaw Lem: Hospital of the Transfiguration
Stanislaw Lem: Memoirs of a Space Traveler
Stanislaw Lem: More Tales of Pirx the Pilot
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris
CS Lewis: Dark Tower, The
CS Lewis: Perelandra
CS Lewis: That Hideous Strength
Norman Lindsay: Magic Pudding, The
Michelle Margorian: Goodnight Mr Tom
John Marsden: Great Gatenby, The
China Mieville: Scar, The
Philip Pullman: Northern Lights
Olaf Stapledon: Last and First Men
Sue Townsend: Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years
Edgar Wallace: Door with Seven Locks, The
John Wyndham: Seeds of Time, The

My Brand Spanking New Library

2008-09-23T10:20:00.001+10:00

OK, so I've moved house and, for the first time in my life, I have a place where I can put all my books together. It's not quite complete, but this is the basic setup. The purple (excuse me, plum) armchair and ottoman arrived last week.

Tuesday Thingers: Top 100 on LT

2008-09-09T15:11:00.004+10:00

(From 1 July 2008): Here are the Top 100 Most Popular Books on LibraryThing. Bold what you've read, italicize what you own. Star what you liked. Star multiple times what you loved!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (32,484) ****
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J.K. Rowling (29,939) ****
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J.K. Rowling (28,728) ****
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) by J.K. Rowling (27,926) ****
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) by J.K. Rowling (27,643) ****
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) by J.K. Rowling (27,641) ****
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (23,266) ***
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (21,325) ****
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J.K. Rowling (20,485) *****
1984 by George Orwell (19,735) *****
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (19,583) *****
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (19,082) ****
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (17,586) *****
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (16,210) ****
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (15,483) ***
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (14,566)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (14,449) ****
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (13,946)
Life of Pi by Yann Martel (13,272) ***
Animal Farm by George Orwell (13,091) *****
Angels & demons by Dan Brown (13,089) ***
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (13,005) ****
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (12,777)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (12,634)
The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1) by J.R.R. Tolkien (12,276) ***
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (12,147)
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (11,976)
The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, Part 2) by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,512) ***
The Odyssey by Homer (11,483)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (11,392) *****
Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut (11,360) ****
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (11,257) ****
The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, Part 3) by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,082) ***
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (10,979) *****
American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman (10,823)
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (10,603) ****
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (10,537) *****
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (10,435) ***
The Lovely Bones : a novel by Alice Sebold (10,125)
Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1) by Orson Scott Card (10,092)
The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) by Philip Pullman (9,827)
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman (9,745)
Dune by Frank Herbert (9,671)
Emma by Jane Austen (9,610) *****
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (9,598) *****
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (9,593)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (9,433)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (9,413) ****
Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides (9,343)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (9,336)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (9,274) *****
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (9,246)
The Iliad by Homer (9,153)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (9,084)
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (9,080) *****
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (9,027) *****
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (8,960) ****
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (8,904) ****
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt (8,813)
The Little Prince by saintexupryantoinede - 75k - (8,764)
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (8,421) ***
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (8,417) ***
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (8,368) ***
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (8,255)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (8,214)
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (8,191)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (8,169)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (8,129)
The Complete Works by William Shakespeare (8,096)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (7,843)
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (7,834)
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (7,829)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (7,808)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (7,807) *****
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (7,793) *****
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (7,710) *
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (7,648) ***
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (7,598) *****
The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition by William Strunk (7,569)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (7,557)
The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman (7,534)
Atonement by Ian McEwan (7,530) ***
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (7,512)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (7,436)
Dracula by Bram Stoker (7,238) *****
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (7,153)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (7,055) *****
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (7,052)
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (7,043)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (6,933)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (6,901)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (6,899)
Neuromancer by William Gibson (6,890)
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (6,868)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (6,862)
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (6,841)
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (6,794)
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (6,715)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (6,708)
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (6,697)

Recently Acquired Books

2008-09-08T22:03:00.000+10:00

John Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar
China Mieville: Perdido Street Station
William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair
Melina Marchetta: On the Jellicoe Road
Melina Marchetta: Saving Francesca
PG Wodehouse: Blandings Castle
PG Wodehouse: Full Moon
PG Wodehouse: The Heart of a Goof
PG Wodehouse: Leave it to Psmith
PG Wodehouse: Piccadilly Jim
PG Wodehouse: Ring for Jeeves
PG Wodehouse: Summer Lightning
PG Wodehouse: Ukridge
Markus Zusak: The Messenger

Recently Acquired Books

2008-08-27T10:42:00.002+10:00

Cliver Barker: Abarat
GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday
Arthur C Clarke: The Other Side of the Sky
Aldous Huxley: After Many a Summer
Aldous Huxley: The Devils of Loudun
PG Wodehouse: Jeeves in the Offing
PG Wodehouse: Service with a Smile

I have a stack of reviews to catch up on. Trying to get them done by the end of the month.

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

2008-08-17T12:00:00.000+10:00

Rating: 6/10

Published: 1997
Number of pages: 219

Started: 16 July 2008
Finished: 28 July 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
'Timequake explores what happens to Vonnegut when, in 2001, a 'timequake' hits. The universe has a decade of self-doubt, shrinking back to 1991 and forcing everybody to relive the last 10 years of their lives exactly as they had before, but without free will. The same mistakes. The same corny jokes. The same doses of clap.' James Urquhart, Independent

Comments:
I really tried to enjoy this book, but it was just so disjointed and confusing that I couldn't really get into it. Part autobiography and part fiction, it's often hard to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. I know the book is supposed to be this way but, regardless, I struggled with this method of writing.

The basic plot (and I use the term 'plot' very loosely) discusses a 'timequake': an event whereby the universe shrinks slightly and everyone is thrown back 10 years in time to relive their lives exactly as they happened the first time around. That is, every thought, every action and every word is identical. When the timequake ends and humans are suddenly presented with free will again, most don't know what to do with it. It's an interesting premise, but one that isn't used to great effect. The timequake is more like a thin thread that weaves together some of the thoughts and anecdotes of Kurt Vonnegut, which make up the bulk of the book.

Timequake's saving grace is that Vonnegut comes up with some absolute gems concerning humans and their environment. Some of his stuff is very quotable (so quotable, in fact, that I forgot to write any down!) I'd only recommend this for the more hardcore Vonnegut fan. Having only previously read Slaughterhouse-Five, I'm not in that camp myself, but Timequake certainly hasn't put me off reading other works by Vonnegut.

BTT: Other Worlds

2008-08-15T12:00:00.001+10:00

(From 7 August 2008): Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live? Or where you certainly would NOT want to live? What about authors? If you were a character, who would you trust to write your life?
I'd love to live in Harry Potter's world of course! Even with Voldemort and the other baddies, there'd never be any shortage of exciting things happening. And who wouldn't want to live in a world with magic?

And now for a little secret...I've sometimes fantasised about living in John Marsden's world from the Tomorrow...When the War Began series. If you haven't read the series, it's about a group of Australian teenagers who manage to escape being imprisoned when Australia is invaded by another nationality. They go bush and then begin making attacks on the enemy, starting small (blowing up a bridge) and getting bigger and bigger (blowing up an airport). I know it would be an awful, awful world to live in, but I can't help but think about being in that situation myself and wondering whether I'd have the guts to do the stuff they did. I suppose it's the inner delinquent in me wanting to get out and experience the adrenaline of destroying stuff (structures, not people, of course!) So now you know my dirty little secret...

Oh, and having just finished Thank You, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse, I'd happily move in with Bertie to watch him get into his mishaps! And the world of Alice in Wonderland might be all right, but it'd probably do my head in after a while. And I'd love to join the time-traveller in The Time Machine by HG Wells. Ooh, come to think of it, give me War of the Worlds too! If only so I can get to see aliens/spaceships.

I've just been looking through the books I've read in the past few years, and I didn't realise how utterly miserable most of my books are! There are very few worlds or lives I'd like to inhabit.

As for where I wouldn't want to live...A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess says it all, I think. I also wouldn't want to live anywhere that Stephen King has written about!

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

2008-08-14T10:57:00.003+10:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 2006
Number of pages: 459

Started: 7 July 2008
Finished: 15 July 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Angelfield House stands abandoned and forgotten. It was once the imposing home of the March family - fascinating, manipulative Isabelle, Charlie, her brutal and dangerous brother, and the wild, untamed twins, Emmaline and Adeline. But Angelfield House conceals a chilling secret whose impact still resonates...

Now Margaret Lea is investigating Angelfield's past - and the mystery of the March family starts to unravel. What has the house been hiding? What is its connection with the enigmatic author Vida Winter? And what is it in Margaret's own troubled past that causes her to fall so powerfully under Angelfield's spell?

Comments:
The Thirteenth Tale is an engaging and atmospheric gothic novel, and Setterfield reveals herself as an excellent story-teller. Having a booklover narrate the story helped me to identify with Margaret, the main character, and there are some lovely insights on reading.

The story is very well developed and the mystery is built up nicely. I wouldn't say it was suspenseful, but I was kept very interested in learning the outcome, which I didn't guess beforehand. I like that not everything was resolved, and also that the story had no definite time setting; it helped add to the mystery.

The main problems I had with the book were Margaret's obsession with her twin, which came on a little strongly, and I also felt that the Angelfield family were a little too unbelievable as characters. They were all so remote as to not even seem human most of the time, and in the time setting that I had concocted in my mind, they seemed very out of place (actually, when I tried to place them at different points in time, they didn't seem to fit anywhere).

Overall, a very enjoyable book; different and full of intrigue. Highly recommended.

Tuesday Thingers: Popular Books

2008-08-11T13:58:00.003+10:00

(From 17 June 2008): What's the most popular book in your library? Have you read it? What did you think? How many users have it? What's the most popular book you don't have? How does a book's popularity figure into your decisions about what to read?
No surprise really, but the most popular book in my library is one of the Harry Potter books: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (owned by 34,182 LibraryThingers). Of course I've read it! Multiple times in fact, and I'll be reading it many times more.

The most popular book on LibraryThing that I don't own is The Kite Runner (owned by 15,707 LibraryThingers). I'm in two minds about reading this book. Well, no I'm not. I'd definitely like to read it, but despite its huge popularity, I just can't get excited enough about it to go and a buy a copy and read it immediately. The subject matter just doesn't do it for me. Perhaps one day I'll get around to it.

A book's popularity doesn't factor into my decisions too much. If I read a lot of good things about a book, I'll probably be inspired to try it, but seeing on LibraryThing that a large number of people own the book isn't going to make me rush out and buy it.

Recently Acquired Books

2008-08-08T14:33:00.000+10:00

Picked up some bargains today:

Arthur C Clarke: The Space Trilogy (Islands in the Sky, Earthlight, The Sands of Mars)
John Connolly: The Book of Lost Things
Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist
Helen Fielding: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Henry Fielding: Tom Jones

BTT: Beginnings and Endings

2008-08-08T10:28:00.004+10:00

(From 24 July 2008): What are your favourite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line?
The first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has always stuck in my mind:

'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.'

Then there's the first sentence of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, which rather alarmed me when I first read it. I'd had no idea what the story was going to be about, and was expecting something quite highbrow and serious (which I guess it was, but I certainly wasn't expecting a line like that!):

'As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.'

And then there's the first (rather long) sentence of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities:

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.'

(From 31 July 2008): What are your favourite final sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its last sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the last line?
I think the last line that will always stick in my mind is (again) from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities:

'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.'

I positively bawled when I was reading that. I don't think any other line can top that!

Recently Acquired Books

2008-08-01T11:05:00.005+10:00

I've been a bit lax in updating my 'Recently Acquired Books', so here's what I've bought or received in the past few months:

June:
Raven Hart: The Vampire's Kiss
Raven Hart: The Vampire's Secret

July:
Daphne du Maurier: Julius
Kathryn Kenny: Trixie Belden #19: The Secret of the Unseen Treasure
Stephen King: Night Shift
PG Wodehouse: Thank You, Jeeves

August:
William S Burroughs: Naked Lunch

My book-buying has dropped a lot since I joined a 'read 3, buy 1' support group for book-buying addicts like myself to help us decrease the size of our TBR piles. The idea is that you must read 3 books to earn 1 credit that you may then spend. I joined a few months back and things have been going well until today, when I officially fell off the wagon (having teetered on the edge for a couple of weeks now). But who can resist buying books when Borders sends you a voucher for 30% off?

Tuesday Thingers: Tags

2008-07-31T15:14:00.005+10:00

(From 10 June 2008): Do you tag? How do you tag? How do you feel about tagging - do you think it would be better to have standardized tags, like libraries have standardized subject headings, or do you like the individualized nature of tagging? What are your top 5 tags and what do they say about your collection or your reading habits?
I absolutely tag. I find it very handy, especially when checking the size of my TBR pile or looking for a certain genre of book. I much prefer having individual tags - everybody likes to tag their books according to their own needs/wants, so why make it standardised?

My top 5 tags are:

'on goodreads' (563): this is just a tag I added to my books after joining another book cataloguing website called Goodreads. I was having trouble trying to identify which books I had yet to add to Goodreads, so I painstakingly went through all the lists (no easy task when Goodreads alphabetises books differently to LibraryThing) and added this tag once I was certain the book was also listed in my Goodreads account. I plan on removing it one day - after I'm certain all of my books are catalogued in both places.

'read' (431): pretty self-explanatory. This is the number of books I own that I have actually read.

'to be read' (326): again, self explanatory. The number of books I own but have yet to read. Thanks goodness this number is smaller than my 'read' pile!

'children' (250): apparently I have 250 books aimed at younger readers. Probably just over half of those would be my Baby-Sitters Club books. I really should change this tag to 'young adult'. It sounds much more dignified that way.

'second-hand' (248): the number of books I've bought second-hand. With a book addiction like mine, you can't afford to buy brand new books all the time!

I just have to mention the next 2 tags: 'classic' (170 - pretty self-explanatory) and 'bought 2007' (169). Yikes! I bought 169 books last year! As opposed to 52 so far this year. I'm trying to behave this year in an effort to get my TBR pile down.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl

2008-07-31T12:58:00.002+10:00

Rating: 6/10

Published: 1973
Number of pages: 137

Started: 4 July 2008
Finished: 7 July 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Charlie has won the chocolate factory, and sails off in his strange new means of transport to take possession. But somehow the elevator goes into orbit and Charlie, Mr Wonka, and all the grandparents have to save themselves and three gallant astronauts from a mob of vicious space monsters.

Comments:
Another enjoyable read by Roald Dahl, but nowhere near as good as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. My edition has been illustrated by Faith Jacques, and while the illustrations are nice, it's just not the same as having it done by Quentin Blake. Surprisingly, I found this had a definite impact on my enjoyment of the story. That said, there were some humorous parts (including the stuff that was politically incorrect and which I probably shouldn't have laughed at), and overall it was a decent read. Not one of Dahl's best, but worth a read nevertheless.

Classic First Lines Part 4

2008-07-23T16:30:00.000+10:00

47) They embraced each other as tightly as two-flavor entwined string cheese, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white, Mozzarella.

48) Her mouth was set with pearls adorned with elastic rubies and tuned with minstrel lays, while her bulbous nose gracefully concealed its umbrage, and her eyes imparted a cross-eyed, but radiant glow to the azure of the sky

49) As she gingerly reached for the constipated gorilla's suppository.

50) Nicolette let the silk blouse fall from her shoulders, wrapped her left leg around John and deftly cut some cheese.

51) He smelled of pork. Rotting pork, in fact, and lots of it.

52) This time he was prepared for the alien probe, having just finished a seventh bean burrito, a case of Bud, and four packs of Pop Rocks

53) The graphic crime-scene photo was not pretty, mainly beause of the shutter speed,

54) Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably - the first of many such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my career.

55) Lashed with duct tape to the side of his stolen hovercraft, her head lolling in the breeze...

56) He fell off the wagon like a frozen turkey from a Goodwill Helicopter.

57) No one knew of Alicia's troubles, because they'd learned to tune her out.

58) Colin slammed the spritely Vauxhall Vixen into a lower gear as he screamed through the roundabout heading toward the familiar pink rowhouse in Puking-On-The-Wold.

59) And so rosy-fingered Dawn awakened him, first with light counterclockwise strokes, then with gentle kneading, and finally with relentless ticklings that made him rue ever buying her finger paint.

60) Borson crushed a Coke can powerfully with one hand and turned slowly to face the source of the ridicule.

61) He blasted the creature from Xilth, as one pops the head off a zit, except of on a much larger scale.

62) "Forgetttabowwwtit" intoned Arnold gutturally,

63) Olive was waiting on the couch, with only a smile and a cucumber sandwich.

64) "Wear something uncomplicated-I'm in no mood for a struggle tonight,"he drawled.

65) Though flanked by two swarthy state troopers, Paula found her gaze drawn to the chubby saxophonist.

66) Along greasy, paving-stones slick from the sputum of the sky, he wearily trudged up the hill from the cemetery where his wife, sister, brother, and three children were all buried, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was soon to devastate his life

BTT: Doomsday

2008-07-21T22:38:00.003+10:00

(From 10 July 2008): What would you do if, all of a sudden, your favourite source of books was unavailable?
I have plenty of shops around me for reading material. I'd be disappointed if a favourite shop closed down, but ultimately I'd just move on to other shops. I like to spread my business around anyway.

(From 17 July 2008): Do you buy books while on vacation/holiday? Do you have favourite bookstores that you only get to visit while away on a trip? What/Where are they?
I absolutely buy books on holidays. When I visited England several years back I came back with quite a few books on The Beatles (hard to find over here). I also bought a book from Hay-on-Wye. I know, just one book from a town full of bookshops? Unfortunately I only had a few precious hours to spend there and at that stage my luggage had already doubled.

When I went down south on holidays last year, I drove home via Australia's own small 'book town' in the Southern Highlands, and called into a bookshop based in a large barn in the country near Berrima called Berkelouw Books (pics here). A lovely bookshop.

There are also several wonderful bookshops in the Blue Mountains town of Katoomba, my favourite being Mr Pickwicks, a 3-level shops that deals in secondhand and antiquarian books.

Otherwise, whenever I'm on holidays I'll call into any bookshop I see (mostly secondhand; the chain stores are all the same). I love discovering new bookshops. I recently visited a shop in a tiny country town that was quite a nice surprise - it had the best range of Australian history books I've ever seen. I picked up a few good buys there, and I'm sure I'll visit it again next time I'm in the area.

Classic First Lines Part 3

2008-07-20T13:30:00.001+10:00

31) It was a dark night on Pluto, a planet nobody had ever taken seriously before.

33) As she pulled Chloe's unmistakable prosthetic arm from under the bed, she knew she'd been played for a fool.

34) Grandpa was belly down in the meadow , taking a close-up of a cow-pie, when lightning struck.

35) The corpse had been shredded, as usual, with coffee beans to throw off the police dogs.

36) Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle compressed by a Thigh Master

37) I'd always wondered what it was like to wake up naked in a dumpster...

38) The chubby-faced cherub of a niece was stopped abruptly, like a pancake, by the sliding door she had failed to notice, and slid to the floor in a motionless heap.

39) Hoping his lunch hour would provide time for a romp and a digestive biscuit...

40) His thoughts, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer,

41) My underwear stuck to my backside like an All-Pro cornerback to a rookie wide receiver as I browsed through the seed catalog that had mistakenly found its way into my mailbox."

42) Her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, she was driven -fueled by a single accelerant- the man, Alf Romeo.

43) To escape the grizzly, all Gordon had to do was outdistance his chubby hiking partner, Fred.

44) 'Time to leave the Fluffy Forest,' said Susan, as she was smashed on crack.

45) On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky like the way a squashed toilet roll that goes bumpity bumpity in it's holder,

46) Mud squished up between the toes like cappuccino-colored bog-ooze.

Tuesday Thingers: Why LibraryThing?

2008-07-18T20:00:00.002+10:00

(From 3 June 2008): Why did you choose to open and maintain an LT account? Do you/did you use other online cataloging/social networking sites, like GoodReads or Shelfari? Do you use more than one? Are they different or do they serve different purposes?
I chose LibraryThing for the simple reason that I wanted to keep a listing of all my books online and this seemed like a good option. I catalogued 200 books, which is the limit for a free account, and then decided that I liked it enough to purchase a lifetime account - a highly unusual move for me because I've never paid money to a website before.

I also have an account with GoodReads, which I keep pretty up-to-date. I enjoy catching up with various discussion groups there (for some reason I don't do the same with LibraryThing), but I don't like that you can't edit the details of your books. On LibraryThing, all of my books have been neatly edited so they're consistent in terms of capitalisation and the wording of series names etc. On GoodReads, you just have to accept the default, and the selection of covers isn't as good as LibraryThing.

I tried Shelfari for a while but didn't like the layout and the fact that many of my books didn't have covers, so I eventually deleted my account.

Classic First Lines Part 2

2008-07-17T11:55:00.000+10:00

16) Lidie Meaks was a medium-sized, elegant figure, wearing a neatly fitted travelling dress of black alpaca, her raven black hair, copious both in length and volume and figured like a deep river rippled by the wind was parted in the centre and combed smoothly down, ornamenting her pink temples with a flowing tracery that passed round to its modillion windings on a graceful time.

17) The sea raged, the wind howled, and the sand was just plain irritated.

18) We stumbled numbly, dragging behind us the frozen dead corpse of our friend, Bartholomew, whom the hardened permafrost of the tundra had resisted our burying.

19) If it weren't for the knee-high sewage lapping at his dress pants and the confused terrorist spraying automatic gunfire over his head, Johnson could see little reason to change his mind about the wisdom of registering at a two-star hotel.

20) The Prince stood, wondering how her supple lips would feel against his own and contemplated how bad Sleeping Beauty's morning breath would be after one hundred years.

21) The butler did it. Sorry!! I've given the ending away - I couldn't help myself.

22) The thunder sounded like a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage

23) Thockmorton knew if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it.

24) The newest Lady Turnpot descended, her creamy bosom rising and falling like a temperamental souffle.

25) The sun rose over the Canada geese, feathered rumps mooning the day.

26) She gratefully popped the glass orb back in place with a soft sucking sound.

27) The moment he laid eyes on inmate #472825994, he became a prisoner of love.

28) As the blue screen froze, Capt Kirk vowed never to use a Microsoft system again.

29) The blood dripped from his nose like hot grease from a roasting bratwurst pierced with a fork, except that grease isn't red and the blood wasn't that hot and it wasn't a fork that poked him in the nose.

30) This is a story of twin Siamese kittens, or, more specifically, of their shared appendage; it is a tail of two kitties.

Classic First Lines Part 1

2008-07-15T11:53:00.001+10:00

Got this off a forum I'm on. Some good stuff here - I'm sure these books would be very interesting to read in full!

1) Sex with Isaac had been like an experiment wherein she had accidentally mixed ammonia and bleach, burned her eyebrows off, lost all sense of smell for weeks, and never saw the family cat again.

2) McMurphy hit the pavement running like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.

3) Had she known Duncan was a psychopath who would seduce, then brutally murder her, she wouldn't have bought that screwdriver.

4) Ralph looked over at the rumpled form of Lila sleeping next to him in bed and wondered idly why making love with her made him feel as though his body had been pounded by heavy surf.

5) In these uncertain times, one must think of others' viewpoints, and always remember that a crowded elevator smells different to a midget.

6) The scent of sweat from the horse's buttock wafted into his left nostril, past the fine cilia of his nose, through the nasal cavity and into the dark damp depths of his single emphysemic lung.

7) Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do.

8) The potted palm made a feeble attempt at photosynthesis with the naked 25 watt bulb that hung from the cracked plaster of my low-rent office on a less-than-desirable (unless you were vermin) stretch of Pico.

9) He wanted to hold her forever, but he knew evntually that he'd have to take a whizz.

10) Her breasts were like ripe strawberries, but much bigger, a completely different colour, not as bumpy, and without the little green things on top.

11) The sun rose over the horizon like a great big radioactive baby's head,

12) He slumped wearily onto the couch like a sack of **** slung over the shoulder of a warehouse worker.

13) I'm sorry but you still have 873 pages to go.

14) He snapped my bra like a Concord taking off, and I was unhooked for love.

15) The alien was eager to ravage her, unlike Ted, who wanted to take it slow, having come of the heels of a nasty divorce.

BTT: Definition and Holidays

2008-07-12T13:30:00.001+10:00

(From 26 June 2008): What, in your opinion, is the definition of a “reader”? A person who indiscriminately reads everything in sight? A person who reads BOOKS? A person who reads, period, no matter what it is? … Or, more specific? Like the specific person who’s reading something you wrote?
I think a 'reader' refers to anyone who loves reading books. Simple as that. (I feel like I've answered this question before. There seems to be a lot of questions that pop up on BTT that are similar to others that have already been posted.)

(From 3 July 2008): It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S., so let’s keep today’s question simple–What are you reading? Anything special? Any particularly juicy summer reading?
It's all right for some! I love (read: hate) these questions that assume everyone lives in the same time zone/hemisphere/country etc. At any rate, whether or not there are holidays happening (in my own country), they don't really affect my reading. I'm currently reading The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and enjoying it a fair bit. Speaking of which, it's now lunch time and I have some reading to do :)

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

2008-07-11T11:24:00.002+10:00

Rating: 5/10

Published: 1894-1895
Number of pages: 383

Started: 16 June 2008
Finished: 3 July 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
A naked baby is abandoned deep in the jungle and is taken in by a she-wolf to be raised as one of her own. Soon Mowgli the man-cub becomes a wise and feared hunter, learning the Law of the jungle from Baloo the bear, and the skills of the hunt from mighty Bagheera, the black panther, and Kaa, the stealthy rock python.

At once an outsider in these wilds and a unique bridge between the species that inhabit them, Mowgli evolves in the shadow of a dramatic mortal encounter that is fated to take place between himself and Shere Khan, the man-eating Bengal tiger under whose fiery gaze the whole jungle trembles with fear.

The characters and stories that comprise Kipling's Jungle Books are a microcosm of life as he saw it, but like most great literature, Kipling's words speak to us on many levels, blending fantasy and philosophy in a work that continues to delight generation after generation of adults and children alike.

Comments:
For a book of children's stories, The Jungle Book certainly took me a long time to read! I can't quite put my finger on what was wrong with the stories; perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for them. The style of writing was OK but there was nothing exceptional or even slightly above average that pulled me into the stories and made me want to pick up the book at every available opportunity. I didn't really enjoy the poems that began and ended every story, either.

The stories in both Jungle Books focus on different animals (not all from the jungle), which was interesting, and some of the characters, such as Mowgli, Bagheera, Baloo and Kaa appeared in multiple stories.

There's not much else to add, I'm afraid. I highly doubt I'll ever read it again. It was a bit of a slog and I was glad to be done with it!

Tuesday Thingers: Cataloguing

2008-07-07T14:01:00.006+10:00

(From 27 May 2008): How many books do you have cataloged in your LibraryThing account? How do you decide what to include - everything you have, everything you've read - and are there things you leave off?
I have 758 books catalogued in LibraryThing. This makes up the vast bulk of my collection. As far as I'm aware, there are only a few books that I haven't catalogued yet, and they're ones that I couldn't find through LT. I'll be packing up all my books to move house next week, and as I do so I'll hopefully have time to check that each one has been catalogued in LT, GoodReads and in my separate Excel spreadsheet. If I run out of time, I'll just have to check them off after I unpack at the other end!

I try to catalogue everything I have, and I've also included a few ebooks I've read over the past year or two, and a couple of books I've borrowed. According to my tags, 11 of the 758 books are ebooks, which means I most likely read them on my iPod and I don't own hard copies at all. Also according to my tags, 3 of the books were borrowed (2 from my brother and 1 from a library), although I have since obtained my own hard copy of one of those books.

I've thought about creating another LT account to list all my ebooks, but that would cost more money and take me forever to complete. I'll probably just catalogue them in another spreadsheet instead (actually I've already started; it's a mammoth task). As I read more ebooks I'll add them to my regular account, just for the sake of keeping a record of how many books I read each year.

BTT: Flavour

2008-07-03T11:23:00.006+10:00

(From 19 June 2008): Think about your favourite authors, your favourite books...what is it about them that makes you love them above all the other authors you’ve read? What is it about those books and authors that makes them resonate with you in ways that other, perfectly good books and authors do not?
The thing that resonates most with me is a beautiful writing style. Something that is lyrical and just flows straight off the page and straight into my heart. Those books are a real joy to read. This is one reason why Jane Austen and Vladimir Nabokov are among my favourite authors.

I also enjoy reading about characters that are real; where the author isn't worried about showing all their faults. It helps if I can relate to them personally, but it's not necessary and certainly isn't the case with a lot of my favourite books. I just need characters that I care about and can connect with on some level. If a character is impersonal or cliched and not developed properly, it's very off-putting.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2008-07-02T12:54:00.004+10:00

Rating: 10/10

Published: 2005
Number of pages: 584

Started: 10 June 2008
Finished: 16 June 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. And will become busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery.

So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

Comments:
What a beautiful piece of work. One of those books that tugs at the heartstrings and reminds you why you love reading so much: for the chance to come across a gem like this every now and then.

The characterisation is brilliant. The characters are so real - they're unique, flawed and beautiful, and I came to love every single one of them. The narration by Death and all the little asides that came with it is very well done. And it's interesting how Zusak uses Death to tell us what is going to happen, but manages to do so without lessening the impact of the story in any way.

I could rave about the characters until the cows come home, but I'll try to restrict myself to a few short points. Liesel is a beautifully charming young girl, and her foster father, Hans Hubermann, is such a wonderful person - the type you wish you knew in real life. I enjoyed the infrequent but invaluable insights into Rosa Hubermann's real character and my heart broke for Rudy over and over throughout the entire book. Max Vandenburg's artwork also lent a lot to the book - much more insight is given into his character through his stories and art, all of which was very touching.

I haven't read a lot in the way of WWII literature so I don't have much to compare The Book Thief to, but I love that Zusak gives the reader a German perspective of what was happening in their lives.

This is one of the most powerful books I have read in a while and has definitely been added to my list of absolute favourites. A brilliant and very emotional read (I recommend having a lot of tissues handy). Having shamelessly gushed over this book, all that is left to say is that I very highly recommended it!

A Book Meme

2008-06-30T11:40:00.004+10:00

Because you can never do too many of these, here's a book meme. The usual rules apply:

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - I've read enough to constitute it as being read
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - on my TBR pile
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - on my TBR pile
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - read a couple in school, want to read the rest...one day
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - on my TBR pile
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - on my TBR pile
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - on my TBR pile
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - on my TBR pile
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - on my TBR pile
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - on my TBR pile
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - on my TBR pile
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - on my TBR pile
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - part-way through them
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - on my TBR pile
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - pretty sure I read all the stories when I was younger (so much younger than today)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - on my TBR pile
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - on my TBR pile (started this last year - had to put it aside for a little while)
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - bit dull
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - meh
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - on my TBR pile
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - on my TBR pile
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - on my TBR pile
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - on my TBR pile
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - pretty sure this is on my TBR pile
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding - on my TBR pile
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - I'm hoping to get to it before I die
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - on my TBR pile, looking for a nicer copy before I read it
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - meh
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - on my TBR pile
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - undecided whether I want to read this or not; sounds too much like The Alchemist for my liking
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - on my TBR pile
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - on my TBR pile
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - on my TBR pile
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

(I have an awful lot of them on my TBR pile!)

Book News (Old and New)

2008-06-26T12:47:00.005+10:00

Here's an article from the beginning of the year regarding Vladimir Nabokov's final and incomplete manuscript that goes by the name of The Original of Laura. Nabokov wanted it destroyed but his son, Dmitri, is trying to decide whether he should honour his father's wishes or get it published anyway. I'm in two minds about it, myself (like my opinion matters!)

And a story pinched from another blog about various items that have been found in books - some interesting stories there!

By the by, I'll be moving out of home soon (got my keys on Monday), and I'm moving into a 3-bedroom place, so I'll be able to do justice to my book collection (present and future) and house them in their very own library. I'm going to buy a stack of bookcases from IKEA - the famous Billy bookcases. Think I'll get 5 bigguns to start with, and we'll see where to go from there. I'm planning on putting in a comfy lounge as well that will double as a sofabed for guests (who of course will be under strict instructions to keep their mitts off my books). The room is pretty small, but it'll do - it's nice and cozy.

Tuesday Thingers: Discussion Groups

2008-06-25T12:33:00.007+10:00

In an effort to post blog entries more often, I'm going to start doing Tuesday Thingers. It started up in May so I'll have to play catch-up again. All the questions refer to LibraryThing - an excellent online book cataloguing system that I've harped on about before.

(From 20 May 2008): Discussion groups. Do you belong to any (besides Early Reviewers)? Approximately how many? Are there any in particular that you participate in more avidly? How often do you check?
Actually I don't belong to the Early Reviewers discussion group. I belong to a few discussion groups on LibraryThing but rarely visit them or post. Too busy with other forums and blogs for that malarkey!

The groups I belong to are the 50 Book Challenge (rough aim to read 50 books a year, which ties in with my own personal goals), Australian LibraryThingers, BCF (based on the Book Club Forum, that I've mentioned before), Books Compared and Science Fiction Fans. Now that I've looked them up to get the links, they're looking pretty good. There's an interesting discussion on comparisons of dystopian literature (that a couple of readers of this blog will appreciate). I really should check in more often - there are probably lots more interesting discussions happening.

Prince Caspian by CS Lewis

2008-06-25T12:14:00.003+10:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 1951
Number of pages: 107

Started: 8 June 2008
Finished: 9 June 2008

Summary (taken from Dymocks website):
King Miraz can only mean trouble for Narnia, and Prince Caspian, his nephew and the rightful heir to the throne, fears for his safety and the future of his country. He blows the Great Horn in desperation, summoning Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy to help with his task - that of saving Narnia.

Comments:
I enjoyed Prince Caspian a little more than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, perhaps because I now know more about the world of Narnia and the characters within it. A thoroughly enjoyable story, full of magic and adventure. Good stuff!

BTT: Clubbing

2008-06-19T11:41:00.006+10:00

(From 12 June 2008): Have you ever been a member of a book club? How did your group choose (or, if you haven’t been, what do you think is the best way to choose) the next book and who would lead discussion?
Do you feel more or less likely to appreciate books if you are obliged to read them for book groups rather than choosing them of your own free will? Does knowing they are going to be read as part of a group affect the reading experience?
I'm a member of an online Book Club Forum. It's a terrific site full of great people who are very enthusiastic about books. As someone who doesn't have a lot of people in the 'real world' to talk to about books, it's great to be able to jump online any time of day (usually when I'm at work!) or night and talk books with fellow readers. The site is based in the UK, but of course it welcomes members from all over the world.

Every month we can each nominate 2 books to be in the running to be selected for the next month's reading circle. The 3 books that are seconded the most by others are then put into a poll so everyone can vote. It's a really good method that has been working for a long time. We have also done a couple of comparative reading circles where, as the name suggests, we compare 2 books on a similar theme. One such reading circle we did was on vampires, and we read Dracula by Bram Stoker and Carmilla by J Sheridan LeFanu. We don't do the comparative circles anymore though; I think perhaps members had too much other reading to be doing to be able to commit to an extra couple of books. That suits me fine too; I'm happy to participate in the monthly discussion instead.

This month we had a tie for 2 books: Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe and The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling. I've decided to leave Wolfe for now, but I'm reading Kipling as I already had the book on my TBR pile anyway.

One of our mods always starts off the discussion by posting several questions, which we can use answer if we choose. Otherwise we just post our own comments on what we enjoyed (or not) etc. Depending on the book, a lot of discussion can be generated or not too much. Life of Pi was pretty controversial, as I recall. I love when everyone really gets into it, rather than just posting 'I liked this', or 'I didn't like this'.

Whether or not I'm reading a book for a circle doesn't really affect my reading too much. I might perhaps put a little more thought into it and try to remember certain parts to bring up later on, but mostly I just read like I always do - read the story first, then analyse it a little afterwards. I can often appreciate a book more after I've read thorough comments from others - they might pick something up that I didn't notice.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

2008-06-18T16:16:00.001+10:00

Rating: 10/10

Published: 1958
Number of pages: 157

Started: 4 June 2008
Finished: 7 June 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's. And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboys millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

This edition also contains three stories: 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory'.

Comments:
Truman Capote is fast becoming one of my favourite authors, and Holly Golightly has to be one of the best characters I've had the pleasure of encountering in a book. For such a short story, her quirky character is developed nicely and to great effect. I watched the movie again straight afterwards and thought they did a pretty good job adapting it for the big screen, except the obvious change of the ending (and Mickey Rooney's character in the movie is a little over-the-top and unncessary, I thought).

The three short stories included in the book were also very enjoyable. I particularly enjoyed A Christmas Memory - a very touching story.

I Hereby Christen Thee...

2008-06-16T14:07:00.003+10:00

I've changed the name of my blog because I didn't think it sounded pretentious enough. This means that I should probably avoid any further mention of The Baby-Sitter's Club and restrict myself to reading only long and complicated Russian literature. Hmm, maybe I should change it back.

The Fine Book Connoisseur is IN (and currently reading 'The Jungle Book' by Rudyard Kipling).

BTT: Trends

2008-06-16T13:27:00.005+10:00

(From 5 June 2008): Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?
I read much more fiction these days than non-fiction. In years gone by, I read a great deal of non-fiction books, largely concerning my favourite band, The Beatles. I have roughly 60 books about The Beatles. You wouldn't think there could be that much new information in each one, but there are a lot of different aspects to write about.

I have books by The Beatles themselves, books about them as written by the people who were closest to them, such as (ex-)spouses, (ex-)managers, sisters, record producers, friends etc, and by people who weren't close to them at all! Then there are books concerning the writing of their songs and the production of their albums. I have pictorial books, books detailing where they were and what they were doing on a day-by-day basis and other books solely full of interviews and quotes. I have books concerning bootlegs, the 'Paul is dead' conspiracy, tourist books of Liverpool and London, and books concerning their post-Beatles career. Almost all of them offer something new and interesting.

The Beatles story from beginning to end is truly fascinating and I never get tired of reading about it. That said, I haven't read any books about them for a few years. I've been on such a book-buying binge that I have a ridiculously large number of fiction books waiting to be read and I can't afford to re-read a lot of others that I would like to.

I also used to read a lot of non-fiction regarding all aspects of the paranormal - mostly on UFOs and aliens, but also ghosts and anything else concerning the paranormal. It was a great passion of mine which, sadly, I don't have much time for anymore. I think I've also grown a little more cynical so I'm not as interested as I used to be.

So these days, my reading almost entirely comprises of fiction, with the occasional non-fiction book thrown in, usually in the form of a history book. One day I hope to even it out a little more. I mostly read a lot of classics, which can be heavy-going at times. I never read light and fluffy chick-lit - I have a bit of an aversion to the genre, although I must admit I do have Bridget Jones' Diary on my TBR pile. I try to balance my heavy classics with some light reading though, usually in the form of young adult fiction; there's a lot of great stuff out there. I never really read how-tos, mysteries, or romance, although I suppose a lot of my books have those aspects in them.

Idle Chit Chat

2008-06-11T13:49:00.008+10:00

I have so many freaking reviews to write, but I can't seem to find the time to write them. I keep thinking 'I'll do it later - this time would be better spent reading'. Grr...

Maybe it's also because work has been busy lately, and work is where I write most of my reviews (shhh...) If I have time when my work deadline passes this afternoon I'll get onto them.

In the meantime, to keep all my thousands of readers entertained, there's a great blog on cover artwork for books over at Caustic Cover Critic.

There's one post in particular that caught my eye, and that was about...well, read it for yourself here. Very sad pics, especially the one of the abandoned/trashed library. I'm currently reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and have just gotten past a section on Nazi book-burning. What a crying shame to see all those books go to waste.

"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings." - Almansor - Heinrich Heine

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." - Joseph Brodsky

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

2008-06-06T14:01:00.004+10:00

Rating: 10/10

Published: 1818
Number of pages: 279

Started: 23 May 2008
Finished: 2 June 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Victor Frankenstein is obsessed with the secret of resurrecting the dead. But when he makes a new 'man' out of plundered corpses, his hideous creation fills him with disgust.

Rejected by all humanity, the creature sets out to destroy Frankenstein and everyone he loves. And as the monster gets ever closer to his maker, hunter becomes prey in a lethal chase that carries them to the very end of the earth.

Comments (possible spoilers):
I loved this book. It took me a while to get into it (through no fault of the book's), but once I did I thought it was a terrific read, and not at all what I had expected. I thought the story would dwell a lot more on the creation of the monster itself, but in fact it was more concerned with the consequences of Frankenstein's actions.
Speaking of which, Victor's actions often baffled me (for example, when he turned his back on the monster without trying to find out where he went and without considering what he might have unleashed on the world).

I saw a theatre production of The Phantom of the Opera a few nights ago and I couldn't help but make comparisons between the Phantom and Frankenstein's monster. Both are shunned by the people who created them, and by society as a whole, through no fault of their own. They yearn to be loved by good people but ultimately their unhappiness consumes them and they turn to a life of violence in the misguided hope of getting what they want. I found it interesting that the people who rejected them were good people, but they ultimately suffered greatly because they were unable or unwilling to look beyond the surface of what they were faced with.

They are both truly tragic tales and I found them to be really heart-rending. Some of what Frankenstein's monster said really struck a chord with me, and I sympathsised with him a great deal (well, until he became violent). Very, very highly recommended.

BTT: What is Reading, Fundamentally?

2008-06-04T15:35:00.006+10:00

(From 29 May 2008): What is reading, anyway? Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? Are they all reading? Only some of them? What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading” — why? If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance.
The dictionary defines 'reading' as: 'the action or skill of reading written or printed matter silently or aloud'. I suppose this would disregard other forms of storytelling, such as audiobooks etc, but in this technological age, I am inclined to count it as a form of reading.

If I personally listened to an audio book, I would add it to my 'reading for 2008' list as a book that I had read, but I would have to add somewhere that it was an audiobook, because there's something almost a little fraudulent in saying you've 'read' a book when you actually listened to it. I don't think I could ever really consider it 'read' until I had read it in printed form. But that's just me. I have no problem with other people saying they've 'read' it and leaving it at that.

I've tried listening to audiobooks in the past, but I find it very difficult to concentrate. If I go for a walk, I'll be focusing on things around me and then realise I've missed a good portion of a chapter or two. It's too difficult to go back and find where I was up to, so I usually just give up. Ideally, I would have to listen to an audiobook just sitting down, and not doing anything else - which, to me, defeats the purpose of an audiobook (namely, to listen to a book while getting something else done at the same time!)

As for comics, graphic novels etc, of course it's reading! I read ebooks ocassionally and have absolutely no problem counting them as books. It's still printed matter - it just exists electronically rather than in hard copy.

Tag! I'm It!

2008-06-02T16:11:00.004+10:00

I've been tagged by Sarah over at Crescent Moon Reviews (lovely name for a blog!)

Here are my answers:

1. Who is your all-time favourite author, and why?
It would probably have to be Jane Austen. I think she writes the most beautiful prose and lovely stories. I really get sucked in by the romance of each one, even though they do seem to follow the same basic plotline. This may change over time though, as there are several other authors I greatly admire (such as Vladimir Nabokov) but of whose work I may only have read one so far. Perhaps I need to do a little more reading before I establish my favourite author.

2. Who was your first favourite author, and why? Do you still consider him or her among your favorites?
Ann M Martin, author of The Babysitter's Club series. I read those books over and over and over again when I was young. I envied all of their adventures and their close friendships with each other. I still have all of my books, which probably number around 150, although that's not all of the books in the series. I did eventually grow out of them, but if I see the books going cheaply one day, I might buy up the rest to complete my series.

I kind of wish I had a better answer, but I never read the 'classic' children's books when I was young, such as LM Montgomery's Anne... series and Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, etc.

I did (and still do) very much love Roald Dahl, and I also read his books many times over. He had enough of an impact on me that I can still remember the day he died. I have an image of myself walking to the bookcase in my classroom in primary school. I think I probably chose one of his books to read that day.

3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favourite authors, and why?
Probably Truman Capote. I've read a couple of his works this year and been blown away by them.

4. If someone asked you who your favourite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection?
Jane Austen, Truman Capote, John Marsden (Australian writer of young adult fiction) and Roald Dahl pop into my mind straight away.

On further reflection, I would probably add Arthur C Clarke, Charlotte Bronte, John Banville, Vladimir Nabokov, Jonathan Wylie, JK Rowling, Harper Lee, Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, Hunter S Thompson, Alexandre Dumas, Anthony Burgess, Ken Kesey, LM Montgomery, John Wyndham, Jack Kerouac, Bill Bryson...good lord! I better stop there I think!

5. Tagged
Er, I dunno. Tag yourself if you want to take part!

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

2008-05-30T14:08:00.002+10:00

Rating: 7/10

Published: 1927
Number of pages: 127

Started: 21 May 2008
Finished: 23 May 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
An ancient bridge collapses over a gorge in Peru, hurling five people into the abyss. It seems a meaningless human tragedy. But one witness, a Franciscan monk, believes the deaths might not be as random as they appear.

Convinced that the disaster is a punishment sent from Heaven, the monk sets out to discover all he can about the travellers. The five strangers were connected in some way, he thinks. There must be a purpose behind their deaths.

But are their lost lives the result of sin?...Or of love?

Comments (may include spoiler):
The story is a philosophical look at why bad things happen to people. I suppose we've all wondered at one time or another why bad things happen to other people while we escape unscathed. I like that the questions posed were never really answered. It was left up to the reader to put the pieces together and to decide what it all meant, if indeed it meant anything.

An interesting story. I didn't love it, but there's nothing I didn't like about it really. It was just a bit...meh. As in other reviews I've read, I think the book suffers a little from detachment. The characters are given thorough and interesting backstories but I never really felt close to them. That said, there were some lovely quotes on human nature and love, and I liked the interconnectedness of the characters and their lives. A good read, and nice and short. Recommended.

BTT: Books vs Movies

2008-05-30T13:52:00.003+10:00

(From 22 May 2008): Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?
I far prefer reading a book before watching the movie adaptation. In fact, I go out of my way to avoid watching a movie if I ever plan on reading the book (it hasn't always been this way though).

The reason I prefer to read the book first is so I can form my own ideas and pictures of the characters. Of course, this can lead to problems when I eventually see the movie - the characters won't necessarily be as I imagined, and I can't help but be irritated by the way the movie gets changed from the book (or things get left out), but overall, I'm happier doing it this way. I understand that a movie must be adapted a little, but honestly, quite often the changes are completely unnecessary.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

2008-05-29T14:00:00.002+10:00

Rating: 9/10

Published: 1911
Number of pages: 253

Started: 15 May 2008
Finished: 20 May 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Poor Mary! She was a forlorn, unwanted, disagreeable child when, after cholera had carried off her nurse and both parents in one day, she was brought from India to live at the great lonely house (most of it shut up) on the bleak Yorkshire moors. Wandering in the gardens, she found one that was walled in. There seemed no way to get inside it - except as the robin flew, over the wall. How she got inside and what happened to her there is the sort of magic that can still happen.

Comments:
The Secret Garden is a magical, charming story - the type that stays with you for life. The spoilt Mary and Colin, under the watchful, mature eye of Dickon, grow and become more healthy as the garden grows and becomes more healthy. They learn to love and open up their hearts to others. A wonderful story (and a lame review that does no justice to it ;) ).

BTT: Manual Labour (Redux)

2008-05-29T11:51:00.003+10:00

(From 15 May 2008): Scenario: You’ve just bought some complicated gadget home . . . do you read the accompanying documentation? Or not? Do you ever read manuals? How-to books? Self-help guides? Anything at all?
Depends on the gadget. If it's a digital camera I'll have a read through to figure out all the menus and options. If it's a TV or DVD player I'll use it to help program channels. I don't always read them cover to cover - I tend to just use the bits I need, but I always keep the instructions for future reference.

I have a few Complete Idiot's Guides - on Wicca & Witchcraft, Yoga and Astronomy. Despite the unfortunate titles and the seemingly formulaic set-up of the books, I've found them very useful and informative (well, I've only read W&W all the way through).

I think the only self-help book I have is probably Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...And it's All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson. I've read it once and liked some of the ideas, but it seemed very repetitive in places. I think it did help me at the time. I was a more stressed driver than I wanted to be, and virtually on the first page there was info that helped me with that. I now don't give a stuff (usually) when other people are morons on the road :)

I know I have some other 'new-age' books, such as James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy (and follow-ups) but I don't know that they come under the self-help banner.

BTT: Manual Labour

2008-05-28T10:44:00.006+10:00

(From 8 May 2008): Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?
Well, I don't read them straight through but I do love browsing through them from time to time (usually only when I'm looking up something specific).

At home I have a large 3rd edition Macquarie Dictionary with the accompanying Macquarie Thesaurus, and I have the Australian Government Publishing Services (AGPS) Style Manual. I bought all of them for a course I was doing in proofreading and editing, but we also have copies of the Style Manual at work. I also have the wonderful Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. I've eyed off various other dictionaries (how I would love one of those huge etymological tomes!) and grammar books over time but haven't bought any more.

Also at work I have a couple of older grammar books that I rescued from certain destruction. I keep meaning to have a look at them to see whether they're actually relevant to my job, but...you know...work gets in the way. Lessee...one is called Choosing Your Mark: A Guide to Good Expression and Punctuation, and the other is called Using Grammar in Your Prose - both by Dr George Stern.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

2008-05-27T09:44:00.005+10:00

Good article on the '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die' by Peter Boxall.

I agree that the book is lacking in a lot of areas while overdoing others. Even I, massive Jane Austen fan that I am, don't really think it's necessary to include all of her novels.

Of course, these lists are completely arbitrary. No-one is ever going to be satisfied with such lists unless they've created them themselves (and possibly not even then). I still always enjoy looking at them though - maybe it'll introduce me to an author I would otherwise never have noticed.

So far I've read 52 books from the list (a measly 5.19%), with a further 104 books on my TBR pile (either hard copies or ebooks), and another 114 on my wishlist. That only adds up to about 27%, which is fine by me. Despite creating a 1001 Books Challenge for 2008, I have absolutely no intention of ever trying to complete this list. As with all of these lists, the interest for me is in the novelty of it. I like to count up my numbers and feel pride (or, more often, disgust) at the how many I've read.

Incidentally, Arukiyomi's website contains a spreadsheet that you can download containing a complete listing of the 1001 books. It's set up in such a way that you can keep count of what you've read (hence me being able to give a percentage). I've tweaked it a little to customise it for my own needs.

Arukiyomi also has great book reviews of the 1001 books, which I've been neglecting for about a year. Looks like I have a bit of catching up to do.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

2008-05-26T15:04:00.003+10:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 1814
Number of pages: 492

Started: 3 May 2008
Finished: 14 May 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Fanny Price has always felt like an outsider. She was adopted by her uncle as a child and now lives in luxury at Mansfield Park, but doesn't fit in somehow. Shyer and much sweeter than the glamorous cousins she has grown up with, she feels she can only stand by and watch from the sidelines, never living her own life.

Fanny won't admit - even to herself - who she really loves. Her uncle conducts the search for a husband as if it were a business deal, and when the time for Fanny to marry comes, will she be handed over on a handshake? Or will she have the strength to make her own mistakes - and finally find true happiness?

Comments:
Another brilliant offering from Jane Austen, although I have to say that it's probably my least favourite of the four I have read so far. I found all of the characters hard to sympathise with, although I did like Fanny. I can understand why people would think she is a weak character and dislike her because of it, but she reminds me quite a lot of myself, and I don't necessarily see myself as weak - I can probably understand her motives and feelings a bit better.

As usual, Austen's writing is beautifully lyrical throughout the book, and interspersed with subtle humour and irony. Another thing I keep forgetting with her books is that everything gets resolved in the last few pages, and they're usually rapped up very quickly and with little dialogue. Sometimes it's a little disappointing and you wish she would give as much time and care to the end of the book as she did to the rest.

Nevertheless, a brilliant read and highly recommended.

Recently Acquired Book

2008-05-26T15:02:00.003+10:00

I bought Wicked by Gregory Maguire the other. It's a gorgeous hardback book with green-edged pages. You don't see that every day!

The Broadway musical version is coming to Australia soon, so I'll probably bump this one up the list so I can read it before I see the show.

My, I've been very slack with my blogging this month, partly because I've been reading so slowly. A few book reviews to follow in the next couple of days.

Skydiving Rocks! (No Book Content)

2008-05-16T16:02:00.001+10:00

I went skydiving today and it was FREAKING AWESOME!

I jumped on a train to Sydney at 5.40am where I met my friend and we got the bus to Wollongong just after 7am. We got there a bit late (partially my fault, partially not) and as we were in the first group to go, we put on our gear quick smart and got taken through what we would have to do.

The guys were absolutely lovely - very easygoing and reassuring. We took a 10 minute drive to the airport, climbed into a tiny plane and lined ourselves up. There we got strapped onto our instructors. My friend and I were at the front of the line as we were due to jump first.

We took a lovely 15 minute flight up and around Wollongong and climbed to 14,000 feet (over 4 kilometres!) Again, the guys were lovely. Mine kept asking me how I was going and giving me pointers for keeping calm. He even cleaned my goggles for me before I put them on.

Next thing I know, the door is open and my friend is perched in the doorway, only to be gone a split second later. Before I even knew what was happening, I was in the doorway as well and my instructor was reminding me to cross my arms in front of my chest. Next thing, we're out! It was a slightly cloudy day which I think made it all the more terrifying because we just fell into greyness for a few seconds. Then the landscape opened up and I uncrossed my arms and just hurtled towards earth. I got a bit teary because it was such an overwhelming experience.

After about a minute of freefall, he pulled the parachute and there was a jolt. Then we cruised down and took in the scenery, which was absolutely stunning - beaches, ocean, mountains, bush, cities etc. He asked me before we left if I wanted a wild ride or a tranquil one and I said 'tranquil', but he had other ideas. He kept spinning us around in circles, which was thrilling, but not so great afterwards because I was a bit crook for a couple of hours. I also got to 'steer' a little bit.

You seem to lose all strength when you're in the air; on the ground he showed me how to pull my legs up to keep them out of the way when we landed, but it's a very different story in the air - I could barely move my legs at all! Luckily, when it came to the crunch, I was able to keep 'em out of the way.

Now, I'm not a confident or brave person, but somehow I managed to escape the worst of the nerves and didn't actually get scared at all until after we'd jumped. All in all, a terrific day, and if you have ever wondered what it would be like to jump out of a plane, DO IT! I promise it's not as terrifying as you might think! (Well, not after the first few seconds...)

Recently Acquired Books and Books Added to Wish List

2008-05-13T12:14:00.001+10:00

I recently bought Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Revisited. It's a collection of essays written almost 30 years after he published Brave New World. He looks at the predictions he made back in 1932 and compares how society has changed in the intervening years.

Also added more books to my wish list:

John Brunner: The Jagged Orbit
John Brunner: The Sheep Look Up
John Brunner: The Shockwave Rider
John Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar
Harry Harrison: Make Room! Make Room!
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Tom Wolfe: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Breath by Tim Winton

2008-05-02T12:51:00.002+10:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 2008
Number of pages: 216

Started: 29 April 2008
Finished: 1 May 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
When paramedic Bruce Pike arrives too late to save a boy found hanged in his bedroom he senses immediately that this lonely death is an accident.

Pike knows the difference between suicide and misadventure. He understands only too well the forces that can propel a kid toward oblivion. Not just because he's an ambulance-man but because of the life he's lived, the boy he once was, addicted to extremes, flirting with death, pushing every boundary in the struggle to be extraordinary, barely knowing where or how to stop.

So begins a story about the damage you do to yourself when you're young and think you're immortal.

Comments:
Breath is a coming-of-age story about the teenaged 'Pikelet', who befriends the reckless 'Loonie' and their surfing mentor 'Sando'. Pikelet and Loonie develop a friendly rivalry and push themselves and each other to their physical and mental limits. Under Sando's watchful eye, they gradually become more daring and take on bigger and more dangerous waves.

While I sometimes found myself getting a little impatient with all of the surfing descriptions, I also got more and more absorbed, to the point where I imagined that I felt a little short of breath at the same time that Pikelet was struggling for breath after getting dumped by a huge wave. The vivid descriptions really enabled me to be there, cresting the waves right alongside Pikelet.

As the story goes along, it gets more and more depressing as Pikelet gets in over his head. Ultimately it's a story of triumph, but there's always an underlying current of sadness that permeates throughout the entire book and doesn't make for a particularly happy read, albeit it's a very good read.

This isn't usually the type of book I would go for, but it's by one of Australia's most critically-acclaimed authors and I've been wanting to read his work for a while. I'm looking forward to more of it.

Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park

2008-05-02T08:51:00.002+10:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 1981
Number of pages: 196

Started: 27 April 2008
Finished: 29 April 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
The game is called Beatie Bow and the children play it for the thrill of scaring themselves. But when Abigail is drawn in, the game is quickly transformed into an extraordinary, sometimes horrifying, adventure as she finds herself transported to a place that is foreign yet strangely familiar.

Comments:
Abigail is an insightful, although not always likeable, teenager who lives in The Rocks, an historic area located next to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. While chasing a young girl through the maze and alleys of The Rocks, Abigail finds herself transported back in time over 100 years, to a time when poverty and illness were widespread, and lives were very different. She is taken in by a family and discovers that she must help them to preserve The Gift.

The story is well-written and Victorian-era Sydney is portrayed very realistically (presumably, I wouldn't actually know having never lived in that time myself!). What I mean to say is, The Rocks are really brought to life. I know the area a bit, which is always an asset when reading. It's a very interesting place and I'd love to go and retrace Abigail's steps through the labyrinth that is The Rocks.

I last read this book when I was in primary school, some 15 years ago at least, and I had very vague recollections of it. I think it's still a common text in most primary schools, and long may it remain that way!

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis

2008-04-30T11:44:00.003+10:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 1949
Number of pages: 89

Started: 25 April 2008
Finished: 27 April 2008

Summary (taken from Dymocks website):
When Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are sent to stay with a kind professor who lives in the country, they can hardly imagine the extraordinary adventure that awaits them. It all begins one rainy summer day when the children explore the professor's rambling old house. When they come across a room with an old wardrobe in the corner, Lucy immediately opens the door and gets inside. To her amazement, she suddenly finds herself standing in the clearing of a wood on a winter afternoon, with snowflakes falling through the air. Lucy has found Narnia, a magical land of fauns and centaurs, nymphs and talking animals - and of the beautiful but evil White Witch, who has held the country in eternal winter for a hundred years.

Comments:
I'm told by a childhood friend that we both read this story in primary school but I had no recollection of it so I was looking forward to reading it (again). I wish I had paid more attention and read the entire Chronicles of Narnia when I was a young'un so perhaps I could experience the magic a bit better. Reading the story as an adult is fun, and it was a good read, but I feel I was missing something that can only be experienced by a child.

I enjoyed the story for what is was, and didn't notice too much of the religious symbolism until afterwards, when I'd stopped to think about it and read other reviews. This is my favourite way to approach a story, especially for the first time. If I want to delve deeper into the symbolism I'll have a re-read at a later date.

Overall, a very pleasant read and I look forward to reading the rest of the Chronicles.

The Garden of Rama by Arthur C Clarke & Gentry Lee

2008-04-29T16:15:00.003+10:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 1991
Number of pages: 593

Started: 17 April 2008
Finished: 25 April 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
In the year 2130 a mysterious spaceship, Rama, arrived in the solar system. It was huge - big enough to contain a city and a sea - and empty, apparently abandoned. By the time Rama departed for its next, unknown, destination many wonders had been uncovered, but few mysteries solved. Only one thing was clear: everything the enigmatic builders of Rama did, they did in threes.

Eighty years later the second alien craft arrived in the solar system. This time, Earth had been waiting. But all the years of preparation were not enough to unlock the Raman enigma.

Now Rama II is on its way out of the solar system. Aboard it are three humans, two men and a woman, left behind when the expedition departed. Ahead of them lies the unknown, a voyage no human has ever experienced. And at the end of it - and who could tell how many years away that might be? - may lie the truth about Rama...

Comments:
The Garden of Rama is the third book in the Rama series and is the most monumental work yet. I thought it was a great read and it doesn't suffer from a lack of characterisation as many other science fiction novels do. It's largely because of this that you can tell it is more heavily influenced by Gentry Lee than Arthur C Clarke. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. While it has the characterisation, it also lacks a little in Arthur C Clarke's sheer brilliance.

The story spans many years and many adventures and overall is a rollicking good, light read. It was particularly interesting to see how the humans reacted to their new environment onboard Rama and what they made of their chance to begin a new civilisation and avoid the mistakes that mankind has made on Earth. I can't wait to read the final book, Rama Revealed, to find out how it ends.

BTT: Springing

2008-04-29T10:42:00.004+10:00

Do your reading habits change in the Spring? Do you read gardening books? Even if you don’t have a garden? More light fiction than during the Winter? Less? Travel books? Light paperbacks you can stick in a knapsack? Or do you pretty much read the same kinds of things in the Spring as you do the rest of the year?
My reading tastes don't change according to the weather or time of year. I try to spread my reading out over genres and time periods: a long classic here, a shorter children's novel there etc.

I think from now on I'll just answer BTT questions that appeal to me. My answers have been getting duller by the week ;)

BTT: Vocabulary

2008-04-22T14:42:00.003+10:00

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?
I usually get the general gist of it by reading the surrounding text, but if I'm in my bedroom with my dictionary close by I'll pick it up and search for it. Even if I pretty much know what it means, I sometimes like to look a word up to confirm it and to see 'exactly' what the dictionary says. If I'm reading at work I'll use my dictionary widget to look it up.

Most recently I looked up 'foppery' after reading it in A Picture of Dorian Gray. It's my new favourite word and one that can be used to sum up the entire novel. Don'tcha just love words?

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

2008-04-21T09:12:00.002+10:00

Rating: 9/10

Published: 1890
Number of pages: 200

Started: 13 April 2008
Finished: 17 April 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Dorian is a good-natured young man until he discovers the power of his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deep into a frivolous, glamourous world of selfish luxury, he apparently remains physically unchanged by the stresses of his corrupt lifestyle and untouched by age. But up in his attic, hidden behind a curtain, his portrait tells a different story...

Comments:
A wonderfully dark and Gothic novel. Dorian starts the story as a young, innocent man who is more or less unconcerned by his extraordinary beauty. Then he meets Lord Henry, who derives great pleasure in imparting his theories on aestheticism to the impressionable young man. Dorian drinks it all in and begins a life of debauchery and depravity, which leads to tragedy for everyone he comes in contact with.

The Picture of Dorian Gray misses out on a perfect 10 only because I found Lord Henry's ramblings a little hard-going at times. He's a very quotable man (or should I say, Oscar Wilde is a very quotable man), not that I agreed with much of what he said. It took me a while to get into the book, but once the story picked up, it flew along. Has one of the best endings to a story that I have ever read.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

2008-04-20T11:48:00.001+10:00

Rating: 9/10

Published: 2003
Number of pages: 436

Started: 6 April 2008
Finished: 12 April 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Pigs might not fly but they are strangely altered. So, for that matter, are wolves and racoons. A man, once called Jimmy, now calls himself Snowman and lives in a tree, wrapped in old bed sheets. The voice of Oryx, the woman he loved, teasingly haunts him. And the green-eyed Children of Crake are, for some reason, his responsibility.

Comments:
A very enjoyable, yet disturbing, read that contains all the elements that earmark a terrific piece of dystopian literature. It brings to mind some of the greats (Huxley, Orwell) and is a credible take on a world in the near future in which science has gone too far. Any novel that makes you despair for the future of mankind has done a pretty good job, in my opinion.

The story begins with Snowman (aka Jimmy) who may be the last living person on earth (apart from the Crakers). The story jumps between past and present as Atwood slowly unveils the circumstances and events leading up to Jimmy's current situation. Oryx and Crake are mythologised by the Crakers and revered as gods, but the reader is privy to their all-to-human faults.

Margaret Atwood has clearly done a lot of research for this novel, and it shows. Along with the knowledge of genetic engineering, she has done a terrific job of bringing her characters to life. The more I think about this book, the more I realise what an incredible job Atwood did with it. Highly recommended.

BTT: Writing Challenge

2008-04-14T10:07:00.006+10:00

(From 10 April 2008): Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 123. What is the first sentence on the page? The last sentence on the page? Now . . . connect them together….
Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals.
...
After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, and gave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as well as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where they had more than once spent the winter.

Trust me to pick the two longest sentences out there! I think I'm supposed to write something of my own in between to connect them, but I really can't be bothered.

Bookish Articles

2008-04-10T14:42:00.006+10:00

Interesting article from the NY Times about the roles that books play in our relationships.

Long live the semi-colon! The world would be a poorer place without them. I do my part in keeping them alive when I'm proofreading papers.

And here's an article about a previously unpublished (and incomplete) manuscript by Alexandre Dumas (author of the brilliant The Count of Monte Cristo) called The Last Cavalier. It was completed by a French scholar named Claude Schopp and published in France; it became an instant best-seller. I think it'll be published in English some time this year. If you follow the links, the first 6 chapters have been posted online. I'll look forward to reading this when it's published in full!

And here's a cute Rights of the Reader poster, illustrated by Quentin Blake. I've printed it out and hung it on my desk at work. I'm such a nerd :)

The Third Man & The Fallen Idol by Graham Greene

2008-04-09T14:44:00.001+10:00

Rating: 9/10

Published: 1950
Number of pages: 137

Started: 4 April 2008
Finished: 5 April 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
The Third Man is Graham Greene's brilliant recreation of post-War Vienna, a 'smashed dreary city' occupied by the four Allied powers. Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry has died in suspicious circumstances, and the police are closing in on his associates...

The Fallen Idol is the chilling story of a small boy caught up in the games that adults play. Left in the care of the butler and his wife whilst his parents go on a fortnight's holiday, Philip realises too late the danger of lies and deceit. But the truth is even deadlier.

Comments:
I had been after this book for a long time so I could see how it matched up to my favourite movie, and I wasn't disappointed. The film was, for the most part, very true to the book. The only slight difference was to the ending, of which I prefer the movie version.

The book and movie are now so intrinsically linked in my mind that I think any attempt at a review of the book will just turn into a review of the movie. :grin: Needless to say, the book is terrific and (dare I say it?) the movie is perhaps even better. But then, how could it fail with Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton and Alida Valli being directed by the brilliant Carol Reed?

Both book and movie are very highly recommended. Usually I would recommend reading the book first, but in this instance I think seeing the movie first is a better idea because there are a few brilliant scenes that pack more of a punch on screen than on a page.

As for the short story called The Fallen Idol, I thought Graham Greene did a great job of building up the tension - it was enjoyable, if somewhat disturbing. It'd be interesting to see the film version of this - it's such a short story that I think they would have to flesh it out quite a bit for a movie.

BTT: Lit-Ra-Chur

2008-04-09T12:50:00.003+10:00

(From 3 April 2008): When somebody mentions “literature,” what’s the first thing you think of? (Dickens? Tolstoy? Shakespeare?) Do you read “literature” (however you define it) for pleasure? Or is it something that you read only when you must?
I probably do tend to think of it as the classics and the authors who wrote them, although I acknowledge that it's a term that can refer to anything really (trashy as it may be). If I'm going to define it as the 'classics', then I certainly do read it for pleasure. I haven't had to read any particular book since I left school.

The Book of Evidence by John Banville

2008-04-08T09:42:00.001+10:00

Rating: 10/10

Published: 1989
Number of pages: 220

Started: 26 March 2008
Finished: 3 April 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Freddie Montgomery has committed two crimes. He stole a small Dutch master from a wealthy family friend, and he murdered a chambermaid who caught him in the act.

He has little to say about the dead girl. He killed her, he says, because he was physically capable of doing so. It made perfect sense to smash her head in with a hammer. What he cannot understand, and would desperately like to know, is why he was so moved by an unattributed portrait of a middle-aged woman that he felt compelled to steal it...

Comments:
I thought this was a brilliant novel. Banville has a knack for getting into a character's mind and imparting all sorts of truths about human nature in the process. I can see why he has been compared to Vladimir Nabokov, and it also reminded me of Crime and Punishment in some ways. John Banville has said that he tries to give his prose 'the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has', and I think he succeeds admirably.

Freddie Montgomery tells his story in the form of a written confession to a courtroom. He intersperses tales of his childhood with his current situation, giving the reader an insight into his personality and reasoning behind his decisions. It's a little disturbing and also a little amusing in places.

Often I feel a little let down after reading 'modern' literature. They never seem to measure up to older 'classics'. Happily, this is not the case with John Banville and I will certainly be reading more of his work in the future. I can already hear 'The Sea' calling to me from my TBR pile.

Very highly recommended.

Recently Acquired Books and Books Added to Wish List

2008-04-07T15:08:00.002+10:00

I bought the following today:

Margaret Atwood: Cat's Eye
John Banville: Athena
John Banville: Doctor Copernicus
John Banville: Kepler
John Banville: Mephisto
Susanna Clarke: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
David Mitchell: Black Swan Green

And added a couple more to my wish list:

Alexandre Dumas: The Last Cavalier
Alexandre Dumas: The Three Musketeers
Jack Kerouac: On the Road (The Original Scroll)

BTT: The End and Cover-up

2008-04-07T09:20:00.006+10:00

(From 20 March 2008): You’ve just reached the end of a book . . . what do you do now? Savor and muse over the book? Dive right into the next one? Go take the dog for a walk, the kids to the park, before even thinking about the next book you’re going to read? What?
Depends on the time of day that I finish the book. If it's early, and I have another book on standby, I'll jump straight into the next one (time waits for no-one!). If the ending has packed a powerful punch, I might ponder it for a minute or two, but generally I don't give it much thought until a few days later when I sit down to write the review.

(From 27 March 2008): While acknowledging that we can’t judge books by their covers, how much does the design of a book affect your reading enjoyment? Hardcover vs. softcover? Trade paperback vs. mass market paperback? Font? Illustrations?
It doesn't affect my reading enjoyment at all. Sure, I may prefer certain editions of books over others, but ultimately it doesn't affect the way I read so I don't pay very close attention to the way the book looks.

I prefer softcovers, but only because they're easier to handle and carry around. Judging by my bookshelves, I prefer mass market paperbacks to trade paperbacks - I guess they're smaller and easier to store (also cheaper). Font doesn't bother me, so long as it's readable. Not sure if illustrations refer to those internally or externally, but I like 'em either way.

So there are my two thrilling answers to a couple of BTTs. I hope I haven't bored you to death (because I'm just about asleep at my keyboard).

What Will Life be Like in the Year 2008?

2008-04-02T15:48:00.006+11:00

I found an interesting blog containing scans of an article written by James R Berry in 1968 for Mechanix Illustrated. It contains his predictions for 40 years into the future, which would make it...right about now (funk soul brother). Check it out (now):

40 Years in the Future

Some predictions are eerily true (GPS, internet) while others are a bit off the mark. I love the accompanying illustrations. Very Jetsons-esque. Man, I love that cartoon! I have the first season on DVD but I really want that episode that does a take on Dickens' A Christmas Carol. When, oh when, are we going to be able to fly to work?

The dome in the pic also reminds me a little of Arthur C Clarke's 1956 The City and the Stars, one of my fave sci-fi novels, in which the city of Diaspar is completely enclosed in a huge dome. As far as the residents know (not that they care or give it much thought), they are the only humans left on earth. A terrific read. I think it has dystopian elements to it as well - I'm not quite sure why it isn't on Wikipedia's giant list of dystopian literature. It's certainly more worthy of the title than some of the others they've got on there! That books is well overdue for another re-read.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

2008-04-01T14:29:00.001+11:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 1962
Number of pages: 217

Started: 28 March 2008
Finished: 30 March 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Charles goes searching for his lost father through 'a wrinkle in time' with his sister Meg and friend Calvin. They find themselves on an evil planet, where all life is ruled by a huge, pulsating brain known as IT.

The story of their journey through a myriad of dangers is now established as one of the most compelling fantasy classics of our time.

Comments:
A charming book and utterly enjoyable. As far as I was aware, this was the first time I'd read [i]A Wrinkle in Time[i] and yet I had a strange moment, as the children were first walking along the streets of Camazotz, when I realised that it was all sounding very familiar - I'd read this book before! It was such a strong feeling that I'm sure it must be true, in which case I'm glad I'd forgotten the plot as it gave me a chance to read and appreciate the story anew.

I loved all of the characters, particularly Charles Wallace. A lot of questions were left unanswered, but I hope that if and when I read the rest of the series these might be resolved. A very pleasant read.

Bookshelf Etiquette

2008-03-31T10:56:00.004+11:00

Because I'm lazy and have no desire to trawl the internet for interesting articles, I pinch them from other blogs instead. I'm at least kind enough to give credit where it's due, so thanks to Chris from Book-a-Rama for the following entertaining links.

So, I've been reading some articles concerning 'bookshelf etiquette'. The original article was posted in a Time blog by Matt Selman and be found here. He raises some interesting points and rules that he has devised, such as: 'It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it.'

Thankfully I don't agree with this or I would have quite a lot of empty shelves and literally hundreds of books hidden away, never to be seen by the public or gazed upon with fondness by myself. I'm a compulsive book-buyer and buy books way faster than I can read them (so far this year I've read 16 books and bought 41 more - that means for every book I read, I add at least 2.5 more to my TBR pile).

I don't think there's any problem displaying books on your shelves that you've yet to read, although it would be a different story if the you had no intention of ever reading them (like if you're so stupid you buy books just to try to make yourself look smart/well-read, in which you'll be found out sooner or later).

I fully intend to read all of my books one day and I love sitting and looking at them all - thinking of the wondrous tales therein that I've yet to discover (yes I'm aware that I sound like a nutter). One day soon I'll be buying a place of my own and once I have a mortgage I won't be able to go out and buy as many books as I do now. So the way I see it is that I'm stockpiling reading material for future years. No reading drought for me!

There's a couple of other excellent blog entries regarding the original blog posting, which can be found here and here. The comments on both are very interesting as well.

It's nice to know I'm not the only person who has a problem with buying a lot of books :)

Recently Acquired Books

2008-03-30T17:30:00.001+11:00

Cliver Barker: Weaveworld
Roald Dahl: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
HV Evatt: Rum Rebellion
George Grossmith: Diary of a Nobody (I read an ebook version of this last year and found a lovely illustrated version)
Banjo Paterson: The Man from Snowy River

BTT: Playing Editor

2008-03-28T11:37:00.006+11:00

(From 13 March 2008): How about a chance to play editor-in-chief? Fill in the blanks:____ would have been a much better book if ____.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho would have been a much better book if the writing style wasn't so plain and boring, and if the 'treasure' at the end of the story wasn't so damn obvious and inappropriate for the main character.

I could go on and on about that book, but I won't.

A Fortunate Life by AB Facey

2008-03-27T11:09:00.002+11:00

Rating: 9/10

Published: 1981
Number of pages: 326

Started: 22 March 2008
Finished: 26 March 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Bert Facey sees himself as an ordinary man, but his remarkable story reveals a winner against impossible odds. At eight, his 'childhood' ended and he went out to work - clearing, ploughing, fencing, droving, sinking dams, boxing with a travelling troupe. He survived Gallipoli to become a farmer, but was forced to leave the land during the Depression.

Comments:
A Fortunate Life is the amazing true story of the life of Albert Facey, covering his life from his birth in 1894 to around 1976, six years before he died. Bert had little schooling and mostly taught himself to read and write. He began keeping notes about his life and eventually compiled them chronologically into this book at the urging of his family.

The writing is not at all flowery or lyrical - Facey tells the story straight up and betrays little emotion throughout, only occasionally mentioning his loneliness in the bush, his terror during the war, and his deep love for his wife and children. The story is so chock-full of events that, had overly descriptive language been used, the impact of his story would have been lessened.

A Fortunate Life moves along at a cracking pace and is a remarkable story of endurance and humbleness in the face of incredible hardship. The book gives a wonderful view of how life was lived in Australia during this time period. Highly recommended.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

2008-03-26T09:25:00.004+11:00

Rating: 6/10

Published: 1966
Number of pages: 177

Started: 18 March 2008
Finished: 22 March 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Jean Rhys' late literary masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, was inspired by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s.

Born into an oppressive colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage disturbing rumours begin to circulate, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.

Comments:
Nothing in this story particularly appealed to me. I found it very hard to identify with any of the characters or feel any sympathy for them. I don't think Rochester behaved or spoke in any way that was reminiscent of his character in Jane Eyre, so I struggled to make the connection between the two stories, although it improved slightly at the end, when the two books were overlapping.

However, I did find it interesting when taken in a historical context, having previously known nothing about colonial Jamaica or the Creoles and emancipated slaves who lived and suffered there. The descriptions of Coulibris and the surrounding countryside were evocative and quite beautiful, but that's about where my praise ends I'm afraid.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

2008-03-26T09:01:00.002+11:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 2001
Number of pages: 373

Started: 11 March 2008
Finished: 18 March 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or boyfriend.

There is another 1985, where London's criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave's Mr Big.

Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.

Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn't easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.

Perhaps today just isn't going to be Thursday's day. Join her on a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself. Fiction will never be the same again...

Comments:
An interesting concept and quite well done. I'm sure there are probably a lot of little jokes that I wasn't 'getting', but I think on re-reading it I'd probably pick up a bit more. The story was cliched (as it's meant to be, I'm sure), but it didn't bother me, which was strange, because I when the read the same sort of cliched detective story in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (The Luisa Rey Mystery), I just found it highly irritating.

It's certainly a gem of a book for a literary buff and contains a lot of intriguing little ideas and a quirky vision of the future. Not being much of an English history buff, there were some parts of the alternative history that I didn't quite get because I didn't know how that history had played out in our own time. The good thing about my ignorance is that books like these spur me on to research these events on the internet and thus learn while I'm enjoying the story.

Thursday Next is a great heroine and I can see a bit of myself in her, which is always nice. Having owned this book for so long and after seeing so many great reviews about it, I was glad not to be disappointed by it (as can often be the case when you go into a book with high expectations). I'm looking forward to continuing on with the series.

BTT: Heroes and Heroines

2008-03-25T12:29:00.004+11:00

(From 28 February 2008): Who is your favourite female lead character? And why?
My favourite female lead character is Ellie Linton, who appears in John Marsden's Tomorrow... series and also in the follow-up series, The Ellie Chronicles. Ellie more or less becomes the leader of her group of friends when Australia is invaded by another country. She's tough, ballsy and doesn't take crap from anyone. Her friends look to her for ideas and she often gets them out of life-threatening situations (she sometimes gets them into life-threatening situations as well, but part of why she's so great is because she's human and has faults). She's brave and doesn't shy away from doing the tough jobs. She's quite a role model for young women.

(From 6 March 2008): Who is your favourite male lead character? And why?
Mr Darcy . What a gorgeous guy (and I'm picturing Colin Firth as I say that, of course). Need I say more? The perfect man. I also quite like the bumbling Charles Pooter of George Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody, one of the funniest stories I've ever read. He is a classic character of literature.

Woohoo! I'm only 2 BTTs behind! There's hope for me yet.

Vale Arthur C Clarke

2008-03-19T12:04:00.006+11:00

Arthur C Clarke, one of the greatest science fiction writers the world will ever see, has passed away. Details of his life and works can be found at Wikipedia.

He has given the world a body of terrific work that will be valued forever. I have quite a few of them myself, including an absolutely wonderful collection of his short stories. I'm halfway through the Rama series and hoping to continue on with it this year. I also love the Space Odyssey series, and The City and the Stars has always been a personal favourite.

Clarke's works have always been very quotable. Here are some pearls of wisdom:

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering. "

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living."

"It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars."

"And because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars. They sowed and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed."

And here are Clarke's three laws of prediction:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

RIP Arthur C Clarke.

BTT: Two for the Price of One

2008-03-17T12:27:00.005+11:00

With only a few more BTTs to go before I finally catch up, I've decided to step up the pace and provide two in one (particularly because I don't have much to say on the first one!)

(From 14 February 2008): Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? Was the last book you read by the author so bad, you broke up with them and haven’t read their work since? Could they ever lure you back?
No, I can't say that I've ever given up on an author. I've certainly given up on authors after just one book (Paulo Coelho, I'm looking at you), but I've never given up on a favourite author. They've never let me down!

(From 21 February 2008): All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?
Hmm, both have their advantage and disadvantages. Hardbacks would probably last longer but are also heavier and more awkward to hold when reading. Paperbacks are more disposable (although I tend to look after mine pretty well) but they are also lighter and easier to hold.

Hardbacks are probably more likely to come in one size (height-wise) than paperbacks. Or are they? I'm not that familiar with them. But if so, they'd certainly look nicer on the shelves than a hodge-podge collection of different-sized paperbacks. I guess looks aren't that important though...I guess the answer is paperback!

Recently Acquired Books and Books Added to Wish List

2008-03-16T10:05:00.001+11:00

I bought the following books on Friday. There's a bookshop near my train station that sells new books very cheaply. It's a very addictive shop - every time I go in there lately I've come out with at least half a dozen books.

John Banville: The Sea
Alex Garland: The Beach
Henry James: What Maisie Knew
John Steinbeck: The Red Pony
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Thornton Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Unfortunately none of these books were on my mile-long wish list, but they've been in the back of mind for a while so it doesn't matter. I've also added a few more books to my wish list.

Kyril Bonfiglioli: The Mortdecai Trilogy
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World Revisited
Dorothy Parker: The Portable Dorothy Parker
David Sedaris: Naked

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

2008-03-13T15:13:00.004+11:00

Rating: 10/10

Published: 1847
Number of pages: 592

Started: 28 February 2008
Finished: 10 March 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Jane comes from nothing but is hungry for everything that life can offer her. She manages to survive her tragic childhood through sheer spirit and strength of character. And when she finds work as a governess in a mysterious mansion, it seems she has finally met her match in the darkly fascinating Mr Rochester.

But Thornfield Hall contains a shameful secret - one that could keep Jane and Rochester apart for ever. Can she choose between what is right, and her one chance of happiness?

Comments:
I had been looking forward to reading Jane Eyre for quite a long time, and I wasn't disappointed. It's a beautifully written novel with great characterisation. I loved all of the chapters regarding Jane's early childhood. I thought it did a great job of setting up her personality and background.

I loved the character of Jane and could identify with her quite a bit, which isn't something that happens to me very often. She's smart, headstrong and passionate, and her dialogue with Mr Rochester, in particular, makes for some enjoyable reading. I started getting a little bored when she went on her excursion to Morton, but once it got back on track at the end it was truly wonderful.

I'm fairly certain I saw a movie version of this many years ago at school but fortunately I didn't remember a thing about it. So as far as I was concerned I knew nothing of the story. I would love to see those closing scenes being played out, and I'd really like to track down the Orson Welles version of the film, seeing as he's one of my favourite actors.

Another Reading Meme

2008-03-07T14:05:00.004+11:00

I found this reading meme and thought I'd give it a go, seeing as it'll be a few more days before I can get through Jane Eyre and post my review.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?
Usually chick-lit books such as those by Janet Evanovich, Sophie Kinsella and Helen Fielding (although I have to admit that I've given in on Fielding and bought Bridget Jones' Diary).

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?
I'd have a few lads around to my place for dinner: Alex from A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Raoul Duke from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson, and Dean Moriarty from On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Let chaos reign! It would certainly be an interesting night!

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?
The Bible? Although from what I remember reading of it during my childhood days, there were some interesting parts in it. I really can't think of anything too boring. I'm sure there are plenty out there but as I don't make a habit of reading boring books, it's a bit difficult to know really...

Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it?
I can't recall ever pretending to have read a book.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book?
I don't think that's happened either :) I certainly buy doubles of books occasionally, because I can't remember what I've already got!

You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (If you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP.)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. One of the greatest books ever written and, of my personal favourites, the most likely that is to appeal to the broadest audience (and therefore have a greater chance of pleasing the VIP).

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?
Ooh, tough choice. On the one hand, I'd like to be able to read Russian so I can enjoy Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as they were meant to be enjoyed. However, there's also a lot of French literature that I'm looking forward to reading one day, by the likes of Emile Zola and Marcel Proust. Ultimately there's probably more French literature I'm interested in reading, so I'd have to go with that.

A mischievious fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will re-read once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?
It's a close call between To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Hmm, I'll go with To Kill a Mockingbird.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?
I've discovered the wonder of reading challenges. They're quite addictive: I'm doing 9 this year, although I haven't officially signed up for any on the various blogs. I'm just doing them on my own terms. Every time I read about a new one I want to take it up. They all sound so good! There are challenges celebrating author's birthdays, dead authors, 19th century women, etc.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead - let your imagination run free.
A good-sized room with high ceilings, but not so large that it becomes impersonal. It needs to be cosy, with a fireplace and lounges, armchairs, chaises etc - plenty of different seating to suit my different moods (all matching, of course). Large windows to allow plenty of natural light but also big enough to watch thunderstorms from - it will have a window seat, of course. And there'll be plenty of reading lamps on tables for atmosphere. The bookcases will stretch from the floor to the ceiling, and cover all the walls (except where the windows are!), with a ladder on tracks to get to the higher books.

As for the books themselves, I don't need anything fancy. Just my usual paperbacks, with the odd hardback thrown in. A mixture of new and second-hand books, with maybe a few autographed copies as well.

BTT: But, Enough About Books

2008-03-06T12:37:00.004+11:00

(From 7 February 2008): What else do you do with your leisure to pass the time?
I'm generally a homebody and don't like to go out much. I love staying home and watching DVDs and reading. I occasionally get stuck into doing mosaics. I usually have a specific project in mind, such as a table, and they end up taking months to do so I don't do them too often (plus the materials are expensive).

When I do venture outdoors I love bushwalking. Nothing beats spending a beautiful day in the Australian bush. I also love going for drives to small country towns or just driving for the sake of driving (in rural areas, never cities). And tracking down secondhand bookshops that I've never been to before.

I'm also in the SES (State Emergency Service). I joined about 6 months ago and I love it. It generally takes up 2-3 hours per week for training and I've spent quite a lot of time out at operations already (storm damage mostly). I've been learning heaps and met a great bunch of people. So despite being a homebody and not generally very sociable, the SES has turned that around for me a bit :)

Animal Farm by George Orwell

2008-03-03T15:03:00.002+11:00

Rating: 10/10

Published: 1945
Number of pages: 120

Started: 26 February 2008
Finished: 27 February 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
First published in 1945, Animal Farm has become the classic political fable of the twentieth century. Adding his own brand of poignancy and wit, George Orwell tells the story of a revolution among animals of a farm, and how idealism was betrayed by power, corruption and lies.

Comments:
This is probably the most technically brilliant novel I have ever read. It's not exactly a page-turner, but it is perfection (or as near it as you're going to get). The story is neither too long nor too short; there is not a single superfluous sentence in the entire novel.

Animal Farm is a political satire of Soviet socialism - the Rebellion of the farm animals against the humans represents (as far as I can understand it) the revolution of the Bolsheviks against the Russian government. The human owners are driven off the farm and the animals finally have their freedom. They determine to create a society in which all animals are equal and must work together in order to survive, but, of course, things start to fall apart and we learn that some animals are more equal than others. This story works on so many levels and really does a wonderful job in exploring the concepts of power and corruption. Very highly recommended.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

2008-03-03T15:00:00.001+11:00

Rating: 8/10

Published: 1999
Number of pages: 372

Started: 20 February 2008
Finished: 25 February 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Under the streets of London there's a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: neverwhere.

Comments:
A very light and enjoyable read, full of vivid and unique characters. The world underneath London is nicely portrayed and bears striking similarities to London Above. It loses points for the way in which Gaiman describes the characters in the exact same way time after time (for example, Door's eyes). For the life of me I cannot think of anything else to write, except to repeat that it was very enjoyable, and that I'll be seeking out more Neil Gaiman in the future.

BTT: Quirky

2008-02-27T12:11:00.006+11:00

(From 31 January 2008): Sometimes I find eccentric characters quirky and fun, other times I find them too unbelievable and annoying. What are some of the more outrageous characters you’ve read, and how do you feel about them?

The most outrageous characters I have ever read would have to be in Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Every single character is completely mad...and this is what makes the book so wonderful.

Having a quirky character in a novel can add a lot of interest to the story and there's more chance of such a character staying in the reader's mind long after they've finished the book. However, I think the author needs to be careful that they don't overdo it, otherwise the character will end up completely unbelievable, and the reader will become irritated by the 'try-hard' attempt by the author.

Banned Books Challenge

2008-02-25T14:26:00.008+11:00

COMPLETE!

In honour of Freedom to Read Week, I've decided to embark on one final challenge for 2008: a Banned Books Challenge (BB). I've based my choices on a list I found at a Canadian public library's website. It turns out that I already have quite a few of the books on my TBR pile, and a lot of them will also count for other challenges. I'm setting myself a goal of 5 books for the year.

BB reading in 2008: (currently reading)
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood
Madeleine L'Engle: A Wrinkle in Time
CS Lewis: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
George Orwell: Animal Farm
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

TBR books that qualify for the BB challenge:
Note: Books in italics have been read.
Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
Stephen King: IT
DH Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
Madeleine L'Engle: A Wrinkle in Time
CS Lewis: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Henry Miller: Tropic of Cancer
Boris Pasternak: Dr Zhivago
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: Don Quixote
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
John Steinbeck: East of Eden
John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Other BB books I'd like to own and read:
Note: Books in italics have been bought.
VC Andrews: Flowers in the Attic
William S Burroughs: Naked Lunch
Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
Ken Follett: Pillars of the Earth
Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner
Victor Hugo: Les Miserables
James Joyce: Ulysses
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon
Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead
Katherine Paterson: Bridge to Terabithia
Jodi Piccoult: The Tenth Circle
Phillip Pullman: The Golden Compass trilogy
Annie Prioux: Brokeback Mountain
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Alice Walker: The Color Purple

Freedom to Read Week

2008-02-25T11:50:00.006+11:00

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. - Joseph Brodsky

Yesterday heralded the beginning of Canada's annual Freedom to Read Week. And just because I'm not Canadian, I don't see why I can't jump in and help them celebrate! Book censorship is an issue that's close to my heart and I believe that people (yes, that includes children) should be able to make their own decisions as to whether or not a particular book is suitable for them to read.

You wouldn't think that in these times it would still be an issue, but Harry Potter still gets banned in schools for encouraging children to practice witchcraft (don't get me started on their misguided views of Wicca!) Children shouldn't be so mollycoddled by their parents. The books in question usually contain important issues that the child will inevitably come across in life. Isn't it better to arm them with knowledge and information concerning the subject beforehand? Otherwise they'll grow up to be intolerable adults (goodness knows we have enough of them already!) and go into situations totally ignorant of facts.

So join in the fun and help fight back against those who believe a book should be censored just because it contains material that offends them (the individual, who sometimes hasn't even read the book in question).

In honour of this week, I'm going to start up a new challenge (which will actually last the rest of the year). Details to follow shortly!

10 Signs a Book Has Been Written by Me

2008-02-21T12:32:00.006+11:00

Found this somewhere else and thought I'd give it a go. Here are '10 Signs that a Book Has Been Written by Me'.

1. It will be a dystopian novel - cleverly written (I wish) and well thought out and researched.

2. It will be 450+ pages in length.

3. One of the main characters will be a young man - perhaps mid 20s. He will be the 'hero' of the story, but he'll also be a regular guy.

4. It will have a memorable closing line.

5. My main characters will have enough of a backstory that readers will be able to identify with them, but not get bogged down or bored by too much detail.

6. There will be a club of some description (possibly secret) where important (and perhaps sinister) business will take place.

7. People of extraordinary intelligence will play an important role.

8. Music will be involved somehow.

9. My readers will be reduced to tears.

10. My book will be compared (favourably) to George Orwell's 1984. :)

That's about all I can say without giving away too much! I have more details written out in a notebook, which would make it all sound more interesting, but this'll have to do.

Z for Zachariah by Robert O'Brien

2008-02-21T09:33:00.004+11:00

Rating: 7/10

Published: 1975
Number of pages: 188

Started: 17 February 2008
Finished: 20 February 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Lone survivor after a nuclear holocaust, Ann Burden sees her solitary peace threatened by this unknown intruder. She hides, he watches, they both wait. Is he a friend and ally, or the terrifying near-maniac she begins to suspect? Just as Adam was the first man on earth, so this man must be Zachariah, the last...

Comments:
This is a quick and interesting read aimed at young adults. It's a story concerning the end of the world and the survival of a 16-year-old girl who believes she may be the last person alive...until she sees someone else entering her valley. I wouldn't necessarily call this a dystopian novel - it's more post-apocalyptic. Still, I'll count it as dystopian because it's on Wikipedia's list of dystopian literature.

I thought the main character was a little too naive (or maybe just too optimistic) but I always love an ending that leaves something to the imagination. A pretty good read!

BTT: Huh?

2008-02-20T09:26:00.005+11:00

(From 24 January 2008): What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never heard of it?”

There are a couple of books I love that people have generally never heard of. Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith is one of them. It's actually a classic and I think it's more well-known in England, where it originated, but it's not something that a lot of people have heard of around here.

And in reverse, I love a series of books by Australian author John Marsden, beginning with Tomorrow, When the War Began. They're very well-known in Australia but not so well overseas, I don't think (at least, I don't get much of a reaction when I mention them).

I was once given a book for Christmas called These is My Words by Nancy Turner. It wasn't a bestseller or anything, but it's a remarkable story of a young American woman who travels with her family from New Mexico to Arizona in the 1880s. A terrific story full of triumph and tragedy. It's been high up on my 're-read pile' for quite a while now.

Also, I'm a bit behind the rest of the world in the fantasy genre, but one overlooked author I love is Jonathan Wylie (aka Julia Gray). Both names are pseudonyms of a husband/wife writing team and I've always enjoyed their books. I think I now everything they've written but haven't had a chance to read most of it yet, having only tracked most of the books down in the past 12 months. Of the books I've read, I particularly love the Unbalanced Earth trilogy and Dreamweaver.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

2008-02-19T14:31:00.004+11:00

Rating: 10/10

Published: 1966
Number of pages: 336

Started: 31 January 2008
Finished: 17 February 2008

Summary (taken from blurb):
Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible, yet entirely and frighteningly human.

The book that made Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.

Comments:
In Cold Blood is a terrific blend of journalistic skill and creative writing. Capote begins the story by introducing the reader to all of the main players: the Clutter family (the victims), and Perry Smith and Dick Hickock (the killers). We get to know them very well - their personality traits and quirks, their views on life, and basically all of their background stories. Other characters, ranging from local gossips to detectives, are introduced equally vividly.

Although the reader knows what's going to happen, Capote masterfully builds up the story and draws out the suspense, leaving the reader with numerous questions as to the 'why's and 'wherefore's of what's about to happen. Of course, they're all answered in time, but it's an intriguing journey and well worth the read. The story is never dull, and I had to keep reminding myself that this was not a work of fiction.

Truman Capote worked tirelessly to gather his information (along with the aid of his friend, Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird) and put it together meticulously to create this incredible, true story. It's chilling and scary, but absolutely terrific! Highly recommended!

BTT: Let's Review...

2008-02-15T12:07:00.004+11:00

(From 17 January 2008): How much do reviews (good and bad) affect your choice of reading? If you see a bad review of a book you wanted to read, do you still read it? If you see a good review of a book you’re sure you won’t like, do you change your mind and give the book a try?

I love reading reviews of books before I read them myself. If I've heard of a book that I think sounds OK, I'll usually head to Amazon and read a selection of reviews. I'll also check out what fellow members at the BCF have to say about it. Bad reviews rarely put me off reading a book, but sometimes it will push a book lower down my wish list.

Two recent cases in point: I saw Patrick Suskind's Perfume going cheap in a bookshop. Before I bought it, I went back to work and read up on a thread at the BCF that had been devoted to this book. Opinion seemed very much divided and I decided that the only way to know for sure was to read it myself!

The second case is Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I must admit that the title alone put me off for a little while because it sounds very new age (something that might have once attracted my attention, but nowadays doesn't). I had read some good reviews and was thinking of buying it, then read more reviews, this time bad, and now I'm sitting on the fence again :)

I don't think one should let bad reviews completely dictate whether or not they read a book, because often what one person loves another person will hate. The only person who can ultimately decide whether or not a book is any good is the individual themselves. I like taking into account other people's views and then comparing my own once I have read the book myself (which means I usually read reviews twice over!)

Recently Acquired Books

2008-02-12T15:49:00.000+11:00

Nine more to add to the TBR pile. According to LibraryThing, that brings my total number of TBR books to 318 (or 309, according to my profile - I wonder where that discrepancy is coming from?). A good 6 years worth of reading there!

Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
Albert Camus: The Outsider
Albert Camus: The Plague
Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany's
Cervantes: Don Quixote
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings
John Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
Patrick Suskind: Perfume
Lynne Truss: The Lynne Truss Treasury (With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, Tennyson's Gift, Going Loco, Making the Cat Laugh)

I wish someone would keep me away from this bookshop! So much choice and such small prices!