I've hit 42 in 2007 and 43 in 2008, so may this be the year I can get that extra few under my belt and get to 50!

I need to start looking through my books and tentatively picking some out, plus factoring some in for the different seasons - there are some books that just FIT warm or cold weather, and if you miss the season it gets left for another year...




Books Read 2009
1) On Reading - Andre Kertesz (post 2)
2) New Moon - Stephenie Meyer (post 4)
3) The Pleasure of Reading - ed. Antonia Fraser (post 9)
4) Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co. - Jeremy Mercer (post 16)
5) Remotely Controlled: How television is damaging our lives and what we can do about it - Dr. Aric Sigman (post 17)
6) The Complete Polysyllabic Spree - Nick Hornby (message 23)
7) Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade: How to Survive Life's Smaller Challenges - Guy Browning (message 28)
8) Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife - Sam Savage (post 33)
9) Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer (post 38)
10) Egypt's Golden Empire: The Age of the New Kingdom - Joyce Tyldesley (post 41)
11) Addition - Toni Jordan (post 48)
12) My Autobiography - Charles Chaplin (post 55)
13) Moan About Men: A joyful guide to the things men do that drive women mad - Juliana Foster (post 59)
14) Skylight Confessions - Alice Hoffman (post 63)
15) Passing for Normal: Tourettes, OCD and growing up crazy - Amy Wilensky (post 71)
16) The Madness of Modern Families - Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders (post 76)
17) Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey - The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World - Holley Bishop (post 97)
18) The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole - Sue Townsend (post 99)
19) Under the Paw: Confessions of a Cat Man - Tom Cox (post 118)
20) The Year of Pleasures - Elizabeth Berg (post 125)
21) Gold - Dan Rhodes (post 127)
22) Bookworm Droppings: An Anthology of Absurd Remarks Made by Customers in Secondhand Bookshops - Sean Tyas (post 140)
23) The Big Over Easy - by Jasper Fforde (post 143)
24) Ella Enchanted - Gail Carson Levine (post 144)
25) Angels and Demons - Dan Brown (post 146)
26) Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer (post 148)
27) Life on the Refrigerator Door - Alice Kuipers (post 150)
28) Growing Up at War - Maureen Hill (post 152)
29) Minus Nine to One: The Diary of an Honest Mum - Jools Oliver (post 152)
30) Housewife Down - Alison Penton Harper (post 158)
31) The Hades Factor - Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds (post 165)
32) The World According to Mimi Smartypants - 'Mimi Smartypants' (post 170)
33) Frenchman's Creek - Daphne du Maurier (post 175)
34) Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction - Tom Raabe (post 182)
35) Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis (post 192)
36) How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day - Kath Kelly (post 202)
37) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (post 208)

Message edited by its author, Sep 26, 2009, 7:41pm.

1) On Reading by Andre Kertesz - one down! A nice little photography collection of books and people reading, newspapers, books, on roofs, in the street, backstage in the theatre, lounging in the park... It feels like a bit of a cop out as number one, but I'm still halfway through another book that I started before the New Year - and am NOT counting - and I got this one for Christmas, so...

OK, I've changed my mind, I am going to include the book I started before January when I've finally finished it... I'll have read about two thirds of it after the New Year, and if I feel guilty about it later on I'll just try for 51 by December 31!

I've spent ages thumbing through my books to pick some for the year too, but I ended up with far too many and that doesn't even factor in my book-buying addiction as the months pass. Onwards and upwards - I'm off to keep reading and watch the wonderful 'Diary of Anne Frank' on TV - maybe I'll read that again as one of my next few...

2) New Moon by Stephenie Meyer - Excellent sequel to Twilight. This one starts off more gently, but by the climax I actually had to stop reading for a while to calm down before I carried on! The Cullens leave town for Bella's sake, but all it does is leave her numb and with a selfish recklessness that can't do anybody any good. Things start getting better when she renews her friendship with Jacob Black - but his strong feelings for her and his own problems soon put a spanner in the works. Ultimately things can't continue in such emotional chaos, and Bella's continued thrill-seeking ends up causing a misunderstanding that could destroy everything... I kind of fell into the ending rather abruptly, as the plotlines set up earlier in the book don't materialise as expected - presumably carried over into Eclipse - but it was another gripping read and I'm looking forward to the next one!

Did you like New Moon more than Twilight? New Moon is probably my least favorite of the four books. I think it is because I prefer Edward to Jacob. I like Bella and Jacob as friends, but I never saw them as more than that.

Wait, I take that back... I might have liked New Moon a little more than Breaking Dawn.

Message edited by its author, Jan 9, 2009, 2:02pm.

I definitely preferred Twilight. I liked New Moon, it was an excellent novel - it just fell a little FLAT after all the electricity and the humour of the first book. And the destruction of the Edward fantasy for most of the duration was a bit offputting. Still great, but Twilight was a hard act to follow... I'm going to read something else before I start Eclipse to give myself a breather!

I agree, i thought New Moon was flat after reading Twilight.. I really started to dislike Bella after New Moon. I read halfway through Eclipse sometime last year and felt like i needed a break and unfortunately havent gotten back to it yet. Is Breaking Dawn really that bad??

No Breaking Dawn isn't that bad. I just can't decide which one is my least favorite. Don't get me wrong, I liked them all. Eclipse I really liked. I read them all one right after another this past July over two weeks. I have re-read Twilight once since then... after seeing the movie.

I also read the draft she posted on her website of the first 12 chapters of Midnight Sun, which is Twilight told from Edwards perspective. I wish she would finish it. It is more interesting in ways from his view since he can read everyone's minds.

Here is link if you would like to check it out.

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/midnightsu...

3) The Pleasure of Reading by Antonia Fraser

I've been reading this since well before Christmas (I decided to include it here since I've read two thirds of it post-New Year) but it's a really nice book to dip into in between reading other things. It is a collection of short pieces by famous writers - maybe four or five pages each - reminiscing about their childhood reading, musing on the place books have in their lives, and discussing what they read nowadays. Some of the writers have added a 'top ten' list of their favourite books to the end of their pieces, and each author has been allocated an illustrator, giving a varied and colourful flavour to the pages.

With the exception of a couple of duds - including, to my surprise, Alan Hollinghurst - it's a lovely ensemble piece, bringing back memories of my own childhood reading: how I read, what I read and how different books floated into my life. I had to read it with a piece of paper and a pen next to me because there were so many books I wanted to chase up, old favourites and as yet unread masterpieces, having heard them praised so highly.

Although the book is quite old - the youngest author is Jeanette Winterson - I might get myself a copy (I read it from the library) because the themes and many of the books are so timeless and universal that they'll always ring true.

Am I the only one who feels that there just aren't enough reading hours in a day? I'm almost wishing I could get flu so that once I'm back on the same planet but still recuperating I can have a few days in bed with tea and books! Onwards and upwards... over half way through book #4 so I'll keep at it!

There isn't enough time.

Today I am listening to The Golden Compass while I work. I seems to be working out well.

When I was younger I had a little magazine that I made at home and sold to my friends to make money for a wildlife hospital. When all the photocopies were made I used to lie on the floor with a box of felt tips and colour them all in by hand while I listened to Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden over and over again on tape...

>2, Oh! I'm going to look for this. I have a beautiful picture of my son reading on his bed that his roommate (a professional photographer) took of him that I hope inspires my students much the same way.

Be warned, the pictures are quite old now, I think the last ones were in the 70s sometime... I expected them to be more recent, I must admit - maybe your son's roommate could continue the project!

The Secret Garden would be a good one to listen to at work.

4) Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer - I love this book! It was my second reading and it only got better this time around as I'd learned so much more about the store and the Whitmans since last time.

On the run from an unfortunate mistake in his Canadian life as a crime journalist, Jeremy Mercer heads to Paris to escape for a while. Caught in a rainstorm near Notre-Dame one afternoon, he spots a welcoming light across the river and thus stumbles inadvertently on the Shakespeare and Company bookshop. Invited upstairs for tea by the beautiful woman behind the desk, wandering the labyrinth of books and beds, he soon realises that this is no ordinary bookshop and, as a poor writer, is invited to join the ranks of lost souls inhabiting the book-lined rooms.

So begins his whimsical and quintessentially bohemian stay, under the watchful eye of eccentric owner George Whitman (surely the star of the book, with his fascinating life and Communist ideals), who renamed his unique store after the original literary oasis, run by his good friend Sylvia Beach, which was forced to close down during the Second World War. Here all are welcome to browse and lose themselves in their reading; tea is offered on a Sunday; eclectic readings take place in the library; literary and political opinions are argued out – and those in need of a bed will find one amongst the books in return for a few hours helping around the shop and in the kitchen.

Mercer deliciously evokes days trawling the scattered tomes, nights spent storytelling by the Seine, tourists attracted by the store’s reputation, wanderers attracted by Whitman’s generosity, showering in the public washhouses, scrounging leftover food to get by: in short, a poor life, without good facilities or scope for wastage of any kind, but a happy, lively life nonetheless. The characters moving through Whitman’s utopia are many and varied, yet he remains, a kind of rock in the tides of time and tourism, as the chaos of youthful dreams and books and wine whirls around him.

Of course, eventually reality bites for Mercer and it’s time to move on – but his journey is magical and the lessons of the bookstore honest. Now I have Sylvia Beach’s own book ‘Shakespeare and Company’ to read, and I recommend the documentary ‘Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man’, made towards the end of Mercer’s time in Paris and readily available online. Still not sure whether to read it? Try searching online for photos of the store in all its glory – if that doesn’t persuade you, nothing will!

Message edited by its author, Jan 18, 2009, 9:16am.

5) Remotely Controlled: How television is damaging our lives and what we can do about it by Dr. Aric Sigman

A fascinating book jam-packed with studies exploring the effects of television on our brains, our bodies, our minds and our societies. Sigman draws together work on everything from changing brain function to anorexia in distant cultures, racial misrepresentation to copycat violence, and caps it all off with a few ideas as to what else we could be doing with our time to counteract some of the negative effects of modern media saturation. A dry start quickly turned into an intriguing read with some devastating messages, especially for parents. Highly recommended.

Message edited by its author, Mar 27, 2009, 7:59pm.

Wow -- I've seen a few books out there like that recently, but your description of Remotely Controlled is very compelling. I'm going to have to look for it. Thanks!

I can also recommend 'The Plug-in Drug' by Marie Winn - it's compelling stuff even if we never change quite as much as we promise ourselves we're going to...

Thanks for the recommendation. I had been eyeing Packaging Girlhood by Sharon Lamb. It's certainly a subject I want to learn more about, yet at the same time I don't want to know...

Yes, I've got a few like that - The Real Toy Story by Eric Clark, Buy Buy Baby by Susan Gregory Thomas, Toxic Childhood by Sue Palmer... I'm only 21 but before I had to leave uni I became fascinated with this stuff, and the earlier the better I suppose!

I'm sorry you had to leave your studies, though it sounds like you are a life-long learner with a wonderful curiosity. I can't think of a better characteristic to take into adulthood. Best wishes!

Message edited by its author, Jan 31, 2009, 12:57pm.

Thanks AMQS... I've also just added 'Packaging Girlhood' to my wish list :-)

6) The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby - The COMPLETE Polysyllabic Spree, to be exact, but the touchstone for the new edition wasn't working!

This is a brilliant collection of Nick Hornby's 'Stuff I've Been Reading' magazine columns from 'The Believer' literary magazine, run by an ever-shifting, white-robed, omniscient, evangelical group of people nicknamed 'The Polysyllabic Spree'. There is only one rule: no negative comments on sensitive living authors, so anything he hates has to remain unnamed...

Each month Hornby starts his column with two lists - 'Books bought' and 'Books read' - then proceeds to guide the reader through his choices. But this is no ordinary review column. Each month he dives into the very essence of reading - what guides us to pick up one book and not another? Why is there such a void between the literary snobs and real readers? How can one book lead us to the next, and why do some books leap out at us in a shop but never get read once they're back home? Alongside all this he adds his thoughts on football, family and the books he's actually read, and once again I found myself reading it with a pen and paper by my side to note down his warm recommendations. Here are the real thoughts on books - fair, honest, warts-and-all reader reactions (though always constructive, as per Spree rules) - so sadly lacking from 'superior' literary reviews.

This book is, quite simply, a delight, and I can't believe I haven't discovered it earlier! As it is I've been lucky enough that my copy, found in a discount store no less, is a signed hardback, and I'll be hanging onto it... Hornby's wit, diluted somewhat in his novels, sparkles here - it is dry, sharp, and doesn't spare its American readers with its British slant. The lists make for interesting comparisons and quick reference, and there are brief extracts from some of his favourite reads scattered throughout the book to add a little something extra. Brilliant - a must-read for anyone who likes books about books, with a generous splash of chuckling-aloud humour thrown in!

In fact, it's kinda like reading an extended version of the LibraryThing forums... :-)

Message edited by its author, Feb 1, 2009, 7:16pm.

JANUARY SUMMARY: (inspired by #6!)

BOOKS BOUGHT:
- 'The Complete Polysyllabic Spree' by Nick Hornby
- Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
- Atonement by Ian McEwan
- Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Addition by Toni Jordan
- Crazy as Chocolate by Elisabeth Hyde
- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
- The River King by Alice Hoffman
- Written Lives by Javier Marias
- Yes Man by Danny Wallace
- 'Death in Venice' by Thomas Mann
- 'Eating for England' by Nigel Slater
- Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

BOOKS READ:
- On Reading by Andre Kertesz
- New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
- The Pleasure of Reading edited by Antonia Fraser
- Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co. by Jeremy Mercer
- Remotely Controlled: How television is damaging our lives and what we can do about it, by Dr. Aric Sigman
- 'The Complete Polysyllabic Spree' by Nick Hornby

Hmmmm, bit of a discrepancy there... kind of puts my book addiction in perspective!

Message edited by its author, Feb 1, 2009, 7:45pm.

The Polysyllabic Spree sounds lovely! I've only read High Fidelity by him, which I quite liked, and recently mooched A Long Way Down though I haven't received it yet.
Good luck with the challenge! (and with controlling your book addiction) :)

I read and enjoyed About a Boy - though I prefer the movie cos one of my uni mates was in it! - and I like High Fidelity the movie, and I've got A Long Way Down and How to Be Good on my TBR pile... but so far this caps them all!

7) Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade: How to Survive Life's Smaller Challenges by Guy Browning

A hilarious little hardback collection of 'How to' columns from the Weekend Guardian, perfect for reading in snatched moments, or when you're feeling poorly, or at that almost-asleep time just before bed. Collected into sections like 'Sport and Exercise', 'Fashion and Grooming', 'Religion and Politics' and 'Love and Marriage', it includes everything from 'How to... eat sweets' ('you can offer them first or eat one first, depending on the exact position of the black one') to 'How to... be a revolutionary' ('you need to start with an interesting arrangement of facial hair'). At only a couple of pages per piece, it's a great book to dip into when you need cheering up - maybe not on the train if you're prone to the giggles!

That book looks wonderful!
--BJ

I really enjoyed The Polysyllabic Spree when I read it a few years ago (do you know if the "complete" one has more articles? If so, I'll have to look it up). And thanks for your write-up on The Pleasure of Reading, as you recently reminded me I read it on your suggestion and found it extremely enjoyable. :-)

I'm not sure - I was trying to work this out too! According to Wikipedia there are three volumes or so, including The Polysyllabic Spree, which contain all the columns between them - it kind of makes it sound like there are crossovers between the different volumes, and maybe the COMPLETE version just collects them all into one? If anyone can shed any more light on this I'd be grateful because I don't know if it's a waste of time to buy any of the other volumes.

Hi elliepotten! Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs sounds terrific, as does the Pleasure of Reading. I'll be a dull American and admit that I had no idea that Hornby wrote a column. I'll be downright stodgy and own up that I've yet to read any of his novels. My library has the Polysyllabic Spree, though not a "complete" one. I may give it a try.

8) Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage

This book is quite unlike anything I have ever read before - and I must admit, when I first started reading it I thought I had made one of my very infrequent reading mistakes and that I wasn't going to finish it. In the most basic terms, this novel is about the odd life of a rat named Firmin. Born in a bookstore to an alcoholic mother, Firmin is the runt of a litter of rowdy children, and he quickly has to learn to take care of himself. Unable to feed properly thanks to his boisterous siblings, he has to take matters into his own hands and starts to chew on the books around him.

To his surprise, he finds them delicious, and as he chews more and more he starts to be able to tell the difference between the taste of various authors and publishers, between good and bad literature - and realises he is learning to read. This is the starting point for a strange life, filled with literature, the bookstore, the nearby cinema with its gyrating 'Lovelies' - and most of all, a desire to be understood by the humans he so admires.

So far so unusual, but this is much more than a book about a rat. In the beginning Firmin's poetic lyricism, his lapses into crudity and his odd ideas, built out of the books he has read and his permanent melancholic state, felt self conscious and overdone, hence my initial scepticism. But slowly I felt myself sinking into the world of this little creature, into his impossible dreams of something bigger than his life, into his hopeless quest for acceptance by the humans around him who see vermin, not Firmin. In telling his life story he veers between black humour and utter misery, yet in seeing us both through our literature and through observation of our lives and habits, peering in longingly, he cuts sharply through to the very core of human emotion and philosophy.

As the council's town redevelopment (read: demolishment) plans move slowly, ominously, ever-closer to the bookstore and to the life Firmin has built for himself, the reader can only allow themselves to be swept up in the tide of rising hopes and crushing disappointments, happiness and despair, friendship and loneliness, that make up the world of this little rat. Ultimately, of course, he is an allegorical figure pushing in vain against his own nature, his place in life, the weight of knowledge and the unstoppable forces that threaten to drown everything he holds dear - and finally bring him full circle.

The best advice I could offer would be to read it for yourself. Look at the heartbreakingly sweet, melancholic pictures dotted amongst the pages; feel the yearning and the intelligence oozing from each word, each moving sentence... You will never look at the world in quite the same way again.

hmm...I was just reading squeakychu's thread and he also just reviewed a book about a rat :) Lovely review, sounds like a very sweet book!

It is, and heartbreaking, and weird, and just generally... pretty difficult to describe. Hence the rambling review! :-)

>31 ooh, didn't even know anymore volumes had come out, I've just put in a request for Housekeeping vs. the Dirt through my library system. According to Amazon, this title and The Complete Polysyllabic Spree came out the same year, but I don't know if the fact that "Complete" is an import makes a difference (I'm in the US).

>33 Your review is very intriguing! This book sounds totally charming. I've got to take a look at it!

Edited to add the posting I was referring to.

Message edited by its author, Feb 8, 2009, 2:19am.

9) Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Another gripping, thrilling, intense novel from Stephenie Meyer, the third in the brilliant 'Twilight' series. After the scrumptious romance of 'Twilight' and the evolution of larger plots and themes in 'New Moon', 'Eclipse' draws everything together into a more mature plot that reflects the turbulence of sexual awakening and the harsher realities of living alongside the vampires and werewolves of Forks.

I won't say too much about the story since it depends so heavily on having read the first two books. The werewolf characters are developed and drawn much more heavily into the action. The Cullens' individual histories are revealed in more detail. Raw animal rivalry and passionate love are brought to breathless climax and down the steep slope to heartbreaking agony. The running revenge plot comes to its violent and explosive conclusion, and the way is cleared for the much-anticipated union of Edward and Bella in 'Breaking Dawn'...

Meyer might be criticised for not being the most literary writer in the world, but like Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling and Nicholas Sparks, she creates novels that people genuinely fall in love with, with worlds that we can utterly immerse ourselves in and characters that we really care about. Each of her readers has their favourite Cullen, their preference for Edward or Jacob, their own hopes for how everything will pan out in the end. The humour made me giggle, the romance was achingly bittersweet, the action was nail-bitingly exciting - and what else can you ask for from a novel of a winter evening?

P.S. Oh, and guess what... I even found myself falling for hot 'n' passionate Jacob over Edward's icy perfection... didn't see that one coming! :-)

Message edited by its author, Mar 27, 2009, 8:05pm.

hmm...I will not be annoying you with my take on Twilight as you already know it :P I'll wait for your next review! :D

P.S. remember that we both love chocolate eggs and Smarties when you feel like punching me :D

I'll eat some more chocolate if I feel the mist descending then... haha, don't worry, we've both had our say now and popular novels always seem to attract the most controversy!

10) Egypt's Golden Empire: The Age of the New Kingdom by Joyce Tyldesley

I got this one out of the library but I'll be keeping an eye out for a copy of my own now. It took me a couple of weeks or so to get through but I have no idea why - it was accessible, concise, well structured and easy to read. Tyldesley is known for her books on the New Kingdom and this didn't disappoint.

In neat chapters she takes us on a journey through the rulers of the New Kingdom in chronological order, alternating these with chapters on important elements of everyday life in the Nile Valley. It makes for fascinating reading, covering the famous Pharaohs - including Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Nefertiti, Hatshepsut, Tutankhamen and Ramesses II - alongside the helpful background chapters on topics including the role of women, soldiers, agriculture, funerary rites and the gods of Egypt. There is also a helpful chronological list of the New Kingdom Pharaohs, a map of Egypt, and a strong bibliography of further reading suggestions.

My only complaint would be that the accompanying photos are split between two conventional sections midway through the book. This may be fairly usual, but for a subject as rich as this it would have been nice to have seen more and better photographs (particularly since it accompanies a television series), interspersed throughout the text as much as possible as a reference point to bring to life the descriptions of the wonderful monuments, statues and wall carvings.

Nevertheless, well worth reading and, as I said, I'll be on the lookout for a copy of my own... 4*

Message edited by its author, Feb 28, 2009, 2:10pm.

FEBRUARY SUMMARY:

BOOKS BOUGHT:
- The Footsteps of Anne Frank by Ernst Schnabel
- Marley and Me by John Grogan
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
- 'Spitfire Women of World War II' by Giles Whittell
- Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
- Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
- The Butterfly House by Marcia Preston
- The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- The 39 Steps by John Buchan
- Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
- Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion by Mark Cotta Vaz
- 'How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day' by Kath Kelly
- A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
- A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
- Passion by Jude Morgan
- The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
- Rat Pack Confidential by Shawn Levy
- Eragon by Christopher Paolini
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Happy Prince and other stories by Oscar Wilde
- The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell
- The Plague by Albert Camus
- An Utterly Impartial History of Britain by John O'Farrell
- Of Wolves and Men by Barry Holstun Lopez
- The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier
- Petite Anglaise by Catherine Sanderson
- The Coma by Alex Garland
- 'Life Swap' by Jane Green
- Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
- Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
- 'The Children of Húrin' by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
- Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
- On Beauty by Zadie Smith
- Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella
- Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
- Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
- One Pair of Hands by Monica Dickens
- Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
- Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
- Pole to Pole by Michael Palin
- Dude, Where's My Country? by Michael Moore
- Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco
- The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

BOOKS READ:
- Never Hit a Jellyfish With a Spade by Guy Browning
- Firmin by Sam Savage
- Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
- Egypt's Golden Empire: The Age of the New Kingdom by Joyce Tyldesley

Oh holy crap. So THAT'S where all my money went this month. Perhaps I should try to restrain myself a teeny bit in March, then.

Message edited by its author, Feb 28, 2009, 2:53pm.

Good luck with that! :D I have also been trying to cut back and it is so hard!
--BJ

Thanks BJ - though to be honest I don't hold out much hope given the amount of weekly exposure I have to charity shops these days, volunteering and shopping. As the agoraphobia recedes so does my bank balance, now I'm surrounded by temptation again - but I have to be out there so I can get well enough to get back into work to replenish that bank balance, so it's a tragic cycle! Haha, any excuse... ;-)

I always say that by supporting those charity shops you are both saving lots of money and helping others! :) Have a great day!
--BJ

>42 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh my God!
I bought like 3 books last month. (although I did get around 10 from Bookmooch but that doesn't count) You are breaking all sorts of record here.

What a list of new books! I would highly recommend A History of Love. What a voice! Whenever I just see that title I want to go back and read the book again, but then I have too many new books in front of me to choose from.

11) Addition by Toni Jordan

A nice quick little 'chick lit' read. This one sets itself apart with its unusual leading lady - an obsessive compulsive 30-something 'counter' called Grace. The gentle romance blossoming in the background takes second place to the turbulent inner workings of Grace's mind as she obsessively counts and measures out every aspect of her day to day life, from visiting the local cafe at exactly the same time each day, to making sure she knows the exact number of cotton wool balls in her bathroom. When she meets Seamus she realises she is sick of being held prisoner by her routines and starts therapy for her complex issues.

This book is definitely more of a commentary on mental health than it is a romance. Much of Grace's day to day life is filtered through her OCD and her quirky take on the world around her. The life of the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla is quite extensively explored - as a famous inventor and fellow 'counter', he is Grace's hero and one of her little obsessions. When Grace's treatment begins the bizarre world of her group sessions becomes a key focus of the book, and it is tangible the way the drug treatment changes her body and mind into a shadow of what they once were.

It is an absorbing book, pulling the reader into the mind of an obsessive compulsive - Jordan has obviously done her research on OCD, and the statistics and random information swirling in Grace's thoughts are quite fascinating too. The impact of her problems on her family and close relationships is also well explored. The end of the book is a bit haphazard and rather unsatisfying, but nevertheless I would recommend this purely on the strength of its unique take on an often cliched genre.

Message edited by its author, Mar 6, 2009, 2:51pm.

>48, I'll have to check that book out. I'm always interested in books that give me more insight into behaviors that I might see in my students, friends, family members...myself! :-) I see students who are closer to the OC end of the continuum, while others are closer to the ADD/ADHD end. So much of the time, their behaviors aren't purely strengths or weaknesses; they can be both, depending on the circumstances.

Addition sounds like it might be interesting.

You are doing well on your challenge for reading. I can't believe you bought that many books. =O

Yeah, I know... I bought another eleven on Friday, shopping with a friend in need of post-breakup retail therapy - and Help the Aged had a BOGOF offer on their books! The next book will be a bit slower going - I'm reading Charlie Chaplin's autobiography, which is great but much longer and in need of careful reading to appreciate it.

I read Addition two months ago. It surely was a nice read! Glad to hear that you enjoyed it as well.

Egypt's Golden Empire: The Age of the New Kingdom by Joyce Tyldesley is really something I'd love to read! Nice review. :)

>53 It was a great read - and a great chronological introduction to the New Kingdom Pharaohs too. It's nice to read something that brings to life the rulers in all their glory because it helps cement them in the mind for future reading... I'll be reading more of Tyldesley's books!

12) My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin

What a fantastic book! All you 20-something wannabes (Kerry, Chantelle, I mean you) take note – this is how an autobiography SHOULD be written: at the end of a long, fulfilling and fascinating life, not after a normal childhood and ten minutes on a reality TV show.

This is a sweeping and beautifully written story covering the entire span of Chaplin’s life at the time of writing, from his poverty-stricken London childhood and his early theatrical career, through the evolution of Hollywood and the development of his most famous and well-loved character, the ‘Little Tramp’, to his dazzling rise to fame and fortune, his brushes with the harsh face of American politics, and his final escape to Switzerland with his wife Oona and their large family, where he remained until his death in 1977.

Not only is this a wonderful journey through the world of theatre and the development of the film industry, it is also overflowing with interesting people, places and anecdotes. His was a golden era of sparkling society in which the aristocracy and the intellectual elite mixed on equal terms and travelled frequently. Thus Chaplin can legitimately name-drop a veritable wealth of friends, acquaintances and casual meetings, from Albert Einstein to Winston Churchill, Lord and Lady Mountbatten to John Steinbeck, Rachmaninov to Picasso. On top of all that there is a meandering thread of personal philosophy, politics and considered opinion, all of which come together to form a rounded picture of someone whose genius could otherwise have become buried under his comedy.

I picked up the book on the strength of the film ‘Chaplin’ (starring Robert Downey Jr.), which I fell to watching on television one day and watched to the end, finding myself captivated by the life of this unique, intelligent little man and his consuming interest in entertaining the masses with his films, of which he was writer, director, composer, actor and everything in between. I have never seen a Chaplin film in its entirety, but after reading his autobiography I have a list of movies to see and enough knowledge to fully appreciate them. I didn’t want the book to end, long though it may be, and as I closed its pages I was reminded of Truman Capote’s famous remark about finishing a book being like you’ve taken a child out in the yard and shot it. That feeling of looking at your bookshelf, wondering what on earth could top that? Oh, and in case you were wondering – Capote gets a name-drop too…

You sold me! :-)

Hell yeah! Sounds good! Oh, Oona O'Neill used to date Salinger before she married Chaplin - any mentions of that? If so, that would be TOTALLY sell me too :P

No mention of that, but it's just added another layer to the story! It takes the Oona/Charlie story from the day they met. Famous people whirled in and out of his life so I guess he couldn't cover everything outside of his own experience...

13) 'Moan about Men: A joyful guide to the things men do that drive women mad' by Juliana Foster

An attractive little cloth-covered hardback which manages to be a kind of Grumpy Old Women, only geared at younger women. It's not a robust read, just a bit of humorous fluff, but I did have a bit of a giggle at the very astute observations on the little quirks of male behaviour, covering everything from selective hearing to barbeque machismo. A good girlie gift, or one to read as a bit of light relief - maybe get it from the library or pass it on to your friends afterwards...

Hi elliepotten, I've starred your thread, you write great reviews.
Have added Books, Bedbugs and Baguettes and The Polysyllabic Spree to my wishlist. Looking forward to more reviews.

message #57;
can this be true? My Gawd, has the world gone mad?
And Moan About Men sounds too good to be true. I think my 91 year old mother would even enjoy that one.
Happy reading.

Hi Ellie, long-time-no-speak, what have you been up to?

Sorry this one's a bit stilted and short - I'm really knackered today!

14) Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman

Another enchanting and magical, yet poignantly bittersweet, novel from Hoffman. John and Arlie fall in love in a misguided haze of youth. After a spell trapped in an increasingly meaningless marriage Arlie rebels against the way her life has turned out, then tragically falls ill. With Arlie gone life spirals downwards for those who surrounded her: John is haunted by the memory of his beautiful wife, his son Sam is going off the rails and little Blanca is just tripping along trying to make sense of everything. Then Meredith enters their lives, strangely drawn into their problems and determined to rescue them from themselves. A few years later, the children are grown and life has moved on yet again…

In the same vein as 'Blackbird House', the novel's poignancy lies in its beautiful observations of life through the generations, as characters we come to care deeply about grow, live, love, and die. Folklore and magic weave through the storyline but never grow cloying, as this spirituality lies twisted within the experiences of the characters rather than being thrown in our faces as a narrative element.

In short, another wonderful novel - my second favourite Hoffman so far, after the masterpiece that is 'The Ice Queen.' Highly recommended!

Message edited by its author, Apr 2, 2009, 5:30pm.

>60 Thanks jbeast! It's always fantastic when a review puts across my own love of a book enough that someone else picks it up to try...

>61 nannybebette - 'Moan about Men' was one of those books that is so utterly spot on that you can name someone guilty of just about every single male trait Foster discusses!

>62 GUG - We've been rushed off our feet diving head first into the business side of opening a second hand bookshop. We've found premises and have agreed everything with the landlord/agent so now we're just waiting for a draft contract to be sent out for our perusal. If all is good it'll be all go to open in July - there's a LOT of work to be done and many, many books to source and sort and catalogue (*goes off into happy daydream*)...

oh wow! I'm SOOOOO jealous - that's wonderful! Make sure to take pictures in the process, of the books and the place itself so we can see and be even more jealous. (And be a little happy for you too, somewhere in the bottoms of our dirty hearts :P) Happy reading! And happy daydreaming too!

I've just realised, I've not done my March roundup yet either - though I'm running a bit behind on book cataloguing etc. Still, here it is as complete as possible:

MARCH SUMMARY

BOOKS BOUGHT:
Fashion Babylon by Imogen Edward-Jones and Anonymous
Bon Appetit! by Peter Mayle
Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins by Rupert Everett
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Daydream Girl by Bella Pollen
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner
Marilyn Monroe: The Biography by Donald Spoto
Dewey by Vicki Myron
Marked by P.C. and Kristin Cast
Madresfield by Jane Mulvagh
Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
Swallowing Grandma by Kate Long
The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble
Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen by Garth Nix
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
Girl with Green Eyes by Edna O'Brien
The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith
About a Boy by Nick Hornby
Bookends by Jane Green
Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy by Fiona Neill
The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn
Message in a Bottle by Nicholas Sparks
Introducing Media Studies by Ziauddin Sardar
Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice
Acting Up by Melissa Nathan
The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle by Beatrix Potter
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday
The Snow Geese by William Fiennes
Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir
Portraits of the Riviera by Carolyn McKenzie
Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsey
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin by Norah Vincent
Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby
Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain by Charles Cross
Who Killed Kurt Cobain? by Ian Halperin
Parky: My Autobiography by Michael Parkinson
Zorro by Isabel Allende
The Bad Mother's Handbook by Kate Long
The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks
Thanks for the Memories by Cecilia Ahern
Three Men in a Float by Dan Kiernan
Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson
My Week with Marilyn by Colin Clark
March by Geraldine Brooks
The Peacock Emporium by Jojo Moyes
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Bookselling for Dummies by Tere Stouffer Drenth
Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge
The Savage Garden by Mark Mills
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain by Ronald Hutton
The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice
The Memory-Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
The Unfortunates by Laurie Graham
Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman
The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox

BOOKS READ:
Addition by Toni Jordan
My Autobiography by Charlie Chaplin
Moan About Men by Juliana Foster

Oooooops, yet again I've gone way overboard! Deary me...

elliepotten;
I am just sitting here wondering how much a ticket across the "big blue" is going to cost me by the time you get your store up and running. And please tell me your purchases are for said store? Because if those are for your personal library I will go insane and they will be sticking me back on 1-South at St Petes!~! Ohhhh and the fees they charge for xtra bags on the planes these days--------what are we Yanks going to do?
I want to thank you for your post on Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman. She has long been a favorite author of mine and I just picked this one up the other day on the four dollar table at Barnes and Noble. I was so proud and happy with such a deal and now after reading your comment I am even happier. Thanx!

Message edited by its author, Apr 2, 2009, 7:34pm.

I just spotted that you'd bought it actually, quite a coincidence! I picked up The Ice Queen at the library last year and within about five pages I knew I had found something special and that Alice Hoffman and I had just started a happy new relationship, as it were. All these particular books were for my own collection - though I dare say some of them will head in the direction of the bookshop once I've read them. I don't mind giving up some of my own books but I have to be 100% ready to let go of them - if I think I should give a book a second chance, or still have something to learn from it, it stays put, end of! I just have no will-power where books are concerned...

My goodness. There went the old paycheck, as it were.
And don't you just love Alice Hoffman? Everything she writes turns to gold. I've only read one of hers that I didn't just love and I can't even remember which one it was. I read every Hoffman I can get my hands on. I wish I owned them all.
Swallowing Grandma sounds hysterically funny and I have heard a lot about the Curious Incident book, but as of yet have not read it. Let me know what you think once you have please.
Well, I have been up for 2 hours now--I think I will try to go back to bed and get some sleep. (I suffer from insomnia and most nights it is terrible)
Anyway, happy reading. You have a lot of it to do. hehehe ***she said with her tongue in her cheek***

Best of luck with your second hand bookshop. I am so happy for you! :)
--BJ

15) Passing for Normal: Tourette's, OCD and growing up crazy, by Amy Wilensky

Not much to say about this one - it pretty much does what it says on the label. Amy Wilensky tells her story: how she started to develop odd physical tics as a child, how these developed into full-blown tics, rituals and obsessions which dominated her life, and how she battled those around her - and herself - until she finally got her diagnosis and started learning how to live with her disorders.

There are some mistakes in the book which could have been ironed out, and Wilensky doesn't always come across as a particularly pleasant young woman, particularly at the beginning. She warms up towards the end of the book, so it's hard to tell whether to attribute her less savoury side to honesty and self-deprecation, recreation of her feelings as a child, or to pure self-obsession. Either way, it's a fine line and she sometimes seems a very selfish and rude, seeming to think little about the feelings of those around her even in the retrospect allowed by the autobiographical form. Towards the end, as her understanding of her disorders improves, she detaches a little and this uncomfortable self-interest lessens in favour of genuine insight and information.

In conclusion - an interesting book, but perhaps a different one might have been better suited to gaining insight from outside the disorder. This one might appeal more to people who suffer - or think they might suffer - from Tourette's and OCD, as they can gauge there own experiences against Wilensky's. Worth a read but nothing special.

P.S. Bookshop update - It's been a packed week this week. The charity shop I work for has arranged to sell me a donation sack full of books that have been taken off the shelves each week for £3-4 a time. We've been looking at shelves, chatting to the accountant, setting up a business bank account, eyeing up stationery catalogue, buying little bits and bobs like cuddly toys and book ends for displays/the children's area, and we just won a huge load of books on eBay, to be collected next week. The contract has arrived and we should be getting our keys mid-week to start getting it ready!

Chuckle! I love it how when I, or someone else, has bid on something at an auction, we say we "won" but that's how I usually feel too. You're really rolling. Fun hearing about your progress.

Re: Passing for Normal, I'm interested in this because I know people who are OCD, plus my son has always had one minor tic after another in his life (some kind of throat clearing or sniff). I don't think people always realize that they are on that continuum until it's gets extreme. I'll have to read this book. Thanks for reviewing it.

Edit. to include book reference.

Message edited by its author, Apr 11, 2009, 4:25pm.

I am excited for you and your bookshop! Yea!
--BJ

OK, I'm going to follow the example of a few others and include my answers to the two current memes on the 'What Are You Reading Now' threads.

First up, the BBC Top 100! Read books are bold, partially read books are italics, and I've starred the ones I own but haven't read yet.

BBC TOP 100 BOOKS

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy*
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk*
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger*
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh*
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden*
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan*
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel*
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon*
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas*
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy*
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert*
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom*
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare*
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

That's fairly respectable at my age, especially when the BBC reckons most people will only have read 6. Clearly the BBC has not yet come up against the might of LibraryThing!

Message edited by its author, Apr 19, 2009, 2:35pm.

16) The Madness of Modern Families by Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders

This one pretty much does what it says on the tin. I think it's a TV tie-in, a bit like the Grumpy Old Women one - a neat little humorous hardback - but one that is superior to others I've read. It covers everything absurd about 21st century family living, from competitive parenting and the battle for school places, to organic food and hotel Kids Clubs.

I'm only 21, not a parent, but this book was so astute that I recognised 95% of the subject matter from my own observations over my life, from when I was a little girl as well as more recently. Very amusing and very telling!

elliepotten, I am so excited with the news of your book shop. I just wish I was going to be able to shop it.
Sounds like you have really been busy and still finding time to read? Wow!~!
Keep us posted and is that not a great list??????????
belva

Thank you! I spent all day today in the shop with Mum - our second 'proper' session working on it. So far it's just been the dull stuff - I had the REVOLTING task of cleaning out a bathroom that looks like it hasn't been cleaned in months. Cobwebs festooning the ceiling and criss crossing the walls, damp paper hanging off, grime, the works. Mum's working on the little sink area with the sliding door in the main shop, get that done, and I've frazzled my fingertips wielding a screwdriver all day, unscrewing all the old shelf brackets from the walls. I can't decide if they're numb or sore, blistered or friction-burnt. Either way, tomorrow's gonna hurt... :-D

eughh glad you're done with that bathroom - and don't worry: more pleasant tasks await you in the future. Like arranging books on shelves for example :D

That (the arranging) should be such fun for you and your mum. I love it when I decide to move things around in the house (poor husband--hates change) but one must remove the books from the shelves in order to move the bookcase. I have 6 plus one built-in all the way across one end of the spare room. Then joy, joy, the rearrangement of books back upon the shelves. That is such fun.
And I am definitely with girlunderglass regarding that bathroom. I hate to clean my own, let alone one sitting idle for some time. Ewww. Hope those fingers heal quickly.
But you will be up and running before you know it.

Yes, the last two days haven't been bad actually. Yesterday I took the rest of the wallpaper off in the bathroom and cleaned it down while Mum sanded and stripped the sink closet downstairs. Then today we swapped so Mum was filling cracks and damp-proof-painting bits of the bathroom and I was painting the sink closet. The radio was on, my grandad came, a few people stuck their heads in and a man sold us some books, and we sat out in the sun in the yard for a Kitkat break! Much nicer. And all to the happy soundtrack of the ducks and Canada geese on the river a few feet away...

It all sounds so wonderful!
--BJ

Owning a bookshop is the dream, isn't it? There's a little second hand shop for sale down the road from me, and reading your comments makes it sound very tempting, in spite of all the dirty jobs. Good luck, I'm sure it will all be worth the effort!

A bit late, but:

APRIL SUMMARY

BOOKS BOUGHT:
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
The Beach by Alex Garland
Merde Actually by Stephen Clarke
Paris: Biography of a City by Colin Jones
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich
Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia by John Dickie
David Golder by Irene Nemirovsky
Here to Eternity: An Anthology of Poetry edited by Andrew Motion
Krakatoa by Simon Winchester
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters edited by Merlin Holland
Himalaya by Michael Palin
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Everything You Didn't Need to Know About the UK by Nick Brownlee
Missee Lee by Arthur Ransome
The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Supernature: A natural history of the supernatural by Lyall Watson
Trawler by Redmond O'Hanlon
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite
Diana Mosley by Anne de Courcy
Mediterranean Winter by Robert D. Kaplan
Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman
The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi
Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Gates of Eden by Ethan Coen (a member giveaway book)
Big Bang by Simon Singh
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
In Siberia by Colin Thubron
Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
Reading in Bed by Sue Gee
Johnny Cash: He Walked the Line by Garth Campbell
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (pristine 1st ed.)
The Ringmaster's Daughter by Jostein Gaarder
Around the World in 80 Days by Michael Palin
Moonraker by Ian Fleming
'A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy' by Thomas Buergenthal
C'est La Folie by Michael Wright
Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie
Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
Moon Dust: In Search of the Men who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith
Black Holes: The End of the Universe? by John Taylor
Queen Camilla by Sue Townsend
Left Bank by Kate Muir
The Wonder of Girls: Understanding the Hidden Nature of our Daughters by Michael Gurian
The Gift by Cecilia Ahern
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
I Will Repay by Baroness Orczy

I've also reclaimed some childhood books from a box in the attic, including some Beatrix Potter books, Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce, Moondial by Helen Cresswell, and my complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia books - which I have been searching for for months!

BOOKS READ:
Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman
Passing for Normal by Amy Wilensky
The Madness of Modern Families by Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders
(not finished) Robbing the Bees by Holley Bishop
(not finished) The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

Message edited by its author, May 12, 2009, 4:49pm.

Chuckle! Your listings of books bought versu books read reminds me of Hornby's books (e.g., my favorite: Housekeeping vs. Dirt). Since joining LT, I think I'm going to keep track of books like that too.

Once your book store opens, you'll have to send all of your LT friends a map, so we can come visit you when we're in England (haven't been there yet, but I can always dream!)

Exactly - I read 'The Complete Polysyllabic Spree' and decided to steal the idea for my thread! Actually as of this second I still have two piles of books to add to the 'books bought' part for April - it's taking a while to catalogue them all, what with all this shop stuff and all. We've been working on it all day every day and I'm sick of the sight of tins of paint and the smell of white spirits now!

Doesn't sound like fun at all--although I'm one of those weird people who like the smell of paint (not good for you, I know). Have you read Ex-Libris? I think you would love it if you haven't; it's a really fast read if you want it to be. Me, myself, I'm reading it for the second time.

So what are you calling your shop? Please tell me it's Ellie Potten's Used Book ______ .

Sadly no - we're Book End, Bridge Street, Bakewell - it's all very twee and lovely, golden yellow walls, deep green glossy wood, a sparkling river full of ducklings just outside the gate... At least I'm gloss painting in the main shop now - when I had my nose hanging over the tin in the enclosed office it kept making me go all funny!

I have a bit of catching up to do on here, eeek, not enough hours... I haven't done that second meme yet, I haven't finished adding my 'Books Bought' for April, and I just finished another book... bloody hell!!!

That's okay then cause I love that name too. And a river of ducklings! How lovely.

Lots of good associations with that name, including a strong one for a used-book store! Congratulations! :-)

It all sounds so wonderful! :)

Have you read Tom's Midnight Garden before? If so, what did you think of it? I have been thinking about getting that book. Have a great day!
--BJ

Hi. It sounds as if you have been going great guns since I spoke with you last. And you have purchased tons of books!~! I am pea green with envy. I just can't wait 'til your shop opens and you can share the response you get from your customers. I am very excited for you.
And little ducks pittering about. What fun. I like the name you and your mum chose.
Have a great day and try to find some reading time.
belva

Hello Ellie!!

I finally decided to read most of your thread here. I always come on and look at the threads and then sigh to myself and think boy I really need to spend some time just reading them and then I never do. I enjoyed your take on the Twilight books that you have read so far. I have read all of them just as the last book was released.

As I read some of your reviews (will come back and read the rest later) I now want to buy or at least check out some of the books especially The Polysyllabic Spree. You have a list of many books on here that I have never heard of or read.

I don't think I could keep track of all the books I have bought in a month, even though I don't buy as many as you do. I think the most I have ever bought in a month is about 5 maybe 6 books.

Best of luck with your book store. I can't wait to hear about your grand opening and how everything goes.

See you around and happy reading!!

Monica

#94 I liked Housekeeping vs. Dirt a LOT more, but your first experience with any one of those three books (see also Shakespeare Wrote For Money) will probably be a fun one!

edit. to fix a grammatical error--don't tell me about the rest of them! ;-)

Message edited by its author, May 13, 2009, 11:06am.

BJ - I have read Tom's Midnight Garden and remember it being quite charming, but slightly hazy in memory now, like I didn't really understand some of it, perhaps... In comparison with, say, The Secret Garden, it's all a bit fuzzy. I might have to read it again this summer!

crazy4reading - I usually keep a list of incoming books throughout the month ready for my summary at the end, but this month was made rather easier by the fact that I only catalogued one of them, early on - the rest have been in four piles in front of the coffee table so it was easy to list them off!

Thanks for all the bookshop enthusiasm too - in the middle of the ordered chaos of decorating it's easy to lose track of the end result and get a bit tired, so it's nice to have people sending happy tidings to remind me of what's coming once the decorating is all done... :-)

17) Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey - The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World by Holley Bishop

A gorgeous book written by a woman under the spell of her bees. In order to show all sides of beekeeping Bishop writes partially from her own experience as a domestic keeper, but predominantly through a fascinating two years shadowing Donald Smiley, a commercial beekeeper in Florida.

The book is split into sections to cover every aspect of the history of honey and beekeeping, from the design of domestic hives and the mechanics of a bee's stinger, to the uses of honey in cosmetics and medicine and the importance of other bee products such as wax and royal jelly. Through each of these chapters weaves the year in the life of Donald Smiley, as he moves his bees from place to place, harvesting and marketing each type of pure honey in a neverending cycle of physical labour and sweet reward. At the end of the book Bishop also includes several honey-rich recipes, from ancient (probably unpalatable) meals to modern marinades.

Scrumptious, lyrical, and well worth a read.

Message edited by its author, May 13, 2009, 6:34pm.

That reminds me of a book I just saw in the store the other day: Plan Bee. Isn't that a clever title? I also read a book years ago that was a truly lovely story of one woman's year as a beekeeper/seller of honey. I always wanted to read it again, but don't remember the title.

18) The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

A very wry and funny jump into the world of a naive but very precocious young man, his long-suffering family and the love of his life, Pandora. I first read it when I was only about 12 so there must have been many funny moments in this book that went right over my head - but I really enjoyed it as a light read this time around! I'm glad I picked it off the shelf for a re-read all these years later.

ETA: Thanks Bonnie - I've promptly added Plan B to my wish list!

Message edited by its author, May 15, 2009, 5:37pm.

I really enjoyed Adrian Mole's voice. It reminded me a bit of Black Swan Green--or, actually, the other way around since I read Growing Pains... years before David Mitchell's book. So you added the Bee book, huh? You must really be into bees. You know the one I mentioned was non-fiction, right?

I haven't read Black Swan Green - it's one of those books I've heard lots about but I never seemed to get round to it, somehow... I'm not especially into bees, but I seem to be hankering after books on totally random subjects at the moment. On the pile of books right in front of me (my newest acquisitions) I have a David Attenborough natural history book, one on the role of women in war, one on space and mathematics, one on the oracles of the ancient world, a biography of Madame de Pompadour...

Robbing the Bees was non-fiction too!

I think you're gonna go crazy (in a good way) for Black Swan Green. I got my book off the remainder table so it was cheaper than a new paperback.

I get that way about subjects too. I was one of those kids who, when using an encyclopedia, always got distracted by all sorts of crazy subjects while I was supposed to be researching some other topic for school. Usually at a book store, I pick out an equal number of nonfiction books to peruse before buying. I almost picked up Plan Bee, but I was already juggling too many books in my arms.

>16 Hi Ellie. I just found your thread and this book, Books, Baguettes, and Bedbugs. It sounds absolutely fabulous! I MUST find a copy. Thanks for the suggestion.

It's great - it's one of those books where you think, 'no, that's just too eccentric and perfect' but IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS! If you're interested in Shakespeare and Co., there's a documentary called 'A Portrait of the Bookstore as an Old Man' (or something like that) - it's about an hour long and you can get it on Google Video, or in five or six sections on YouTube. It shows the chaos of life in the shop and really helped me picture everything when I re-read the book. Plus it's amusing - George is such a character! Would you 'give yourself a haircut' by setting fire to your own head with a candle and patting it out when the hair burnt to the right length?!

This is from mckait's 'Getting to Know You' idea on the 75-Books thread... I shamelessly posted MY fave things there anyway, because I can't resist a list!

BOOKS
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

FOOD
Warm pain au chocolat with coffee
Potato salad
Red grapes/cherry tomatoes
Chocolate buttons
My mum's corned beef and potato pie :-)

ACTIVITIES
Reading
Watching TV/DVDs
My scrapbook of magazine articles etc.
Renovating our soon-to-be bookshop

TV PROGRAMMES
The Big Bang Theory
Kyle XY
Young Dracula (I know, I know, it's for kids, but...)
Black Books
Ashes to Ashes

QUOTES
'Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?' - Henry Ward Beecher

'Everything that happens, happens for a reason.'

'I was happier as an impoverished and unpublished writer than I have ever been as a solvent and mediocre executive.' - J.K. Rowling

'Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.' - Carlos Ruiz Zafón, 'The Shadow of the Wind'

Message edited by its author, May 18, 2009, 3:50pm.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore? - Henry Ward Beecher

I've so got to steal that one! ;-)

I am there with you Bonnie. That is a great quote!~!

ellie;
Aren't those fun little bits to fill out?
I hope both you and Bonnie are having a great day.
belva

And here, finally, is my response to richardderus/alcottacre's meme:

1) What author do you own the most books by?
I have 10 by David Eddings - his Belgariad and Malloreon series. In terms of individual books rather than series, I have 9 by Nicholas Sparks and 7 by Joanne Harris.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
I just cleared out the couple of duplicates I had for the shop. I DO, however, still have two copies of Russell Brand's My Booky Wook (had the paperback, got the hardback for the shop, want to swap them over as pb will sell better, can't now FIND pb amongst the mountains...). I also have the paperback and the large illustrated hardback editions of Labyrinth by Kate Mosse.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Not until you pointed them out!

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Shall we count them off? Mr Rochester, Henry Winter (The Secret History), Noah Calhoun (The Notebook), Jacob Black/Jasper Hale (Twilight Saga), Lazarus Jones (The Ice Queen), Max de Winter...

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
Some of the early Harry Potters (I read them all over again each time a new book came out), and Enid Blyton books like the Malory Towers and Cherry Tree Farm series. More recently, probably The Picture of Dorian Gray.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
I was addicted to Nancy Drew, if I remember rightly!

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. Jeeeez, what a load of self-promoting twaddle.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Maybe Nefertiti by Michelle Moran, The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman or... dare I write these words... Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (sexy men to fantasize about, and the thrill of first love, what more can I say?).

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Alice Hoffman, for bringing a little magic to our lives

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
The Secret History - apparently they got the ball rolling for one but it stalled and has never been heard of again...

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Any more of the prize-winning novels that always seem to be set in a bleak environment (take your pick of: a refugee camp, the slums of a poverty-stricken African country, a filthy house in the outskirts of a dockside town, a desert) with a depressing-as-hell plot to boot.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
There may have been some dramatic adventures involving Hogwarts, flying curses and Draco Malfoy at some point. I don't really remember!

14) What is the most "lowbrow" book you've read as an adult?
Some chick lit from the library, The Da Vinci Code, The Notebook, the Twilight series - and you know what, I loved every last page!

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
I tried reading Ulysses for uni but ended up just reading notes on it instead and milking the lectures for all they were worth. A large stash of hallucinogenic drugs/bottle of absinthe might have helped put me in the right mindset to make sense of it!

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
At school a theatre company came and put on a weird two-man version of Macbeth that was performed on a climbing frame structure in the middle of the room.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Not sure, but I'll have to go for French just because I can't keep up with the names in Russian literature - even Dr Zhivago which I loved on TV!

18) Roth or Updike?
Never read either.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Never read either, but I have a David Sedaris book or two on my wish list.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Chaucer

21) Austen or Eliot?
Austen - so far.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Sci fi and crime, maybe.

23) What is your favorite novel?
Eeeek - I have to pick one? I'll say The Secret History and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

24) Play?
The beautiful Romeo and Juliet.

25) Poem?
'She Walks in Beauty' by Lord Byron

26) Essay?
One of the Ex Libris collection by Anne Fadiman

27) Short story?
I don't really read short stories - they never satisfy, somehow. I have Murakami's book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman to read soon so maybe I'll find a favourite there.

28) Work of nonfiction?
Notes on a Big Country by Bill Bryson

29) Who is your favorite writer?
Alice Hoffman or Bill Bryson

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Some of the 'celebrated' authors of yawnsworthy award-winners that nobody actually reads.

31) What is your desert island book?
Something long - like maybe The Count of Monte Cristo.

32) And... what are you reading right now?
Under the Paw: Confessions of a Cat Man by Tom Cox. My mum's library book, very sweet, quite amusing...

Miss Ellie;
Tell me it isn't so. Please tell me it isn't so. You DID NOT read the (ahem) twilight series.

I just read your list over in the original thread with this meme. I have to agree with you on being in love with Jasper Hale. I didn't even think of him when I filled out my list.

I know not many people like Twilight but I am glad that I read them just to loose myself in a tale of first love and to meet some very interesting vampires.

You had a crush on Henry in the Secret History huh? I liked Francis myself... he was more my type - the skinny, effeminate, nerdy looking type, that is :)

I fall in love with many fictional characters - it's a terminal symptom of singledom, and was a respite from real twenty-something men before that...

I LOVED Twilight - I couldn't put it down! The thrill of first love and adoration just swept me along and tied my stomach in knots. New Moon had a thrilling climax that left me breathless, and the tension growing between Bella and Jacob in Eclipse was pretty darn sexy. I guess it was the same with Dan Brown and Nicholas Sparks - I noticed the slight clunkiness at first but I got so caught up in the story that after a couple of chapters it just didn't register. And THAT is why they're still on my bookshelves while other more highly regarded novels have bitten the dust...

"I LOVED Twilight - I couldn't put it down!"

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww!~!

Next year the rest of us will probably all be reading them. Ha!

I am sorry Ms. elliepotten.
That was rude, sarcastic, and inappropriate. Not at all a ladylike comment to make and not at all like me. I don't know what came over me.
Please accept my apologies.
belva

Don't worry - these books are really dividing opinions! Perhaps my susceptability to falling in love with fictional characters has something to do with it. I'm saving Breaking Dawn for a free day so I can just read and read, because I know how caught up I got in the last three. I'm thinking work hard tomorrow and Monday, then on Tuesday when Mum's picking my sister up from uni in Liverpool, I can settle in with my book and some junk food and just immerse myself in it! :-D

Hi Elliepotten,

I have never read a Twilight book but I can't help but notice that the people who do like them REALLY like them and take a lot of flack for it. And maybe your last line above is why - you can settle in and just enjoy. I have a feeling that I may find myself trying one some day, and I might even like it!

And I think that those of us who have not read them just like to pitch *hit upon those who have. It is just too easy and too fun not to.
I said on someone else's thread that if we all enjoyed the same type of reading material, what a boring place LT would be. We, here at LT are nothing, if not diversified!~! Right?
belva

19) Under the Paw: Confessions of a Cat Man by Tom Cox

What can I say about this one...? Well, if the title appeals to you, then the book probably will too, because it pretty much does what it says on the tin. In a nutshell, Cox discusses the perils of being one of the minority breed of Cat Men, and covers the span of his time as a cat lover, right from his earliest, little-mentioned childhood friends Puss and Felix. Most of the book, however, is dedicated to the cats gracing the prime of his life - beginning when he first meets Dee, his future wife and an unashamedly enthusiastic cat woman. And so The Bear comes into his life: a temperamental black cat who may or may not be concocting evil plots, and who has a liking for Indian food and defecating in Dee's dressing gown pocket. Add to that Janet, a huge black hairball with the IQ of a teaspoon and a startling talent for creative vomiting, and you have the start of something huge.

From there it's a rocky roller-coaster of cattishness. Into their newly-married life tumble three kittens: Brewer the adventurer, Ralph (previously Prudence - bit of a shock when that one came out) and Shipley (the Obnoxious Yappy Black Cat). Throw in a couple of house moves, a turtle, and a brief dalliance with a 'cat' the size of a puma, then add two more cats to the mix: Pablo (Overexcitable Retarded Ginger Cat, previously a feral tearaway) and Bootsy (Grey Dwarf Cat, finally a clever girl to keep Dee company!).

Throw in a dash of tragedy and a whole lot of humour, and there you have it. A book that made me giggle out loud and cry a little bit as well. I have to admit, it did get a bit MUCH at times, and I was ready for the end when it came, but if I started to drift off there was always another cracking 'my cat does that!' moment to chuckle over and jerk me back into the book. In between the (long) chapters there are little humorous interludes which also helped, from a dictionary of cattish terms (do you know what a mousetache is? No?) to a definitive guide to successfully feeding six demanding characters at the same time.

Would I read it again? Maybe, maybe not. Cox doesn't quite have that far-reaching humour that Deric Longden, for example, possesses in such wonderful quantities and which makes him so re-readable. I love cats, but I did feel that sometimes the book could have benefited from slightly less felines, slightly more rest of life, only with the spot-on humour staying intact instead of dying away on non-cat-related pages. Would I recommend it? Definitely...

Message edited by its author, May 25, 2009, 7:09am.

Have you read My Cat Spit McGee by Willie Morris? It's a short memoir type book of a man who went from a dog man to being a cat man, but I think there's a good balance of cats/animals and outside life in the book, and he's incredibly funny :) Regardless, I'll be adding Under the Paw to my wishlist. Thanks for the great review :)

Hi, Ellie!
Eliza mentioned to me that you might be able to recommend a book by Nicholas Sparks for me. I was looking at them at the bookstore the other day, but there were so many to choose from, I did not know what would be a good place to start. If you read his books, could you suggest one for me? Thanks,
--BJ

Hi BJ - I know I'm not ellie but just wanted to chime in with my Sparks suggestion. Message in a Bottle has always been my personal favourite. Makes me cry every time, but in a good way.

Not tried that one yet - but A Walk to Remember had me sobbing away (despite already having seen the movie), and The Notebook catapulted itself way up my favourite books list in one afternoon. I find Sparks' writing to be quite clunky when you first start reading, but within a chapter or two it melts into a heartbreakingly beautiful story. Have some tissues and a bar of chocolate handy - you'll need them, but it will be so worthwhile! Hope that helps a teeny bit... :-D

Thanks so much Ellie and Spacepotatoes! That is just what I needed. :) I need to get shopping because with two kids in college next Fall, the book budget is plunging. Yikes! I want to have a good supply by then. By the way, spacepotatoes, I cannot look at a reference to asteroids anywhere without thinking of you!! Now that is a good username! Thanks again, and y'all have a great day!
--BJ

Aw, thanks BJ! And glad I could help, let us know how you like the books when you get around to them!

20) The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg

I have to say, I had my reservations about this book. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but when I picked it up at the library the style seemed to be aimed at more mature women, and I worried that I didn’t have enough life experience to fully appreciate a book about a woman who has lost her husband of many years to cancer.

I needn’t have worried. I became thoroughly absorbed in the story of Betta Nolan, a woman in her fifties, recently bereaved and trying to follow her husband’s last wishes for the direction her life should go after his death. The reader first meets her driving through the American countryside. She and John had dreamed of packing up their lives and driving randomly until they came across a nice town where they could start a new life. Now Betta is taking up the challenge on her own, both as a distraction from her grief and to honour her promise to live her life to the full.

The story meanders through her unhappiness, her bravery, and her faltering steps as a single woman in a new place. She meets new people, catches up with old friends, and nurtures her lifelong dream to open a beautiful shop called ‘What A Woman Wants’, full of vintage treasures and comforting femininity. She reaches out to young people and old people alike, takes risks, and reaps the rewards. Slowly grief begins to give way to hope and the whispers of a happy future, with wonderful memories instead of painful regret.

I think this story has something for everyone – it is full of wisdom and humour, it has a mixed bunch of characters to appeal to different readers, and anyone who has ever lost anyone can relate to Betta’s journey, whether they have been bereaved after thirty years or broken up with a boyfriend after a few months. Ultimately it is a novel about simple pleasures, counting blessings, taking chances and making the most of every precious day – and that’s something we could all do with being reminded of every once in a while. I might just read more of Elizabeth Berg’s work now…

Message edited by its author, Jun 4, 2009, 6:24pm.

MAY SUMMARY

BOOKS BOUGHT
For One More Day by Mitch Albom
Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali
Frost/Nixon by David Frost
Sahara by Michael Palin
Stonehenge by John North
Madame de Pompadour by Christine Pevitt Algrant
The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature by Heinz R. Pagels
Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War by Katie Adie
Life in Cold Blood by David Attenborough
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Lottery by Patricia Wood
Bilgewater by Jane Gardam
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
The Road to Delphi by Michael Wood
Catch Me if You Can by Frank W. Abagnale
Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy
Sea Trek by Martha Holmes
For Crying Out Loud (The World According to Clarkson vol.3) by Jeremy Clarkson
The Complete Wolf by Liz Bomford
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Emma by Jane Austen
Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power by Virginia Rounding
Deception Point by Dan Brown
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
High Five by Janet Evanovich

I think there might be a couple more piled up too, but I'm going to carry them over to June because I really don't have time to sort them out right now!

BOOKS READ:
(completed this month) Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey - The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World by Holley Bishop
(completed this month) The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
Under the Paw: Confessions of a Cat Man by Tom Cox
(not finished) The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg

Better, but I still haven't quite the hang of this 'sensible book buying' thing, have I?!

21) Gold by Dan Rhodes

A difficult one to describe without ruining anything for potential readers. It opens with three men in a pub - short Mr Hughes, Mr Puw (with his black beard and pipe) and tall Mr Hughes (with his alligator obsession). Septic Barry and the Children from Previous Relationships are on the other side of the pub, and Mr Edwards is pulling pints behind the bar. All is as it should be. Then a Japanese-looking girl arrives, orders a pint, and sits in the corner of the room under the stuffed pike. 'Welcome back', everyone says.

Here we switch to Miyuki's point of view, and the story begins to unfold. Who is she? Every year she arrives in this little coastal town in Wales by herself, stays a fortnight walking and drinking and reading, then leaves again. Why is she here? How about all the eccentric individuals in the pub - what are their stories? The rest of the book meanders through each day of her stay, adding little by little to the rich tapestry of the town and the people in it as events unfold, and reaching deeper into Miyuki's life back home. Rhodes is very amusing - there are some real unexpected laugh-out-loud moments - and delights in whipping the rug out from under the reader with unexpected revelations and little twists.

Different, quirky, and beautiful - one of the best books I've read this year so far. I'll be buying my own copy next time I order online!

Message edited by its author, Jun 10, 2009, 6:21am.

Hello ellie;
I am so glad that you enjoyed The Year of Pleasures by Berg. She is one of my favorites and I, too enjoyed this read and at my age I was able to easily put myself in her position.
Now this Gold you speak of; hmmmmm, I think I must, no, I just, ohhhh, yessssss my presssssssssscious I must have my own copy of that. It sounds like something I might like to read every couple of years or so.
And on the *hitload of books: I must ask (last time I was wrong) shop or home? Cosmic Code would probably be over my head, but I looked it up and it looks wonderful!~! Stonehenge, I want. Catherine the Great; Love, Sex and Power; that one sounds like a good read and I might learn a thing or two. (Does the application process come with it?) hee hee How is the shop coming along?
And how have you been ellie? How is your health? I haven't been on here much lately, but have been thinking of so many of you. I start drawing my social security in December so I need to get my passport in order and put a wee bit back each month and who knows-----perhaps next year I could come over the puddle and go book shopping at your little store with the ducklings paddling about outside. Maybe I could drag another LTer or 2 with. Twould be fun.
You take care. It's been nice chatting with you.
belva

That would be wonderful! If you ever come my way make sure you come and introduce yourself, I'll make you a cup of good old English tea and everything... Bakewell's so beautiful, I'm so proud of living in the Peak District, all green and gorgeous. The shop's going okay - we started shelving some of our catalogued books yesterday evening while we were waiting for our office fridge to arrive - but it's so damn hard to sit inside cataloguing when the weather has been so warm and delicious! I must admit I have spent a lot of time sitting outside on a blanket with my book, soaking up the sun instead. It does me the world of good so I don't feel TOO guilty! Our till arrived today so Mum's been having a whale of a time playing with it and working out what's what.

The health thing is going okay I suppose. Ironically enough I think working so much on the shop isn't helping the agoraphobia, as I've basically created another 'safe' place for myself and get a bit nervous still when I go somewhere else. But I AM going, so it's not so bad. I'm still working on the stomach problems, finding out what I can eat without making myself ill. Unfortunately half my favourite summer foods seem to be out - salad, mayo, nice meats, apricots... Ah well.

It will all come. Just be patient and in the meantime you can read. Right? Try not to overdo and do take care of yourself. We care.
belva

I've put Gold on my TBR as well, it sounds like something right up my alley! I can relate to wanting to be outside with a good book instead of working inside. I say if you can get away with it, do it as often as possible! Take care :)

Ultimately it is a novel about simple pleasures, counting blessings, taking chances and making the most of every precious day – and that’s something we could all do with being reminded of every once in a while.

Or every day! I've read several reviews by other LT-ers, but none that made me want to read this book as much as yours did. It reminds me of how much reading is a connection between the writer and the reader.

I have been very lucky with my reading recently, I must say - particularly as both The Year of Pleasures and Gold were library gambles on new authors for me. I might read more Elizabeth Berg - and maybe buy my own copy of this one - and I loved the Dan Rhodes so much that I ordered it off Amazon a couple of days ago. I think it'll be reread and well loved over the years!

Good grief - does anyone here use Ciao! as a product comparison site? I'm a member of the community, which means I can write reviews to earn a few pence each time someone rates it or comments on it. I'm honestly thinking of jacking it in, because everyone there is so damn negative! The awards for best reviews go to people who write an A4 page about everything, from a chocolate bar (way overboard) to a book (often ruining the entire plot). Instead of reading a review (which is predominantly meant for people coming to the site to look for that product) and taking it or leaving it, members seem to feel the need -and the right - to be extremely critical and in a deeply patronising way. If you write more, you've given too much away. Keep it short and sweet, and you've not written enough and need to do better - even if writing more would ruin the experience for the consumer. I feel like I'm at school writing essays again!

Take my review for Gold (#127) - I went into that book blind and thoroughly enjoyed the unfolding of events and the carefully revealed character quirks as the story progressed - Rhodes holds back information and sparingly doles it out as part of the novel's structure. If I read a review that gave everything away I wouldn't have gotten half as much pleasure from the book, and I had that in mind writing the review. I want people to read it, of course, but I don't want to kill it dead for them! It's getting increasingly difficult to refrain from commenting back on there, y'know - the really condescending ones are just so out of line! One girl's only 15, writes dreadful, off-topic, meandering reviews that seem completely out of touch with reality (which, by the way, everyone seems to love!) and still comments on others' work as if she was The Source of All Knowledge.

Grrrrr! OK, rant over. Thank God for LibraryThingers who are more interested in the books themselves and in fostering friendships than tearing each other apart all the time! :-D

My dear Ellie;
I would imagine you are feeling much better now that you got that off your chest. Are you ready for your tea yet dear? We don't want it to get cold now.

Hi Belva - I am feeling a little better thank you! It's not quite teatime here - British time and all that - but I did have a rather delicious lunch of buttered lemon and raisin pancakes and some divine Sundream tomatoes, which definitely helped improve my mood! That and watching 'The Darling Buds of May' - have you heard of it? Based on the books by H.E. Bates, comedy drama, rural, full of the joys of life in the British countryside, starring David Jason and a VERY young Catherine Zeta-Jones... Now it's thundering a little bit and I should be cataloguing books or writing a press release or something, but I keep getting distracted! Ah well. :-D

Hi Ellie;
No, I haven't heard of it. I am imagining it is on the Brit telly? It sounds very light hearted and relaxing. If it is a VERY young Catherine Zeta-Jones, I am thinking I could get it over here on video rental though. Will be checking into that. Movie or series?
And all that other "stuff", you know, the work part, it will keep until you get to it. Somehow it always does. No work gremlins at my house, dog-gone it!

Yes, it's vintage British TV - I have it on DVD. David Jason is Pop Larkin, Pam Ferris (the nasty aunt that gets blown up in the third Harry Potter movie, Miss Trunchbull in Matilda...???) is Ma Larkin, and Catherine Z-J is their eldest daughter Mariette. Big family living on a farm, all hearty romance and gorgeous food and the bliss of the countryside, plenty of humour, it's fantastic! You could always try one of the books first, get a taste for it and see if you like it.

I still haven't done much cataloguing but I made a couple of calls that needed to be made, got some info about advertising in the local paper, and knocked up a little advert template to send to them, so I feel slightly more productive now! Then I watched a movie and spent some time chatting to my mum and grandma - think I'll call it a day now and hit my book for a few minutes before bed...

xx

***snorzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz***

Well, after picking up Stiff by Mary Roach just because it was a library book, putting it down because I was getting too distracted by everything else, and starting something different, this little book arrived for me:

22) Bookworm Droppings: An Anthology of Absurd Remarks made by Customers in Secondhand Bookshops, by Shaun Tyas

Very amusing little collection of stupid customer remarks and ridiculous exchanges between readers and booksellers.

There are some real pearlers in here:

"You've opened up a whole new world to me! I now collect modern first editions, but tell me, do you know what 'new impression' means?"

"I had a book myself once. Never read it. It was blue. I don't suppose you've got a copy?"

"My father lent me a copy of this book on Marine Engineering because I was doing a course on car maintenance and he thought it might be helpful."

And my all-time favourite:

"Have you got Anne of Clark Gables?"

That one nearly made me choke on my coffee!

Hopefully I'll have plenty more to say when I get home from my hols next Friday... A whole week of being able to sit and READ books instead of boxing them up, hallelujah. Now I just have to decide which to take - I've spent the past two days narrowing my shortlist from about 150 to about 30, now it's the difficult bit! I'm looking forward to it so much - a cottage in the countryside, cheesecake, chocolate, tea and toast, sunshine (hopefully), and a whole heap of books... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

I would also take some Clark Gables. hee hee

It sounds like you are going to have a lovely holiday. Eat well, drink well, rest well and read well. I hope you come home rested in body, mind and spirit. Then you can share with us all the reading you did. (and all the other "stuffs" too). You did say countryside and not island, correct???
Enjoy Miss Ellie,
belva


glitter-graphics.com

I'm back! Back from a week of cheesecake and books and sunshine, into a week of chaos and trailing all over Derbyshire trying to fit everything in before we open. Bloody hell. Anyway, here's my holiday reading catchup:


23) The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

A surreal book following DS Mary Mary and DI Jack Spratt in their investigations of the suspicious death of troubled egg Humperdinck 'Humpty' Van Dumpty. They work in the ailing Nursery Crime Division of the Oxford and Reading police force, a laughing stock to other officers. Now they must solve this eggy crime to keep the division from being disbanded and the sickeningly charming Friedland Chymes from taking all the glory yet again.

It sounds mad, and the strange appearance of nursery characters and aliens alongside the human characters does take a few chapters to get used to, but the strange thing is... this really works! It's like a combination of Shrek and CSI - a real murder mystery but with an intelligent and amusing strand of fairytale mockery woven through the whole thing. The three pigs have just been found not guilty of the murder of Mr Wolff (boiled to death when he came down their chimney), and an alien called Ashley (like us but blue) is working in the NCD trying to adjust to his strange human colleagues.

It's funny, it's very clever, and it's well worth a read. I'm looking forward to the Thursday Next novels now!

24) Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

I bought this on the strength of the glowing reviews on Amazon, many from people who loved both the book AND the film. I actually found the two to be very different, and on balance I much prefer the film (sacrilege, I know, I know...). Where the film is more of a satire on fairytales (Prince Char has a fan club, his evil uncle is trying to take his place, the fairy godmother's lover is trapped as a magical book), the novel is a far more conventional retelling of Cinderella (with no evil uncle in sight!).

Ella has been given a 'gift' by a well-meaning but thoughtless fairy. She has to be obedient at all times. Whether she's being told to wash the dishes or give up her most treasured possessions, she has to do as she's told. When her world falls apart and her vile stepmother and stepsisters find out about her obedience, she realises that the only way to stop this madness - and her domestic slavery - is to find the fairy, Lucinda, and persuade her to take away the gift. So she leaves her home town of Frell and sets off to find her, leaving behind her best friend, her home and her growing romance with Prince Charmont.

So far, so different from the movie - but still eminently readable and a sweet story. It's the ending that fell apart completely for me. The film had a gripping, exciting ending that made full use of the compulsive nature of Ella's obedience to create tension and a great climax. The novel just fell quietly into a bland ending which was really disappointing at the end of such a feisty heroine's story. It was perfect holiday fluff, but I don't think I'll be rereading this one. I'll buy myself the DVD instead!

Welcome home Miss Ellie;
I hope your holiday was everything you hoped it would be.
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde sounds to be a hoot and a madcap of a mystery. That one is definitely going on my TBR listing.
I missed your smiling posts on LT while you were gone but am happy you were able to have some time of refreshment and that you made it home safe and sound.
Welcome back, my dear.
belva

Message edited by its author, Jun 27, 2009, 6:56pm.

25) Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

Well, my hopes were high after The Da Vinci Code. I read that one in a day and couldn't put it down. Sadly, Angels and Demons didn't QUITE live up to expectations in terms of quick reading or 'not-being-able-to-put-it-down-ness' (there's probably an excellent word I'm missing in my search for appropriate terminology but it's a very humid day and my brain's gone a bit sloshy).

There was definitely more science and terminology to get your head round this time - whereas the religious references in The Da Vinci Code were recognisable to most people, Christian or otherwise - but that done, it took off at a good pace. A horrific murder has taken place, with a top scientist being killed and branded with the word 'Illuminati'. For Robert Langdon, a symbologist called to the scene by the head of the scientific institution in which Leonardo Vetra lived, it is a word that rings with panic and deep meaning. The Illuminati were an enlightened group of scientists meeting to discuss their work away from religious persecution, but forced underground they mixed with less desirable groups, spread in influence and became a name to inspire fear.

Now Langdon, with Vetra's beautiful daughter Vittoria, are in a race against time to solve the riddle of the Path of Enlightenment to stop four murders being plotted by a dark stranger, and to save Vatican City and the cardinals who have gathered there from a bomb of horrific power which has been hidden somewhere within its walls.

Throughout most of the mystery, Angels and Demons lived up to its promise. There were some suitably gruesome bits, plenty of artistic clues and religious intrigue, and a sense of menace that was quite satisfying. But towards the end Brown outdoes himself with a few TOO many twists and turns, each added onto the end of the one before, so that by the end I'd had enough and just wanted it to finish. The twists were exciting in themselves, but it was too much and ruined the novel a bit for me. Brown could have cut out a fair few pages there and finished with a taut finale instead of tapering back down to a bland ending...

I don't know if I'd read this one again - I'm sure I will be rereading The Da Vinci Code sometime soon - but I'll keep hold of it for now and will definitely not let the soggy finish put me off reading the other two Brown novels!

Hi Belva! How promptly you dropped by...

The holiday was lovely thank you - I got there in one piece and didn't leave once except to go to the supermarket and for a pub meal on our first evening! The cottage was beautiful and the owners had the friendliest cat we've ever met, who adopted us for the weekend and spent most of the time on our knees or stretched out on a blanket in the sun. I had lots of chocolate, raspberry cheesecake and ice cream, and lay flat out reading and doing su doku puzzles all day, every day. And watching Wimbledon, obviously!

Now, alas, we have returned to the council tax people misguidedly wanting to cut off my exemption benefits, about ten people scattered all over Derbyshire wanting us to go and look at books, a shop that still needs books shelving and windows dressing, books to catalogue by the boxful, various appointments to fit in before we open (in ONE WEEK!)... Arrrrgh! Plus Michael Jackson's death, of course, which has kinda knocked me for six and upset me a bit, I must say. :-(

26) 'Breaking Dawn' by Stephenie Meyer (touchstone not working)

I know I'm fighting the 'love it or hate it' war here - but I am an unashamed Meyer fan and have finally had the chance to read the last book in the Twilight saga. I started it on holiday, made time to read it over cheesecake back home, and finished it in tears over breakfast this morning.

I can't really say much about it in case other LT-ers haven't read it yet, but suffice to say that Bella finally gets vamped, with the rest of the book revolving around her new experiences, her place in Forks and her new family, and the remaining conflicts that haven't been resolved in the previous three novels.

It definitely didn't have quite the same 'can't put it down!' breathless thrill of the other three books, but the twist to the narrative voice of Bella in her new role kept it fresh and added a new slant which was very interesting to read. This book was powerful in a different way, with stronger relationships and more touching interactions which were at times quite poignant.

All in all, another hit for Meyer and a fitting end to the saga!

Message edited by its author, Jul 1, 2009, 11:52am.

Yada yada yada!~!
I don't want to be hearing 'bout no Bella getting "vamped". What I would dig, yeah, even at my age, is Belva becoming a vamp!~! Tee hee
The old man would love it!~!
Whoo!~!

and regarding: "Plus Michael Jackson's death, of course, which has kinda knocked me for six and upset me a bit, I must say. :-("

sad for his family, but the children of the world are sleeping much safer these nights.
belva

Message edited by its author, Jul 1, 2009, 3:08pm.

Innocent until proven guilty, Belva dear. For now, crank up 'Billie Jean' and enjoy the good old days...

Well, the bookshop is now OPEN and it seems my feet haven't touched the ground these past few days. It says something when I actually feel guilty for stopping to eat because there must be something bookshop-related to do every waking minute. Today I've been left holding the baby, if you like, when Mum had to rush off after my sister got rear-ended in the car on her way to work this morning and had to be taken home in a state. She's only 19, poor munchkin, she was very shaken and the car had to be towed. So I was left here to open up and run the shop for the morning!

Anyway, it's lunch time now and I'm sitting in the back with a baguette and a mug of tea taking five. I finished another book - borrowed from Book End this time - so here it is:

27) Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers

What an interesting little book this turned out to be. It caught my eye because it's a bright pink little hardback with a ribbon page marker in it, and flicking through it I could see that it is entirely made up of notes written between a mother and daughter and stuck on the fridge in their kitchen. With each note starting a new page (though the later notes get longer) it was a quick book to read, but it packed quite a punch.

Writing in such a personal style quickly gives the reader an insight into the relationship between these two individuals, a doctor who is constantly on call at the maternity ward, and her sociable teenage daughter Claire. The two barely see each other, with other commitments constantly hindering them in spending time together even when they've tried to arrange something special. This in itself is poignant enough when shown in such a stark manner, but when Claire's mother discovers a lump on her breast things get even worse. Through these notes we see her struggling to explain things to her daughter and get her own mind around what she's facing, and hear about Claire's worries and her attempts to make things better for her mum.

I hadn't expected the book to take this direction at all - I just thought it was a quirky little chick lit book, to be honest - but by the end I was sobbing into my breakfast and wanted to run out and give my mum a big squidge. Mum and I have always been so close that this situation would never happen to us, but perhaps that made it all the more heartbreaking for me to read, imagining how I would feel and how dreadful it would be if there was such a distance between us at such a critical time.

Definitely worth a read - quick, but a strong reminder about family and getting your priorities right. Brilliant.

Good morning Miss Ellie;
Very nice review there. I had to add it to my list of ever growing TBRs. (and a thumb's up, btw) Love the "mum and squidge" bit. It must be so nice to enjoy that kind of relationship with your mum.
I have it with my girls and appreciate it no end. But once my "mum" got the seven of us raised she pretty much just wanted to see the back side of us.
How is sis doing? Any whiplash or anything? I do hope she is okay.
Are you happy that the shop is up and running? Are things beginning to calm down within the shop? I do hope so.
You have a lovely afternoon.
belva

She had a bit of whiplash but she's okay now, ta - just being a hell of a lot more careful on the road, even though it wasn't her fault!

The shop's going well, though seven days a week is starting to lose its novelty... thankfully, my sister has volunteered to work with Mum on Wednesday so I get my first day off - I'm already planning how to use it wisely! I'm thinking coffee, chocolate and my book, then pizza and a movie in the evening, and spending all my Amazon vouchers!

Anyway, I've decided to curtail my monthly roundups as there is such a strange flow of books in and out of the flat right now and I can't keep up with what's arrived when - but I'll try and carry on my 50-Booker nonetheless...

28) A book called Growing up at War by Maureen Hill, about life in World War II. I read it from cover to cover in the shop office. It was more of a kid's/young adult book, with puzzles and 'things to do' sections, but nevertheless I really enjoyed it and learned more than I did in the countless WWII history lessons we got over the years!

29) Minus Nine to One: The Diary of an Honest Mum by Jools Oliver

A strange one for a 22 year-old singleton to pick up, you might think - but there it was, in our new 'Families' section - and it just jumped out at me! A very sweet little book. It definitely had a noticeable abundance of exclamation marks, which jarred a bit at first - but ultimately this is a warm, friendly, honest take on becoming a mum for the first (and second, by the end!) time, with all the joys, trials and huge questions that go along with it. I learned a lot, and I loved the many beautiful photographs documenting this amazing period in Jools and Jamie's life. It has been a lovely little read at night before bed, when the history of Pompeii just wasn't feasible - and I've been dreaming about babies every night as a result, which is strange!

Message edited by its author, Jul 19, 2009, 5:00pm.

Ellie, congrats on your shop opening!

Yeah! How's it going?

Pretty good, thanks! Opening weekend was a bit flustered, but since then we've settled right in and feel right at home there again now we've adjusted to having people coming in and taking our books away! We've just scrapped our catalogue too (too many problems with our rickety old computer!) which means getting books on the shelves is quicker and we can interact with customers more now we're not scribbling titles down to take off the catalogue again later! Better still, it means we have time to READ and go online and things when the shop's quiet - it hardly feels like work at all, it's a dream!

That said, after two weeks of very long seven-days-a-week hours, I was looking forward to my day off today, which sod's law, turned out to be a complete dud, despite my careful planning! Luxury banoffee chocolate pots somehow morphed into cheap bashed banoffee pies in our food delivery, my stomach had a tantrum this afternoon which meant I've had no tea, I've now got a splitting headache, and my hard work clearing paperwork so I could RELAX was scuppered when a threatening letter arrived from the tax office this morning... :-(

Oh well, onwards and upwards I suppose - and may my next day off be less of a disaster!

Amen to that!~! Sounds like you've had one. Hey, since you're part/boss, could you take the rest of the week off? Ha!~!
Try to get some rest and take care of yourself and mum. The rest will come round. Good luck.
belva

Sounds like you're figuring out what works for you when it comes to how you want to run your shop. How big is it? Sounds like a lovely place to be!

30) Housewife Down by Alison Penton Harper

A very fluffy little novel which has proved a nice way to relax each evening after work. It revolves around Helen Robbins, a housewife who has been downtrodden by her boarish husband for years and finally comes to her senses just in time for him to die in a freak car accident. This is the story of how she breaks free of her former life of drudgery and regains her life, her friends, her self-confidence, and a few bonus extras to boot. There were some glaring editorial mistakes and a few sentences that almost made me squirm they were so awful and painfully written - but nevertheless I enjoyed it for what it was and will be reading the sequel soon for a bit more light relief!

Hey, can someone explain how I can add a picture or three to a posting? I know some of you have done it and I can't work it out!

I can do it, but I want to be able to pull a picture directly from LT rather than search for one on the internet. I don't know why LT can't do that. When we add books, we automatically get a picture.

I mean adding a photo from my computer - like a picture of the shop. I know some people have added the occasional pictures from their hols and things to their threads and I can't work out how they did it!

OK, well, that didn't work! I thought I'd got the whole 'book cover picture' thing even if not the 'my own photos' thing... But I ended up with nothing at all!

Message edited by its author, Aug 1, 2009, 8:15am.

If at first...try, try again! :-)

Do you have this explanation from TadAD?

Message edited by its author, Aug 1, 2009, 8:35am.

I've given up on the piccies thing for now! No luck thus far...

Anyway, next book down:

31) The Hades Factor by Robert Ludlum

This was my first Robert Ludlum novel - indeed, my first real crime thriller - and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. It opens with a handful of people dying suddenly and horribly from hemorrhagic fever. A team of army research scientists immediately set to work to isolate the virus and find a way to stop it. Meanwhile Jonathan Smith, one of their number, away on other business and blissfully unaware of the crisis, receives a blunt warning for his life from an old friend and is promptly attacked.

His fiancee, fellow scientist Sophia Russell, finally has a breakthrough, linking the virus with something she has seen before on a research trip to Peru... but the only person who might be able to help denies all knowledge, and she too is attacked. By the time Jon reaches her back home she is dying from the same virus.

From here it becomes a race against time to find out who is responsible for the attacks, Sophia's death - and, it would seem, the virus itself. Who has unleashed it, who is keeping secrets, what do they stand to gain - and how on earth can they be stopped?

It definitely kept my interest all the way through, though there were odd moments when I was jerked out of the story and thought, 'whoah, that was bad.' Ludlum insists on repeating the ranking of many of his characters, and while the descriptions of gun fights and stealth operations ring with authenticity and knowledge, the personal relationships that cement the story are a bit clunky. It might have increased the thrill factor had the romance between Jon and Sophia, and the tight bonds between Jon and his friends (and partners-in-crime), been a little less awkward in their portrayal.

All in all, a really good, well paced novel - and I would certainly read more Robert Ludlum now I've started.

Hi! Glad you like the thread - thanks for stopping by and commenting. (I know I've seen your name pop up on other threads, and similarly can't believe I haven't taken a look earlier - you've got lots of good stuff here). Love, love, love that you run a bookshop - quite envious.

>165 I highly recommend the Bourne Trilogy if you're interested in more Ludlum. They are quite different from the movies, but they're really good!

They do keep drifting in and out of the shop - I'll keep my eye out and stash them away if I come across them... Do you know the order they come in - Identity, Supremacy, Ultimatum? - so I can look out for #1?

Yup, the order you've given there is the order they are meant to be read in. Personally, Supremacy was my least favourite of the three (funny because it was my favourite of the movies!), but they are all good.

32) The World According to Mimi Smartypants

I picked this up because as a former blog-turned-book it sounded perfect for bitesize reading between customers in the shop. A bit of fluff and fun, if you like. In fact, I couldn't read it under the counter for long at a time because I kept getting the giggles. This is a sharp, irreverent, slightly mad collection of personal musings and snapshot observations of Chicago life. Our Mimi has the humour of Bridget Jones and the sass of Carrie Bradshaw, all rolled into one...

Any other themes to make it worth reading, or is it good enough for the giggles alone?

It's just a blog really - a quite un-PC, very funny little blog full of stories about nights out and people on the subway and bizarre conversations: all the ridiculous, amusing moments that crop up every day in our lives, and the strange flights of imagination and memory that we flit off on from time to time. Mimi's slight manic quality helps bring these things out in a way that other writers might not achieve so well. It's not really a 'themes' kind of book!

What a lovely day it has been in the shop today. I had a woman light up extolling the virtues of Margaret Atwood, and another telling me animatedly about all the Tracy Chevalier books she had read. I delighted a woman by enlightening her as to the number of books Bill Bryson has currently written - she is a recent convert who had only seen the ones about Britain and his travels in Europe. At one point the shop turned into a mini book group with two parties of women excitedly discussing Khaled Hosseini's books. A lovely lady brought a gorgeous old collie in to flop on the floor while she chatted to us, and right near the end of the day a little boy held an impromptu tea party on the dehumidifier with Tigger in a chair on one side, Aloysius (our shop teddy!) in a chair on the other side, and two little birdie book ends in the middle.

On a different note, I have a NEW PLAN to tackle my TBR mountain. I am going to... (drumroll please)... READ ALPHABETICALLY. My next book (after Frenchman's Creek, alongside Biblioholism and the already-lined-up How I Lived a Year on a Pound a Day) will have to be one with the author surname A, then B, and so on. When I start a book I'll draw up a shortlist for the next one, then choose from them depending on what I fancy at the time. I'll bias my list towards books that have been sitting on the shelves a while. I can still read other books alongside (for example, if I chose a classic and wanted something lighter for bedtime reading) but the alphabet chain must be kept going first and foremost. Wish me luck!

The 'A' Shortlist:
Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali
Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan
The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Message edited by its author, Aug 17, 2009, 4:58pm.

I like your new plan! My votes goes for reading the Allende or the Ali. I haven't read either but I've enjoyed both author's part works. Can't wait to see what you choose and your B shortlist next.

33) Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier

I started this book with a few expectations, I suppose. On some I was correct - the plot, of which I knew a little, is straight out of Mills and Boon, for example... On others I was not. Having 'Rebecca' as my only du Maurier reference point so far, I was interested to find that 'Frenchman's Creek' could have been written by an entirely different writer. The only obvious similarity stems from the descriptive prose, which I recognised from the haunting passages about the path down through the rhodedendrons to the little cove in 'Rebecca'.

'Frenchman's Creek' is like a very, very well written trashy romance novel. Mills and Boon taken a few welcome steps in the right direction. Or maybe Pocahontas in reverse - wild man arrives and turns everything upside down, teaching civilised woman her own strength in the process. Basic plot: Lady Dona St Columb leaves London for the family retreat, Navron House in Cornwall, to escape her oafish husband and her bad behaviour in the face of her sheer boredom. At Navron she can enjoy the sun and the garden and find her 'inner Dona', the woman she has always wanted to be. Then she hears about a ruthless French pirate and his marauding crew who have been terrorising the coastline, robbing the wealthy and escaping into thin air... and so the tale really begins.

Even at its climax, the novel is far gentler in its manner than 'Rebecca', but this isn't by any means a bad thing. Althought it starts in a slightly dry fashion and occasionally slows enough for a bit of cliche and clunk to show through, I really appreciated the lyrical descriptions of Cornwall and the exploration of love and freedom. Likewise, though the characters aren't really fleshed out as much as I might have liked, the two sets of conflicting individuals, experiences and values at its core play against each other very well. I'll definitely be reading more Du Maurier and I'm looking forward to seeing where her style and stories will take me next.

Ooh - another book to read! :::sigh::: I don't even know how long my TBR list is anymore...I hope you're feeling properly chastened for adding to a list that I will not be able to finish before I die.

;-)

OK, the decision on my first alphabetically-chosen book is Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. It's been on my TBR shelves for years, so I'm pleased to have finally plucked it down and started it!

The 'B' Shortlist
The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne
Cuban Heels by Emily Barr
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

Message edited by its author, Aug 22, 2009, 6:21pm.

Hello there, I've seen your handle mentioned in several of the 75'ers threads and I hunted you up over here at the '50's. Gonna star ya' now and keep up with your reading and your store. How cool is that?!?!?! Opening your own bookstore. You should really keep a journal or diary or something and jot down your adventures getting the store up and running and the day to day events.

Read your rant up there about reviews and I agree that LT'ers are more fair in their reviews than many other places I've seen. You guys should have an 'LT'er Recommends' corner in your bookstore; print a review for some of the books you've seen here and put them all together on a shelf!

Great idea, blackdogbooks!

So, Eleanor/Ellie...I looked at your 5 choices of "B" books you're considering, and of the three I've read (the last 3), I would recommend Bryson's, A Walk in the Woods, because it made me want to be more adventurous--to get out there and walk and enjoy the great outdoors.

P.S. Is that a new picture on your profile? Very cute!

Blackdogbooks - welcome to my thread! I'm intrigued that my handle has popped up over in the 75-ers threads... I'm definitely enjoying being in the shop, except for the odd drawback - namely, the 7-days-a-week thing we've got going on through the summer, the relentless haggling over books with difficult people, and the moaning old women who think it's still a Red Cross charity shop (bearing in mind it shut about eight months ago!). On the plus side, we're putting books in the right hands, and get to sit around most of the day on LT or reading, which is a cushy way to spend the day! It being a second hand shop, there's no faffing around with publishers and display stands and all that jazz, so we're very much at our leisure.

We actually started a customer recommendation board after a few people expressed an interest, but so far the only people to contribute have been me and my family! And we do have a few stories and eccentric customers already... :-D

Message edited by its author, Aug 24, 2009, 6:15am.

Hi Bonnie! Only my headteacher ever called me Eleanor, Ellie will do just fine amongst friends... :-)

I must confess, I have actually already read A Walk in the Woods (a long time ago) and The Coral Island (a VERY long time ago), but they're ripe for a reread so they made the list anyway. I've tried to include a bit of variety so that I can just see where my mood takes me...

And yes, it's a new profile pic, just before we opened the shop, when my new haircut hadn't yet descended back into its usual 'out roaming the moors' wildness!

34) Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction by Tom Raabe

A thoroughly enjoyable book that I would wholeheartedly recommend to each and every LT-er. It could have been written for us - or by us, for that matter!

In short, this is a comprehensive guide to biblioholism and all the various quirky traits and habits that go along with it. It is evident that Raabe is 'one of us' and he drives right to the heart of our affliction with great humour and insight. Do you find yourself spending money on books that would otherwise have been spent on food? Getting rid of your possessions to fit in more books? Do you set yourself a book budget, or are you of the belief that if it's under £5 it's a bargain anyway? Do you have to sneak books in past your other half? What would your fantasy bookshop be like? Do you read in restaurants, in bed, on the train? Do you lend your books or guard them protectively? On top of discussions of all these topics and more, Raabe includes an amusing alternative history of the book, a look at book narcissism (don't pretend you haven't succumbed on occasion) and a section on the extremes of bookish behaviour - eating books, stealing them, destroying them.

With a wealth of interesting and amusing examples of biblioholic behaviour, some sweet illustrations and a strong bibliography (like we needed to add any more to our TBR mountains!), this comes very highly recommended and is a firm keeper for me.

Ellie, nice review of Biblioholism - sounds like another one to add to my TBR mountain! :-)

Oh, and I'd give another vote for A Walk in the Woods; I love Bryson's humorous stories in this one. I haven't actually read any of the others though, so I look forward to hearing what you think of whichever one you choose.

Biblioholism is going on my TBR as well. I love reading about my fellow book addicts and taking comfort in knowing that my little habits are actually normal :)

Ok, Ellie. :-) So, true confession, when I looked at your list, I wasn't all that excited about your choices (at least the three I had read) so looked at my "B"s and this is what I could suggest as an alternative:

One of the best collections of short stories: Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett

A totally fun book: Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns

A really good SF book written in/about the 70's in which an African American woman keeps getting yanked back in time to a plantation in the South: Kindred by Octavia Butler

Tempted? ;-)

Hey, no fair! I'm supposed to be tackling my TBR pile with this endeavour, remember, not adding more to it! BAD Bonnie.

I'm not keen on short stories really - I've seen Ship Fever in the shop and have remained untempted... No, I like my five, and I'll stick to them. I can't fall apart two books in! :-)

LOL! OK, OK, I won't tempt you anymore! ;-) I've got a bunch of tbr's myself to tackle. And I much prefer a novel over short stories as well, so I'll let you get on with it. Which "B" did you choose?

I'm not choosing until I finish Lucky Jim... I've decided the best way is to make my next shortlist as I start each book. So I made my 'B' list while reading Amis, then I'll choose from them based on my mood when the time comes, then get on with my 'C' shortlist. It makes more sense in my head, I promise! :-)

Hello Miss Ellie;
Missed ya, love the new pic, you darling girl!~!
I "thumbs uped" your reviews of Frenchman's Creek and Biblioholism, very well done, those. And you have killed me dead with 2 more recx as well. When will you people take pity on this old lady????????????????
I am so happy you are enjoying your little shop and loved the day story. You could begin a little journal on here and each day enter the odd and/or interesting bit that occurred at the shop. What fun for us to keep up with.
hugs to you,
belva
P.S. Love your system for getting your TBR pile down. It makes good sense to me.

Message edited by its author, Sep 8, 2009, 6:00pm.

hey, I saw you wanted to upload pics of your bookshop and I'm VERY curious to see them so I'll try and explain! Basically you need to upload your pics online somewhere first. I use Flickr : you can sign up for free, all you need is an e-mail address.

Once you have an account you:
1. click on You - Upload and find the picture you want on your hard drive.
2. after the pic has uploaded you click on it
3. click above the picture where it says "All Sizes"
4. now it should say, underneath the picture "2. Grab the photo's URL" with a code. Copy that code.

5. Into your LT post type



6. Paste the code you copied (step 4) in between the two quotation marks.

it should look something like this



I really hope you manage to do it!!

Eliza

Message edited by its author, Sep 3, 2009, 6:31pm.

Thanks Eliza - I might have a go tomorrow... DAY OFF, YIPPEEE! :-D

How come I am reading so damn slowly right now?! Anyway:

35) Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

I can't think of much to say about this one, really. It's a bumbling, amusing sort of story about a bumbling, amusing sort of fellow - the very 'old-style-British' lecturer Jim Dixon. Basic plot: Jim is trying to up his standing at the university and impress his eccentric superior, Professor Welch, despite being hopelessly inept and pretty much detesting even his own work. Neurotic Margaret is claiming too much of his attention, which is unfortunate as his attention has been captured very much by the rather prim young girlfriend of Welch's odious son Bertrand. Mishaps and misunderstandings ensue as the web of academics and wives and sons and lovers becomes ever more tangled, with Jim trying to keep up at every turn.

It's not as funny as I thought it would be - perhaps some of it went over my head given its age - though there were a fair few 'slight smile' moments and even one or two 'choking on my coffee' lines. It struck me more than once that some of the humour and the mannerisms of the characters might be more smoothly captured on screen than they were on the page. That said, Jim comes across as likeable, confused, rather innocent and childlike at times, and seems to reflect a kind of caricature of every moment that we as men and women in society feel put upon, disappointed, cheered, or just plain bewildered. A nice little novel with a touch of Wodehouse about it - not sure whether it's a keeper or not yet but I'm glad I finally got to reading it!

OK, my B read will be Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs.

The 'C' Shortlist
The Family Tree by Carole Cadwalladr
The Plague by Albert Camus
Marked by P.C. and Kristin Cast
The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier
The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America's Youngest Consumers by Eric Clark

Message edited by its author, Sep 5, 2009, 7:45am.

Golden Rules for Customer Service
by Eleanor Potten

1) Smile, smile, smile.
2) Customericide is not an option.
3) Always have a series of polite but firm responses ready for difficult patrons.
4) Customericide is NOT an option.
5) Should you feel a rising need to scream/cry/throw things, try to make it to the office first.
6) CUSTOMERICIDE IS NOT AN OPTION!!!

ha! too funny :)

LOL. I love it! I worked in my university's IT support department while I was doing my undergrad program and #2, 4, and 6 were always the hardest ones to stick to.

LOL!~!
My dear girl, is there an "anger management class" nearby?
love,
belva

Hmm, have you seen Sweeney Todd...? ;-)

Unfortunately we had three heathens in a row in the shop today and I'm a little ashamed to say that the third one was the last straw and sent me legging it to the office all teared up... I did, however, stick to the Golden Rules. I later stood back and admired my own restraint. :-)

I think I have to go to work every day with two settings ready to be activated: Manny Bianco for nice customers, Bernard Black for the rest. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, try searching for Black Books on YouTube - you'll soon understand!

That "Golden Rule" really comes in handy, doesn't it? I was b**chy today with a person who worked in a juice bar today, then immediately thought why did I act that way? I'm not usually like that. I apologized, and she was immediately nicer too, but I'm still thinking about why I got upset enough in the first place to get snippy. I know I was tired, but I think I mostly reacted because this person didn't follow one of the "shoulds" I have in my head. Don't you think that that is often a big part of the problem? The "shoulds" we have on both sides of the counter?

Well done for following those rules ;-)

Do we get to vote on the shortlist for "C"? If so, I vote for the PC and Kristin Cast novel, because I'd like to know what they're like! They have them as a BOGOF offer at Waterstone's at the moment. In fact, all the shops seem to have lots of vampire fiction on special. I don't know where it's all come from, although perhaps it was always there, and has just become extra-popular because of Twilight Even Foyle's had a whole display bay of 3 for 2 on vampire books yesterday, and I didn't even think Foyle's did 3 for 2...

I hope you get better-behaved customers today!

36) How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day by Kath Kelly

I had been eyeing up this book for a few weeks when I saw Ms Kelly talking on an ITV documentary about how life can be lived on mere pennies a day. I decided to buy the book and see if I could gain any life-changing insight from it - or maybe just a few tips to save a little money and live a little more frugally.

It started out well: Ms Kelly mentions another book I'd read, Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine, and saw all the same faults as I did. Ms Levine planned to live her entire year buying only essentials - food, toiletries, etc. - but sadly rather stretched the definition of 'essentials'. Luxury food and skiing trips do not merit the word 'essential' in my view, and sadly her message tended to get lost in her own self-interest. I hoped, therefore, that since Ms Kelly had picked up on this too, perhaps in her book I would find all that I had failed to find in Ms Levine's.

Well, it was definitely more British. Sadly, much of it was just as out of reach for me as Ms Levine's American attempt. She imparts some excellent ideas and inspiring tips, to be sure. Rather than a book opportunity, Ms Kelly's journey begins in a personal attempt to save money to buy her brother a wedding present. Slowly, she learns to pick out the exact times to shop for discounted products, scouts out the best in free events, finds websites that offer freebies from volunteering holidays to toiletries, uses the library for the internet and books, and hitchhikes or bikes everywhere. If she spots money on the streets she adds it to a jar of emergency 'roadkill money' - which she manages not to touch all year.

Unlike Ms Levine, Ms Kelly really learns and takes inspiration from each day that passes living on £1. This makes for the best parts of the book - seeing the heartwarming generosity of strangers on her hitchhiking excursions to see her family, reading about her genuine appreciation of a flask of hot chocolate on the seafront or a soggy picnic with her friends, and sensing the gradual change in her as her impulsive challenge becomes a happier, healthier way of life.

So far, so good, right? Well, yes, but it must be said that the clunkiness of the writing REALLY let this one down for me. I don't expect poetry from this sort of book, but it was pretty disjointed, skipping over some interesting points and settling awkwardly on others. Not only that, but Ms Kelly's attempt to put across the views of her friends and the people she meets as direct speech is hideously wooden; it would have been far better and more insightful to have paraphrased instead. Sadly for me, there was also the small fact that Ms Kelly was living in Bristol, a busy port and university city, which means that there were many, many opportunities open to her that wouldn't apply to other places. Free university lectures, museum openings, book launches, comedy nights, market research forums... not round here, I'm afraid! The 'Happily Ever After' conclusion, handy appendix of tips and contacts, and the undeniably profound statement this journey makes about modern life, did redeem it enough for me to be a bit torn about whether to keep it or add it to the bookshop shelves... I would recommend having a read, but follow Ms Kelly's example and use the library instead of forking out a handful of money!

Finally got to grips with finding your thread and here I am! Nice review...
Mum x

Ellie - Black Books? The tv show? If so, that's so funny that you mentioned it. I have the dvd waiting for me at the library. A friend recommended it to me a while ago. Funny? Or too close to real life? :)

A bit of both... :-)
My inner Bernard Black grows stronger with each customer who walks in and squawks 'Ooooh, it isn't a charity shop any more!' or looks inside the cover of an average Liverpool-family-saga paperback and loudly announces '£1.25! You could get three of them for a pound on the market in (insert scrubby local suburb)!'
Watch it and laugh!

Ahhhhhhh, just very politely ask them, well then why don't you just do that? Hmmmmmmmm???????????????????
Funny, I was just over on my thread talking to you and you were back at home over here.
love n hugs,
belva

Hey coppers!~!~! :-)

Right back atcha, I just posted on your thread while you posted on mine! Spooky...

37) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

I'm still in the middle of two other books, but I came across this one while I was sorting through some books in the wardrobe looking for duplicates and decided on a whim to reread it this morning. I finished it a couple of hours later with tears in my eyes, just like last time.

I started reading it the first time for school in year 9, I think it was, and was sure it wasn't going to be up my street. I ended up racing home from school and borrowing my stepdad's copy so I could read to the end NOW (and was glad I did so it didn't catch me off guard in class!). Second time round some of the urgency had ebbed away from the pull of the plot, but the tension was still there and I found it as moving as before.

I actually remembered a lot of what we'd learnt back at school as I read, which was a bit distracting, but Steinbeck drags the reader into this little story from the first couple of pages, and holds you there until he's ready to let you go. I liked the way there were two different emotional layers from very early on too: the top layer of Lennie's delightful innocence and the simple day to day existence of a ranch labourer, and the ominous undercurrent of foreboding and danger, which combine to create such a resonant atmosphere. It's humorous yet heavy, everyday yet profound, all at once, particularly with the realities of ranch life and race issues thrown in.

I'm not going to review this one properly because I won't do it justice - such a complex set of reactions and feelings about such a little book - but suffice to say, I will be reading more Steinbeck soon!

It looks like Belva is working her magic in the 50 Books group...she'll have us ALL reading the Steinbeck in no time ;)

I think you've already done a "proper" review there, Ellie, nice job!

Ellie;
I think that is a "proper review" also and very well done. If you put it over on the "book page", I can give you the "thumbs up" it deserves. So hop to, chickie poo, and do!~!
love,
belva

Well, in the face of such outrageous flattery... consider it done! (Albeit very slightly edited...).

Hey Ellie,

Loved your thoughts on rereading Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. He is a favorite author, though my favorite by him is East of Eden. Reading him is like talking to an old friend in front of a warm fire!

Given your love of Of Mice and Men, I have a recommendation for you if you like good ghost stories. The folks over on the 75'er thread and who read my thread are tired of hearing me recommend it. Stephen King wrote a novel as an homage to the Steinbeck classic, with Lenny and George as con men/crooks, Blaze. It's one of his best in the last few years. Try it out if you like that kind of thing.

Message edited by its author, Sep 10, 2009, 10:05am.

East of Eden is also my favourite Steinbeck , Ellie, and I highly recommend it ! (now there's two of us praising it surely you cannot resist :P)

I think my stepdad has a copy... I'll have to scour the bookshelves in the main house sometime this week! The good news is I'm LOVING Running with Scissors - I think this alphabet reading thing is going to be good! - though I had to put it down for a bit in the shop. It got to a kinda graphic gay sex scene, which was fine until I realised there was an old lady practically reading it over my shoulder trying to see what book it was! Which would just have made it look like I was reading a dirty book at work. Good stuff. :-D

My dear ellie;
They took your idea and really ran with it. The alphabet thing. I like it. I ripped it off your thread when I first heard you talking about it.
I went over and signed up a bit ago. I think it will help me keep organized. I was just doing it on paper, so will start fresh with the group. It's a small group thus far but there are some there that I am familiar with. You should check it out.

http://www.librarything.com/groups/alpha...

big hugs,
belva

Oh, I am SO there.... that's fantastic! Now I can have my 50-book thread for EVERYTHING I read, and the ABC for that meandering thread of alphabeticalness, to keep things on track in good company. Thanks for the heads up! :-)

OK, I've seen this around a few times so here's my attempt!

Describe yourself: Ella Enchanted

How do you feel: Passing for Normal

Describe where you currently live: Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Egypt's Golden Empire

Your favourite form of transportation: Frenchman's Creek

Your best friend is: Gold

You and your friends are: Angels and Demons

What’s the weather like: Breaking Dawn

You fear: The Madness of Modern Families

What is the best advice you have to give: Never hit a Jellyfish with a Spade

Thought for the day: The Pleasure of Reading

How I would like to die: The Year of Pleasures

My soul’s present condition: Moan about Men

I may have been scraping the barrel a bit on one or two of these... :-D

OK - time for a new thread to carry me through to the end of the year...

http://www.librarything.com/topic/73065

Come see me!

Love your quiz answers! I had trouble with a few of my answers too, but it's amazing how much you can communicate about yourself. See you on your next thread! :-)

Great job on your 50 book challenge. You should have not trouble meeting it. I on the other hand... *embarrased look* will not make my thirty. I will have to try again next year. =D

Ah, but remember, I run a bookshop now so I get to read at home AND at work, when the shop's quiet or over lunch in the office... ;-)

So that is what I am doing wrong. I need to work in a bookshop or library. You are doing great Ellie!! I hope to come close to reading 50 books this year. I am up to 37 and I think I can manage reading 20 books in just over a month.

I have started taking breaks and reading when I get a free moment and that is helping me to finish books faster.

Come along to thread numero 2 and keep me updated!

http://www.librarything.com/topic/73065