Musings of a Bookshop Girl

Stevenson Under the Palm Trees, by Alberto Manguel

2012-05-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

REVIEW: STEVENSON UNDER THE PALM TREES (3*)

by Alberto Manguel (Canongate Books, 2004)

Alberto Manguel is probably best known for his books about books, which include A History of Reading and The Library at Night. Despite my love of anything bookish, I haven't read him before, so I decided to start small with this slim little novella about the final months of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Set around Stevenson's home in the village of Vailima, on the Samoan island of Upolu, it relies upon the same concept of duality that Stevenson himself utilises in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In the book, Stevenson meets a Scottish missionary, a rather odious man called Mr Baker, on the beach and finds himself caught up in a religious and ideological battle against Baker's Puritanical sensibilities. But all is not quite as it seems, and the reader is left to figure out who is wreaking havoc upon the Samoan islanders - Stevenson or Baker?

It was interesting to learn about the end of Stevenson's life, and how the local villagers welcomed him into their community. The vibrancy of the culture is vividly evoked in spare, finely honed prose; the flowers, the music, the sensuality of Samoan life come alive under Manguel's pen through careful snapshots of imagery and description. There are some interesting moments as Stevenson and Baker argue about dreams, reality and the nature of religion, though I found them a little obtuse at times. Sometimes it just felt a little too pretentious - like Manguel was writing with future literature students in mind, rather than readers - and I was left frustrated by the rapid and inconclusive ending.

Perhaps a reader more familiar with Stevenson's life and works would gain more satisfaction from Manguel's tribute than I did, I don't know. At the very least, I can say that this was a quick and intriguing little read, and that it's inspired me to pick up more of Stevenson's books and to delve a little deeper into his life and travels. A gateway to bigger and better things, perhaps?!

Notable Quotables:

"In the midst of a large group of people, joyful or angry, mourning or seeking merriment, he felt naked, and he had tried, often, to overcome that feeling, which for want of a keener word he called shyness, but which his father had once branded cowardice, an accusation he had not forgotten."
"I will not deny myself a good glass and a dish. And I would not deny it to another fellow human. Love of life is a strong passion, and I have always followed its pull, even in trivial things such as food and drink."
"Our civilisation is a hollow fraud. All the fun of life is lost by it. All it gains is that a larger number of persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on the surface of the globe. But there are so many moments of utter joy, glimpses of paradise, and for those I live."
"I know my time will come soon enough, but I will not dwell on it. What is the purpose? We might as well dwell on the work of our teeth or on the mechanics of our walk. It is there, it will always be there, and I don't intend to spend my glorious hours looking over my shoulder to see death's icy face."

Source: I got this book free in a batch of Freecycle books and magazines a few years ago.

Bout of Books Wrap-Up Post

2012-05-23T05:10:00.001-07:00

They think it's all over... it is now! This is a rather late post, because Monday at the shop was pretty busy, and yesterday was GLORIOUS so I spent the whole day in the garden. Unfortunately I spent a chunk of it taming my nemesis (or as normal people might call it, weeding my rockery) so it wasn't all reading and relaxing. Still, it paves the way nicely for my 25th next Tuesday - I know the day's clear now the gardening's done! :)

So, the read-a-thon. I didn't get anywhere near as much reading done as I'd hoped, but I don't mind too much because I had a lot of fun, and I WAS working six days out of the seven. It's not always easy to settle into a book when you're surrounded by customers - I did try, but sometimes I found myself reading the same page over and over because someone was chattering away near the desk, or I was keeping one eye on what someone's children were doing!

What I Read

I finished The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists by Gideon Defoe, as planned. I'd already read a few pages of Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk before the read-a-thon started, but I finished that too. I'd hoped to finish Alan Moore's V for Vendetta by the end of Sunday, but only got about halfway through that one. I wasn't too worried though, because all three books were FANTASTIC! My first Pirates! book, my first Palahniuk and my first graphic novel, and all three exceeded expectations. Perfect! Plus I'm now one step closer to being able to watch V for Vendetta on DVD, finally... The 'master post' with my goals for the week and each day's updates/chatter is here. My final stats were:
Pages read: 463
Books read from: 3
Books finished: 2

When I Wasn't Reading

Well, I didn't listen to 'Open Book' or do my bookshop profile, as mentioned in my original goals - though I did take some photos to use alongside the article, which is a start at least! I managed to sort out my bookish wishlist (I try and do it every year before my birthday, just in case!), wrote a review of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists, and made quite a lot of headway with getting all my books listed for my new Mount TBR page. Still lots to do there, but I made a good start!

Twitter

This was definitely one of my biggest non-reading time drains this week, oops! I suspect I'm not the only one to have fallen prey to the lure of #boutofbooks! I also participated in one and a half of the Twitter chats (the shop closed halfway through the last one so I had to get going) and they were all fast, frenetic and a lot of fun!

The Challenges

I loved the challenges for this read-a-thon, despite the fact that I went seriously overboard on the first couple and dented my reading time by a good few hours, oops! On Day 1 I kicked off the challenges for the week with a post about read-a-thons: what I like about them, what my read-a-thon traditions are, and a tongue-in-cheek guide to getting the most out of the experience! Day 2 was all about getting into the mind of the reader, so I posted about my compulsive book-buying and answered the 'This or That' bookish quiz. Day 3's challenge asked us to take an existing book cover and re-title it. Of course I went off on a bit of a tangent, as always... Day 5 was possibly my favourite challenge, even though I'm not a 'shoe person' - I chose to match the beautiful cover of The Secret Life of Trees by Colin Tudge to an array of interesting leafy-themed footwear (and an umbrella, jut because it was nice).

Next time

I'll definitely be signing up for the next Bout of Books read-a-thon! You can follow the Bout of Books blog if you fancy joining in the next one - there's currently a poll running to decide when it will be (sometime in August), and there'll be an announcement as soon as a firm date is set. Next time I'm going to try to use my evenings and early mornings to read more (I kept sliding a bit this week!), and keep my challenge posts a little more low-key to save time. I'll also try to finish any longer/more challenging books before the read-a-thon starts, so I can topple a handful of books instead of just one or two. Not that the books I read this time weren't great, but my page count was a bit demoralising at the end of the week!

Over to you readers! If you were a Bout of Books-er, did you hit your goals? What did you like best about the read-a-thon, and what was your favourite book that you read over the week? If you didn't join in this time, have we persuaded you to sign up in August? *smiles slyly* You know you want to... :)

Matching your shoes to your... book?

2012-05-18T04:22:00.001-07:00

Bout of Books Read-a-Thon Mini Challenge The Fifth: The Friday Edition

Hosted by The Reading Housewives of Indiana

Take any book you like and match up a character in the book OR the cover of the book to a shoe.

What a cool challenge! My first thought was: "Oooh, trees!" I have a beautiful little paperback called The Secret Life of Trees by Colin Tudge, and I am a total Tree Person, so I've been on a Google mission to find gorgeous shoes to match the cover and the general leafy theme. I gotta tell you, I'm not even a shoe person, but I WANT EVERY SINGLE PAIR! EVEN THE IMPRACTICAL ONES! If I couldn't wear them, I'd install them on an end table as a delightful nature-themed modern art piece, I love them that much.

So, here's the original cover:

And here are the shoes to match! This first pair is by Pendragon Shoes, and they may be the most beautiful boots I have ever laid eyes on. No, I don't think that heel would last two minutes, and no, I might not be able to walk two steps without falling over (and NO, it doesn't EXACTLY match the cover), but ohhhhh, they're so lovely...

These are Manolo Blahniks. They are... hideous. And yet strangely compelling. I don't think you would ever actually wear them - except maybe to a Peter Pan-themed fancy dress party - but they would make a LOVELY centrepiece for that modern art end table business we were talking about before.

Finally, on the shoe front at least, a shoe made of ACKSHUAL PALM LEAVES. Which, I think you'll agree, is probably about as authentic as it gets - not to mention deliciously cool and smooth on a hot sunny day. :)

Last but not least, just for kicks, while I was searching for shoes I also came across this rather snazzy umbrella. The icing on the suspiciously green cake! Admittedly, matching your book, shoes AND accessories might be a bit much, but I rather like it... Maybe you could just opt for two out of the three at any one time, depending on the weather forecast?

On that note, I'll say HAPPY FRIDAY READING, fellow read-a-thoners!

A few more hours and we'll be into the weekendy home stretch, eek!

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists, by Gideon Defoe

2012-05-17T03:50:00.000-07:00

REVIEW: THE PIRATES! IN AN ADVENTURE WITH COMMUNISTS (4*)

by Gideon Defoe (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006)

Oh, how I loved this book! I heard Chris Addison talking about the series on My Life in Books, and the extract he read out had me (and him!) in stitches, so when I saw this one at the library I snapped it up. It's actually the third book in the series, but it didn't matter in the slightest that I didn't start with An Adventure with Scientists. It's still brilliant!

It's a hilarious, lively, tongue-in-cheek and completely addictive little book in which the Pirate Captain (Terror of the High Seas), his number two (the pirate with a scarf) and his motley band of rogues team up with Marx and Engels to find out who is attempting to discredit the communist movement across Europe. It's a real romp - but if you want to find out how statuesque blonde ladies, opera, French schoolchildren, waxworks, bears and a volcano fit into the story... well, you'll just have to read it for yourself!

The humour is sly, ridiculous and occasionally a little bit naughty, and with the genuinely informative but pithy footnotes scattered through the pages, I can see why previous reviewers have often drawn comparisons with Terry Pratchett. A set of these books would make a great gift idea I think, whether the recipient is a keen reader or not, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the rest of the series for more chaos and chuckles in the near future!

Notable Quotables:

"His nose was hairy. His forehead was hairy. Even his hands were hairy. And his beard was a great bushy black number, which looked like he had sellotaped a bunch of cats to the bottom of his face and then frightened them with a loud noise."
"'And you'll notice that I'm not drinking from my favourite mug,' the Pirate Captain went on, indicating his mug. The Pirate Captain's favourite mug was one he'd got from a garden centre. It had a picture of a flea on the side that only appeared when it had a hot drink in it. This one just had 'Monkey World' emblazoned across the handle and was about his fifth favourite."
"I think of it like this - there are only two certainties in life. One is the inevitability of death, and the other is uncertainty itself. So when everything seems to be going badly, it's probably meant to be. Or perhaps it's fate. Either way, it's something we'll never really know, and it doesn't pay to waste too much time thinking about it. Eat a chop instead."
"During his long career and many adventures, the Pirate Captain had often found himself saying, 'Quickly! Through this door!' In the past, saying, 'Quickly! Through this door!' had variously led to: a room full of scorpions; a nest of killer African bees; the ceremonial chamber of a sinister cabal of Satanists; and a pit of stinging nettles. Saying, 'Quickly! Through this door!' had never yet led to: a stable full of fast horses; a useful cupboard of muskets; a pile of ham; or the shower room of a young women's tennis club."

One final note: I couldn't actually write out these 'Notable Quotables' without giggling again. It's that good. :)

Source: I borrowed this book from my local library. Arrrrrrr!

Old cover, new title!

2012-05-16T03:12:00.001-07:00

Bout of Books Read-a-Thon Mini Challenge The Third: The Wednesday Edition

Hosted by Books Devoured

Your challenge is to choose any book cover and re-title it! You can choose anything you like and go the serious or humorous route!

Well, this one had me stumped for a moment. I was trying to think of any blatantly stereotypical or awful covers I'd come across and was drawing a bit of a blank - until I remembered that the book I'm reading NOW has one of the most terrifying covers I've ever seen. Without further ado, allow me to introduce...

Which I have mentally rebranded as:

DOGS GONE WILD!

Also, now I've gone down this route in my head, it's making me want to write a whole new book with this revamped cover/title combo. Your ultimate canine guide to life on the wild side, that kind of thing. How to sniff girl dogs' bottoms without looking pervy. How to hang your head out of a car window so you get all the fun with none of the dead-bug-spatter. Great places to hide a slipper where no one will ever find it. Fail-safe ways to charm your owner out of an extra doggie biscuit or six. That kinda thing... Sometimes I worry about what goes on in my mind, actually. ;)

Please feel free to link up to your blog or your challenge entry in the comments and I'll come and visit!

HAPPY WEDNESDAY READING!

Reading Confessions/This or That

2012-05-15T10:27:00.001-07:00

Bout of Books Read-a-Thon Mini Challenge The Second: The Tuesday Edition

Hosted by Nyx Book Reviews

PART ONE: Share your most shocking, embarrassing or funny book related story.

I'd say most of my less-than-fine moments come from my level of book acquisition and the number of unread books piling up in my house. The time I nearly fell through a patio door tripping over a pile of books. The moment I first realised that I had enough unread books in my possession to last me somewhere in the region of ten years. The time I went charity shop-shopping with my friend and bought so many books the taxi driver struggled to get them all in the boot. The time I wedged a copy of Naked Lunch down the back of my jeans to try and sneak it in under Mum's radar (which, as you may remember, was a fail!). The time I went car-boot shopping on an emergency mission to restock some of our most-raided shop shelves and came back with half a bag of books - and another bag and a half for myself. Honestly, I think it's compulsive behaviour. When I get in the vicinity of anywhere selling books, it's like my body sends out some kind of invisible rope that ties itself to a shelf inside. If I try to walk past, it starts to tug and make me feel funny, and I have to go back! And if I see a book that's already on my wishlist in a charity shop, say, I literally CANNOT leave it behind. That's my excuse, anyway... ;)

PART TWO: Answer all of these "this or that" questions.

Physical book or e-book?

Physical book, most definitely. I bought a Kindle thinking it would help stop me buying so many paper books, and that I could use it alongside what I already had - but I hated it. We just didn't get along, so the machine is now deregistered and I'm going back to my beautiful REAL books.

Paperback or hardcover?

Time was, I would have said hardcover, just because they're more durable. But these days I prefer paperbacks, I think, because they're easier to carry, I can fit more of them on my shelves, and I don't have to worry about the dustjacket while I'm reading! I quite like those smart little hardcovers that are around more now though - they're the best of both worlds...

Reality or make-believe?

Ummm, a little of both? You can't have engaging make-believe without at least a vague grounding in reality, but reality's no fun without a good dose of make-believe! I live in my own fantasy world half the time anyway... ;)

Adult or young adult?

Honestly, I prefer adult overall. Young adult fiction has vastly improved over recent years so I get a lot from both, but I still find that I tend to read YA as a break from adult fiction, rather than the other way around. Adult fiction can venture further into themes, topics, politics and relationships than most YA, and the scope still seems to be wider. I don't read as many 'realistic' YA novels as I do adult novels, because I have no desire to relive my school years in every excruciating detail!

Dog ears or bookmarks?

Bookmarks to keep my place, and little pieces of paper to mark quotes I want for my blog, or references I want to follow up in some way (like mentions of books or songs I want to check out). I do occasionally dog-ear, but only in used books and only when nothing else is to hand!

Breaking the spine or barely open the book?

Halfway between the two. I open the book, but I go for 'light creasing' rather than 'broken in half'. And if I'm reading a hardcover, the dustjacket comes off until I'm done. Though I did read a (paperback) galley the other day and went the whole way - broken spine, dog-ears, annotating - and it felt strangely liberating...

Tea or coffee?

I go through phases where I drink one over the other, but mostly I keep going back to coffee. Tea first thing while I wake up, coffee with breakfast, coffee at work and decaff before bed - with an occasionally foray into those new Starbucks espresso milk cans and mocha bottles you can buy at the supermarket. I also drink a LOT of Ovaltine and white hot chocolate.

Reading in bed or on the couch?

Wherever! A comfy couch works, but flat out on the bed is good too. Now I'm back in the family house (instead of in the flat next door) I do a lot of my reading either sitting/lying on my bed, or sitting on the floor with my back to the radiator where it's warm! On a sunny day, outside on a sun lounger takes some beating.

Series or stand-alone?

Doesn't matter, as long as the books are good. There seem to be a lot more series now, which is starting to get a bit... impossible... but then again, with a good author it DOES prolong the pleasure!

Original or TV adaptation?

Both - but I usually try and read the original first if I can. I didn't watch Birdsong, for example, because I haven't read the book yet. Then again, with certain classics and very long books, I don't always mind watching first, because it helps me get my head round all the different characters and subplots. I don't regret watching Pillars of the Earth before I've read the book, for instance, because I know the book's going to be bloody awesome regardless!

Defy motion sickness or audiobooks?

I used to read in the car ALL THE TIME, whether we were going five minutes to the shops or eight hours down to Cornwall. These days I can maybe manage a magazine, but not all-out reading. I prefer to listen to music in the car - crank it up loud and sing along! I still love reading on the train though - it's what Quiet Carriages were made for...

Author crushes or 'who-was-that-guy-again?'

In its 'do you remember who wrote your books' sense - yes, almost always. I have a good memory, stalk Amazon and book blogs constantly - and I run a bookshop, so it's kinda handy to know who wrote what! In its literal sense, a bit of both. I'm definitely getting to know more authors' faces these days - and occasionally when I'm messing about on my LT author gallery (the thingy LT puts together with a picture of every author in your collection) someone will bowl me over! Unexpected hotties aside, EVERYBODY has a crush on Neil Gaiman. Everybody. Fact. He's what would happen if the universe flipped upside down and Bernard Black turned nice. :)

Interview or guest post?

Guest post, probably. I like interviews if the author does them properly, or where the blogger asks the questions rather than the publicist. Some interviews are amazing, but some are so stilted and by-the-book that you can't help but think that a guest post would have been a better opportunity to get to know the author without the questions getting in the way...

Sooo, how's everybody getting on? Going well? Or has Tuesday beaten you down?
HAPPY READING UNTIL TOMORROW!

What I Love About Read-a-Thons, by Ellie aged 24 3/4

2012-05-14T06:29:00.000-07:00

Bout of Books Read-a-Thon Mini Challenge The First: The Monday Edition

Hosted by Sarah Says Read

“What do you like best about readathons? Do you have any readathon traditions or rituals? If this is your first readathon, what do you like so far? Discuss away!”

Well, this is definitely NOT my first read-a-thon - though most of the ones I've participated in so far have been 24-hour jobbies. I always miss the Dewey read-a-thons because I have to do WORKING at weekends, so last winter I did some ad-hoc ones on my days off instead. Happily, after the first time, I managed to get a bunch of LibraryThingers interested so I wasn't doing it on my own any more! It's such a good way of boosting my reading up a bit, I love it.

Bearing all that in mind, here, for your entertainment, is my five-step guide to read-a-thons, Ellie-style! (Yes, this veers SLIGHTLY away from the question, but I think I've covered my favourite things and my read-a-thon traditions along the way!)

1. There Will Be Pizza

And other delicious snacks. Read-a-thons are all about luxuriating in reading pleasure, and as we all know, what we're shoving in our mouths as we turn the pages is a huge part of that. Some people prefer to go for vegetables and dips and healthy, healthy food - but let's face it, that really isn't my style. For me, the ideal read-a-thon food is anything I can cook quickly and/or graze on. That means stuff I can cook, slice up and nibble (pizza, Spanish tortilla); stuff I can toast (pancakes, toasted teacakes and, er, toast); cakes and pastries (chocolate chip muffins and custard Danish pastries being my vices of choice) and stuff I can pour into a bowl (sweet popcorn, Hula hoops, M'n'Ms)... I think I might have put on three stone just writing this paragraph.

2. Read-a-Thons are a Geek's Paradise

NO WORD OF A LIE. There are SO MANY opportunities to geek out during a read-a-thon, which is probably why I love them so much. Before every read-a-thon (or during, in this case, since I already have my first couple of books sorted) I have a total list-making frenzy, combing through my LibraryThing catalogue hunting down potential reads. It stops me overlooking any perfect candidates and sometimes I stumble across a book and get that NOW IS YOUR TIME feeling. Aside from all the list-making, a read-a-thonner also has the opportunity to keep numerous read-a-thonny statistics (page numbers, hours, books) to his or her own level of nerd-compulsion. I'm trying to keep this fairly low this time so I don't come over all 'Here's Johnny!' by the end of the week.

3. Snoozing Is Compulsory

Whether you're doing a 24-hourer or a seven-dayer, it is VITAL that you get some snoozing time in there somewhere. Obviously, if you're reading for seven days you're going to be, y'know, SLEEPING and all that. But if you're reading for any prolonged amount of time, day or night, you know that at some point your eyes will start to burn, the words on the page will start to swim, you'll read the same paragraph thirty times, and suddenly the cushion/sofa/bed/floor will look sooooo inviting... That's when you snooze. Twenty minutes later, you wake up, pop a handful of M'n'Ms, and the read-a-thon goes on!

4. Step Away from the Interwebs

This is v. ironic because so far at work today I have read NOTHING for the read-a-thon, but have spent much time online reading (and now writing) stuff ABOUT the read-a-thon. I suspect I am not the only one. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE READING THIS RIGHT NOW, HMMMM? I thought so... The bestest thing about read-a-thonning is that it is a most excellent excuse to NOT do other stuff, like laundry, gardening, cleaning, shopping and playing on Twitter. Okay, there might be a bit of playing on Twitter. And laundry. But the read-a-thon is a very good reason to keep these dangerous, dangerous things in moderation and retreat somewhere cosy where you can read and eat biscuits instead.

5. I Did it Myyyyyy Waaaaaaay

Above all, a read-a-thon should be FUN! Whether you're reading over breakfast or before bed, at work or in the park, sunbathing in the garden or huddled in an armchair watching the rain, for twenty minutes at lunchtime or twenty-four hours on your day off, it's all about doing it your way. Everything about your read-a-thon is personal and interesting, which is why I love trawling other people's updates! I want to know that X is reading Sarah Waters in Edinburgh, eating Nutella with a spoon, while Y is in Florida reading Charles Dickens while their homemade lasagne cooks and Z is sitting on a bench on their university campus drinking chai latte and reading Sarah Dessen. This is what it's all about! Reading good books, eating good food, making good friends and being really, REALLY nosy about other people's reading habits.

Happy reading, everyone!

The Bout of Books Read-a-Thon!

2012-05-13T04:22:00.000-07:00

Regular readers will already know that if there's one thing I just can't resist, it's a good read-a-thon. Well, and kittens. And book shopping. And Easter eggs. But read-a-thons are right up there, okay! And this one's a whole week long and has its own blog, Twitter account and hashtag and everything...

So, I'm saying YES to the read-a-thonny goodness. I'm going to be at work for six days out of the seven, but I'm going to make every moment count. I can read on the counter at the shop - the quieter the town, the more I'll get read - as well as before and after work, and right through my day off on Tuesday. I might not finish a book a day, but anything that encourages me to stop playing online/article hopping/watching catch-up TV/staring at the wall/snoozing and pushes me gently back to my reading has to be a good thing, right?!

My Reading Goals

If I haven't already, I definitely want to finish The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists by Gideon Defoe. I'd also like to finish Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk, and on my day off I'll be attempting to read Alan Moore's V for Vendetta in its entirety. After that I have any number of books to choose from, both library books and books from my own TBR pile, so we'll just have to see what happens! If I could finish these three titles and at least make some headway into a fourth, I'll be a happy reader.

My Other Goals

I'd like to get at least ONE review written and posted during the week. Reviewing Time very much eats into Reading Time, but if I can squeeze in just one it'll at least stop me getting too far behind. I want to get my bookish wishlist in some sort of order, because it's all over the place and totally out of control right now! I'd also like to commit to catching up with the last two episodes of Open Book on BBC iPlayer (that's only an hour total and it'll give my eyes a rest!), and make some progress with FINALLY writing my bookshop profile for Jen Campbell's series over at her blog.

My Progress

I'll be updating as I go along, both on this post and on Twitter. Do follow along and feel free to cheer, congratulate or corral as the need arises!

DAY 1: Monday (14th)

What I've been reading: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists by Gideon Defoe (FINISHED); Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk

Pages read today: 59

Running total: 1 book; 59 pages

Challenge: Blog post - What I Love About Read-a-Thons

Non-reading progress: I looked vaguely in the direction of a review post this morning, then changed my mind. :)

General notes: Busy day today. Work, errands, chores, then a documentary on Chatsworth that I just couldn't miss. I was a bakery girl in the farm shop, once hid from the Dowager Duchess in the walk-in fridge (I was starstruck!), and our bookshop is LITERALLY on the other side of the hill from the house. Happily I've managed to squeeze in a few more pages before bed, and tomorrow's my day off so I can read for hours!

Today #insixwords: The day I stalked everybody else!

DAY 2: Tuesday (15th)

What I've been reading: V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd; Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk

Pages read today: 96

Running total: 1 book; 155 pages

Challenge: Blog post - Reading Confessions/This or That

Non-reading progress: Not a bean. On my day off?! Preposterous suggestion... *wanders off in search of more coffee* ;)

General notes: Dammit, that page total looks so tiny! Hmmm, well, I've not done as much reading as I'd expected, to be honest. Maybe because from what I'd heard, graphic novels are fairly quick to read, so I was expecting to be turning those pages faster. But now I've started I don't WANT to rush V for Vendetta, because so far it's taking every possible thought I had about it and about graphic novels in general, and blowing it all out of the water. It's AMAZING! I've enjoyed creating a second fun challenge post today as well, and visiting more participating blogs to say hi. Oh, and I finally ate my custard Danish this afternoon. It was yummy and sticky and delicious, and made up for the crap Sainsbury's pizza I ended up throwing away in disgust.

Today #insixwords: Really awesome book; REALLY bad pizza.

DAY 3: Wednesday (16th)

What I've been reading: Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk; V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Pages read today: 95

Running total: 1 book; 250 pages

Challenge: Blog post - Old cover, new title!

Non-reading progress: I opened my review template for The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists. I stared at it for a few minutes. Then I went on Twitter instead. *facepalm*

General notes: Actually, today hasn't been a bad day, all things considered. I spent a fair amount of time stalking the #boutofbooks feed on Twitter, a little time chatting to my sister on MSN, and there were a lot of unusually chatty customers in the shop too, but I still managed a pretty decent page count! Partially because today's challenge was quicker, I suspect. I read before work, at work, and part of the evening, and managed to tot up a page count only one less than my day off yesterday!

Today #insixwords: Smaller challenge makes for bigger reading!

DAY 4: Thursday (17th)

What I've been reading: Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk

Pages read today: 39

Running total: 1 book; 289 pages

Non-reading progress: Yes! I finally wrote a review, for The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists, by Gideon Defoe. I also, aside from my original goals, set up a new page on the blog to list all my TBR books and (hopefully) encourage me to actually read them. I've only got as far as the 'D' authors on my LT catalogue but the list is already huge!

General notes: It's not been a good reading day today. I woke up with a hayfevery headache this morning that steadily increased as the hours went by, which put paid to reading for a while; the shop was quiet, but Mum decided we should reshuffle all of our fiction shelves during the lull; and my stepbrother has just arrived home from a round-the-world trip and is staying with us for a few days, so I spent a while downstairs chatting with everyone after work. I did make an effort to at least read a bit though, while I had tea. Maybe tomorrow will be better!

Today #insixwords: The readathon-killing headache strikes again.

DAY 5: Friday (18th)

What I've been reading: Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk

Pages read today: 28

Running total: 1 book; 317 pages

Challenge: Blog post - Matching your shoes to your... book?

Non-reading progress: I went a little off-goals and added more books to my Mount TBR page. I'm up to the end of authors beginning with 'D' and the list is already horrifying, oops!

General notes: Another duff day. *sigh* Oh well. I was convinced I was going to read in the morning - then I was really tired and ended up staring into space for quite a while. I was sure I was going to read through the day at work - then we got lots of chatty customers and finished our shelf reshuffle instead. I was POSITIVE that after work would be one long reading delight - then I made tea, did the Twitter chat (so much fun!) and ended up staying on the internet until bedtime. *deeper sigh* TOMORROW! TOMORROW WILL BE THE DAY! Maybe I'll just not go near Twitter too often. Yeah. Yeah, that'll work... :)

Today #insixwords: Manic Twitter chat; EPIC reading fail.

DAY 6: Saturday (19th)

What I've been reading: Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk

Pages read today: 76

Running total: 1 book; 393 pages

Non-reading progress: I've edited ten pages of books and five pages of DVDs on my Amazon wishlist. It's where I keep my kind of 'master list' for when I go shopping or to the library, so I like to go through every now and again and sort the wheat from the chaff! I've also done a bit more of my new Mount TBR page - I'm onto 'G' authors now!

General notes: A much better reading day, finally! I made an extra effort to keep returning to my book between customers at the shop, and read for most of the evening as well (though I did stop for a dose of 8 out of 10 Cats right before bed). I reckon I'll finish Rant tomorrow, at any rate, so that's one step closer to actually COMPLETELY those seemingly-tame goals I set for myself a week ago! I still can't believe quite how little I've managed to read this week though. In a 24-hour read-a-thon I can normally manage 2-3 books, no problem - so what went wrong this time?!

Today #insixwords: One day to go - what happened?!

DAY 7: Sunday (20th)

What I've been reading: Rant: An Oral History of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk (FINISHED); V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Pages read today: 70

Running total: 2 books; 463 pages

Non-reading progress: I pretty much got my bookish wishlist sorted, which is good. I also worked for an hour on that new Mount TBR page, but the internet threw a tantrum at the last minute and lost it all! Oh well, I'll carry on tomorrow...

General notes: Well, it's all over! I can't believe how quickly it's gone - and how slowly my pages have mounted up... I'm quite pleased with today's progress though, I don't usually get so much read during a busy weekend at the shop! If I'd not been so sleepy this evening (read: lazy) the tally would probably have been higher, but I ended up watching Grandma's House and yawning instead.

Today #insixwords: How fast did this week go?!

Thanks to everyone who ran Bout of Books, and everyone who's read and commented throughout the week. My Wrap Up Post will be up soon!

A post of randomness and book-buying

2012-05-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

Out of Chaos Comes Order

First up in this post of randomness: hoarding programmes. Yes, you read that right. Hey, I SAID this was going to be random, okay! So, hoarding programmes. I love 'em. And now they're ALL OVER THE TEEVEES and I am a very happy woman. There's just something about seeing all that clutter and chaos, and finding out the back story, and watching all the therapy and clearing coming together until BOOM! The poor downtrodden packrat has a Life Epiphany or a Grand Breakthrough Moment, turns into a whirling dervish of Skip-Chucking Efficiency, and winds up with a lovely home again, looking clean and fresh and beautiful instead of like a Vortex of Doom. It makes me want to go tidy stuff. And it usually makes me cry, because I'm a sap like that.

Which is why I was well pissed off when The Times TV guide thingy's only response to these programmes (which they put in their TV picks and everything) was 'Yeah, but how can you feel sorry for these freaks? Have you SEEN that programme about kiddies in the Great Ormond Street Hospital? No? Because it's on today/tomorrow/last week and THAT, my friends, is suffering.' Well, yeah, but not every programme can be about hospitals, guys. I can only hope that The Times TV guide thingy's critics aren't planning to become mental health professionals anytime soon.

If you're more sympathetic and intrigued like ME, Britain's Biggest Hoarders (with Jasmin Harman and her mum, from last year's documentary - this is 'one year on' for them, and looks at two other people's hoarding problems too) is available until the end of Tuesday on BBC iPlayer. The Hoarder Next Door is on Channel 4, Thursdays at 9pm, and there are two episodes already available on 4OD.

I Done Shopping

Despite another Crap Headache on Tuesday, I graciously (*cough*) agreed to accompany Mum to the local retail village so she could do fun stuff like looking at cushions and I could do fun stuff like looking at books. Maybe, thunk I, I might be permitted to partake of ONE BOOK in return for my Completely Unreluctant And Utterly Selfless (*cough cough*) companionship? Perhaps I might idly spend away ten of my Hard Earned Pounds on frivolity before we depart?

Oops. But right, no, listen, I TOTALLY needed some jazzy little shoes because I don't really DO jazzy little shoes, and I was in danger of attending my sister's summer graduation in Converse. So they were an okay buy, right? Tiny heel, quite comfy, glitzy enough to team with just about anything... And the FUDGE was dead important because we'd not had lunch, and we were hungry, and there was a chocolate chip tumbled version and it sounded nice. And the Pic 'n' Mix, yeah, that was VITAL because I needed some fruity sweets to balance up all that naughty fudge. And the BAG, right, well.... nah, I'm out of excuses now. The bag was just cute. :)

And then I went to The-Works-Like-Place-That-Isn't-The-Works-But-Magickally-Has-The-Exact-Same-Stuff. And a Miracle happened. Because Mum saw the 3-for-£5 deal and saw the Heartbreak I was facing trying to pick between another two as well and ACKSHUALLY SAID these words: "No more than four, please. I'll be in the shop opposite." I very excuse me? No "You don't need any more, the cat nearly got squashed under a pile last week"? No "Ellie, you may be 25 but you're not too old to be dragged out of a shop by the ear"? SHE SAID NEITHER OF THESE THINGS.

So when I had finished picking my jaw up off the floor and Sellotaping it back into place, I bought books! After much deliberation and a fair amount of funny looks from the bored sales girls, I chose Michele Jaffe's The Rosebush, Mary McCarthy's The Group (off my Gilmore list) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's entirely possible that I already have that last one, but this edition has Benedict Cumberbatchery going on and thought it'd be nice to be able to sit and lick the cover in between stories. For Book Four of my buying allowance I went for Steven Adler's My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, Drugs and Guns N' Roses. BUT WAIT, ELLIE! I hear you cry. Aren't there FIVE books in that photo? Why yes there are! Because in a childlike display of cunning I managed to mention/big up Steve Haywood's Narrowboat Dreams: A Journey North by England's Waterways so dazzlingly often as we visited all the other shops that Mum let me go back and buy it. TWO MIRACLES IN ONE DAY, PEOPLES!

And, Er, Then I Done More Shopping

Because sometimes five books and two miracles in a week just isn't enough. So I added two more books and a THIRD miracle. This is the stuff dreams are made of, ladies and gentlemen. There was a little more maternal Huffing And Puffing this time, and a brief hiss of "You don't want Lewis Carroll, Ellie! It's like he was on something!" but I still walked out of Mind with two more books. Hooray! This time it was the Oxford World's Classics edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass (nowhere near as cute as the Vintage Classics or Vintage ♥ Film editions, but one step at a time) and an interesting-looking little natural history/travel writing tome called Downstream: Across England in a Punt by Tom Fort.

And Now, A Musical Interlude

Ahhh, the power of rhyme. Every day I have been reading Heart-Shaped Bruise and thinking about how I should be reading Half Blood Blues because it needs to go back to the library, and the whole time I've had 'Folsom Prison Blues' stuck in my head. Go figure. So now I'm going to attempt to get it stuck in EVERYONE'S head so I don't feel quite so bad about it. Play on!

Mum Quote of the Week

In our family, we're known for occasionally - and entirely unpredictably - coming out with some weird and wonderful stuff. But this might be one of my favourites of all time, particularly because it also slams together two great Hitchcock movie titles in glorious style. Picture the scene: Mum and I are wandering along the river on our way back to the car after a day at work. Watching two ducks and a swan fly in overhead, Mum suddenly opens with:

Mum: Do you think birds ever get vertigo?
Me: *bursts out laughing* Er, no.
Mum: *pause* What about penguins?
Me: Penguins? Penguins don't fly!
Mum: Well, no, but still... Do you think they do?
Me: You mean, do they ever look over the edge of an iceberg and get a bit giddy? No.
Mum: Okay, but do you think SOME birds do? Like, does a pigeon ever sit on the top of a building and think, "Whoa, it's a bit high up here"?
Me: No.
Mum: I would.
Me: I think natural selection probably ironed that one out fairly quickly, to be honest...

Ahhh, birds with vertigo. Definitely one for my mental archives, that one... ;)

One For The Cat Lovers

This has been the week of the Live Streaming Kitties. Two websites have been open on my browser, side by side, for the last few days. The first is Miranda's Kittens. That's them on the left, only now they're bigger! Their foster dad John has a webcam set on their play area 24 hours a day, and I'm hooked! Whether they're being rounded up by their mum, bouncing around after a toy or falling out of their tower basket, they're just so CUTE! I WANTZ THE BABEEZ! The second Kitty Cam is in the zoo den of an Amur leopard. She has three tiny cubs and they're so adorable! Go, watch, fall in love... and if the camera freezes just refresh the page and all will be okay!

Final Thought For The Day

Works for me! Over and out, folks.

Heart-Shaped Bruise, by Tanya Byrne

2012-05-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

REVIEW: HEART-SHAPED BRUISE (3.5*)

by Tanya Byrne (Headline, 2012)

Heart-Shaped Bruise has already received plenty of rave reviews across the blogosphere, so I had pretty high expectations when I started reading. With so much talk about how it was addictive and nigh on impossible to put down, perhaps my expectations were too high - but I just didn't fall for it in quite the same breathless way. I think some of my highest hopes stemmed from the frequent comparisons to Girl, Interrupted and Heathers, two of my favourite films of all time.  In actual fact, a couple of characters and a few little moments are a bit TOO similar to Girl, Interrupted, which I found offputting, and the book didn't have the same level of black humour that made both movies so appealing.

Comparisons aside, what is the book actually about?  It takes the form of a notebook, found in the now-defunct psychiatric ward of a young offender's institution. Inside it is the journal-style testimony of Emily Koll, an eighteen year-old girl in psychotherapy there. We don't know what she did, or how she did it, but we know that it must have been something terrible - and that it involved revenge against a girl called Juliet, who was instrumental in the exposure of Emily's father as a London gangster. Beyond this the entire book becomes a jigsaw, as the reader tries to put together the pieces and work out how Emily arrived at this deeply unhappy point in her life. The 'journal' details Emily's sessions with her therapist, Dr Gilyard, as well as offering her own take on her past and anecdotes about daily life on the ward. The title themes of bruising and the heart run throughout the book: the importance of family, the pain of teenage love, the horror of betrayal and the sheer intensity of youthful emotions.

There were definitely things that worked in the novel, but there were other aspects that just didn't hit the spot for me. Some of the teens' exploits were fun to read, but very idealistic and a bit clichéd - going to all the coolest gigs, wanting to take time out in Paris and busk on street corners, sitting on the floor in the poetry section of the local bookshop drinking green tea... It was all a little too perfect, particularly given the dark premise.  The plot wasn't as complex as I had expected, and I found the obvious nods to Girl, Interrupted quite distracting at times (I expected humour and insight that didn't appear, and somewhere in the back of my mind I continually thought of Emily's fellow inmate Naomi as 'Lisa'). The whole thing just felt a little self-conscious, like I was hearing Tanya Byrne rather than Emily Koll, and it lacked a certain spark that could have really brought it to life.

On the other hand, there's also a lot of good in the book. I found the first thirty pages or so quite dull and confusing, but the further I got into the novel, the more intriguing it became. The layers of Emily's history - and of her character - started to build up, and I found myself liking her more and more.  I found her motives completely plausible and she was a wonderfully complex and feisty, albeit damaged, character behind the brassy wall she'd erected to protect herself. It was quite thought-provoking, watching Emily's 'evil' persona - the persona she feared the world would always remember - being gradually created by the media, and seeing the person underneath being swallowed by her own myth. I'd just about figured out Emily's big crime by the end, but when it came it was still swift and shocking. There was no neat conclusion, which left the way clear for me to think through the different possibilities for myself and wonder how everything worked out in the end. My verdict? Well, it's a promising debut novel that will probably benefit from walking the fine line between the YA and adult markets, and it definitely got more and more compelling as the pages went by - but to my disappointment, in the end it just didn't live up to the hype...

About the author:

Tanya Byrne was born in London and studied in Surrey, where she still lives with her cat who goes by several names, none of which he actually answers to. After eight years working for BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4, she left to write her debut novel. She started the novel at a Writer's Retreat in the South of France. She has a weakness for boys with guitars (me too!), drinks far too much tea (ME TOO!) and even though her mother tells her not to, she always talks to strangers. You can find out more by following Tanya on Twitter at @tanyabyrne or by visiting her blog.

Notable Quotables:

"That's all normal is, you know, a habit I have to relearn. Crazy is a habit I have to break."
"I don't know if that's ever happened to you, if you've loved someone, loved who they are, then found out they're not that person after all. It doesn't just break your heart, does it? It breaks you. Then you're not who you thought you were, either."
"It happened so quietly, her and Sid. It wasn't one of those stories they'd tell their children. There was no rain, no chance encounter. Sid didn't pull her out of the way before she stumbled into the path of a bus. But I felt the classroom hum with it. The floor shivered. Pens rolled off desks. Books fluttered off shelves like broken birds."
"I wasn't as pretty as the girls at St Jude's, as rich, as thin, as clever. They had boyfriends and were on the hockey team and had short stories published but still managed to get straight As while I struggled to read all the books on my reading lists. But Rose didn't need to pass any exams. She didn't need a boyfriend or a place at university. It was strangely liberating, not having to try to be someone."
"'They say home isn't where you live,' I said, 'but where you're understood.'"
"You know how, sometimes, something can hurt so bad that after a while it starts to feel kind of nice? Like pressing a bruise with your finger. This was the opposite; this felt so good it hurt. It hurt so much I thought I was dying."
"I need you to pass on a message to my father. His name is Harry Koll. Do you know him?... Of course you do! Everyone knows Dad. There's the Devil, then Hitler and Dad's somewhere between cancer and famine."
"He looked at her sometimes like he didn't know how to stop. Walls fell, the ceiling peeled off, furniture blew away like dead leaves until all that was left was her, and he'd look at her like she was the only thing he could see for miles."

Source: Many thanks to the lovely folks at Headline, who sent me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Struck, by Jennifer Bosworth

2012-05-05T07:40:00.000-07:00

REVIEW: STRUCK (4*)

by Jennifer Bosworth (Doubleday, 2012)

As soon as I saw the cover for this book I wanted to read it. I have a borderline-unhealthy love/hate relationship with lightning, for a start. I'm terrified of it but I just find it fascinating, particularly how every strike victim is affected differently (something Bosworth addresses very early on), and the beautiful Lichtenberg figures (or 'lightning trees') that bloom across the skin afterwards. It's also one of the most powerful covers I've seen yet in 2012 and definitely one of my favourite YA covers of recent years.

Gorgeous cover aside, this is a thrilling addition to the seemingly unstoppable wave of new dystopian fiction. Mia is a lightning addict. She's been struck so many times that she has a positive charge all her own, and doesn't feel truly alive until a storm brews overhead, setting her skin tingling and her energy reaching out to draw the lightning down. For now, however, she has quite enough on her plate trying to keep her family together in the aftermath of the great earthquake that shook LA a month ago. Thousands are homeless and starving, her mother is wracked with anxiety after her near-death experience, and now she and her brother must go back to school in order to qualify for food rations. But things aren't going to go back to normal for Mia anytime soon. Two warring cults are rising, both proclaiming that the end of the world is coming, that a great storm will herald the beginning of the apocalypse - and that Mia is the key. Throw Jeremy into the mix - a beautiful tormented boy who sees visions of the future and warns Mia away from both the darkly mysterious Seekers and the super-religious Followers - and the scene is set for a cracking good read (no pun intended)!

This is a fantastic, complex novel that proved to be quite thought-provoking even as it was roaring towards the gripping climax. I think a lot of this complexity stems from the way Mia has to navigate her way between the two cults that dominate the story. This IS a fantasy novel, and the spiritual Seekers with their blood-red cloaks and tarot readings definitely sway more in that direction, but the Followers and their leader, Rance Ridley Prophet, really gave me pause for thought. Stripping away the fantastical elements, what we're left with is a televangelist who is clearly exploiting the fear and desperation of the people of LA to preach his message of fire and brimstone. That part didn't seem so far-fetched! Nor did the general post-earthquake setting, which felt brutally realistic as I was reading. I thought that staging this apocalyptic battle against such a bleak but entirely plausible backdrop really helped keep the book grounded (or should that be earthed? Pun definitely intended this time!).

I really enjoyed Bosworth's debut, and I'm looking forward to reading more from her in the future. She gave me everything I wanted from a dystopian novel - evocative writing, characters I could root for, mysteries I could puzzle over, messages about society to reflect on, a sizzling romance (thank you, I'm here all week) to savour, and a film-worthy climax to race towards - and, of course, a little lightning fix of my own!

Notable Quotables:

"My name is Mia Price, and I am a lightning addict. There. Now you know the truth. I want the lightning to find me. I crave it like lungs crave oxygen. There's nothing that makes you feel more alive than being struck. Unless, of course, it kills you."
"Up ahead, what remained of the Santa Monica Pier tilted like a ramp into the ocean. The longest of the wooden pilings that supported the pier had bent and broken during the quake, pouring hundreds of tourists and a dozen or so chintzy restaurants into the Pacific. A section of the famous Santa Monica Ferris wheel still protruded from the water, like the spine of some Lovecraftian sea beast emerging from the depths."
"The heat collected inside me, concentrated in the center of my chest. It smouldered in my heart, an ember that would burst into flame and consume me from the inside out. At least, that's what it felt like. I tasted metal. There was a scent coming off me, like burning wires and ozone. Like the moment before a storm cracks the sky wide open."

Source: This book was sent to me by the lovely folks at Random House Children's Publishers, in return for an honest review.

King Solomon's Mines, by H. Rider Haggard

2012-05-04T06:02:00.000-07:00

REVIEW: KING SOLOMON'S MINES (5*)

by H. Rider Haggard (Penguin Popular Classics, 1994)

Well, here's a rave review I didn't expect to be writing! In fact, I'm not even sure I'm going to make this into a 'real' review - how do you review a book that's been read by generations already and been discussed hundreds of times to boot? I think if I have to attempt that I might never post ANYTHING about it, so I thought I'd go for a rambly collection of thoughts instead. Better that nothing, right?!

** There may be teeny tiny SPOILERS ahead here - it's hard to throw together all my thoughts about the book without revealing any details! But I'll try to keep them very mild and not reveal any major plot points and big moments, okay? Read on! **

I borrowed this book off my sister's shelves to satisfy the Allan Quatermain segment of my League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Challenge (hosted by the lovely Hanna, over at Booking in Heels). I was expecting a light, dated and slightly rubbish adventure story, something I could read fairly quickly, tick off my list, and stick back on the shelf without any fuss. I am happy to report that I couldn't have been more wrong! I LOVE it when this happens - when I'm not expecting much from a book and it turns out to be awesome. Makes the pleasure that much more satisfying, don't you think? Actually King Solomon's Mines completely blew me away, and by the end, to my surprise, it had even managed to topple Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child off the top spot as my favourite book of 2012 so far.

In a nutshell, this is a proper old-fashioned adventure yarn. It is narrated by the now-iconic Allan Quatermain, an English hunter making his living shooting game in South Africa. He is on a boat returning to his home in Durban when he meets Sir Henry Curtis and his friend, naval officer Captain John Good. Sir Henry is attempting to find his brother, last seen heading out on a suicidal mission across the desert in search of King Solomon's legendary diamond mines. He enlists Quatermain's (rather reluctant) help and the three set out for the mountains, aided by a crudely-drawn map left to Quatermain by the last fool to attempt the journey.

What follows is a real Indiana Jones story that had me completely absorbed from start to finish. First the desert must be navigated, then there are mountains to cross, only for the exhausted trio to find themselves embroiled in a bitter tribal war on the other side. It could have been so dull, but Quatermain's plentiful dry humour and beautiful flights of description proved irresistable. The excitement and suspense is genuinely riveting - there are a couple of deliciously gruesome moments that sent me mentally diving behind my sofa cushion - and when I reached the last page I felt utterly bereft. Having been so completely immersed in the trio's African exploits, I wasn't quite sure what I could read next that could POSSIBLY compare (always the sign of a great book!).

I think two things really made it for me: the characters and the big set-piece moments. The characters are exquisite creations, each and every one of them. Sir Henry, the great fair Viking with his deep integrity and ferocious strength as a warrior. Captain Good, with his eye glass, impressive swearing abilities (never rendered here, by the way!) and determination to dress like a gentleman despite the harsh conditions. Even foul old Gagool, the ancient and evil Kukuana witch doctress, was so brilliantly drawn that I felt a wave of revulsion every time she graced the page with her presence.

One thing that pleasantly surprised me was the respect Haggard shows towards other races - I had expected a more 'savages vs whites' mentality. In some ways it is still very much of its time, of course - for example, the idea that it wouldn't be 'proper' for a black person and a white person to be together, and the implication that the local tribes are inferior in status and intelligence - but in others it seems quite progressive. Quatermain and his companions show great affection and respect for the Kukuana tribespeople across the mountains, joining their civil war and becoming close friends with several of their leaders. These leaders are portrayed as impressive, if brutal, warriors, and honest men. The Kukuana language is wonderful too, 'translated' by Quatermain in all of its grand, sweeping and eloquent beauty.

The biggest thing I'll take away from the book, the element that will stick with me the most, is the incredible set-piece imagery, some of which wouldn't seem out of place in a Lord of the Rings film. I think certain 'snapshots' from the book are forever imprinted on my memory, they're so unforgettable. The great twin mountain peaks at sunrise. A wounded bull elephant charging through the trees (there are scenes of elephant hunting in the book, by the way, but as with the outdated race issues it would be unfair to judge Haggard too harshly for it). Key moments from the tribal war. The moment when the trio first enter the Kukuana Place of Death (that was perhaps the most memorable scene of all for me). I mean... wow. I'm actually glad that no decent film adaptation of the book has ever been made, because now I'm not tempted to watch it. It'd take a damn fine movie to match up to the pictures in my mind! Perhaps I should write to Peter Jackson...

Notable Quotables:

"There is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it. There is nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may not climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross... if love leads him and he holds his life in his hand counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or lose it as Heaven may order."
"On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed presently to gold bars, through which the dawn glided out across the desert. The stars grew pale and paler still till at last they vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man. Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day." - Isn't that just gorgeous?
"My mind's eye singled out those who were sealed to slaughter, and there rushed in upon my heart a great sense of the mystery of human life, and an overwhelming sorrow at its futility and sadness... Only the old moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses, and the wide earth would take its rest, even as it did æons before we were, and will do æons after we have been forgotten."
"Reader, you may have lain awake at night and thought the silence oppressive, but I say with confidence that you can have no idea what a vivid, tangible thing is perfect silence. On the surface of the earth there is always some sound or motion, and though it may in itself be imperceptible, yet it deadens the sharp edge of absolute silence. But here there was none."
"Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last." - Wise words indeed!

Source: I borrowed this book from my sister - though I'll definitely be getting my own copy now I know how flippin' AWESOME it is!

Soooooo.... I loved it. I'm actually really sad that this particular copy isn't mine, because now I have to put it back. And if I buy a new copy for myself, it won't be THIS one, the one that blew me away, the one that I didn't ever want to end, the one that now has a little reading wear that's all MINE (my sister hasn't read it yet). Is that silly? Probably. Anyway, this is my second book ticked off the LXG challenge (the first was The Invisible Man) which I'm pleased about, AND it's my new favourite book of the year so far, AND it's really got me in the mood for more classics and literary fiction, which is always a good thing. I leave this epic meandering post a happy reader!

I'm now reading Struck by Jennifer Bosworth, a new semi-dystopian YA novel about a girl with a lightning addiction living in LA in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake, torn between two warring cults who believe that the apocalypse is coming... I'm fascinated by lightning anyway, and so far I'm really enjoying Mia's story. After that I'll FINALLY be reading Heart-Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne, and then I'm free to go back to my stack of library books!

I'm just at that happy point of reading right now where I'm not getting impatient with my books (Must read more! Faster! NOW!) but nor am I getting bogged down, or struggling to engage with them. In fact, if I can only keep my reading mojo at this perfect level, this summer's madcap holiday period could be a smooth ride indeed - I'll just stick my nose in a book and not come out until it's over! :)

I got a World Book Night book!

2012-04-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

Yes, today I got my first WBN book! And I got it in such a lovely way, I wanted to share... A very nice lady dressed in bright strawberry red breezed in through the door and straight up to the counter, where she told me that she was 'part of World Book Night' and presented me with a copy of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. She told me a little bit about the book, about how she'd given away all of her copies in an hour, and about what she'd written on her giver application form to get her box of goodies in the first place. I have to say, I like this year's editions even more than last year's! They have glossy burgundy spines (last year it was navy), and this one has the posh Penguin cover set into the front, and Shakespeare's Sonnet 34 printed inside the back cover.

Now, this was all very nice in itself: my first WBN book - one I really wanted to read - being given to me by someone who evidently adored it and was passionate about passing it on. But then she told me WHY she was giving me the book. Apparently she'd been here before while on holiday in the area, and loved our little shop. Loved it so much, in fact, that knowing she'd be coming again, she'd saved her last copy and brought it all the way from South Wales to give to me!

She looked quite relieved that I'd not read it yet but evidently wanted to - if I'd already been a Two Cities enthusiast she said she'd still have given it to me, to pass it onto someone else here. Mum will probably read it after me and we'll both leave comments on the website using the book's unique code (the nice lady asked my name so she could look out for me!), then we'll pass it on again - perhaps by leaving it in the coffee shop over the road for the next person to take away...??

How lovely is that, though? I went all red-faced and told her she'd just made my day, then SHE went red-faced and told me it'd made hers too... Two happy bunnies, one (apparently) brilliant book. Champion. :)

Did you take part in World Book Night 2012? If you gave a book, which did you choose and how did you give them away? And if you received one, which one did you get, and how did it fall into your hands?

0.4, by Mike Lancaster

2012-04-30T05:30:00.000-07:00

REVIEW: 0.4 (4*)

by Mike Lancaster (Egmont Press, 2011)

'They're gone,' he said. 'Changed. All of them. You hear me? I... I SEE THEM!'
His words sent a physical chill down my spine.
'See what?' I demanded. 'What can you see?'

This is one of those unassuming books that actually far exceeded my expectations. Rather overlooked in the current wave of YA paranormal and dystopian fiction, this is the kind of novel that can be enjoyed by the full sweep of the YA target audience, and is a proper little page-turner to boot.

The whole novel is centred around the mysterious event which takes place - unlikely though it may seem - during the local talent show in the little English village of Millgrove. As part of the show, Kyle and Lilly, along with two adults, Mr Peterson and Mrs O'Donnell, agree to get up on stage and be hypnotised by their madcap friend Danny. To their horror, when they 'awaken' a few minutes later, everyone in the village is frozen in place where they sit, shocked expressions on their faces. When they begin to move again, it's clear that something has changed. Now these four must try to work out what happened - and why - before it's too late...

Lancaster has been especially clever in that the structure of the novel, and even the paper-book format, tie in intrinsically with the plot. The chapters are written in a normal narrative style, but are divided into tape sides - this is supposed to be a kind of transcript of the testimony of Kyle Straker, which has been recorded onto old audio tapes and discovered later. Lancaster takes on the role of 'editor' and there are occasional futuristic notes inserted into the text to explain popular culture references and some of our more unusual idioms.

I found it a quick but hard-hitting read, with some deliciously creepy moments along the way, fusing the quiet menace of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers with the thought-provoking ideas of The Matrix into one exciting premise. The pithy, amusing and occasionally revelatory text notes are a nice touch. Between the testimony and the 'editorial input', everything starts to come together, but until the big reveal I still wasn't quite sure what had happened! One for boys AND girls to enjoy, and I'd say it was suitable for younger YA readers as well, though they might not pick up on some of the references and humour that an older reader would. Recommended!

Notable Quotable:

"Not everyone has to fly high to prove they exist; some of us are perfectly happy flying low and enjoying the view."

Source: This book was a Christmas gift. Thanks Dad! xx

The Silent Land, by Graham Joyce

2012-04-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

REVIEW: THE SILENT LAND (3.5*)

by Graham Joyce (Gollancz, 2010)

I had originally intended to read The Silent Land over the winter - it being set amidst the snowy peaks of a ski resort and all - but I'm glad I got to it in the end nevertheless! It's hard to explain what this book is about. It opens with a young married couple, Zoe and Jake, out skiing in the early morning. They are anticipating enjoying the peace and beautiful scenery before the rest of the resort empties onto the slopes for the day - but instead end up getting swept up in an avalanche...

When she comes to, Zoe manages to fight her way out from under the snow and is reunited with Jake, and the two stumble back down to the village to get help and warn the other skiiers. But when they reach their hotel - the closest to the slopes - there is no one there, and it appears that everyone has left in quite a hurry. Figuring that perhaps the hotel has been evacuated, they walk into town, only to find it likewise deserted. At first the couple find this situation quite a romantic novelty, cooking dinner in the hotel kitchen and enjoying the spa and the empty slopes, but then strange things start to happen. Zoe begins to hallucinate, time seems to speed up and slow down at will, and when they try to leave the village, no matter what they do the roads always bring them back to where they started. Has the town really been evacuated? Or has everyone died in the avalanche? Have THEY died in the avalanche? And why does it feel like the village itself is trying to manipulate them in some way?

It's a fascinating novel, which really keeps you puzzling and trying to figure out exactly what is going on. I started to work it all out as the chapters flew by, but even so I wasn't quite sure until all the pieces came together at the end. Occasionally it got a bit TOO puzzling, and I think I missed a step on a couple of occasions, but that might have been me rather than the book. I did find that as the situation got more sinister, things started to get a little bit repetitive and once or twice I found myself getting frustrated as a result. The sex scenes were horrendously clinical, I have to say, and I found some of the coarser moments of dialogue between the couple very jarring, and completely at odds with the thoughtful, almost poetic nature of the themes and setting. But when push came to shove, it WAS an interesting premise, with some beautifully surreal moments, some genuinely frightening scenes, and a moving message about the nature of life and the power of love which had me tearing up nicely. Cautiously recommended.

Notable Quotables:

"But it's like life, isn't it? We know death is coming. And yet we always see our loved ones as taken away from us, instead of given to us for whatever time we have."
"Two people in love don't make a hive mind. Neither should they want to be a hive mind, to think the same, to know the same. It's about being separate and still loving each other, being distinct from each other. One is the violin string, one is the bow.

Source: I borrowed this book from my local library.

My World Book Night - and the aftermath!

2012-04-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

My World Book Night Day-Off Post-Dewey Book-Themed Read-a-Thon Thingy (But With Sleeping)

7pm: My night kicks off! I've got Mike Lancaster's 0.4 to read - a Christmas gift from my dad - and as always, pizza and coffee for sustenance. Happily I managed to wrestle Mum AWAY from the pizza, but not before she'd taken a huge bite out of one the slices...

8:30pm: I stop to listen to Mariella Frostrup's Radio 4 WBN documentary from earlier in the day. It's called One in a Million and explores the effects of WBN on some of LAST year's givers and receivers. It's only half an hour long - the link takes you to BBC iPlayer if you want to listen! I found it inspiring and quite moving, and particularly liked these parting words from the end of the programme:

"Amid the hustle and bustle of contemporary society, with work and family, internet, emails, TV and so much else demanding our attention, reading is increasingly an intimate luxury to be sought out and savoured. Those who haven't had this door opened for them, who for one reason or another have yet to step into the world of books, are missing out on so much... You never forget it when someone gives you a story that transports you to another world."

9:45pm: Time for more reading and tea - until I start getting freaked out by my book in a kind of Signs/Cloverfield/Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind of way, at which point it's time to stop so I don't give myself nightmares!

10:15pm: Driving away the freak-out with coffee, a chocolate chip muffin and a dose of the Gilmore Girls. It's not a very bookish episode, as far as they go - Sherry's extremely annoying baby shower, from season 3 - but hey, it's doing the job!

11pm: Okay, I give up. My eyes are tired and I HAVE just done a day at work, so it's time for bed...

4am: Woken up by Domino, having one of her middle-of-the-night 'OMG I LUVZ U!' purring/paddling sessions on my stomach. Sit up and read for half an hour before both of us snuggle down and drop off again.

10am: Well, I didn't have nightmares about aliens - but I DID dream that I was at a WBN event, surrounded by people passing out those distinctive-covered books, laughing and smiling and encouraging people to read. How appropriate! Time for breakfast and more Gilmore Girls while I wake up properly and get my focus back. It's one of my favourite episodes - the one with the Dance Marathon, where Lorelai has that fabulous outfit on and Jess and Rory can finally get together, woohoo!

11am: Breakfast and Viewing Time are over, so it's time for more reading and a nice cup of tea... Things are getting exciting in 0.4, and I'm puzzling away, trying to work out what on earth's going on in the little village of Millgrove... Mum is unimpressed to catch me back under the duvet with a large black and white cat asleep on my chest - but hey, it's my day off, and a sleeping cat is a great book rest!

12:30pm: Snack time! I'm about ready for a change of scenery, so I'm having a warm fruit scone with butter and jam, and a mug of coffee, and sitting at the kitchen table for a while. As a bonus, it's easier to wait for our log delivery down here where I can see outside, instead of sitting in my room listening out for every noise on the drive. My reading takes a small detour into a discussion of new-house options and renovation possibilities, which with our house on the market is Mum's current all-consuming obsession...

2:15pm: The logs have ARRIVED, so I can head back upstairs and curl up for a few minutes. Could this possibly be the home stretch of 0.4?

Image via ronyardley.com

2:50pm: Noooooo! It's the moment of The Big Revelation in 0.4 - but I've been called to go and help Mum stack that mountain of logs that have just been delivered into our little sheltered woodpile thing. This could take a while...

5:15pm: I'm back inside, showered, aching and hopefully with all that wood dust washed out of my hair. Now I can finally get back to 0.4, with the rest of yesterday's pizza and a fortifying mug of coffee...

6:15pm: Hooray, I've finished 0.4! I must say, its format has been well thought out, and it's cleverly put together. Kinda like The Matrix meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I recommend it! Now, time for another dose of Gilmore Girls - an impromptu visit to Yale, and Rory and Jess's first real kiss, awwww... (Yes, I'm Team Jess all the way! Hot, witty, reads constantly and looks just a little bit like James Dean, my perfect man!)

7:30pm: Setting up my review post for 0.4. Just the basics - title, publisher, book cover, labels etc. I'm two reviews behind now, oops. Feeling very tired after all that reading and log-stacking. Think it's the wood dust making my eyes burn, ouch... Next job: trying to choose something new to read. Library book? Review book? Kinda feeling like something a bit more literary this time, but what? Hmmmm.

8:15pm: I've temporarily given up on trying to choose a new book to read. Sometimes you have to let the end of the last book fade for a few minutes before you can decide what to move onto next. Instead I'm writing down all of the titles from WBN 2011 and WBN 2012 here in the UK, plus America's 30 WBN titles and Susan Hill's alternative list, just in CASE I want them at some point to satisfy my nerdish love for lists and being able to Tick Stuff Off With Relish.

9:15pm: Success! I've tentatively chosen King Solomon's Mines as my next read, which should satisfy my literary craving AND topple Allan Quatermain off my League of Extraordinary Gentlemen challenge (more Stuff To Tick Off With Relish, woohoo!). Now I think I'll retire with yet more Gilmore Girls, a choc chip muffin, more coffee and some trusty headache tablets - and who knows, I might get in a little more reading before bed, sore eyes/head allowing... At any rate, this little bookish bonanza will hopefully have kick-started my reading for the rest of the week!

And now, to bring us up to date: I didn't do any more reading before bed, of course... My eyes just wouldn't stay open any longer! I'm still owing those two reviews for The Silent Land and 0.4 - and wondering whether to mini-review both in one post, just to get 'em out the way - but I was right about the kick-started reading. After yesterday's rainy day with no customers, and an evening on my bed with a fat cat across my knees (yup, same one again), I'm now about halfway through King Solomon's Mines and loving it! Quite verbose, but exciting and evocative, with some deliciously horrific moments and some very funny ones too. So far so good! Lots more rain again today so I'm making good progress - though, er, we could probably do with a few people buying books at some point...

Over to you - did you do anything special for World Book Night 2012? Did you go to a WBN event, or perhaps you were a giver (or receiver) of one of the WBN titles? Maybe you just went on a book shopping spree or had a night in with a good book instead?

Annexed, by Sharon Dogar

2012-04-23T06:02:00.000-07:00

REVIEW: ANNEXED (4*)

by Sharon Dogar (Andersen Press, 2010)

"Will we be imaginary one day? Will we be just like one of Anne's stories? Or worse, will the story that survives be the Nazi one - that we were only ever good enough to be wiped out. How? How could anybody do this?"

I didn't know quite what to expect from this novel. The Diary of a Young Girl is one of my favourite books of all time, so the idea of a novelisation of the same events was simultaneously exciting and just a little bit worrying. Happily - and to my great relief - I found that for the most part, Dogar's endeavour manages to walk the fine line between 'respectful tribute' and 'artistic license' quite successfully!

The book is written from the point of view of Peter van Pels, the teenage son of the family in hiding with the Franks. It begins with Peter watching his (entirely fictional) girlfriend Liese and her family being rounded up and driven away. He can only stand in the road in despair.  He makes his way reluctantly to the warehouse to join the Frank family - and his first impressions don't exactly fill him with joy... But slowly he adapts to life in the annexe, finds a new strength he didn't know he had, and begins an odd flirtation with livewire Anne.

This romantic element seems to be the main issue for many of the novel's detractors, but actually I found it quite subtle and entirely plausible. In such a confined space, with hormones raging and very little to engage their attention elsewhere, I found it completely believable that precocious young Anne could set her sights on Peter - and that he might feel extremely conflicted about it, but also tempted by her quick wit and cheerful charm.  I occasionally found Peter's narrative a little self-conscious and slow, even manipulative at times, and it didn't have all the little details about daily life that made Anne's journal really come alive, but I still enjoyed it! I thought Dogar's depiction of the various characters living in the annexe was spot-on, and she captured the experience of a frustrated teenage boy rather well.

Unlike Anne's iconic diary, which obviously ended just before the annexe's occupants were found and taken away, Dogar extends her novel right through to Auschwitz and beyond - and this is where I thought she really excelled.  Peter's whole narrative is precipitated by his flood of memories as he lies in the sick bay at Mauthausen, deliriously waiting for the call to wake up and start another day in hell.  Between chapters there are occasional interjections from the dying boy to remind the reader that this is not going to end well. After they are captured Peter describes the horrendous train journey out of Amsterdam, the separation from his mother and the Frank women, how he learned to survive in the camps, and how he lost his father to the gas chambers. I could barely read the last twenty pages or so, I was crying so hard.

At the end of the day, it may be uncomfortable reading but I don't think we can ever remind ourselves too often of the evil that humanity has perpetuated in the past, especially when hatred and ignorance are still used as excuses to inflict pain on minority groups today. It really is well worth a read, whether you're already familiar with The Diary of a Young Girl or not, and I think it would make fantastic supplementary material for a high school project, for example. Dogar includes a brief epilogue at the end of the book explaining where and how each of the characters died, as well as a short bibliography which includes seminal works of Holocaust literature like Primo Levi's If This is a Man and Elie Wiesel's Night.  Recommended.

Notable Quotables:

"I'm in the attic. The sun shines and I sit in it and read. The book makes time change. Stops it hanging. Somewhere I can hear the breeze in the tree behind me. I can feel the sun on my back and the pages turn and I forget. There are only the people on the page and what will happen next. What will happen to the people in the book, not what will happen to me... I forget everything."
"It's been snowing. I stand in the attic, waiting for Anne, and stare at the branches of the chestnut tree all covered in white. There are stars behind it. The night is a clear, strange blue. I know I could paint all my life. But I could never make a blue that dark. That deep. That beautiful. I could never make stars like little holes of light in the night. Even van Gogh couldn't do it."
"Sometimes, in the camp, her words came to me. Appeared in my head out of nowhere. They came like a taunt. A curse. A dream from another world that has no meaning here. They made me hope she died quickly. Quickly. That she walked into the chambers full of love, courage and hope - and went out like a light. A bright light. Not like this. This living death."
"'I want people to know, Peter. I want them to feel what we feel. What it's like to be scared. What it's like to look out of the window and see your own people led away whilst you're safe in your bed. What it's like to eat whilst they starve. If they know, if they feel it too, then they can never do this again, can they?' Her eyes are alight. Blazing. Burning."
"'They're fighting for us,' I say, and it feels like a miracle again, that there are people from all over the world, fighting. Fighting to allow the differences between us. Living for us. Dying for us."
"In those first minutes the seconds fell like hours. We sat shaved and uniformed and numbered. Häftlinge now, unable to wake to the shock of that final parting we didn't even know had happened, yet sensed within us - a severing from our women, from ourselves - the first of many to come as we are kicked, or beaten or hanged or shot, or taken into the showers that turn water into gas. There are so many ways to part with life."

Source: I borrowed this book from my local library.

A Favourite Books A-Z

2012-04-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

Well, my review of Annexed is still in the works, but I've not been well for the last couple of days and since review-writing requires actual brainpower I'm going to leave it alone until I'm feeling better. Most of you will already know that I have quite bad IBS, which I usually keep well and truly under control - but every now and again it manages to flare up and have a little party in my abdomen all by itself. You know how you feel if you get a stomach bug? Yeah, that - only it can go on for days. Today is day 3, so my stomach currently feels like it's been enthusiastically wrung out by a large strong-armed washerwoman, I'm white as a sheet, I keep getting the chills, I have a lovely headache, and my back and side muscles are in need of a good massage.

I've had to come to work every day, of course. This is one of the really, REALLY bad bits about running your own shop (without staff) - common sense would tell you to stay at home wearing pyjamas and snuggling under a duvet with the cat/a book/the telly/a cup of tea, but what you're ACTUALLY doing is sitting behind a shop counter looking like you've been recently exhumed, smiling painfully at the customers, writhing around a little bit when no one's looking, and trying not to fall off your chair. I've spent quite a bit of time desperately trying to get comfy in the office, snuggling under a fleece jacket with a hot water bottle and nibbling arrowroot biscuits, and yesterday we closed an hour early because Mum had had enough, oops!

Anyway, today I'm feeling (mercifully) a tad less like death, but still fuzzy and sore, so I'm back on the counter and distracting myself a little bit with Blogger and some fun Tumblr sites. And I'm still trying to read in between bad spells, of course - because what is life without a book to while away a few unpleasant hours when you need it most?!

Sooooo, Matthew at A Guy's Moleskin Notebook posted this meme in which you name your favorite book that starts with each letter in the alphabet. I reckon this is one of those memes that would be really fun to do every year or two, see what amazing books you've read since that could topple your old answers off the pile... I saw it yesterday over at Caroline Bookbinder and like her, I couldn't resist, so here we go!

0-9 84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff

A Atonement - Ian McEwan

B Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co. - Jeremy Mercer
C The Cat Who Came In From the Cold - Deric Longden
D The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
E Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table - Nigel Slater

F Faceless Killers (Kurt Wallander 1) - Henning Mankell

G Gold - Dan Rhodes

H The Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling

I I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

J Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë

K Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell*

L Lorna Doone - R.D. Blackmore

M Matilda - Roald Dahl

N Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

O The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton

P The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Q Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime - Joe Moran

R Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

S The Secret History - Donna Tartt

T This Book Will Save Your Life - A.M. Homes

U The Undomestic Goddess - Sophie Kinsella

V Virals - Kathy Reichs

W Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

X - No title

Y Year of Wonders - Geraldine Brooks

Z - No title

* I haven't actually read Keep the Aspidistra Flying yet, but I didn't have anything else to fill that slot and I DO love the movie, so I'm expecting great things from the book!

Hmmm, very interesting. Many of the books listed here are amongst my absolute favourites of all time; a couple are just decent reads that were pushed up onto the platform because their letters didn't yield many choices (at least not yet - I've got so many unread books I'm sure a few of them will be easily replaced!). Some of my favourite books were pushed out of the running because they were from letters with LOADS of choices! Still fun though - and coasting through my LibraryThing catalogue for something like this also serves the delightful purpose of reminding me of all the wonderful books awaiting me on my shelves. It's easy to forget sometimes, especially now I'm living down in the family house with most of my books still shelved or boxed in the flat!

If you decide to nab this meme for your own amusement, do drop by and leave the link in the comments so I can come have a wander through all the titles that made it onto YOUR list. Have fun!

More rampant liberrying for me!

2012-04-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

Soooo, guess who's been a-liberrying again? No, that's not a dirty sex word you just haven't heard about yet. (Mum actually told me off for keep calling it a liberry - but it sounds so much TASTIER than 'library', doesn't it?) I had to make some tough decisions about what to keep and what to take back, but it had to be done because The Big Library is an absolute treasure trove compared to The Little Local One and I don't get over there that often! I took back two that I only just checked out, and a couple of others, but since most of them came from The Little Local One anyway I reckoned I could just pick them back up again at this end when I take my next couple back! I haz a PLAN, peoples!

I have to say, I'm really getting back into this liberrying thing. I mean, in some ways it's BAD because I'm always prioritising liberry books over the thousand or so unread books on my OWN shelves. But in other ways it's GOOD because I'm Supporting My Liberry and taking a chance on new authors and Exploring New Stuff, and I actually have a sort-of mental deadline to get them read by, AND even if I reserve stuff (which I haven't needed to do yet) it means getting a book for the tiny tiny price of 80p instead of buying it.

Soooo, my current complete library haul of 16 now stands like this:

1. Hell's Angels - Hunter S. Thompson

2. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists - Gideon Defoe

3. Annexed - Sharon Dogar

4. Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet - Barry Miles

5. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe

6. The Silent Land - Graham Joyce

7. Half Blood Blues - Esi Edugyan

8. Rant - Chuck Palahniuk

9. A big Penguin volume of the Collected Poems of Allen Ginsberg

10. Tattoos and Tequila - Vince Neil

11. Hospital Babylon - Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anon.

12. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

13. There Is No Dog - Meg Rosoff

14. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

15. V for Vendetta - Alan Moore

16. Tomorrow, When the War Began - John Marsden

I'm well chuffed because I think I'm the first person to get the shiny new copy of Hell's Angels (a cute little Penguin Essentials edition, I LOVE IT!), and only the second to get hold of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Lucky, lucky girl, I bet they won't see the library shelves very much. I also *cough* sneaked to Waterstones *cough* (What? Mum wasn't ready yet and I had LOADS of time!) and bought Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (because I took the other one back to the library already, to make room for MORE BOOKS!) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (because that's what I was looking for at the other bookshop last week!). And I found St. Elmo's Fire in a charity shop en route back to the car park for a miniscule £1.99, so I came home happy! Especially because I bought cookies from the petrol station too. Mmmm, cookies...

Sooooo, I finished Annexed BEFORE we went to the library yesterday morning, but when I'd finally stopped sobbing I realised I couldn't possibly do the book justice without having it in front of me when I reviewed it, so I kept it for now. That'll be COMING SOON. And I started The Silent Land when we got home from shopping/house viewing and to my surprise, was actually halfway through it by the time I went to bed. I'm glad it survived the Library Book Massacre yesterday morning, because it's been a really absorbing read so far!

I might get that review of Annexed done today, since it's basically given rain, rain and more rain, with a side helping of hail, thunderbolts and lightning (very very frightening, Galileo) - though part of me thinks it would the PERFECT time to get stuck into my book while there's no one around. Someone brought a load of books already, though since she was very friendly we didn't mind the Lack Of A Book Bringing Appointment too much, even though she is obviously MAD for thinking, "Hey, a torrential downpour! What a perfect opportunity to carry some boxes of books into town!." PLUS Mum left me to it so I managed to squirrel away The Last of the Mohicans and The Bonfire of the Vanities under the counter already. It's a sickness, it really is. People think books are so benign, but they're just as capable of creating a vicious circle as alcohol, say. Or sharks.

OK, onwards and upwards! I am on a READING ROLL! I'll leave you with this, which my sister just sent me and which took me a minute to, y'know, get, but when I did, O HOW WE LAUGHED!

IMM: I never come home empty-handed!

2012-04-15T07:49:00.001-07:00

Yes, my friends, once again I have been allowed out unsupervised! This is quite surprising since the book-acquisition situation in our house is currently at breaking point again (oops) - so much so that when I mentioned my little excursion to my sister on MSN yesterday morning, her first reaction was, "Does Mum know?" Which sums it up fairly succinctly, I think. :)

First up, let me say that I did REMOVE six books from the house on the same day, so this isn't all a one-sided story. I took four library books back, for a start. One was finished and reviewed (The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman), and three were rapidly approaching their Final Deadline and just wouldn't have been read in time. I brought Karin Slaughter's Skin Privilege back to the shop, and also Belle de Jour's Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, which I'd been reading sporadically over the last couple of months and was starting to become a bit much of a muchness. Done, gone, better things to read...

Like my NEW batch of library books, for example! (How was that for a segue?!) I wasn't actually anticipating getting quite so many, mostly because I've still got a few at home anyway AND we're going to town (where THE BIG LIBRARY is) on Tuesday, so I was planning on keeping more spaces free on my card. Sooooo, I reckoned I'd try and finish ONE of my current check-outs by then (probably Annexed), go through the library catalogue and my wishlist on Tuesday morning to see what they've got on the shelves, then decide what I want most and juggle them around accordingly. Yes, I run my library trips like a military campaign, but it gets RESULTS, people! :)

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes! Library books! (Not such a great segue...) I got six out yesterday - which was probably about four more than Mum hoped, but she didn't mind too much! (Well, they don't clog up the house the same, do they? They have to go back eventually!) First up, a rather offbeat duo, Kurt Vonnegut's Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction and Chuck Palahniuk's Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey (which has a truly horrible cover, by the way). I've never read Vonnegut OR Palahniuk - though I have a book by each on my shelves - but I thought I'd take a leap into the unknown. As an added bonus, I won't be starting with their most obvious titles - Slaughterhouse Five and Fight Club - which I find curiously satisfying!

To my delight, I FINALLY managed to put my hands on a copy of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (and at our little local library, no less! I tried that big library three or four times and came up empty-handed!). It'll be my first ever graphic novel, but I had a flick through it sitting on the library floor and I think I'm going to enjoy it. It'll be another completed category for my Mixing It Up Challenge too, which is good, and I'll be able to watch the movie at last. I also found John Marsden's Tomorrow, When the War Began. I hadn't even heard of it until the movie came out (I haven't seen it) but the reviews are pretty overwhelmingly positive, so I'm looking forward to it.

And last but not least, a couple of non-fiction books to round out the bunch. I've enjoyed Hotel Babylon and Beach Babylon already, and have Fashion Babylon and Wedding Babylon on my shelves (each written by Imogen Edwards-Jones and an anonymous industry insider), so I've been rather looking forward to the latest addition to the series, Hospital Babylon. Should be an interesting - if alarming - read! My last choice was Joshua Foer's runaway hit Moonwalking with Einstein, which my sister's already read, loved and fervently recommended. She has a copy somewhere, but I couldn't remember if she'd taken it to Liverpool with her so I grabbed it anyway!

And then I was a little bit naughty... I sneaked along to the bookshop along the road to look at their very awesome Beats/Bob Dylan/Counterculture section. It's basically a narrow bookcase tucked in a corner, crammed with all sorts of cool stuff. As you may remember, I bought a bunch of books off there after my birthday last year so I reckoned it was about time for another look! There were three biographies and a huge book of Bukowski's poetry that I drooled over, but I didn't buy any of them this time. I was just about to walk away (shock!) when I noticed a cute little pocket edition of Naked Lunch for only £5, so I bought that instead. And the best thing about it? It was the perfect size to slip into the back pocket of my jeans, under my coat, so that when Mum 'frisked me' (ie. rifled through my bag) when I got back, I came up squeaky clean and smelling of roses! Haha, sometimes I scare myself with my own evil genius. :D

As a little footnote to this story, I SAY evil genius, but evidently I still have room left for improvement, as I made the schoolboy error of leaving the draft of this post up on the screen while I went to fill up the shelves - and Mum read it. Dammit! Haha, at least she was SMILING when she called me a 'lying little toerag', so I reckon my book babies are safe for another day. *sighs with relief*

That's all, folks! (For now, at least!) Have you read any of these already? More importantly, what's in YOUR mailbox this week? Leave me a comment and tell me aaaaaall about it!

Karin Slaughter, Jack Kerouac, Bernard Black and a bit of rambling

2012-04-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

It's nearly the end of the Easter Holidays - and wow, it couldn't come soon enough... No matter how bouncy and optimistic we are at the start of a school break, we're always glad when it's over! The headaches increase in number (and severity), we fall into bed earlier and earlier every night, and my inner Bernard Black needs less and less provocation to emerge fighting. So a little quiet time is very welcome at the end of it all! It may not last long, but we should at least get a SMALL reprieve before the summer holidays, particularly during the week. The tourists are still around, especially at weekends, but at least we don't have to defend our stock from small marauders and sticky hands to quite the same extent, ha!

Anyway, this is my review of the book that got me through the Easter weekend, Karin Slaughter's Skin Privilege, which proved to be wonderfully diverting when the shop got busy and I started to feel a bit flustered! I've moved on to one of my much-anticipated library books now - Annexed by Sharon Dogar, which is very interesting so far - and I've been to the library AGAIN this morning, so I'll do an IMM post tomorrow to show off my little haul. On Tuesday we'll be popping across to the big town half an hour away - the cause of my bookish downfall on several occasions, as you may remember - en route to a house viewing, so I'd better get reading so I can make the most of our brief stay to go library/Waterstones stalking yet again... Hey, you can't keep an avid reader down! :)

REVIEW: SKIN PRIVILEGE (4*)

by Karin Slaughter (Arrow Books, 2008)

Also published as Beyond Reach, this is the sixth of Slaughter's Sara Linton novels - though it's the first I've ever read. Happily, I didn't find that my lack of Slaughter experience hindered my enjoyment of the book in the slightest! It is a fantastic piece of storytelling that weaves a complex and all-too-believable plot around a compelling group of flawed, feisty but very likeable characters.

When Jeffrey Tolliver, Chief of Police in Granta County, gets a phone call to say that his detective Lena Adams has been arrested at a crime scene in her home town, on suspicion of arson and murder, he and his coroner wife Sara immediately drive out to Reece to investigate. There they uncover a terrifying web of meth trafficking and corruption, with rival neo-Nazi gangs keeping the townspeople in fear, greedy eyes on everyone and everything. With this claustrophobic atmosphere slowing their progress, will they manage to piece together what really happened the night Lena was arrested? Can they find out who was condemned to die in the burning car? And as the body count rises, will they be the next target?

Skin Privilege didn't pull me in headfirst, dragging me breathlessly through the pages; instead it builds slowly, layering up our knowledge of the characters, the town, the background, playing around with little details that may or may not be important. Slaughter doesn't shy away from the realities of Sara's work in the mortuary, or from the more graphic elements of her victims' fates, but it never feels gratuitous and like Sara, we are encouraged to detach a little and read with interest rather than revulsion. I also appreciated how she explores the endless ways - both good and bad - that people can be tied to each other, whether they are friends, family, colleagues, partners, neighbours or even complete strangers. There were a few sections that seemed a bit slow, and a couple of slightly confusing moments where I felt like I'd missed something along the way, but there were other parts that had me glued to the page, including one big shock where I least expected it that nearly had me weeping on the shop counter! All in all, a very enjoyable first foray into Karin Slaughter's writing - and I'll be keeping an eye out for more of the Sara Linton titles!

And now: an impromptu JACK KEROUAC quote. Just because.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...

Isn't that wonderful? THAT, ladies and gents, is why I can't wait to read On the Road. Onwards!

The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman

2012-04-07T07:57:00.000-07:00

Aaaah, Easter weekend... how I hate you. Not only am I still calorie counting, so I can't just sit stuffing my face with Easter eggs like I normally do (it is a truth universally acknowledged that chocolate in an egg shape tastes 50% yummier than chocolate in a bar), but it means BANK HOLIDAY CROWDS flooding the shop. Bank Holiday Crowds, in case you were wondering, are often large family groups with twelve children (who split off in different directions the second they're through the door, rendering them impossible to control) who will spend £3 after 45 minutes destroying the shop; tourists who can't buy anything because they've already exceeded their baggage allowance for their flight home, and bored couples filling up time between tea and scones at the cafe and lunch at the chip shop. Many of these people have never been in a bookshop before, and will duly end up on my Twitter feed when they say something ridiculous. (Hey, you gotta take your pleasures where you find 'em!)

Fortunately my reading mojo is strong right now, so I am determined to read through my pain (ie. hide behind a book until we close on Monday) and have plucked down a couple of suitably lightweight titles to tide me over. First up is Skin Privilege by Karin Slaughter (never read her before, how exciting), then I might move onto a YA novel or perhaps Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. Then on Tuesday, everybody's raging colds allowing, my sister and I will be off to celebrate surviving the bank holiday (and break our diets) in glorious style by going to see The Hunger Games. Popcorn and hot chocolate, and a Maccy D's for lunch.... ohhhh, I can't wait! :)

REVIEW: THE IMPERFECTIONISTS (3*)

by Tom Rachman (Quercus, 2010)

Rachman's debut novel has been lauded as a funny, intelligent and quirky look at the inner workings of a failing international newspaper, so I picked it up hoping for great things. Sadly, I didn't find them. It is certainly an ambitious book, but for me Rachman just didn't live up to expectations.

Each chapter in the book is heralded by a headline from the newspaper, and dedicated to one of its contributing characters, including the financial officer, the Paris correspondent and the editor-in-chief. In between these chapters are short italicised segments tracing the history of the paper - how it was founded in Rome by successful businessman Cyril Ott, and the rise and fall of his creation through the decades, as editors come and go and the world changes. It's a really interesting format, and I enjoyed those parts. However, the main chapters themselves fell very flat for me. Clearly Rachman succeeds in his intention to peek into his characters' lives and motivations, slowly building up an interconnected web of people with the news office at its centre. But lordy, they're an odd bunch. I don't think there was even ONE character I really liked or related to, and the theme of 'endings' - the end of lives, relationships, eras, attitudes, and ultimately, the paper itself - meant that every vignette seemed to fixate on the most sad, unpleasant or strange elements of humanity.

There WERE some funny moments - the aspiring Cairo stringer's dreadful flight of description in his first piece was a particular highlight - and even occasional glimpses of optimism, but these were quickly dampened back down again by the big black cloud seemingly hanging over the entire novel. I certainly wouldn't have called it a humorous book - even a darkly humorous one - despite reading several reviews describing it that way. These characters are damaged, every last one of them. Whether they're achingly lonely or pathological hoarders or just despise their work, calling any of them 'average' seems horribly pessimistic. So... no. Maybe it was the depressing tone of the book, maybe it's because I've never worked in a newspaper office myself (some of the best reviews came from journalists who would know that environment inside out), maybe it was the vignette format that never allowed me to get attached to any of the characters. Whatever it was, I'm quite glad I gave it a try, but it just didn't do it for me!

Notable Quotables:

"Arthur's cubicle used to be near the watercooler, but the bosses tired of having to chat with him each time they got thirsty. So the watercooler stayed and he was moved. Now his desk is in a distant corner, as far from the locus of power as possible but nearer the cupboard of pens, which is a consolation."
"The loss of one's life is not the greatest loss. It is no loss at all. To others, perhaps, but not to oneself. From one's own perspective, experience simply halts. From one's own perspective, there is no loss. You see? Yet maybe this is a game of words, too, because it doesn't make it any less frightening, does it."
"Here is a fact: nothing in all civilization has been as productive as ludicrous ambition. Whatever its ills, nothing has created more. Cathedrals, sonatas, encyclopedias: love of God was not behind them, nor love of life. But the love of man to be worshipped by man."

Moon Pie, by Simon Mason

2012-04-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

Wow, I'm doing quite well with this 'regular posting' thing recently! Long may it continue... We had two days off again this week, despite it being the Easter holidays, because yesterday April decided that the whole sunbathing thing March pulled off was a bit rubbish, and threw a nice blizzard at us instead. Whirling snowflakes, heavy white skies, gales, flickering lights, the whole works. Thank YOU, April. So we stayed at home. I read a big chunk of Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists, which is great because I'd come to a bit of standstill with it, and I finished off my rewatch of season 1 of Gilmore Girls and broke into season 2. AND I drank a LOT of coffee, and didn't have a nap ONCE even though I wanted to... *pats self heartily on back* Now, a review!

REVIEW: MOON PIE (4.5*)

by Simon Mason (David Fickling Books, 2011)

This book was a little 'younger' than I would normally venture into with my reading, but actually I'm really glad I did because it was fantastic! It is a sweet story about eleven year-old Martha, who looks after her house and her little brother Tug every day because her dad is never at home. Meanwhile HE is becoming more and more 'strange', doing reckless things and being silly all the time, to the point where even Tug is unimpressed. As it turns out, he has been steadily descending into alcoholism since their mother died - and things are about to reach crisis point...

It's certainly a serious subject, but as in Jacqueline Wilson's books, it is woven together with cheerier subplots (mostly about filmmaking - the children make their own movies with their friends), and it is handled with a lightness of touch that saves it ever getting too much for a young reader to handle. Things DO get bad - their lives are turned upside down by their father's illness - and there are some terribly poignant moments, but the novel shows the whole family working through their issues and ultimately reaching a happy ending. There is a truckload of wonderful humour to temper even the darkest of moments, and I have to say, the children are a delight: Mason nails their voices and little quirks so precisely, it's a joy to read. I particularly liked little Tug (who is always hungry, especially for pies) and Martha's flamboyant diva friend Marcus! And Martha is such a wonderful character to root for. She's like all my favourite young literary heroines rolled into one - a little Matilda, a little Jo March, a little Anne Shirley, a little Sara Crewe...

I think this would be a great book for older children and tweenage readers, and while I was reading it I was also struck by how good it would be for reading aloud in the classroom. There's plenty to discuss in terms of the more mature themes, but also plenty of giggle-out-loud crowd-pleasing moments as well (Tug is one of the funniest characters I've come across in AGES!). All in all, I'd highly recommend it - though parents might want to read it first to be sure their kids will be able to comprehend and handle the more graphic elements of the alcoholism storyline.

Note: Many thanks to the lovely ladies at Random House Children's Books, who sent me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

A mammoth shopping spree, wheeeeee!

2012-04-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

Aaaaaah, nothing soothes the Shopgirl Holiday Blues quite like a little bout of book shopping in OTHER PEOPLE'S stores. I didn't go as far as the indie bookshop on the other side of town, but I DID raid the four closest charity shops, the library and a conveniently placed stall... And yes, I DID get THE LOOK from my mother when I returned with a heaving canvas bag. She was 'very disappointed' because 'we'll be moving soon'... however, since this may not be for another 18 months for all we know, I'm not too worried! At least, I'm not too worried now that she's stepped AWAY from the carrier bag and stopped looking quite so threatening. :)

Sooo, what did I buy, I hear you ask? Well, my little sunflowers, pull up a chair, because I have plenty to report! First up, the delights of our local Air Ambulance shop... This shop is very new in town, but I already love it. Upstairs they have a wall of bookshelves, two narrow shelves of DVDs and two big comfy leather sofas, which is AWESOMENESS especially when I have too many books to look through and need somewhere to perch. They obviously have some regular patrons who donate shiny new fiction, good non-fiction and a healthy dose of YA alongside the usual charity shop fare, so I've never left empty-handed yet. Far from it, in fact! I only went in last week so not much had changed, but I DID buy two things. I bought Lost in Translation on DVD for a very reasonable £1.95, and an unread copy of High Fidelity by Nick Hornby for a delicious 95p. Yes, I already HAVE a copy of High Fidelity - but this one is so much PRETTIER and has rock posters on the front and I love it, and did I mention it was only 95p?

Our local hospice shop was a dud - all granny fiction and cheap thrillers - so my next stop was Age UK, which is usually so-so for books. Sometimes I find something awesome (like the last couple of times), sometimes I walk away without succumbing to anything. Happily, on this occasion not only did they have some BRILLIANT titles, but they also had an ALL PAPERBACK BOOKS 49 PENCE SALE! Aaaargh! Such beautiful, beautiful words. So, for the bargain price of £2.45, I got five lovely shiny books. Snowdrops by A.D. Miller is one I've been after from the library/Amazon anyway, because it was on the Man Booker shortlist. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan has been on my wishlist since it appeared on the TV Book Club last summer. Chuck Palahniuk is one of those cult authors that always seems to be checked out of the library, no matter how long you wait, so I snatched up a copy of Fight Club. There was a practically unread copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which I've never had the urge to read but have heard great things about - for 49p, I wasn't arguing! And finally, I just had to buy Craig Revel Horwood's autobiography All Balls and Glitter, because he's kinda grown on me and now I think he's pretty FAB-YOU-LOUS, dahling...

Last on my charity shop list was Mind, which again, can be a fruit-laden tree of bookish delights... or a bit of a dead shrub. Once again I was in luck, and came away with another three bargainous books! I snatched up E.M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady, which has been on my wishlist for YEARS (even the first PAGE makes me laugh), for a miniscule £2.50. Simon Napier-Bell's Black Vinyl, White Powder was a fortuitous find at £2 - I picked it up because the title was cool and whaddya know? Turns out it's a fifty-year history of the British music business! Great! And lastly, I threw in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for £1, just because I'm SURE someone wrote about it the other day, and I haven't read it yet, so what the heck...

Only a couple left now, I swearz. I was returning a handful of books to the library - the 'YOU CANNOT RENEW THIS BOOK ANY MORE, SLOWPOKE!' date is rapidly approaching and there was no way I was going to finish 'em all, so I'm PRIORITISING - thus providing another prime book-searching opportunity. The interwebs faithfully promised me that The Forest of Hands and Teeth was on the shelf, but I couldn't find it anywhere, not in adult fiction or fantasy fiction or teen fiction. Lying interwebs. I DID find Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding but it was BLOODY ENORMOUS so I thought I'd wait for the paperback. Or another time when I haven't just bought a million books already. So the only book I got back OUT of the library was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which was rather fascinatingly shelved on the 'True Crime' section alongside a book called Murder and Mayhem in the Peak District (pffft, the closest we get to mayhem is the queues at the fish and chip shop come lunchtime) and the worryingly titled How to Kill. Good job that one wasn't checked out, really. And LASTLY, just as I thought I was safe, I passed a Rotary Club stall and spotted a heaving box of books and THERE, crumpled and battered, was a copy of Jemima J by Jane Green, which the lovely Miss Jess recommended ages ago and which I've been looking out for ever since. Happy days!

Aaaah, what a delight it is to pop out to return library books and buy a bottle of milk, only to return with eleven books, a DVD, milk and two intriguing new 'fajita chicken pizzas'. This rampant book buying all ties in very nicely with this article I read today, which is by Tom Cox and is loosely about bookshelf reorganisation but also contains this wonderful paragraph that I TOTALLY GET:

"Of course, some of these excesses are simply a by-product of that elastic thing that can happen to time when we are in a bookshop, where our sheer good intentions and excitement overrule everything we have previously learned about how many hours there are in a day. Just as I keep on subscribing to the New Yorker magazine in the expectation of a lengthy, debilitating illness that will allow me to catch up on 15 years' worth of issues I have hardly skimmed, I'm keeping The Golden Bough in preparation for the non-fatal heart attack that will ultimately enable me to read it. That's a lot of sickness in my future, but I'm embracing it. I suppose that's the joy of a proper, unexpurgated book reorganising session: it makes you look forward to the good times, and the bad."

Can't we all relate to that a tiny bit? It may be knackering, but I get a bit of a kick out of reorganising my bookshelves, or even just combing through them all looking for a particular volume. I forget what I have, hidden away on the back rows or on the top shelves, and finding them all again is like burrowing into a treasure chest. And I quite frequently catch myself thinking things like "Huh, a little bout of flu wouldn't be SO bad, would it? I mean, not so I get really really sick or anything... but just think how much I could read, sitting in bed drinking tea for a week!" Come on, 'fess up, we've all been there.

Okay, well, today is my DAY OFF, so I'm going to go make some more coffee and sit and read Simon Mason's Moon Pie. No, it's not a library book, and yes, it's a tad 'younger' than I would normally read, but I think it's going to be AWESOME. It's about eleven year-old Martha, who is caring for her brother as her father descends into alcoholism after her mum's death. Not the cheeriest of subjects, but I have to say that despite the underlying sadness it is SO FUNNY! The characters are wonderful - Mason's really got a child's voice down - and Martha's little brother Tug is just the cutest jellybean... So, onwards! Many books to read! And I want to enjoy today because after this it's six days of Easter in TouristTown, otherwise known as HELL ON EARTH, and I need as much R&R as I can get beforehand to save my already tenuous grasp on sanity. Laters, all!

If you like this blog, you'll love this book...

2012-04-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

Especially since I'm in it! You may already be familiar with my fellow bookseller Jen Campbell and her blog, This is Not the Six Word Novel - but have you seen her Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops posts? They're hilarious - and tragically familiar to anyone working in the book business - and now they've been made into a book!

I've already read my copy cover to cover, and it is simultaneously hilarious and a little bit tragic. The illustrations, by The Brothers McLeod, are the icing on the cake! Split into three sections, Jen has covered her time at the Edinburgh Bookshop and Ripping Yarns in London (where she currently works), as well as collecting crackers from other booksellers all over the world for the third section, 'Weird Things Customers Say in Other Bookshops'. Which is where our little Derbyshire bookshop comes in! I sent Jen a handful of the pearlers we've had thrown our way over the last couple of years, and was well chuffed when one of my own favourites was chosen, haha!

You definitely don't need to be a bookseller to appreciate the humour - just a love of books, I think! A couple of my favourite gems from the book, just to give you a flavour:

~ CUSTOMER: Do you have any books by Jane Eyre?

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~ CUSTOMER: Doesn't it bother you, being surrounded by books all day? I think I'd be paranoid they were all going to jump off the shelves and kill me.
BOOKSELLER: . . .

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~ CUSTOMER: Do you stock Nigella Lawson under 'Sex' or 'Cookery'?

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~ CHILD: Mum, look, it's the book of A Hundred and One Dalmatians. Can I get a hundred and one puppies?
CHILD'S MOTHER: No, dear, you've already got a hamster. That's quite enough.

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Are you smiling already? Well, good! Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops is published by Constable & Robinson, and is hitting shop shelves near you round about NOW! And remember - be nice to your friendly local bookseller. You never know who's listening... ; )