HanGerg jumps in with both feet in 2012!
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Talk75 Books Challenge for 2012
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1HanGerg
So, my first full year in LT and in the 75ers! Can't wait to get started!
Some highlights from 2011, in no particular order:
Cyberabad Days - Ian McDonald
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
Skinny Legs and All - Tom Robbins
I'm hoping that 2012 will be a year in which I learn to embrace my inner non-fiction reader. I'm also aiming to read a bit more heavyweight literary fiction, perhaps a touch more fantasy, a few more female writers of all kinds, and of course, lashings of lovely sci-fi. Recommendations for all of the above, and anything else, welcome at any time : )
Books Read
January
1.A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin 5/5
2.The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer 5/5
3.Anno Dracula - Kim Newman 4/5
February
4.Pride of Chanur - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
5.No Great Mischief - Alistair Macleod 3/5
6.A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin 4/5
March
7. Chanur's Venture - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
8. Holes - Louis Sachar 4.5/5
9. Worldwar: In the Balance - Harry Turtledove 3/5
10.Affinity - Sarah Waters 5/5
April
11. The Kif Strike Back - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
12. The Dispossessed - Ursula Le Guin 4/5
13. A Storm of Swords 1:Steel and Snow - George R.R Martin 4.5/5
14. Mr Vertigo - Paul Auster 3.5/5
15. The Dervish House - Ian McDonald 4/5
May
16. The Silver Pigs - Lindsay Davis 3.5/5
17. Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson 4.5/5
18. Superfreakonomics - Steven D.Levitt 2/5
June
19. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami 4.5/5
20. Enna Burning - Shannon Hale 3/5
21. Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media - Susan J. Douglas 4.5/5
July
22. Chanur's Homecoming - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
23. A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon 3.5/5
24. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer 2.5/5
25. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper - Fuschia Dunlop 3.5/5
26. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemison 4/5
27. Freedom - Jonathan Frantzen 4.5/5
August
28. The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold 4/5
29. The Equality Illusion - Kat Banyard 4/5
30. Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter 5/5 (Reread)
31. A Madness of Angels - Kate Griffin 4.5/5
September
32. A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold - George R.R.Martin 4.5/5
Books Acquired
January
1.Tiffany Masterworks - Camilla de la Bedoyere Late Christmas present
2.No Great Mischief - Alistair Macleod First ever ReadItSwapIt swap!
3.Black Star Rising - Frederik Pohl Bookmooch
4.Waged Work: A Reader - ed.Feminist Review Brilliantly, bought from the charity shelf in my local pub
February
5.Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media - Susan J. Douglas Second hand bookshop, St. Nicholas Market, Bristol.
6.The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer Oxfam, Bristol
7.Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami Oxfam, Bristol
8.Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card Oxfam, Bristol
9.Worlds of IF Magazine: Vol 21 No 6 Jul - Aug 1972 - inc.The Merchants of Venus - Frederik Pohl et al Monthly book market, Bristol
10.Matisse - Volkmar Essers Monthly book market, Bristol
11.The Chanur Saga - C.J. Cherryh Bookmooch
12.The Pride of Chanur - C.J.Cherryh Very kindly sent to me by the lovely Sibyx , when it looked like the above was not going to show up in time for our group read, which it then promptly did.Doh!
13.Heechee Rendezvous - Frederik Pohl Bookmooch
14.A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin Amazon
15.A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf Amazon
16.Gino's Pasta - Gino D'acampo The Bookpeople, from my workplace
17.Holes - Louis Sachar Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
18.The Silver Pigs - Lindsay Davis Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
19.Happenstance - Carol Shields Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
20.The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas Charity shelf in my local pub
March
21. The Dervish House - Ian McDonald Secondhand through Amazon
22. Chanur Homecoming - C.J. Cherryh Secondhand through Amazon
23. Chasing the Monsoon - Alexander Frater ReadItSwapIt swap
24. A Time of Gifts - Patrick Leigh Fermor Cancer Force Charity shop
25. Small Hands Big Ideas - Tony Hart Cancer Force Charity Shop
26. Peace and War - Joe Haldeman Market bookstall
April
27. The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene The Topsham Bookshop
28. No Full Stops in India - Mark Tully The Topsham Bookshop
29. A Storm of Swords 1:Steel and Snow - George R.R Martin The Topsham Bookshop
30. The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury ReadItSwapIt
31. Wise Children - Angela Carter Bookmooch
May
32. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole Charity shelf in my local pub
33. Minoan and Mycenaean Art - Reynold Higgins Cancer Force Charity Shop
34. The Chrysalids - John Wyndham Cancer Force Charity Shop
35. Ilium - Dan Simmons Cancer Force Charity Shop
June
36. The Number of the Beast - Robert Heinlein Bookcycle tent at Exeter Respect Festival
37. Helliconia Summer - Brian Aldiss Bookcycle tent at Exeter Respect Festival
38. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - Kate Summerscale Oxfam, Teignmouth
39. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon Charity Shop
40. The Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna ClarkeCharity Shop
41. 24 Party People - Tony Wilson Charity Shop
42. Japanese Graphics Now! Cancer Force Charity Shop
43. Drawing from your Imagination Cancer Force Charity Shop
44. The Time of the Hero - Mario Vargas Llosa Cancer Force Charity Shop
45. Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter Bookmooch
46. Pigeon English - Stephen Keman Given away by work colleague
47. Pilgrimage 1 - Dorothy Richardson Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
48. Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
49. Seven Japanese Tales - Junichiro Tanizaki Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
50. A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
July
51. The Warrior's Apprentice - Louis McMaster Bujold Secondhand via Amazon
August
52. We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
53. Hyperion - Dan Simmons Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
54. The Fig Eater - Jody Shields Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
55. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
56. IQ84 - Haruki Murakami Waterstones
57. A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold - George R. R. Martin Waterstones
September
58. Mostly Brilliant (Hitchhiker's Guide Boxset) - Douglas Adams Stall at Tiverton market
2muddy21
Hi, Hannah - I saw in your intro that you live in Exeter, UK. Just so happens that I work in Exeter, USA! Welcome aboard and I'll be interested to hear about what you're reading.
5HanGerg
Welcome muddy21 and jadebird. I see from your profiles you are both Sci-Fi fans, so I look forward to swapping recommendations!
Good to see you here jolerie! I'm off to a great (early) start with Game of Thrones, which I'm having difficulty putting down at the moment!
Good to see you here jolerie! I'm off to a great (early) start with Game of Thrones, which I'm having difficulty putting down at the moment!
6markon
Ah, another Martin fan. I also like science fiction (and fantasy and mystery as far as genre reading goes). I loved Cloud Atlas and Robinson's Mars series. Last year my favorite science fiction reads were Daryl Gregory's Pandemonium & The devil's alphabet.
7dk_phoenix
Huzzah, another spec fic reader!!! *starred*
10alcottacre
Glad to see you back with us again, Hannah!
11HanGerg
Welcome, welcome, friends old and new! Wow, all this starring is exciting! I feel a certain amount of pressure now to read lots of interesting books to keep you all engaged, plus make loads of witty and incisive comments about them too! Whew! I'll try my best... ; )
I welcome readers of any hue, but I'm especially excited to swap recommendations with readers of sci-fi, spec fiction, future history, dystopias, or whatever else you might want to call these things.
#6 The year hasn't even started and already I have a great recommendation of a new author to check out. I liked the look of both those books markon, so many thanks!
Hope everybody has a great New Year's Eve, and I'll catch you all in 2012 proper!
I welcome readers of any hue, but I'm especially excited to swap recommendations with readers of sci-fi, spec fiction, future history, dystopias, or whatever else you might want to call these things.
#6 The year hasn't even started and already I have a great recommendation of a new author to check out. I liked the look of both those books markon, so many thanks!
Hope everybody has a great New Year's Eve, and I'll catch you all in 2012 proper!
12alcottacre
Happy New Year, Hannah!
15PaulCranswick
Hi Hannah will look forward to trying to keep up with you in 2012. Happy new year from an exiled Brit in Malaysia.
16HanGerg
So, after finding out about it here on LT, I have gone and joined Bookmooch and ReadItSwapIt, so feel free to interact with me there if you are a member of either of these fine book swapping communities. I'm know as HanGerg on both, so shouldn't be hard to track down!
17gennyt
Just finished reading the end of your 2011 thread and followed over here to add my congratulations on your new job - that sounds like a great challenge and new start for the new year.
Also, I've just been given Game of Thrones and the next couple of books for Christmas by my sister (as I had put them on my Amazon wishlist. I too have been hearing so much about this series on LT, and then my father recorded the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones and sent me a copy, so I've already watched that and was really gripped. I'm expecting to start on the the first book once I've finished my current read.
I'll go and look for you on Bookmooch now, also!
Also, I've just been given Game of Thrones and the next couple of books for Christmas by my sister (as I had put them on my Amazon wishlist. I too have been hearing so much about this series on LT, and then my father recorded the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones and sent me a copy, so I've already watched that and was really gripped. I'm expecting to start on the the first book once I've finished my current read.
I'll go and look for you on Bookmooch now, also!
18HanGerg
Hi Genny! I've responded to your friend request on bookmooch, and just posted my first book, to Sweden! Lets hope the nice American lady I requested my first book from will be feeling in a generous mood!
Game of Thrones is incredibly compelling and great fun, though it is also pretty violent, scary and just downright...mean, in places, but I'm sure you gathered all that from the TV series. I'm looking forward to watching that when it comes out on DVD, but I'm also quite happy to be able to read the books first.
I just had my first day at my new job. It was a non-pupil day, but today I got my timetable so I now have a better idea what I'll be doing. Looks like I'll be pretty busy, teaching everything from phonics with early years to R.E with year 6. The good news is, the year 6 teacher I'll mainly be covering for is happy for me to teach his class Art (alongside Literacy, my favourite subject to teach) Yay!
Game of Thrones is incredibly compelling and great fun, though it is also pretty violent, scary and just downright...mean, in places, but I'm sure you gathered all that from the TV series. I'm looking forward to watching that when it comes out on DVD, but I'm also quite happy to be able to read the books first.
I just had my first day at my new job. It was a non-pupil day, but today I got my timetable so I now have a better idea what I'll be doing. Looks like I'll be pretty busy, teaching everything from phonics with early years to R.E with year 6. The good news is, the year 6 teacher I'll mainly be covering for is happy for me to teach his class Art (alongside Literacy, my favourite subject to teach) Yay!
19souloftherose
Hi Hannah - welcome back and well done on surviving your first day at a new job. Sounds like it went pretty well.
I've also sent you a friend request on bookmooch (although I am trying to use it less to slow down my book acquisitions). Books on bookmooch tend to get mooched quite quickly so I would recommend adding everything you would like to your wishlist and then bookmark it to check fairly regularly (email notifications are sent out randomly to people who have wishlisted a book).
It's also ok to send books overseas using surface mail and it can halve your postage costs if you're sending outside of Europe. Happy mooching!
I've also sent you a friend request on bookmooch (although I am trying to use it less to slow down my book acquisitions). Books on bookmooch tend to get mooched quite quickly so I would recommend adding everything you would like to your wishlist and then bookmark it to check fairly regularly (email notifications are sent out randomly to people who have wishlisted a book).
It's also ok to send books overseas using surface mail and it can halve your postage costs if you're sending outside of Europe. Happy mooching!
20HanGerg
Book 1 for 2012 is done!
A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin 5/5
What a great book to start the new year with! I know it's a huge favourite here on LT, so I doubt I have anything new to add to the praise already heaped on it elsewhere, but I can confirm for those that haven't been convinced yet, that all the hype is justified. It's a barnstorming, exciting, non-stop adventure, told expertly, with memorable characters both good and bad, a compelling narrative and an epic scope. It also takes you in some unexpected directions, so that just when you think you know where the story is headed and start to realax, you can be wrongfooted. Also, there is a refreshing amount of shades of grey in the characterisations - so that characters broadly speaking on the side of the "baddies" can often be charming, and those broadly on the side of good can at times be meanspirited or even, interestingly, too pricinpled and inflexible. Not that the book is always subtle, there are gory scenes of heads being sent flying across battlefields, horny knights having their way with saucy maidens, and scary as heck moments with, er, zombies. Balanced expertly against this though, is lots of court manouvering and intrigue, double and triple crossing, and characters who are so ambiguous that by the end of the novel you still can't quite decide where their loyalties lie. AND, if that wasn't enough, it's genuinely well written, with the odd turn of phrase or image that stops you in your tracks. I still have several more books to read, but for my money, Lord of the Rings' crown as the pinnacle of the fantasy genre is under serious threat. For me, this is more subtle, more adult, better written and more compelling. Perfect entertainment.
A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin 5/5
What a great book to start the new year with! I know it's a huge favourite here on LT, so I doubt I have anything new to add to the praise already heaped on it elsewhere, but I can confirm for those that haven't been convinced yet, that all the hype is justified. It's a barnstorming, exciting, non-stop adventure, told expertly, with memorable characters both good and bad, a compelling narrative and an epic scope. It also takes you in some unexpected directions, so that just when you think you know where the story is headed and start to realax, you can be wrongfooted. Also, there is a refreshing amount of shades of grey in the characterisations - so that characters broadly speaking on the side of the "baddies" can often be charming, and those broadly on the side of good can at times be meanspirited or even, interestingly, too pricinpled and inflexible. Not that the book is always subtle, there are gory scenes of heads being sent flying across battlefields, horny knights having their way with saucy maidens, and scary as heck moments with, er, zombies. Balanced expertly against this though, is lots of court manouvering and intrigue, double and triple crossing, and characters who are so ambiguous that by the end of the novel you still can't quite decide where their loyalties lie. AND, if that wasn't enough, it's genuinely well written, with the odd turn of phrase or image that stops you in your tracks. I still have several more books to read, but for my money, Lord of the Rings' crown as the pinnacle of the fantasy genre is under serious threat. For me, this is more subtle, more adult, better written and more compelling. Perfect entertainment.
21alcottacre
Congratulations on starting off your 2012 reading with a 5-star book, Hannah!
23HanGerg
Just a quick check in from me. I've managed to get (delightfully) entangled with two fairly large novels, so I'm not making such fast progress as I would like. In their own ways, both books I'm currently reading a very good though. First is World War In the Balance, a book I picked up on a whim in a charity shop a while back. The basic plot is simple and delicious: World War II is in full swing when suddenly.....here come the lizard men! It's much better written that that overview suggests, but it is cursed with such a ridiculous cover that I've decided to only read it in the house. I'm no book snob, and proudly read all the children's editions of Harry Potter in public, but honestly, what would YOU think of an adult you caught reading this:
Much more acceptable in the school staffroom is my second read, The Invisible Bridge, which was a gift from my Hungarian parents-in-law for Christmas. It's set shortly before the outbreak of WWII, and follows the journey of a young Hungarian Jew from Budapest to Paris to study architecture. He meets and falls in love with another Hungarian Jewish emigre, but all around them the dreadful tide of history is gathering momentum....This book has been terrific so far, and had a very hard job of following Game of Thrones which I was suffering withdrawl symptoms from the minute I finished it, but this is holding my attention very nicely.
Much more acceptable in the school staffroom is my second read, The Invisible Bridge, which was a gift from my Hungarian parents-in-law for Christmas. It's set shortly before the outbreak of WWII, and follows the journey of a young Hungarian Jew from Budapest to Paris to study architecture. He meets and falls in love with another Hungarian Jewish emigre, but all around them the dreadful tide of history is gathering momentum....This book has been terrific so far, and had a very hard job of following Game of Thrones which I was suffering withdrawl symptoms from the minute I finished it, but this is holding my attention very nicely.
25HanGerg
OK, finally finished book number two, and it was another cracker:
2. The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer 5/5
When a book covers real life subject matter as emotive as the Holocaust, it can sometimes be difficult to take a step back and objectively judge a book's merits and weaknesses (if one can ever be objective about such things.). All I can say is that I found this book incredibly moving, with characters and situations I expect to live long in the memory. It was also a very compelling read, so that even when the action took a turn for the tragic, and even armed with the knowledge of the awful historical context, one couldn't help but read on, hoping that this set of characters would somehow avoid the dreadful fate you know befell so many of their contemporaries. Of course, I don't want to give away the outcome for any future readers, but briefly the plot is something like this: Andras is a talented young man who has won a scholarship to study architecture in Paris, despite his humble origins in rural Hungary. A whole new life and some great adventures await him, except the year is 1937, and Andras is a Jew. He is destined to never finish his studies in Paris before his world is engulfed by terrible events he is powerless to control.....
The action moves between Paris and Budapest, and then, as the situation grows worse, the forced labour camps randomly dotted around Central Europe. I've read other books about the Holocaust, and this is by no means the most gruelling, but it does take you deep into the heart of a family affected by this darkest chapter of history, and allows you to feel very deeply what it might have been like to be there in a way no other book I know of has done. I was already aware of some of the historical context of what happened to Hungary's Jews, as my husband's family have there own terrifying stories to relate on the subject (indeed, I can go into my kitchen now and stir my coffee with a spoon that spent most of the war buried in a front garden in Budapest), but I learnt about so much more from the book - the parties of forced labour groups, made entirely of Jews, who were called up long before other Hungarians, and forced to do back breaking labour in terrible conditions. I learnt about the Hungarian leadership of the time, and how they had tried to protect their Jewish citizens from the horrors affecting Jews in other parts of Europe. Also, how tragically late in the war the Germans actually occupied Hungary, and began the deportations that nevertheless virtually emptied rural Hungary of Jews in under a year. All this and more is told in heartbreaking detail, but overall, somehow, it isn't a hearbreaking book, simply a very moving and unforgettable one.
26alcottacre
#25: One of these days I am going to get to that book! I have seen nothing but good reviews of it. I am glad to see you enjoyed it so much, Hannah!
27HanGerg
Hi Stasia! Yes, it has a LT rating of 4.25, which must mean it's pretty universally loved. I'd never heard of it until I was given it as a gift, but I enjoyed it greatly, if enjoy is the right word for such tragic subject matter. Feel enriched by would perhaps be nearer the mark.
28alcottacre
#27: 'Feel enriched by' sounds like a good description to me.
29PaulCranswick
Good review of The Invisible Bridge Hannah. Hoping to get to it in July with the next round of Orange reads nd you certainly make it appear irresistible.
30gennyt
That does sound a very good book, Hannah. I must keep my eyes open for a copy...
I just typed a reply to your message on my thread, regarding the news about Janet - but then managed to erase the whole message before I posted it. I'm sorry the news came as a shock, but I guess it was a shock for all of us, whichever thread we came across the news on.
I just typed a reply to your message on my thread, regarding the news about Janet - but then managed to erase the whole message before I posted it. I'm sorry the news came as a shock, but I guess it was a shock for all of us, whichever thread we came across the news on.
31HanGerg
Oh please don't feel bad Genny. As you say, it would be a shock wherever I found out. I must get hold of a copy of The Dervish House to read in her memory - it was the first thing she recommended to me, and I'm sure I'll love it.
32HanGerg
3. Anno Dracula - Kim Newman 4/5
A rip-roaring steampunky adventure set in an alternative fictional universe in which Dracula has defeated Van Helsing and has in fact managed to enter into the highest echelons of Victorian society by becoming the Prince Consort to Her Maj herself. Vampirism becomes the new must-have attribute for polite society and the impoverished lower classes alike. However, not everyone is happy with this new world order.... Throw in a host of other fictional and historical characters, like Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, Oscar Wilde, Dr Jekyll and many more, and you have a bloody good fun read.
33HanGerg
Oh good lord. I just found my ultimate reading chair! I followed a link on Roni n'cats' thread to bookshelfporn.com, and there it was. Book reading heaven!
35PaulCranswick
Hannah I don't usually go for Vampire books but Anno Dracula looks intriguing and an interesting departure. Good review!
#33 My word I want one! Will get my Carpenter on the job immediately!
#33 My word I want one! Will get my Carpenter on the job immediately!
36HanGerg
#34 Yes! It's designed to rock slightly, like an old fashioned rocking chair.
#35 Thanks Paul! I'm sure that chair is fiendishly difficult to make actually. Let us know how it goes!
#35 Thanks Paul! I'm sure that chair is fiendishly difficult to make actually. Let us know how it goes!
37HanGerg
Just a quick drive by from me, to say I'm currently juggling 3 titles, World War in the Balance, No Great Mischief and Pride of Chanur which is a great fun first contact story told from the point of view of the alien race not the human, and has some nice baddy aliens lurking in the background too - a few of us are reading it as a group read and are all enjoying it enormously.
Right, now it's time to brave the snow to drive to Bristol to see my brother. A quick bit of research has revealed the nice market I was planning to visit has a specialist book market on the first Sunday of the month, so I may have some new aquisitions to report on my return!
Right, now it's time to brave the snow to drive to Bristol to see my brother. A quick bit of research has revealed the nice market I was planning to visit has a specialist book market on the first Sunday of the month, so I may have some new aquisitions to report on my return!
38HanGerg
As I suspected, Bristol proved to have a pretty good haul of books in it's secondhand and charity shops and at the book market. I could have bought several more than I did, but I managed to rein in my purchases to keep the total spend from becoming too crazy. So, I got:
1. Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media - Susan J. Douglas
2. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer
3. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
4. Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
5. Worlds of IF Magazine: Vol 21 No 6 Jul - Aug 1972 - inc.The Merchants of Venus - Frederik Pohl et al
6. Matisse - Volkmar Essers
The Magazine is more like a pulp-y paperback book, one of the sort of monthly SF periodicals that were the first place a lot of really legendary writers got published. The one I picked up has a novella by Frederik Pohl, who I know from his Heechee saga, plus short stories by Duncan Lunan, Piers Anthony, Zach Hughes and Lester del Ray. The market dealer who I bought it from had a whole box of similar titles, and I'm quite glad I don't live in Bristol, as the tempatation to start collecting these lovely things, with their awesome sixties/seventies artwork and the chance to unearth little known gems of the genre would almost certainly prove too much to resist.
1. Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media - Susan J. Douglas
2. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer
3. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
4. Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
5. Worlds of IF Magazine: Vol 21 No 6 Jul - Aug 1972 - inc.The Merchants of Venus - Frederik Pohl et al
6. Matisse - Volkmar Essers
The Magazine is more like a pulp-y paperback book, one of the sort of monthly SF periodicals that were the first place a lot of really legendary writers got published. The one I picked up has a novella by Frederik Pohl, who I know from his Heechee saga, plus short stories by Duncan Lunan, Piers Anthony, Zach Hughes and Lester del Ray. The market dealer who I bought it from had a whole box of similar titles, and I'm quite glad I don't live in Bristol, as the tempatation to start collecting these lovely things, with their awesome sixties/seventies artwork and the chance to unearth little known gems of the genre would almost certainly prove too much to resist.
39lunacat
I hope you enjoy A Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England as I did. It's good fun, and informative at the same time.
41HanGerg
39 Thanks! I had a quick flick through and it looks really fun and accessible, which is how I like my non-fiction.
40 It could have been even bigger, but I was trying to be good and not spend too much!
Well, 2012 is off to a bit of a slow start, but I have been kept very busy with my new job and various other commitments. Just this week we had a visit from Ofsted - the government inspectors that ensure the quality of schools. Most schools can expect a visit about once every 4-6 years, but because our school was put into special measures about 10 months ago, we receive visits on a termly basis. I've been at schools whilst Ofsted had visited before, but the stakes felt considerably higher for this visit, and everyone's stress levels were therefore correspondingly high, including mine, as I was teaching whilst the inspector was there. In theory he could of walked in at any moment (he didn't, thank goodness, though he'll be back again in a few months, so I may just have dodged the boomerang). Anyway, for that reason, reading has been slow, but I did manage to finish one good fun read that kept me going through all the drama:
The Pride of Chanur - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
A fast paced story of a galaxy in which the handful of competing civilisations have come to an uneasy agreement that allows for peaceful co-existence, with trade and travel taking place freely amongst them. The reader is aboard ship with the hani, a feline, humanoid species with a proud heritage and a penchant for decorating their ears with golden hoops to denote their status. They are making a routine stop at a space station to trade and refuel when a funny hairless creature smuggles himself aboard their ship, causing consternation amongst the all-female crew. The ways of this stowaway seem very strange to the hani, but with the aid of some translation software, they find out the name of his hitherto unknown species. Apparently he is something called a "human"....
A great fun story of inter-galactic adventure and conflict, that doesn't really take too much time to explain itself (there are several more books in the series, and I'm hoping some of the gaps in hani customs and space travel strategies may be filled in there), but is filled with tension, and pulls off the neat trick of making you so immersed in the world of the hani, that the humans really do seem like the aliens.
40 It could have been even bigger, but I was trying to be good and not spend too much!
Well, 2012 is off to a bit of a slow start, but I have been kept very busy with my new job and various other commitments. Just this week we had a visit from Ofsted - the government inspectors that ensure the quality of schools. Most schools can expect a visit about once every 4-6 years, but because our school was put into special measures about 10 months ago, we receive visits on a termly basis. I've been at schools whilst Ofsted had visited before, but the stakes felt considerably higher for this visit, and everyone's stress levels were therefore correspondingly high, including mine, as I was teaching whilst the inspector was there. In theory he could of walked in at any moment (he didn't, thank goodness, though he'll be back again in a few months, so I may just have dodged the boomerang). Anyway, for that reason, reading has been slow, but I did manage to finish one good fun read that kept me going through all the drama:
The Pride of Chanur - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
A fast paced story of a galaxy in which the handful of competing civilisations have come to an uneasy agreement that allows for peaceful co-existence, with trade and travel taking place freely amongst them. The reader is aboard ship with the hani, a feline, humanoid species with a proud heritage and a penchant for decorating their ears with golden hoops to denote their status. They are making a routine stop at a space station to trade and refuel when a funny hairless creature smuggles himself aboard their ship, causing consternation amongst the all-female crew. The ways of this stowaway seem very strange to the hani, but with the aid of some translation software, they find out the name of his hitherto unknown species. Apparently he is something called a "human"....
A great fun story of inter-galactic adventure and conflict, that doesn't really take too much time to explain itself (there are several more books in the series, and I'm hoping some of the gaps in hani customs and space travel strategies may be filled in there), but is filled with tension, and pulls off the neat trick of making you so immersed in the world of the hani, that the humans really do seem like the aliens.
42lunacat
Eek, OFSTED.
My main memory of that at school is that I was in THE worst behaved tutor group in the whole of Upper School. We barely used to make it a week without either the Deputy head, or the Head coming round in morning register and giving us a talking to.
We had all the different Humanities lessons, PE etc together, and were the kind of class teachers dread - although this was in a rather 'middle class' C of E school with a good reputation in a fairly wealthy country town. I'm sure we could have been sooooo much worse. Still, there were bags and chairs thrown on occasion. I am ashamed now, thinking back. While I was neither an instigator, nor a participator, I was one of those who would easily down tools, not pay attention, laugh along with misbehaviour.
Having been read the riot act during our worst lessons of the week, we proceeded to be inspected during our absolute worst - last lesson on a Thurs afternoon, that was preceded by two other lessons where the class had been together instead of split up into skill classes.
We were good as gold. Angelic.
The following week, the teacher thanked us, and then said, "Now WHY can't you just behave like that every week?!"
The playing up continued, but I think being thanked for our effort made a difference, and we were never quite as bad as we had been before.
My main memory of that at school is that I was in THE worst behaved tutor group in the whole of Upper School. We barely used to make it a week without either the Deputy head, or the Head coming round in morning register and giving us a talking to.
We had all the different Humanities lessons, PE etc together, and were the kind of class teachers dread - although this was in a rather 'middle class' C of E school with a good reputation in a fairly wealthy country town. I'm sure we could have been sooooo much worse. Still, there were bags and chairs thrown on occasion. I am ashamed now, thinking back. While I was neither an instigator, nor a participator, I was one of those who would easily down tools, not pay attention, laugh along with misbehaviour.
Having been read the riot act during our worst lessons of the week, we proceeded to be inspected during our absolute worst - last lesson on a Thurs afternoon, that was preceded by two other lessons where the class had been together instead of split up into skill classes.
We were good as gold. Angelic.
The following week, the teacher thanked us, and then said, "Now WHY can't you just behave like that every week?!"
The playing up continued, but I think being thanked for our effort made a difference, and we were never quite as bad as we had been before.
43HanGerg
41 Ooh, that sounds so familiar!
I'm currently battling with a class that can feel like it descends into chaos at times. Luckily it wasn't them I was teaching the other day, I would have been having kittens if I had. When I do have the more tricky classes like that, I do try and stress the positive, as otherwise you lose the good faith of the kids who are behaving- in almost every case, the majority of the class. It can be hard sometimes though, when you've been interrupted for the fifth time by someone whinging in a loud voice about another child poking them, or some other triviality that is really just designed to hold everybody up. I find behaviour management by far the hardest part of teaching, and I feel it's an area for improvemnet in my practise, as it seems to me almost impossible to get the balance right between praise and "telling off", as I often feel like I'm doing far too much of the latter.
I'm currently battling with a class that can feel like it descends into chaos at times. Luckily it wasn't them I was teaching the other day, I would have been having kittens if I had. When I do have the more tricky classes like that, I do try and stress the positive, as otherwise you lose the good faith of the kids who are behaving- in almost every case, the majority of the class. It can be hard sometimes though, when you've been interrupted for the fifth time by someone whinging in a loud voice about another child poking them, or some other triviality that is really just designed to hold everybody up. I find behaviour management by far the hardest part of teaching, and I feel it's an area for improvemnet in my practise, as it seems to me almost impossible to get the balance right between praise and "telling off", as I often feel like I'm doing far too much of the latter.
44gennyt
Sympathies for the Ofsted... Have the inspectors finished now? It must be so hard to carry on doing your job when they are present and observing everything!
I picked up a copy of the Time Travellers Guide to medieval England last year - haven't read it yet, glad to hear that Jenny recommends it.
I picked up a copy of the Time Travellers Guide to medieval England last year - haven't read it yet, glad to hear that Jenny recommends it.
45sibylline
So glad you survived yr. inspection! I was hired one year to evaluate a program that brought classics to 'at-risk' groups, so I had to go around the state and listen in -- I've never ever been in that position before or since of being an 'authority', a scary figure, who could lose you your contract. Luckily everyone was really good at what they did and all the 'students' were very engaged. It was a very weird experience all around.
46HanGerg
Thanks for all the Ofsted sympathising. They are long gone, and although nothing has been said officially yet, the general mood seems to be one of satisfaction with how the school is progressing, and therefore well-earned relief on the part of the staff. Actually, the inspector came at a good time, as this week is half term, and all of us can now enjoy it knowing that that particular hurdle has been cleared.
So, in that spirit, I've just returned from a very action packed visit to London. No books were bought, actually not much shopping done in general, as it was more a trip to catch up with some friends I haven't seen in ages. Me and the husband did fit in a morning at the British museum though, as I realised it's probably the one major museum/gallery in London that I haven't visited at some point. I had to resist the lure of a few tempting things in their bookshop, including this really intriguing graphic novel that was a collaboration between the museum and a well known manga comic creator: Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure by Hoshino Yukinobu. The only thing that stopped me was the price, and sure enough I've just done a search on amazon and I can get it there almost half price, so I think I will treat myself to it sometime soon.
Also, I have finished something on my travels:
5. No Great Mischief - Alistair MacLeod 3/5
I had sky high expectations of this book, as Sibyx had given it a brilliant review, but alas, I just didn't feel as moved by it as she evidently was. I can appreciate that it was well written, and does create quite a lot of atmosphere, but it rather left me cold. The front and back covers are full of fulsome praise for the novel, though, so maybe I just wasn't a receptive enough reader. Whatever it was, I'm afraid that this tale of the descendants of a long line of proudly Scottish inhabitants of Cape Breton, and the various tragedies and occassional triumphs that happen to their extended family over the course of a few generations, just didn't really do it for me.
So, in that spirit, I've just returned from a very action packed visit to London. No books were bought, actually not much shopping done in general, as it was more a trip to catch up with some friends I haven't seen in ages. Me and the husband did fit in a morning at the British museum though, as I realised it's probably the one major museum/gallery in London that I haven't visited at some point. I had to resist the lure of a few tempting things in their bookshop, including this really intriguing graphic novel that was a collaboration between the museum and a well known manga comic creator: Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure by Hoshino Yukinobu. The only thing that stopped me was the price, and sure enough I've just done a search on amazon and I can get it there almost half price, so I think I will treat myself to it sometime soon.
Also, I have finished something on my travels:
5. No Great Mischief - Alistair MacLeod 3/5
I had sky high expectations of this book, as Sibyx had given it a brilliant review, but alas, I just didn't feel as moved by it as she evidently was. I can appreciate that it was well written, and does create quite a lot of atmosphere, but it rather left me cold. The front and back covers are full of fulsome praise for the novel, though, so maybe I just wasn't a receptive enough reader. Whatever it was, I'm afraid that this tale of the descendants of a long line of proudly Scottish inhabitants of Cape Breton, and the various tragedies and occassional triumphs that happen to their extended family over the course of a few generations, just didn't really do it for me.
47kgodey
I'm just catching up on your thread now. Anno Dracula sounds hilarious and is going on my wishlist. I also really need to read some C.J. Cherryh soon.
48HanGerg
#47 Yes, I heartily recommend AD as great, though gruesome, fun. It's the start of a series too, so plenty more entertainment to be had if you get bitten.
C.J.Cherryh is not a writer I know a great deal about, but she seems to have plenty of admirers here on LT, plus a huge back catalogue. She is apparently a great inventor of multiple alien civilisations in several different series of books, so a bit of investigating could yield a rich haul of possible reads. I already have Downbellow Station on my wishlist, and I'm eager to crack on with the rest of the Chanur saga just as soon as I finish my current read, A Clash of Kings, which is predictably compelling and fun so far.
C.J.Cherryh is not a writer I know a great deal about, but she seems to have plenty of admirers here on LT, plus a huge back catalogue. She is apparently a great inventor of multiple alien civilisations in several different series of books, so a bit of investigating could yield a rich haul of possible reads. I already have Downbellow Station on my wishlist, and I'm eager to crack on with the rest of the Chanur saga just as soon as I finish my current read, A Clash of Kings, which is predictably compelling and fun so far.
49sibylline
One of the great mysteries is how we all respond differently to different books..... I'm always a bit nervous when I praise a book to the skies, since sometimes it causes someone else to go out and buy it.... but it is the only way to find out, really!
50HanGerg
Exactly! And I didn't buy it, simply swapped it with a stranger via the magic of ReadItSwapIt, which was a delightful experience.
I'm still plugging away at Clash of Kings, which I'm enjoying, though all the rape 'n torture 'n murder can get a little overwhelming at times. I've also been aquiring books at quite a pace, not really intentionally, I just seem to keep finding myself in the presence of lots of lovely books, and several then catch my eye....
Here's the latest haul:
Holes - Louis Sachar
The Silver Pigs - Lindsay Davis
Happenstance - Carol Shields
The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas
I'm still plugging away at Clash of Kings, which I'm enjoying, though all the rape 'n torture 'n murder can get a little overwhelming at times. I've also been aquiring books at quite a pace, not really intentionally, I just seem to keep finding myself in the presence of lots of lovely books, and several then catch my eye....
Here's the latest haul:
Holes - Louis Sachar
The Silver Pigs - Lindsay Davis
Happenstance - Carol Shields
The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas
51HanGerg
I've finished the latest installment of A Song of Ice and Fire, and I feel a bit like one of the characters in the book who's just survived a fierce, bloody battle:
6.A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin 4/5
Full of all the brilliant story telling, plotting and double crossing, epic battles and memorable characters as the first but......somehow, not quite the same. Maybe it's just that old tale of familiarity breeding contempt, but I wasn't quite as smitten this time around. This one is also VERY violent and bloody, and it seems that no woman in this fictional world can ever entirely banish the threat of terrible rape and brutality at the hand of man (one could make various arguments about whether the author uses this for the purposes of titilation, or to make a serious point...maybe a little of both being my conclusion). Also, his habit of jumping from one storyline to another entirely seperate one for each chapter really began to grate in this book. Overall though, still great, though very gruesome and at times gruelling, entertainment.
6.A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin 4/5
Full of all the brilliant story telling, plotting and double crossing, epic battles and memorable characters as the first but......somehow, not quite the same. Maybe it's just that old tale of familiarity breeding contempt, but I wasn't quite as smitten this time around. This one is also VERY violent and bloody, and it seems that no woman in this fictional world can ever entirely banish the threat of terrible rape and brutality at the hand of man (one could make various arguments about whether the author uses this for the purposes of titilation, or to make a serious point...maybe a little of both being my conclusion). Also, his habit of jumping from one storyline to another entirely seperate one for each chapter really began to grate in this book. Overall though, still great, though very gruesome and at times gruelling, entertainment.
52sibylline
Overall though, still great, though very gruesome and at times gruelling, entertainment. That's it exactly! I simply could not put it down, even when overwhelmed. He does seem to know too, when to stop, when one more brutality would cause you to throw the book out the window.
53HanGerg
>52 sibylline:. Agreed. And I do like the moral ambiguity - it really is so much more adult and complex than (at least in my perception) more usual Fantasy world stereotypes where hereos are simply heroic and good, and the bad guys are plain evil, shifty and morally dubious. In the world Martin has created everyone shares a bit of all these traits. Well, most do. Some are just plain evil.
55weejane
I'm glad I read your review of A Clash of Kings and the warning about it being violent and gruesome! I still plan on reading the book but am glad I won't be too shocked by it!
56HanGerg
>54 sibylline: Busy indeed, but I've been around, just unfortunately do not have any finished books to report. Nearly done with the 2nd Chanur though....
>55 weejane: Doffs cap, makes small curtesy Glad to be of service! I was given the same warning before reading the first one, and probably because I was braced for it, the first instalment didn't strike me as exceptionally violent, but the second is pretty blood (and other bodily fluids) splattered.
>55 weejane: Doffs cap, makes small curtesy Glad to be of service! I was given the same warning before reading the first one, and probably because I was braced for it, the first instalment didn't strike me as exceptionally violent, but the second is pretty blood (and other bodily fluids) splattered.
57HanGerg
Whew! Finally another book finished! It seems like it's been an age, even though the book in question was very short.
7.Chanur's Venture - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
This isn't actually the copy I read, as my one is an omnibus edition of the first three books, but I thought I would post this cover instead of the same one again. So, very much the "Empire Strikes Back" of the series, ending as it does, on quite a cliffhanger, but this carries on where the first book left off, ups the action stakes, and manages to flesh out the backstory of the characters as well. For me the most interesting aspect of this book is the picture that is emerging of hani society, which is only revelead to us in tantalising glimpses, but seems totally fascinating. There are very specific roles for the two genders, roles which our hani heroines are subverting by inviting a male of their species on board - the captain's mate, who should have by rights allowed himself to be killed by younger males when his territory on the home planet was taken over. Hani males are generally reckoned to be too unstable and highly strung to handle the delicate business of interstellar travel and trade, but our hani have seen a bit of the galaxy now, and seem to be getting the feeling from other civilsations that maybe there's another way of doing things....fun and thoughtful stuff.
7.Chanur's Venture - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
This isn't actually the copy I read, as my one is an omnibus edition of the first three books, but I thought I would post this cover instead of the same one again. So, very much the "Empire Strikes Back" of the series, ending as it does, on quite a cliffhanger, but this carries on where the first book left off, ups the action stakes, and manages to flesh out the backstory of the characters as well. For me the most interesting aspect of this book is the picture that is emerging of hani society, which is only revelead to us in tantalising glimpses, but seems totally fascinating. There are very specific roles for the two genders, roles which our hani heroines are subverting by inviting a male of their species on board - the captain's mate, who should have by rights allowed himself to be killed by younger males when his territory on the home planet was taken over. Hani males are generally reckoned to be too unstable and highly strung to handle the delicate business of interstellar travel and trade, but our hani have seen a bit of the galaxy now, and seem to be getting the feeling from other civilsations that maybe there's another way of doing things....fun and thoughtful stuff.
58HanGerg
Just devoured a great book in a couple of gulps:
8.Holes - Louis Sachar 4.5/5
A great YA read that I read very quickly, mainly because it was so tightly plotted and brilliantly written. I first heard about it here on LT, recently managed to get hold of a copy from a charity bookshop and it recently came up in conversation in my school staff room, so it seemed like the perfect time to read it. The story is compelling and grabs you from the outset - smart, sensitive but perennially unlucky teenager Stanley Yelnats is the victim of a miscarriage of justice that sends him to a bizarre youth offenders institute in the desert. Here Mr.Sir the guard, Mr. Pedanski the selectively kind counsellor, and the sinister Warden, oversee the boys digging a hole every day, exactly five foot deep and five foot wide. They say it's to improve their character, but Stanley soon begins to suspect they don't have nearly such altruistic motives...... Interwoven through the narrative is the story of Stanley's family, including the roots of the curse that seems to have haunted the family for many years, plus the sad story of the lake and the town next to it that is now their desert prison. It all moulds together brilliantly, in a way that makes you feel that not a single superflous word has been written, and that you are in the hands of a master storyteller. Highly recommended.
8.Holes - Louis Sachar 4.5/5
A great YA read that I read very quickly, mainly because it was so tightly plotted and brilliantly written. I first heard about it here on LT, recently managed to get hold of a copy from a charity bookshop and it recently came up in conversation in my school staff room, so it seemed like the perfect time to read it. The story is compelling and grabs you from the outset - smart, sensitive but perennially unlucky teenager Stanley Yelnats is the victim of a miscarriage of justice that sends him to a bizarre youth offenders institute in the desert. Here Mr.Sir the guard, Mr. Pedanski the selectively kind counsellor, and the sinister Warden, oversee the boys digging a hole every day, exactly five foot deep and five foot wide. They say it's to improve their character, but Stanley soon begins to suspect they don't have nearly such altruistic motives...... Interwoven through the narrative is the story of Stanley's family, including the roots of the curse that seems to have haunted the family for many years, plus the sad story of the lake and the town next to it that is now their desert prison. It all moulds together brilliantly, in a way that makes you feel that not a single superflous word has been written, and that you are in the hands of a master storyteller. Highly recommended.
60HanGerg
Oooh! There's a movie! I had no idea. I'll get the husband to put in on the list of ones we get through the post. I'm also keen to check out the next book in the series at some point.
62HanGerg
>61 muddy21:. Yes indeed! Helpfully, there was an ad for it in the back of my copy of Holes, otherwise I'd be none the wiser. It's called Small Steps, and rather than following our heroes from the first book, picks up the story of Armpit and X-Ray. Sounds like fun!
In other news...finished up my slightly silly Alternate History book that I have been reading in the house over quite a long time. I didn't ever read it outside the house, due to it's extremely schlocky cover, but that did mean progress was pretty slow at times.
9. Worldwar: In the Balance - Harry Turtledove 3/5
A pretty fun premise - WWII hangs in the balance, when from out of the skies comes a far superior enemy - the lizards! The lizards have more technology - tanks and helicopters that run on hydrogen, nuclear weapons, and radar - just at the point where mankind hasn't discovered any of these handy things. However, the reconaissance mission was done many years earlier, so they are expecting an enemy for whom the broadsword is still high tech, so have a rude awakening when the encounter people that have got airplanes, tanks and guns of their own. Also in mankind's favour is the fact that lizardkind's civilisation has been stable for thousands of years, and they are not used to adapting to rapidly changing circumstances in a way that humans are. So although humans have the inferior technology, their use of cunning tactics soon means they have, if not the upper hand, at least a fighting chance against these invaders from the skies. The story is told from multiple narrative viewpoints, ranging from a German tank commander, a female pilot from Russia, a Polish Jew trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, a Chinese peasant, and for some reason, several members of an American minor league baseball team that have widely diverging fates after their train is bombed by the lizards. One of the strengths of the book is that we also see things from the lizard's point of view - both common ground troops and the high command. They are not evil monsters, simply soldiers that have been sent to subjugate the Earth and bring it into their Empire. And they are not here to slaughter all the humans, just pacify them. Also, they don't seem to have invented torture, and treat captured enemy combatants with respect if not kindness, something they are not always afforded by their human counterparts. On the downside, this is a LONG book, that jumps from each narrative point fairly regularly, breaking up the flow and momentum, making it a struggle at times. Also, what it doesn't say anywhere on the cover of the book, is that this is only the first of a series of four, so having slogged through the whole thing, I wasn't given any resolution, which was rather annoying. I'm not sure if I care enough the track down and read another three volumes, but taken on it's own, this was quite a fun, and at times unexpectedly thoughtful book.
In other news...finished up my slightly silly Alternate History book that I have been reading in the house over quite a long time. I didn't ever read it outside the house, due to it's extremely schlocky cover, but that did mean progress was pretty slow at times.
9. Worldwar: In the Balance - Harry Turtledove 3/5
A pretty fun premise - WWII hangs in the balance, when from out of the skies comes a far superior enemy - the lizards! The lizards have more technology - tanks and helicopters that run on hydrogen, nuclear weapons, and radar - just at the point where mankind hasn't discovered any of these handy things. However, the reconaissance mission was done many years earlier, so they are expecting an enemy for whom the broadsword is still high tech, so have a rude awakening when the encounter people that have got airplanes, tanks and guns of their own. Also in mankind's favour is the fact that lizardkind's civilisation has been stable for thousands of years, and they are not used to adapting to rapidly changing circumstances in a way that humans are. So although humans have the inferior technology, their use of cunning tactics soon means they have, if not the upper hand, at least a fighting chance against these invaders from the skies. The story is told from multiple narrative viewpoints, ranging from a German tank commander, a female pilot from Russia, a Polish Jew trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, a Chinese peasant, and for some reason, several members of an American minor league baseball team that have widely diverging fates after their train is bombed by the lizards. One of the strengths of the book is that we also see things from the lizard's point of view - both common ground troops and the high command. They are not evil monsters, simply soldiers that have been sent to subjugate the Earth and bring it into their Empire. And they are not here to slaughter all the humans, just pacify them. Also, they don't seem to have invented torture, and treat captured enemy combatants with respect if not kindness, something they are not always afforded by their human counterparts. On the downside, this is a LONG book, that jumps from each narrative point fairly regularly, breaking up the flow and momentum, making it a struggle at times. Also, what it doesn't say anywhere on the cover of the book, is that this is only the first of a series of four, so having slogged through the whole thing, I wasn't given any resolution, which was rather annoying. I'm not sure if I care enough the track down and read another three volumes, but taken on it's own, this was quite a fun, and at times unexpectedly thoughtful book.
63sibylline
What a great premise! I do worry sometimes that we are hopelessly naive about the nature of the sentient life forms 'out there' and what might happen if we are 'found'...... I think we tend to assume that any culture that has solved FTL (truly the only way to travel sensibly) so that they can physically travel would be enlightened in every other way, having solved most other problems that life forms face...... Of course what I think is more likely is that we will find ways to communicate with other sentiences using some form of quantum messaging - but no one, thank heavens, will be able to visit in person......
64HanGerg
Yes, let's hope that mastering spacetravel is always proceeded by being enlightened to the folly of war, conquering other worlds etc... Although the lizards wouldn't be the worst of all possble evils. Actually, that is one of the interesting questions raised by the book - that most nations of the Earth unquestioningly rise up in oppossition to the idea of the lizards becoming thier masters, whereas in fact they would perhaps be much less ruthless and cruel than some of the behaviour the humans were showing towards each other at the time of WWII, the fate of the Jews of Poland being the clearest possible example.
65HanGerg
I've just recovered from a bout of flu, that had the one plus side of giving me the time to finish a marvellous book:
10. Affinity - Sarah Waters 5/5
I loved Sarah Waters before I read this, and I love her even more now. I think this is a terrific book, baring all of what I think of as the Waters' hallmarks - a brilliantly written tale, with a tightly constructed plot, memorable characters whose emotional inner lives are writ large on the page and an incredibly powerful atmosphere and sense of place. This story's chief protagonist is Margaret, a young lady in Victorian London, who becomes the lady visitor at a women's prison. She falls under the spell of Selina Dawes, a disgraced spiritualist who has ended up in the jail after a "visit" has gone tragically wrong in ambiguous circumstances. Margaret is a sensitive soul who has had her share of tragedy and suffering, and senses in Selina a kindred spirit. Selina senses it also, and their friendship soon proves to have life changing consequences for both of them.....
Waters' chief subject matter in all her novels is the lived experience of women, and what it means to be a woman. This novel is more like this than most - it barely even has any male characters at all. It examines the Victorian attitude to womanhood from almost every angle - from the timid and socially trapped young woman (already branded a spinster for being unmarried at 30), the attractive and therefore successful elder sister, the overbearing mother, the "fallen" women in the prison and the starchy matrons that keep them there, even the gaggle of women that attend Selina's black circles - all of these lives are laid bare for our examination, and feel real and complete, however fleeting a glimpse we get of them. One of the few male characters in the story makes a disparaging comment about how all women novelists can only write stories of the heart, a charge that may well have been laid at Waters' door, as her novels are brimming over with feeling, but in the fiendish plotting and an ending that left me reeling, there is evidence of a great deal of "head" as well. Truly, one of the best writers currently working, in my humble opinion.
10. Affinity - Sarah Waters 5/5
I loved Sarah Waters before I read this, and I love her even more now. I think this is a terrific book, baring all of what I think of as the Waters' hallmarks - a brilliantly written tale, with a tightly constructed plot, memorable characters whose emotional inner lives are writ large on the page and an incredibly powerful atmosphere and sense of place. This story's chief protagonist is Margaret, a young lady in Victorian London, who becomes the lady visitor at a women's prison. She falls under the spell of Selina Dawes, a disgraced spiritualist who has ended up in the jail after a "visit" has gone tragically wrong in ambiguous circumstances. Margaret is a sensitive soul who has had her share of tragedy and suffering, and senses in Selina a kindred spirit. Selina senses it also, and their friendship soon proves to have life changing consequences for both of them.....
Waters' chief subject matter in all her novels is the lived experience of women, and what it means to be a woman. This novel is more like this than most - it barely even has any male characters at all. It examines the Victorian attitude to womanhood from almost every angle - from the timid and socially trapped young woman (already branded a spinster for being unmarried at 30), the attractive and therefore successful elder sister, the overbearing mother, the "fallen" women in the prison and the starchy matrons that keep them there, even the gaggle of women that attend Selina's black circles - all of these lives are laid bare for our examination, and feel real and complete, however fleeting a glimpse we get of them. One of the few male characters in the story makes a disparaging comment about how all women novelists can only write stories of the heart, a charge that may well have been laid at Waters' door, as her novels are brimming over with feeling, but in the fiendish plotting and an ending that left me reeling, there is evidence of a great deal of "head" as well. Truly, one of the best writers currently working, in my humble opinion.
66gennyt
Catching up... Lizards book sounds intriguing - but annoying that it doesn't come to a conclusion. I need to read more Waters - I really enjoyed Fingersmith when I read it last year. A book featuring almost no men would be a good follow up to my most recent read - Asimov's Foundation, which has only one very minor woman character.
67HanGerg
I'm a huge Waters fan Genny, and would urge you to read any of her books, although The Little Stranger is perhaps the weakest. I think Fingersmith was the first one I read, and I enjoyed it hugely. My favourite is possibly Tipping the Velvet, although when recommending that one, one is duty bound to mention that there are a LOT of pretty graphic sex scenes in it.There's a neat symmetry in the fact that whilst you want to read more Waters, your post reminded me that I should definately read more Asimov. Apart from a few short stories years and years ago I haven't really read anything of his.
68gennyt
Tipping the Velvet I've not yet read, but saw on TV, so have some idea of the book's content. But I do certainly intend to read more of hers - I have copies of The Little Stranger and The Night Watch waiting on the TBR shelves already.
As for Asimov, this was my first experience of him. I'm dipping occasionally into the classic sci-fi authors as it's an area I've read little of; there's a group read currently of the whole of Asimov's Foundation series, so that inspired me to pick up at least one of those. I found it hard to stop being annoyed by the almost total lack of women in the story; I know it's a reflection of the era when it was written (early 50s) but even so, for an author to imagine a future for humans many thousands of years ahead of the 20th century and there to be no expectation of women having any role other than as wives and bearers of children is very hard to take.
As for Asimov, this was my first experience of him. I'm dipping occasionally into the classic sci-fi authors as it's an area I've read little of; there's a group read currently of the whole of Asimov's Foundation series, so that inspired me to pick up at least one of those. I found it hard to stop being annoyed by the almost total lack of women in the story; I know it's a reflection of the era when it was written (early 50s) but even so, for an author to imagine a future for humans many thousands of years ahead of the 20th century and there to be no expectation of women having any role other than as wives and bearers of children is very hard to take.
69HanGerg
Yes...we were having a very similar discussion on another thread the other day - these male classic SF authors sometimes had a bit of a blindspot when it came to the future of the fairer sex.
I've just dug out a clipping I saved from the newspaper this week, all about the current vogue for YA dystopian fiction. The piece was inspired by all the hype surrounding the forthcoming release of The Hunger Games film adaptation. I love a good dystopia (if that isn't too oxymoronic), so I already have that book wishlisted, but the piece mentioned several others that I hadn't heard of before. I reproduce the list here to hopefully inspire others, or perhaps get some recommendations on which of these is the best:
The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld
The Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness
The Gone series by Michael Grant
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Blood Red Road by Moira Young.
I've just dug out a clipping I saved from the newspaper this week, all about the current vogue for YA dystopian fiction. The piece was inspired by all the hype surrounding the forthcoming release of The Hunger Games film adaptation. I love a good dystopia (if that isn't too oxymoronic), so I already have that book wishlisted, but the piece mentioned several others that I hadn't heard of before. I reproduce the list here to hopefully inspire others, or perhaps get some recommendations on which of these is the best:
The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld
The Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness
The Gone series by Michael Grant
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Blood Red Road by Moira Young.
70dk_phoenix
>69 HanGerg:: I think James Dashner's Maze Runner series is better than any of those! Of course, I haven't read Blood Red Road yet, though I've heard it's fantastic.
72HanGerg
11. The Kif Strike Back - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
The third out of four in this series, and I'm just enjoying it more and more as it goes on. This one was the most action packed of the series so far, and really upped the levels of tension accordingly. The plot is pretty straightforward - our group of interstellar travelling felines, along with their human ally, get dragged further into a sticky inter-species conflict. Forced to act under the the rule of the old adage "My enemies' enemy is my friend", Pyanfar Chanur and her crew reluctantly join forces with the some of the dreaded Kif. Being allies with members of a species that are rumoured to eat their vanquished foes alive, and change sides in a conflict at a moments notice, is a precarious position at the best of times. But when even your own kind seem determined to pick a fight with you, and your traditional allies look like they might be shaping to double cross you, things get even more complicated.... Great space operatic fun.
Other than this, I'm currently about a third of a way through The Dervish House, which I'm reading in memory of JanetinLondon, and because I love Ian McDonald. It's great so far. I'm also occassionally foraying into The Dispossessed, which is my first ever Ursula Le Guin, and I'm suitably impressed by this tale of ideological refugees who settle on a planet's moon and the maverik Physicist who makes the unthinkable journey back to their home planet.
73ronincats
Glad to see you are continuing with the Chanur books--they are well worth the effort! I'm going to read The Dervish House later this year as well, in memory of JanetinLondon. The Dispossessed is really a story where the ideology overpowers the story, unusual for Le Guin, IMHO. Great ideas, though.
74HanGerg
I'm quite enjoying all the ideological stuff at the moment. I've just got to the part when Shevek is taken to a row of shops to buy some clothes, and is completely overwhelmed by the luxury and variety of things on offer, and also his complete bafflement about the concept of money. It certainly gives you food for thought. Also, if you can get past the political angle, some of the ideas are startlingly relevent to today's ideas about ecology - this whole concept of "treading lightly upon the Earth" is a really worthwhile one. I must admit that the story hasn't exactly hooked me in completely so far though, so I think you are exactly right Roni!
75gennyt
I haven't read The Dispossessed - must get round to that one some day. I did love The left hand of darkness very much when I finally read that a few years back. There are very interesting ideas there exploring gender and identity, but the story was good too.
76sibylline
LeGuin is always interesting, though -- what was the post-apoc. book we read -- set in a former California, even though I was a bit impatient with it as I read it, I think about bits of it all the time. The ones that fall right out of yr. head.... well.....
So glad you are loving Dervish House. I am presently hoarding some other McDonald. Why I do this I cannot say....
So glad you are loving Dervish House. I am presently hoarding some other McDonald. Why I do this I cannot say....
77HanGerg
The Left Hand of Darkness is on the wishlist, and I already have The Lathe of Heaven, which I picked up as the same time as The Dispossessed. The husband's currently reading that one and liking it.
78HanGerg
So, after a fun morning at my favourite secondhand bookshop, The Topsham Bookshop, I arrived home and began happily filling in my new purchases into my LT library, when a sign popped up to say I'd used up the 200 slots of a free account. It was a bit of a shock to crash up against the walls of a free account all Trueman Show-like, but I must say $25 for a lifetime membership seems wholly reasonable for such a great site. The trouble is I don't really have much money going spare at the moment, so it may have to wait a little while. In the meantime, I shall just make a note of them all here:
The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene After reading (well, listening to) 13 Things That Don't Make Sense last year, and thoroughly enjoying it, I thought I might add to my experience of NF science books by another 50%. This looks like a really good introductory book on such mysteries of the universe as string theory, wormholes, four dimensional universes and other such mind boggling stuff.
No Full Stops in India - Mark Tully I've long had a fascination with everything Indian, (haven't been there yet, but promised myself I will one day, a crippling fear of flying non-withstanding) and this looks like a great NF book on the topic. It's a selction of 10 essays by a former BBC India correspondent.
A Storm of Swords 1:Steel and Snow - George R.R Martin The next installment in the fantasy epic, though in a rather weird edition I've never seen before. It has an odd cover that looks more like something out of the 70's, though it was published in 2001. It will break up the nice order on my bookshelf when I put it next to the others, but ultimately my desire to read this SOON won out.
Here's the odd cover:
The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene After reading (well, listening to) 13 Things That Don't Make Sense last year, and thoroughly enjoying it, I thought I might add to my experience of NF science books by another 50%. This looks like a really good introductory book on such mysteries of the universe as string theory, wormholes, four dimensional universes and other such mind boggling stuff.
No Full Stops in India - Mark Tully I've long had a fascination with everything Indian, (haven't been there yet, but promised myself I will one day, a crippling fear of flying non-withstanding) and this looks like a great NF book on the topic. It's a selction of 10 essays by a former BBC India correspondent.
A Storm of Swords 1:Steel and Snow - George R.R Martin The next installment in the fantasy epic, though in a rather weird edition I've never seen before. It has an odd cover that looks more like something out of the 70's, though it was published in 2001. It will break up the nice order on my bookshelf when I put it next to the others, but ultimately my desire to read this SOON won out.
Here's the odd cover:
80HanGerg
Quick message as I come home briefly from one set of travels and set out on the next. Just had a brilliant few days in Ireland and Bristol, now off to the North Devon coast to spend some time with family and hopefully have time to dip my toes in the Atlantic if the weather stays reasonable. I have been doing quite a lot of reading on my travels, so I will be back in a few days with an update!
81dk_phoenix
Whoa, crazy cover! I wonder who that was released by?!
Sounds like you're having an incredible trip. I'm jealous and wish I could be there too!
Sounds like you're having an incredible trip. I'm jealous and wish I could be there too!
82HanGerg
Ok, so my travels are over, and after a lovely Easter holiday I'll be back to work tomorrow. After two weeks off I think it will feel like a mighty hard habit to get back into.
Some highlights of the holiday. I went to Ireland to attend a wedding. I've never been to the Emerald Isle before, and I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, we only had very limited time to explore anything more than the wedding venue and our hotel, but the few hours we spent in Dublin were enough to convince me I really want to return. I picked up a leaflet for a literary pub crawl that sounds like a must, this should be a link to its online equivalent: http://www.dublinpubcrawl.com/. Add to that some lovely time spent in Bristol and North Devon catching up with family, and all the old school friends I saw at the wedding, and you have a lovely relaxing holiday period, now sadly at an end.
So, I read a couple of books recently which were both crackers.
12.The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin 4/5
This is the story of Shevek, a brilliant scientist from Anarres, the harsh, dusty moon of the planet Urras. He lives in a unique community of anarchists, in a society that does not have money or possessions, and lives by the ethos of treading lightly upon the earth. However, Shevek's brilliant scientific ideas are being stifled by a jealous colleague, and the whole society seems to have started to stagnate and therefore go against the true spirit of their free thinking founder. Shevek therefore takes the unprecedented step of of travelling to Urras, a planet his people are brought up to think of as a collection of hellish propetarian dictatorships. The truth is rather more complicated, but no less dangerous....
This is my first Le Guin, and I had high expectations of it due to her formibable reputation. I think this is not really regarded as one of her best books, and one can see why, as the story does rather take a back seat to the politics, but I found the ideas that the book is a vehicle for to be really thought provoking, and therefore enjoyed it. People who prefer their stories without fairly overt political messages might not agree.
13. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) - George R.R. Martin 4.5/5
More fantastical adventures, plotting and double crossing, bodice ripping and head off-chopping. It's just as gripping as ever, and the addition of some new characters, or rather existing characters that have been promoted to having their own chapters dedicated to their PoV, keeps things ticking along at a great pace. (not to mention has been made necessary by all the deaths that have seen the cast members dropping like flies). The book ends on quite a cliff hanger, and the larger story arch of the whole series seems to be taking hazy shape, and promises yet more excitement and intrigue to come, so bring on the next I say!
Some highlights of the holiday. I went to Ireland to attend a wedding. I've never been to the Emerald Isle before, and I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, we only had very limited time to explore anything more than the wedding venue and our hotel, but the few hours we spent in Dublin were enough to convince me I really want to return. I picked up a leaflet for a literary pub crawl that sounds like a must, this should be a link to its online equivalent: http://www.dublinpubcrawl.com/. Add to that some lovely time spent in Bristol and North Devon catching up with family, and all the old school friends I saw at the wedding, and you have a lovely relaxing holiday period, now sadly at an end.
So, I read a couple of books recently which were both crackers.
12.The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin 4/5
This is the story of Shevek, a brilliant scientist from Anarres, the harsh, dusty moon of the planet Urras. He lives in a unique community of anarchists, in a society that does not have money or possessions, and lives by the ethos of treading lightly upon the earth. However, Shevek's brilliant scientific ideas are being stifled by a jealous colleague, and the whole society seems to have started to stagnate and therefore go against the true spirit of their free thinking founder. Shevek therefore takes the unprecedented step of of travelling to Urras, a planet his people are brought up to think of as a collection of hellish propetarian dictatorships. The truth is rather more complicated, but no less dangerous....
This is my first Le Guin, and I had high expectations of it due to her formibable reputation. I think this is not really regarded as one of her best books, and one can see why, as the story does rather take a back seat to the politics, but I found the ideas that the book is a vehicle for to be really thought provoking, and therefore enjoyed it. People who prefer their stories without fairly overt political messages might not agree.
13. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) - George R.R. Martin 4.5/5
More fantastical adventures, plotting and double crossing, bodice ripping and head off-chopping. It's just as gripping as ever, and the addition of some new characters, or rather existing characters that have been promoted to having their own chapters dedicated to their PoV, keeps things ticking along at a great pace. (not to mention has been made necessary by all the deaths that have seen the cast members dropping like flies). The book ends on quite a cliff hanger, and the larger story arch of the whole series seems to be taking hazy shape, and promises yet more excitement and intrigue to come, so bring on the next I say!
83sibylline
I know I've read The Dispossessed but I can't remember a thing about it, a bad sign indeed. On the other hand, the Martins are all still quite vivid.
84alcottacre
*waving* at Hannah
85HanGerg
14. Mr Vertigo - Paul Auster 3.5/5
I was given this book to read by a work colleague, who I have recently been chatting to a lot about reading (always nice to discover a fellow book lover) We swapped most recent reads, so I got this, and she got Affinity which she enjoyed. I enjoyed her book too, as it was a good yarn, well told, but it's one of those books where you wonder if there is a deeper meaning - after all, the author has a good rep, and there's something on the dust jacket about him being "the master of the modern American fable". So, if it's a fable, what is the message we're all supposed to learn? I'm really not sure, and I think maybe the author isn't either. The plot is basically the life story, in fact the autobiography, of Walter Rawlings, who we first meet as a cheeky young street urchin on the streets of St.Louis sometime in the nineteen teens. His life is turned around forever when he meets "the master" a mysterious stranger who promises him the life of a star if Walt is prepared to obey his every command. The route to stardom? Simple. The master knows the secret of levitation, and if Walt is prepared to work hard, he can having him in the air and flying by the time he's thirteen...... This is the start of Walt's amazing story, but no means the only aspect of it, in a tale that takes in kidnap, murder, a World War, baseball stars, the mob, and many more colourful characters and situations. There's as much tragedy as triumph in the tale though, and as the story winds its way towards Walt's less action-packed old age, it's difficult to make out what the author hopes we will get fom his tale apart from the pleasure we can take from its telling.
86gennyt
If you enjoyed The Dispossessed - which I've not yet read - you might also like The Left Hand of Darkness - which was my first non-children's Le Guin and which I really loved.
87HanGerg
Yes, I've got that one on the wishlist Genny, thanks! I didn't acquire The Dispossessed in any deliberate way, I just stumbled across a couple of her books in a charity shop for an irresistible 60p each. The other was The Lathe of Heaven, which my husband has read and pronounced excellent. The Left Hand of Darkness seems to be the absolute must read by Le Guin though.
15. The Dervish House - Ian McDonald 4/5
I've been wanting to read this book for a quite some time, having been hugely impressed by the two previous Ian McDonald's I've read. A more recent reason is the excellent notion that one of our 75ers had of remembering one of our number that sadly passed away at the end of last year, JanetinLondon, by reading books from her library. She and I had swapped recommendations on McDonald's, and this was the one she gave me. So of course I would like to report that I loved it. Which I did, but perhaps not as much as some of his others. This book is a bit more of a slow burner, and the plot takes a while to kick into top gear. When it does, it's very good, plus there's lots more on offer here than simply a thrilling finale. McDonald builds in layers of meaning and symbolism just like the layers of meaning in the Islamic art featuring micro-text that resolves into bigger words and symbols, that is a recurring motif in the story. The story is set in a thrillingly well realised, near-future Istanbul, which is packed with vivid sights, sounds and smells. There are also a host of memorable, well rounded characters with backstories, personality traits and plans for the future, all described in expert style. All this is standard McDonald. Somehow though, the various quests and journeys these characters are on didn't grab me as much as those in River of Gods, but that may just be a subjective view. I took something of a dislike to one of the central characters - Adnan, a strutting broker at a gas company, who along with his fellow young alpha-male friends has some kind of complicated scam going to sell gas in a way that will net them loads of untraceable money. It probably says a lot about me that I found this plot strand far more incomprehensible than the one involving the scientists that have created a whole new kind of nanotechnology that can store data in human DNA, making each human on Earth their own walking supercomputer. These are only a few of the many intriguing stories that are expertly woven together with a whole raft of other brilliant aspects, from men miraculously preserved in honey for hundreds of years and the secret name of God written in the architecture of the city, to robots that can endlessly reform into different shapes as they run through the streets. All of these imaginative flourishes and near-future inventions are grafted seemlessly onto the fictional recreation of a city that feels brilliantly realised and creates images and storylines that will live long in the memory. Perhaps not the absolute perfection I've come to expect from McDonald, but still a very worthwhile read.
15. The Dervish House - Ian McDonald 4/5
I've been wanting to read this book for a quite some time, having been hugely impressed by the two previous Ian McDonald's I've read. A more recent reason is the excellent notion that one of our 75ers had of remembering one of our number that sadly passed away at the end of last year, JanetinLondon, by reading books from her library. She and I had swapped recommendations on McDonald's, and this was the one she gave me. So of course I would like to report that I loved it. Which I did, but perhaps not as much as some of his others. This book is a bit more of a slow burner, and the plot takes a while to kick into top gear. When it does, it's very good, plus there's lots more on offer here than simply a thrilling finale. McDonald builds in layers of meaning and symbolism just like the layers of meaning in the Islamic art featuring micro-text that resolves into bigger words and symbols, that is a recurring motif in the story. The story is set in a thrillingly well realised, near-future Istanbul, which is packed with vivid sights, sounds and smells. There are also a host of memorable, well rounded characters with backstories, personality traits and plans for the future, all described in expert style. All this is standard McDonald. Somehow though, the various quests and journeys these characters are on didn't grab me as much as those in River of Gods, but that may just be a subjective view. I took something of a dislike to one of the central characters - Adnan, a strutting broker at a gas company, who along with his fellow young alpha-male friends has some kind of complicated scam going to sell gas in a way that will net them loads of untraceable money. It probably says a lot about me that I found this plot strand far more incomprehensible than the one involving the scientists that have created a whole new kind of nanotechnology that can store data in human DNA, making each human on Earth their own walking supercomputer. These are only a few of the many intriguing stories that are expertly woven together with a whole raft of other brilliant aspects, from men miraculously preserved in honey for hundreds of years and the secret name of God written in the architecture of the city, to robots that can endlessly reform into different shapes as they run through the streets. All of these imaginative flourishes and near-future inventions are grafted seemlessly onto the fictional recreation of a city that feels brilliantly realised and creates images and storylines that will live long in the memory. Perhaps not the absolute perfection I've come to expect from McDonald, but still a very worthwhile read.
88sibylline
Glad you enjoyed the McDonald -- so far it is my only and I'm looking forward to reading the others (lurking in my ghastly creaking groaning tbr shelves.....)
89HanGerg
Just a quick check in from me to report on current readings, as I have two great books on the go at the moment, and am unlikely to finish either soon. After stating that a reading goal for this year was more non-fiction, I have so far read precisely 0 NF books, so it was about time I got cracking. I picked off the TBR pile Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female With the Mass Media which is very readable and stuffed full of really thought provoking stuff about the contrary messages women are given by the media. So far the book is mainly focused on 50's and 60's media in America, the time and place at which the author came of age. It has been really interesting to learn about that period, and the puzzle of how girls who grew up in the 50's watching TV programmes and listening to pop music that stressed a women's role being one of husband ensnarer, then home maker and martyr to family life, became in the 60's the generation that fought for women's lib. (Clue: most of them were clever enough to realise this hadn't worked out particularly well for their mothers).
I'm also reading the concluding part to Kim Stanley Robinson's fabulous Mars trilogy Blue Mars. I had a slight criticism of the previous installments, which was that they wasn't very fast paced, but so far that's not something you could say about this book. It starts half way through a bloody battle involving some of the major characters! I can already tell it will be one of the story worlds I'll be very sad to leave when the time comes to finish this last part.
In other news...the husband and I have been watching the first part of the Game of Thrones TV adaptation. We've been enjoying it, but I'm not entirely convinced overall how good it is. My main problem with it is that what, as a book, feels really compelling and fast paced, seems rather leaden somehow in their version. I'm not sure where the fault lies, but I think that if you hadn't read the books, it might have taken a few episodes to get hooked in. Some of the casting was also totally different to how I imagined it,(Robb and Jon in particular are nothing like how I imagined them) but actually overall I think that was a strength of the show. I also think it was getting better as it went along, so I shall definately try and catch the second series when it eventually makes it to DVD.
I'm also reading the concluding part to Kim Stanley Robinson's fabulous Mars trilogy Blue Mars. I had a slight criticism of the previous installments, which was that they wasn't very fast paced, but so far that's not something you could say about this book. It starts half way through a bloody battle involving some of the major characters! I can already tell it will be one of the story worlds I'll be very sad to leave when the time comes to finish this last part.
In other news...the husband and I have been watching the first part of the Game of Thrones TV adaptation. We've been enjoying it, but I'm not entirely convinced overall how good it is. My main problem with it is that what, as a book, feels really compelling and fast paced, seems rather leaden somehow in their version. I'm not sure where the fault lies, but I think that if you hadn't read the books, it might have taken a few episodes to get hooked in. Some of the casting was also totally different to how I imagined it,(Robb and Jon in particular are nothing like how I imagined them) but actually overall I think that was a strength of the show. I also think it was getting better as it went along, so I shall definately try and catch the second series when it eventually makes it to DVD.
90sibylline
Ah! So happy that you are loving the KSR Mars Trilogy! It is such a fabulous work. Can you imagine cinematically the special effects of showing the planetary elevator 'chain' being broken and falling and wrapping the planet TWICE!!! And the cast of characters! Oi! And the differences between the children who are true Martians.... oh all of it....
Totally agree with you about GofT screen version - by the end of the season (which we watched, as you did, just recently) I ended up liking Jon Snow enormously, but he wasn't as I had pictured at all. Robb I never had a feeling one way or the other. All the other characters are so good, so close to what I imagined or even better (the Targaryans, for example - sorry about sp. ) I'd forgotten too that the fellow who assists Daeneris (forgive sp again!) and the commander of the Wall crew were son and father..... I could go on and on. It will be interesting to watch it a second time in a few months, to me that is always the real test. The Wall is the best thing in both, no?
Where the Girls Are sounds very good.
Totally agree with you about GofT screen version - by the end of the season (which we watched, as you did, just recently) I ended up liking Jon Snow enormously, but he wasn't as I had pictured at all. Robb I never had a feeling one way or the other. All the other characters are so good, so close to what I imagined or even better (the Targaryans, for example - sorry about sp. ) I'd forgotten too that the fellow who assists Daeneris (forgive sp again!) and the commander of the Wall crew were son and father..... I could go on and on. It will be interesting to watch it a second time in a few months, to me that is always the real test. The Wall is the best thing in both, no?
Where the Girls Are sounds very good.
91HanGerg
Great comments as always Lucy. Yes, the Mars trilogy is a joy, and paints such searingly cinematic visions that a film version would be uneccessary, imho. Plus a film would leave out all the more technical stuff about terraforming, or the bits I've just read, where they write their own Martian constitution. These bits can be a bit dry, but at the same time are fascinating. To be able to imagine what would it be like if one could just start from scratch and make up the laws to govern an ideal society. Between this and The Dispossessed I've been reading a lot of socialist leaning SF recently, which seems very relevant in these times, especially from a British point of view, where we have quite a right leaning government putting all their faith in the private sector to deliver us from our woes.
Regarding GoT TV series, yes Jon is clearly the best, and most likeable character. Tyrion is also brilliant - though perhaps not ugly enough. Jaime Lannister seems a little more sympathetic in this version, as does Theon Greyjoy - I'll be interested to see how they explain some of his later exploits after starting him off seeming relatively pleasant. I also LOVE Littlefinger, I think they've beefed up his role a bit, as they have got such a fabulous actor to play him - Aidan Gillen (who's the mayor in The Wire). I love the bitchy friendship he and Varys have in the TV version. Oh, I forgot the most important deviation from the book - Renly is GAY!?! with the knight of flowers no less. The book doesn't even hint at this, as far as I can remember (although one could say the signs were there with the knight of flowers...), and I'm not sure why the programme makers decided to play him that way. To appeal to a gay audience? I'm not sure if they acheived that aim, or any other, so it seems a bit baffling. Anyway, good fun entertainment is my verdict, and I look forward to the next series.
Regarding GoT TV series, yes Jon is clearly the best, and most likeable character. Tyrion is also brilliant - though perhaps not ugly enough. Jaime Lannister seems a little more sympathetic in this version, as does Theon Greyjoy - I'll be interested to see how they explain some of his later exploits after starting him off seeming relatively pleasant. I also LOVE Littlefinger, I think they've beefed up his role a bit, as they have got such a fabulous actor to play him - Aidan Gillen (who's the mayor in The Wire). I love the bitchy friendship he and Varys have in the TV version. Oh, I forgot the most important deviation from the book - Renly is GAY!?! with the knight of flowers no less. The book doesn't even hint at this, as far as I can remember (although one could say the signs were there with the knight of flowers...), and I'm not sure why the programme makers decided to play him that way. To appeal to a gay audience? I'm not sure if they acheived that aim, or any other, so it seems a bit baffling. Anyway, good fun entertainment is my verdict, and I look forward to the next series.
92sibylline
I read the first book long enough ago that I can't remember anything about Renly although the Knight of Flowers does give one pause..... You are probably spot on that it is to widen appeal and also to generally keep as much sexual stuff going as possible, a la HBO???? I plan to reread so I'll pay attention!
I think Jaime is about right - there is something 'trapped' about him - he has incredible skills, an awful father, a desperate pash for his sister, but he struck me as very smart, and very aware that he is a fighter more than a leader, that he knows he has some limitations and is fearful of being revealed as a failure - his sister is the one with the 'leadership' skills - almost like they really are incomplete alone..... I don't know how far you've gotten so I won't spoil but doesn't Jaime end up travelling later with a very plain (I'm being polite) woman knight-aspirant - I was getting the impression that this experience was having an unexpected effect on him, but that could just have been Martin toying with me - it's one of the big threads left hanging after the Crow book (or the one before?) and I have been putting off reading the next one until I reread the others as I've forgotten so much. And Theon, certainly the Greyjoys are a wretched lot and he's no better but I seem to remember he felt some loyalty to Dad, some toward Robb..... and less to the family as a whole - none to the mother, for ex. So as things continue he feels less and less attached or obligated..... And they do show him being a prat with the woman, at least. If I remember things at all correctly, which it is quite possible I do not!
I think Jaime is about right - there is something 'trapped' about him - he has incredible skills, an awful father, a desperate pash for his sister, but he struck me as very smart, and very aware that he is a fighter more than a leader, that he knows he has some limitations and is fearful of being revealed as a failure - his sister is the one with the 'leadership' skills - almost like they really are incomplete alone..... I don't know how far you've gotten so I won't spoil but doesn't Jaime end up travelling later with a very plain (I'm being polite) woman knight-aspirant - I was getting the impression that this experience was having an unexpected effect on him, but that could just have been Martin toying with me - it's one of the big threads left hanging after the Crow book (or the one before?) and I have been putting off reading the next one until I reread the others as I've forgotten so much. And Theon, certainly the Greyjoys are a wretched lot and he's no better but I seem to remember he felt some loyalty to Dad, some toward Robb..... and less to the family as a whole - none to the mother, for ex. So as things continue he feels less and less attached or obligated..... And they do show him being a prat with the woman, at least. If I remember things at all correctly, which it is quite possible I do not!
93HanGerg
Yes, lots of sexy times is almost cetainly the reason - as in that hilarious scene where Littlefinger is carrying out a long conversation with a pair of whores who are -ahem- practising with each other. The husband and I now call such completely superfluous sex scenes "Spartacusian", or "Spartacusesque", as that show was absolutely riddled with them (and little else of interest - not recommended if you haven't seen it already)
I had the same feeling about Jaime and the lady knight - Brienne or something similar. There is a growing fondness and grudging respect - though at the end of book 3:1 (or however you want to describe it) we're left on a bit of a cliffhanger as to her fate, as she is being given as a prize to the Bloody Mummers, a nasty bunch of rape-happy hooligans. I suspect Jaime will decide he can't have her on his conscience, and will have to perform a daring rescue. He is a character that's definately getting more sympathetic as the story unfolds, my issue with the TV series is that they start him down that road maybe a bit too soon. All this GoT chat really makes me want to read the next one, even though I vowed I'd take a bit of a break and give all my other poor books a chance to get a look in....
I had the same feeling about Jaime and the lady knight - Brienne or something similar. There is a growing fondness and grudging respect - though at the end of book 3:1 (or however you want to describe it) we're left on a bit of a cliffhanger as to her fate, as she is being given as a prize to the Bloody Mummers, a nasty bunch of rape-happy hooligans. I suspect Jaime will decide he can't have her on his conscience, and will have to perform a daring rescue. He is a character that's definately getting more sympathetic as the story unfolds, my issue with the TV series is that they start him down that road maybe a bit too soon. All this GoT chat really makes me want to read the next one, even though I vowed I'd take a bit of a break and give all my other poor books a chance to get a look in....
94sibylline
That's a really good point -- it would be better if he started out worse!
I'm doing the same thing w/Dragon -- also dragging so that I won't have to wait quite so long for the NEXT one......
I'm doing the same thing w/Dragon -- also dragging so that I won't have to wait quite so long for the NEXT one......
95HanGerg
Just a quick check in from me, as it's been a while. I'm busy, busy, busy at the moment, with work stuff and fun stuff at the weekends (netball tournament last weekend, future sister-in-law's hen party coming up), plus job applications and general stuff.
I'm still plodding on with Blue Mars, enjoying it, but getting bogged down in the inevitable detail - a Martian constitution, the continuing effects of terraforming, wrangles over new environmental laws - all very interesting but a little heavy going at times. So, to break it up I plucked off the tbr pile The Silver Pigs the first of the Lindsay Davis Didius Falco series. I've read others in the series I think (though I also strongly suspect I might be getting it mixed up with Steven Saylor's Roman detective series, which I have a much clearer memory of having read.) Anyway, it's all galloping along at a pleasingly snappy pace and I'm enjoying it. It's also interesting as Falco makes a trip to Roman Britain and briefly passes through Isca, now known as Exeter, my current home town. It gives one a unique frisson to imagine this fictional character passing through your city two thousand years ago....pleasing, in an odd way.
I've also made a quick visit to one of the charity shops near my current workplace. They always have a good supply of really tempting books, plus they're always cheap, so it's quickly becoming one of my local favourites. I bought a Thames and Hudson World of Art book on Minoan and Mycenean Art, inspired by my recent visit to the British musuem. I also managed to track down John Wyndham 's The Chrysalids which has been on my wishlist for a while, plus Dan Simmons' Ilium, as he is one of the roughly contemporary SF authors that has a great rep, but I haven't read at all. Quite a nice little haul, especially when you throw in the nice purple scarf I picked up at the same time, and consider that I managed to get all of the above booty for under £4. That's how to shop in a recession!
I'm still plodding on with Blue Mars, enjoying it, but getting bogged down in the inevitable detail - a Martian constitution, the continuing effects of terraforming, wrangles over new environmental laws - all very interesting but a little heavy going at times. So, to break it up I plucked off the tbr pile The Silver Pigs the first of the Lindsay Davis Didius Falco series. I've read others in the series I think (though I also strongly suspect I might be getting it mixed up with Steven Saylor's Roman detective series, which I have a much clearer memory of having read.) Anyway, it's all galloping along at a pleasingly snappy pace and I'm enjoying it. It's also interesting as Falco makes a trip to Roman Britain and briefly passes through Isca, now known as Exeter, my current home town. It gives one a unique frisson to imagine this fictional character passing through your city two thousand years ago....pleasing, in an odd way.
I've also made a quick visit to one of the charity shops near my current workplace. They always have a good supply of really tempting books, plus they're always cheap, so it's quickly becoming one of my local favourites. I bought a Thames and Hudson World of Art book on Minoan and Mycenean Art, inspired by my recent visit to the British musuem. I also managed to track down John Wyndham 's The Chrysalids which has been on my wishlist for a while, plus Dan Simmons' Ilium, as he is one of the roughly contemporary SF authors that has a great rep, but I haven't read at all. Quite a nice little haul, especially when you throw in the nice purple scarf I picked up at the same time, and consider that I managed to get all of the above booty for under £4. That's how to shop in a recession!
96SandDune
#95 I remember The Chrysalids from years ago - it was one of my favourite books in my early 20's. I've been thinking it's time for a reread of John Wyndham's books.
97HanGerg
I haven't read any as yet. I'm more familiar with him through the films made of his books - The Day of the Triffids and Village of the Damned, which is the filmic version of The Midwich Cuckoos, both effectively chilling and thought provoking. I heard of The Chrysalids on LT (where else?), and have high expectations at the same time as knowing very little about the plot.
98SandDune
#97 The Kraken Wakes is another one that I remember enjoying but again I haven't read it for years.
99HanGerg
Oooh, The Kraken Wakes was one of the other Wyndham's they had at the charity shop! I didn't get it at the time as I thought it looked rather like Day of the Triffids only with a Kraken substitute, but now I'm tempted to go back and see if they still have it!
100sibylline
What a great haul! I picked up a couple of Arthur Clarke books for free at one of the two libraries I frequent the other day..... They have shelves where people leave books and audio. I think they scoop up the ones they think will sell well at the biannual sale, and put the rest out there and then haul them off to the 'swap shop' at our transfer station.... after that, well, pulp, I guess. But the books do get a lot of chances to find homes. I'm not sure I'll keep the Clarkes, but I couldn't resist......
101HanGerg
Free books! Wow, what heaven! I think there must be a home for pretty much every book - like me and the feminist essays on women in the workplace at our local pub - it might have waited a long time for a new home had I not come along, but I was rather tickled by it.
102HanGerg
16. The Silver Pigs - Lindsey Davis 3.5/5
Finally I have finished another book! May has been a slow reading month due to lots of other commitments, plus the fact I'm mainly reading the mammoth concluding part to the epic Mars series, Blue Mars. I picked this up as a bit of light reading when I was getting a little bogged down with that mighty tome, and this was a nice palate cleanser. This is the first in Davis' series of detective style novels set in ancient Rome, and introduces us to the wise cracking informer (basically a private eye) Didius Falco, who gets embroiled in a sinister plot to depose the new emperor funded by smuggled silver from th mines in Britain. Falco is in way over his head, as some rather important people are mixed up in the plot, but when the innocent client who hired him to protect her is murdered in cold blood, he vows to bring her killer to justice.
This is a good fun, fast moving detective story, that introduces us to a likable and entertaining main series character - plus a pretty classic line up of supporting characters - the femme fatale, the old army buddy who's now handily placed on the police force, the landlord that's out for blood, the people in high places who are up to no good....all pretty classic, but all cleverly transposed to ancient Roman settings. It's nothing Earth shattering, but certainly entertaining enough to make me want to track down some more in the series to see how the character developes. OK, after that brief foray in ancient Rome, it's back up to future Mars I go...
103dk_phoenix
I have that one sitting around here somewhere! I once heard the author speak at a Classical Studies convention -- I can't recall what she talked about, but she was hilarious and an excellent speaker. I've held out hope for years that her books would be just as good! One of these days I'll find out... haha. Good to hear you enjoyed it!
104HanGerg
Great news! After what feels like an eternity of anxious waiting, but was actually just a few months, we've had the best news imaginable! My husband's research proposal has been jointly accepted by the University of Manchester (we knew that bit already) AND the Leverhulme Trust, a body that gives early career academics a boost by funding their research. This is awesome for several reasons: one, since my husband finished his PhD early and didn't recieve the last quarterly installment of his funding, about a year ago, and has since endured 10 months of unemployment, we have been in a state of permenant pennilessness - this new research position comes with a bigger salary than we've ever previously earnt combined! Yipee!
Two, during the aforementioned period of unemployment, Gabor applied for many jobs for which he was emminently qualified, and yet did not even get so much as a sniff of an interview. This was inevitably very discouraging, and if he hadn't got this reserach post we had tentatively discussed alternative career options for him (not that there were really any, this has always been his dream. He's a good translator but finds the work tedious beyond belief).
Three, the Leverhulme fellowships are incredibly highly sought after, and landing one is very prestigious. After this, he should hopefully have universities fighting over him.
Four, the financial position that this puts us in really frees me from the role I have fulfilled (not very well) for the last several years - that of being the principle bread winner. This in turn will give me the freedom to do lots of things - pursue the fledgling career I was building as a bit of an artist, re-train in something other than education - a field I've worked in almost exclusively since I left uni, and which has given me a lot of pleasure, but I can't help but feel, isn't my dream career. All this just from one decision - it's quite scary how life transforming this one thing could potentially be for us! It is also the culmination of about a decade's worth of hard work and sacrifice on both our parts, and as such, really couldn't be sweeter! Hooray! Hooray!
As a slight postscript to that - I meant to mention it earlier, but there never seemed to be a good time, my husband's thesis is going to be published! It's going to be published by Peter Lang publishers, if that means anything to anyone. My husband's parents have very kindly agreed to pay the few thousand pounds it will cost to publish as we couldn't have afforded it (the publisher wants authors to carry all the financial risk). It will be called Foreign Devils. It's a study of 3 emigre actors in WWII era Hollywood, and the way the roles they played conveyed a sense of an exilic identity - "the other" as seen through the eyes of the Hollywood dream factory. It's fascinating stuff in my (only slightly biased) opinion, and I always pushed him to pursue publication for it, because I think it has relevance and interest for people far beyond the niche of film studies scholars.
Two, during the aforementioned period of unemployment, Gabor applied for many jobs for which he was emminently qualified, and yet did not even get so much as a sniff of an interview. This was inevitably very discouraging, and if he hadn't got this reserach post we had tentatively discussed alternative career options for him (not that there were really any, this has always been his dream. He's a good translator but finds the work tedious beyond belief).
Three, the Leverhulme fellowships are incredibly highly sought after, and landing one is very prestigious. After this, he should hopefully have universities fighting over him.
Four, the financial position that this puts us in really frees me from the role I have fulfilled (not very well) for the last several years - that of being the principle bread winner. This in turn will give me the freedom to do lots of things - pursue the fledgling career I was building as a bit of an artist, re-train in something other than education - a field I've worked in almost exclusively since I left uni, and which has given me a lot of pleasure, but I can't help but feel, isn't my dream career. All this just from one decision - it's quite scary how life transforming this one thing could potentially be for us! It is also the culmination of about a decade's worth of hard work and sacrifice on both our parts, and as such, really couldn't be sweeter! Hooray! Hooray!
As a slight postscript to that - I meant to mention it earlier, but there never seemed to be a good time, my husband's thesis is going to be published! It's going to be published by Peter Lang publishers, if that means anything to anyone. My husband's parents have very kindly agreed to pay the few thousand pounds it will cost to publish as we couldn't have afforded it (the publisher wants authors to carry all the financial risk). It will be called Foreign Devils. It's a study of 3 emigre actors in WWII era Hollywood, and the way the roles they played conveyed a sense of an exilic identity - "the other" as seen through the eyes of the Hollywood dream factory. It's fascinating stuff in my (only slightly biased) opinion, and I always pushed him to pursue publication for it, because I think it has relevance and interest for people far beyond the niche of film studies scholars.
106souloftherose
Congratulations to you both!
110HanGerg
Thank you, thank you kind friends for all the good wishes. It's a few days later now and I STILL can't believe it!
112HanGerg
Have no fear! As soon as I know the full details I'll be sharing them with everyone on LT! : )
113HanGerg
Finally I have finished the epic I've been reading all month!
Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson 4.5/5
The final book in this fabulous trilogy, and it manages to round the series off most satisfactorily, though not too neatly. This has been an unforgettable series of books for me, full of wonders and so believably and cleverly written that you can't help but dream of the day that life may immitate art, and mankind can begin to inhabit Mars with the real life equivalents of the characters that have become like old friends - Nadia, Ann, Frank, John, Sax, Maya, Coyote and all the rest. My one quibble with the whole series is the leisurely pace and somewhat meandering story archs. I would question whether this novel was really improved by, for example, about twenty pages on the brain chemistry involved in creating memories. Much of it is fascinating stuff, but when there are so many wonderfully drawn characters, experiencing such incredible events and breathtaking sights, all the hard science is an uneccessary distraction - for my tastes at least. This shouldn't detract from what a fantastic achievement the whole series is - full of things that will stay with you for a lifetime of reading, and will change the way you see the universe and the people who, maybe one day, will populate it far beyond our home shores.
Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson 4.5/5
The final book in this fabulous trilogy, and it manages to round the series off most satisfactorily, though not too neatly. This has been an unforgettable series of books for me, full of wonders and so believably and cleverly written that you can't help but dream of the day that life may immitate art, and mankind can begin to inhabit Mars with the real life equivalents of the characters that have become like old friends - Nadia, Ann, Frank, John, Sax, Maya, Coyote and all the rest. My one quibble with the whole series is the leisurely pace and somewhat meandering story archs. I would question whether this novel was really improved by, for example, about twenty pages on the brain chemistry involved in creating memories. Much of it is fascinating stuff, but when there are so many wonderfully drawn characters, experiencing such incredible events and breathtaking sights, all the hard science is an uneccessary distraction - for my tastes at least. This shouldn't detract from what a fantastic achievement the whole series is - full of things that will stay with you for a lifetime of reading, and will change the way you see the universe and the people who, maybe one day, will populate it far beyond our home shores.
114sibylline
Yes yes yes. What an adventure -- I still miss all those people, and have to remind myself that they aren't up there.
115HanGerg
If they were, I'd be so tempted to go and join them......
So I'm aware that my book haul so far this year has been a rather paltry one. This has been partly down to work and leisure commitments - all in all it's been a busy year so far, and in the average day I probably don't get more than an hour's reading time, but it's also down to the fact that I've been reading a lot of pretty weighty tomes. Including my most recent book, I've read five or six 700+ books, and one or two 500+ones too. I know it's not all about quantity, and that lots of people don't reach 75, but I would like to try and keep a little nearer the pace if I can. So my plan is to have a few quick reads to boost my figures a bit. (Plus, after the latest epic I feel the need for something fairly light).
I'm looking for something bright and breezy and very readable, ideally not more than 250-ish pages long. Amazingly, my TBR pile doesn't really contain anything that fits the bill, so a book shopping trip or Amazon order may be in the works. In the meantime the nearest thing I could find around the house was a bit of non-fiction Superfreakonomics, the follow up to Freakonomics, which was a mildy provocative and fresh way of looking at everyday occurances, that I dipped in and out of. This sequel feels a little less tightly focused than its predecessor, but still has the power to make you stop and think. I'm currently reading about how data suggests that the advent of TV may be one of the causes of a huge surge in violent crime rates in the US in the 1970's. You can quite often pick holes in their arguments, and you have to accept lots of their statistical evidence at face value unless you want to do lots of time consuming research yourself, but a lot of the arguments they put forward certainly make you see the world in a sightly new way, which I'm beginning to think is what I'm really looking for in a lot of my reading, so I approve!
So I'm aware that my book haul so far this year has been a rather paltry one. This has been partly down to work and leisure commitments - all in all it's been a busy year so far, and in the average day I probably don't get more than an hour's reading time, but it's also down to the fact that I've been reading a lot of pretty weighty tomes. Including my most recent book, I've read five or six 700+ books, and one or two 500+ones too. I know it's not all about quantity, and that lots of people don't reach 75, but I would like to try and keep a little nearer the pace if I can. So my plan is to have a few quick reads to boost my figures a bit. (Plus, after the latest epic I feel the need for something fairly light).
I'm looking for something bright and breezy and very readable, ideally not more than 250-ish pages long. Amazingly, my TBR pile doesn't really contain anything that fits the bill, so a book shopping trip or Amazon order may be in the works. In the meantime the nearest thing I could find around the house was a bit of non-fiction Superfreakonomics, the follow up to Freakonomics, which was a mildy provocative and fresh way of looking at everyday occurances, that I dipped in and out of. This sequel feels a little less tightly focused than its predecessor, but still has the power to make you stop and think. I'm currently reading about how data suggests that the advent of TV may be one of the causes of a huge surge in violent crime rates in the US in the 1970's. You can quite often pick holes in their arguments, and you have to accept lots of their statistical evidence at face value unless you want to do lots of time consuming research yourself, but a lot of the arguments they put forward certainly make you see the world in a sightly new way, which I'm beginning to think is what I'm really looking for in a lot of my reading, so I approve!
116HanGerg
18. Superfreakonomics - Steven D. Levitt 2/5
As per my plan, I breezed through this in no time at all, as, like its predecessor, it is very readable. Unfortunately, unlike it's predecessor, it didn't really have a particularly new slant to add to anything much. Well, that's no quite fair, it did say some interesting things, but somehow they weren't nearly as clever or thought provoking as in Freakonomics. That book took some raw data about a phemonena economists were currently studying, and came up with some truly mind-blowing analysis. This book was more about simply reporting data - some of it interesting, some not so much. I was familiar with more than one of the stories they told from other sociologically slanting books, which given that I don't read much in this field, makes me think they were scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit for ideas. On the plus side, it did make me feel slightly more optimistic about finding a solution to global warming, which is good, and a lot more mistrustful of monkies, which might actually not be a bad thing either, given what I now know about them.....
117souloftherose
#113 I read Red Mars last year and one of this year's goals is to finish reading that trilogy.
118HanGerg
Oh, you really must Heather! They can all be quite hard going at times, but your efforts will be re-paid a hundredfold! (is that all one word? Not one I use often....)
19.
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami 4.5/5
This is only the fourth book I've read by Murakami, but even after just three of his books he was on my "favourite authors" pile, in fact, even after the first book of his I read, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle he would have shot onto that list, such was its immediate impact on me.
What is it I like so much about him? Well, like many of his characters, I find it hard to verbalise. So much happens at a purely emotional, or pre-verbal level in his books. In this way, he reminds me of Virginia Woolf, another of my favourite authors. His genius comes in the way he can convey this emotional inner life of his characters to the reader. His language (or at least the translation of it - I do sometimes wonder how much of it is intentional on his part, how much is the translator, and how much is just the way Japanese people express themselves), has a beautifully bare, stripped down feel. There are no particularly striking individual images or equisitely composed sentences, but somehow the cumulative effect of his writing does have a haunting, poetic quality to it. His characters are often lost, emotionally vulnerable and on a loosely defined quest for something they cannot begin to fathom. They are simply wandering in the maze of modern life, battling loneliness, despair and inertia at the same time as going about their fairly mundane daily routines. These also have a kind of soothing poetry of their own in Murakami's books, and often follow similar lines - doing laundry and housework, eating in little cafes, drinking beers, listening to music, smoking cigerettes, traveling around the city on public transport, walking with no specific destination in mind. Like the wonderful character Midori says in this book, it's not about being smart. You just have to figure things out intuitively. That's what I like about his stories - they work on that intuitive level - you sense the emotional truth of things even if the the events in them seem bizarre and inexplicable. Actually, there is very little of that (in fact, none) in this book. Those that are used to Murakami's more surreal books, where the utterly odd and the completely normal seem to co-exist right alongside each other, may be surprised by this book, which has none of, what I had till now thought of as trademark, Murakami style. Actually, sensing that ths book would be more realistic, I hesitated before buying it, but I should have had more faith in th author. It still features many of the hallmarks that make him such a unique writer, and I still enjoyed it just as much as the others I have read. Reading this, you also get a deeper understanding of where the oddness springs from in some of his other books.
This particular story is framed as the earlier remberences of Toru Watanabe, a normal young man who is haunted by the song "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles. He hears it at the beginning of the novel, and is immeditaely transported back to his young adult life in the late sixties and early seventies. Whilst still at high school he forms a close knit friendship trio with a boy called Kizuki and a girl called Naoko, who have been a couple since childhood. One day, without any warning, Kizuki kills himself. This proves to be a pivotal point in the lives of both Toru and Naoko, and binds them together in ways neither of them could forsee....
Death, especially suicide and mental illness are key themes in this book, and yet it is also a strangely hopeful and uplifting story. A key theme of the book is that death and life are intertwined and intimately connected, and to pretend otherwise is nothing but folly. It's a hard thing to face up to, but somehow the genius of Haruki Murakami allows you to sense the emotional truth of this fact, and be at peace with it. Literature of the absolute highest order, in my humble opinion.
19.
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami 4.5/5
This is only the fourth book I've read by Murakami, but even after just three of his books he was on my "favourite authors" pile, in fact, even after the first book of his I read, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle he would have shot onto that list, such was its immediate impact on me.
What is it I like so much about him? Well, like many of his characters, I find it hard to verbalise. So much happens at a purely emotional, or pre-verbal level in his books. In this way, he reminds me of Virginia Woolf, another of my favourite authors. His genius comes in the way he can convey this emotional inner life of his characters to the reader. His language (or at least the translation of it - I do sometimes wonder how much of it is intentional on his part, how much is the translator, and how much is just the way Japanese people express themselves), has a beautifully bare, stripped down feel. There are no particularly striking individual images or equisitely composed sentences, but somehow the cumulative effect of his writing does have a haunting, poetic quality to it. His characters are often lost, emotionally vulnerable and on a loosely defined quest for something they cannot begin to fathom. They are simply wandering in the maze of modern life, battling loneliness, despair and inertia at the same time as going about their fairly mundane daily routines. These also have a kind of soothing poetry of their own in Murakami's books, and often follow similar lines - doing laundry and housework, eating in little cafes, drinking beers, listening to music, smoking cigerettes, traveling around the city on public transport, walking with no specific destination in mind. Like the wonderful character Midori says in this book, it's not about being smart. You just have to figure things out intuitively. That's what I like about his stories - they work on that intuitive level - you sense the emotional truth of things even if the the events in them seem bizarre and inexplicable. Actually, there is very little of that (in fact, none) in this book. Those that are used to Murakami's more surreal books, where the utterly odd and the completely normal seem to co-exist right alongside each other, may be surprised by this book, which has none of, what I had till now thought of as trademark, Murakami style. Actually, sensing that ths book would be more realistic, I hesitated before buying it, but I should have had more faith in th author. It still features many of the hallmarks that make him such a unique writer, and I still enjoyed it just as much as the others I have read. Reading this, you also get a deeper understanding of where the oddness springs from in some of his other books.
This particular story is framed as the earlier remberences of Toru Watanabe, a normal young man who is haunted by the song "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles. He hears it at the beginning of the novel, and is immeditaely transported back to his young adult life in the late sixties and early seventies. Whilst still at high school he forms a close knit friendship trio with a boy called Kizuki and a girl called Naoko, who have been a couple since childhood. One day, without any warning, Kizuki kills himself. This proves to be a pivotal point in the lives of both Toru and Naoko, and binds them together in ways neither of them could forsee....
Death, especially suicide and mental illness are key themes in this book, and yet it is also a strangely hopeful and uplifting story. A key theme of the book is that death and life are intertwined and intimately connected, and to pretend otherwise is nothing but folly. It's a hard thing to face up to, but somehow the genius of Haruki Murakami allows you to sense the emotional truth of this fact, and be at peace with it. Literature of the absolute highest order, in my humble opinion.
119HanGerg
Ok, this is a really long post, and is entirely non-book related. It's a plea for advice about my non-LT life, so feel free to skip it!
So, I have been busy formulating some plans for my new life, post the great news about the husband's new role as a well paid film studies researcher. We still haven't heard much from the two institutions that will be funding this project (I'm NOT getting anxious about this, it's NOT all too good to be true, this IS definitely happening), so we really don't know much about what our lives will be like come September, only that it should be much better and more exciting in many ways.
The most crucial thing we really don't know is: will we have to move to Manchester??? Neither of us has actually ever been there (I'm such a Southerner, I've hardly been anywhere "Oop North"), but it sounds like a fun, vibrant place, and hubby's a big city boy anyway, so in theory we are keen. On the other hand, we have a house, friends and family down in Exeter and environs, so it will take a while to wind things down here. Plus, part of the research proposal detailed G spending the first 6 months in Hungary for research (the project is on Hungarian film in the inter-war era). So our most recent projections have us staying in Exeter for the next academic year, then moving to Manchester. All very well for hubby, who has an exciting new career to look forward to, wherever we are living. But what am I going to do????
Well, the one thing I do know for certain is that my contract at the school where I am currently working will run out at the end of this term. It's possible that they may chose to renew it, but much as I have enjoyed working there in many respects, it's not the ideal role for me, and I'm ready to move on. Before we knew about G getting the research funding, I had applied for a couple of other jobs, both at a nearby high school. I got an interview for both, which will be next Tuesday and Wednesday. Both jobs look really good, and I've been interviewed at the school before, made a good impression, and was really impressed by the school.
But here's the thing: since G got this funding, I've been thinking a lot about my future career. As I mentioned before, I think I want to move out of education. For a long time I didn't know what I wanted to do instead, as I've always been a person with a really wide range of interests. However, increasingly I'm drawn to a career in graphic design. I have some background in this area, though more from a fine art perspective, plus I've had a modest amount of success selling a few of my quirky photographs which I refine a lot using photoshop. Other commitments have really got in the way of me developing this interest into anything more than an occassional hobby, but now I have the chance to perhaps try and develope it into a something more serious.
So, my curent thinking is this. Do a two year foundation degree in graphic design, but starting next academic year, up in Manchester. Spend this year developing a really kick-ass portfolio to get into the best school possible. Also have a really good attempt at making a success of selling my photographs, and also take lots of part-time and evening courses at the local college in computer programmes to aid graphic design, plus some courses in printmaking at the local print studio. I am really excited and pretty set on all these things happening (though hubby thinks I may not need the 2 year course if I suceed with lots of my short term goals, as my plan is just to do freelance graphic design rather than break into the industry in a formal way).
The thing that is really vexing me is: should I go to these job interviews next week, and consider still having a full time job alongside all these exciting things I have planned? I know I'm in a really lucky position, and most people would love to have this problem, but it is causing me some sleepless nights at the mo. The trouble is I know myself too well- I'm not great at splitting my energies between lots of different things, and a full time job on top of all these nice plans might mean that lots of them don't happen. Of course, hubby's not going to be earning enough money to pay for all these studies I want to do without any contribution from me, so the job would be a great way to save some money towards the cost of my future studies, but I think I could also get some other, less intensive part-time work that could do that. Part of me is just yearning to be free, and get started on this really exciting programme of studying that I have mapped out for myself, but the sensible part of me knows the money will be really handy, even essential. I've already changed my mind about 3 times in the last few days, and hubby's no help as he says he will support whatever decision I make (though does remind me about the money stuff), so any advice welcome.
(PS, I must stress again, for those people that feel like throttling me, I know I'm in a really lucky position to even have the choice to stop work or not, when so many people are struggling financially at the moment. In my defense, it's not like my husband will be earning a fortune, it's just that we've lived off so little money for so long that I know we could make it on just his income. We won't be eating caviar off golden plates or anything like that ; ) )
So, I have been busy formulating some plans for my new life, post the great news about the husband's new role as a well paid film studies researcher. We still haven't heard much from the two institutions that will be funding this project (I'm NOT getting anxious about this, it's NOT all too good to be true, this IS definitely happening), so we really don't know much about what our lives will be like come September, only that it should be much better and more exciting in many ways.
The most crucial thing we really don't know is: will we have to move to Manchester??? Neither of us has actually ever been there (I'm such a Southerner, I've hardly been anywhere "Oop North"), but it sounds like a fun, vibrant place, and hubby's a big city boy anyway, so in theory we are keen. On the other hand, we have a house, friends and family down in Exeter and environs, so it will take a while to wind things down here. Plus, part of the research proposal detailed G spending the first 6 months in Hungary for research (the project is on Hungarian film in the inter-war era). So our most recent projections have us staying in Exeter for the next academic year, then moving to Manchester. All very well for hubby, who has an exciting new career to look forward to, wherever we are living. But what am I going to do????
Well, the one thing I do know for certain is that my contract at the school where I am currently working will run out at the end of this term. It's possible that they may chose to renew it, but much as I have enjoyed working there in many respects, it's not the ideal role for me, and I'm ready to move on. Before we knew about G getting the research funding, I had applied for a couple of other jobs, both at a nearby high school. I got an interview for both, which will be next Tuesday and Wednesday. Both jobs look really good, and I've been interviewed at the school before, made a good impression, and was really impressed by the school.
But here's the thing: since G got this funding, I've been thinking a lot about my future career. As I mentioned before, I think I want to move out of education. For a long time I didn't know what I wanted to do instead, as I've always been a person with a really wide range of interests. However, increasingly I'm drawn to a career in graphic design. I have some background in this area, though more from a fine art perspective, plus I've had a modest amount of success selling a few of my quirky photographs which I refine a lot using photoshop. Other commitments have really got in the way of me developing this interest into anything more than an occassional hobby, but now I have the chance to perhaps try and develope it into a something more serious.
So, my curent thinking is this. Do a two year foundation degree in graphic design, but starting next academic year, up in Manchester. Spend this year developing a really kick-ass portfolio to get into the best school possible. Also have a really good attempt at making a success of selling my photographs, and also take lots of part-time and evening courses at the local college in computer programmes to aid graphic design, plus some courses in printmaking at the local print studio. I am really excited and pretty set on all these things happening (though hubby thinks I may not need the 2 year course if I suceed with lots of my short term goals, as my plan is just to do freelance graphic design rather than break into the industry in a formal way).
The thing that is really vexing me is: should I go to these job interviews next week, and consider still having a full time job alongside all these exciting things I have planned? I know I'm in a really lucky position, and most people would love to have this problem, but it is causing me some sleepless nights at the mo. The trouble is I know myself too well- I'm not great at splitting my energies between lots of different things, and a full time job on top of all these nice plans might mean that lots of them don't happen. Of course, hubby's not going to be earning enough money to pay for all these studies I want to do without any contribution from me, so the job would be a great way to save some money towards the cost of my future studies, but I think I could also get some other, less intensive part-time work that could do that. Part of me is just yearning to be free, and get started on this really exciting programme of studying that I have mapped out for myself, but the sensible part of me knows the money will be really handy, even essential. I've already changed my mind about 3 times in the last few days, and hubby's no help as he says he will support whatever decision I make (though does remind me about the money stuff), so any advice welcome.
(PS, I must stress again, for those people that feel like throttling me, I know I'm in a really lucky position to even have the choice to stop work or not, when so many people are struggling financially at the moment. In my defense, it's not like my husband will be earning a fortune, it's just that we've lived off so little money for so long that I know we could make it on just his income. We won't be eating caviar off golden plates or anything like that ; ) )
120susanj67
Hello, I haven't posted on your thread before, but I read your question above and I would say go for the interviews and take the full-time job if you get an offer. If you're looking to move for the Sept 2013 academic year, then it will only be for a year, the time will fly by and, as you say, it is always better to have money than not. And that's particularly the case if you're moving, when there are all sorts of unforeseen costs and general hassle. Try a couple of the evening courses you have planned and see how you go. You might not be able to do everything, but you should get an idea of whether your long-term plan is likely to work or not, and if you change direction or want to try something else, you will still have an income in the meantime. (But do bear in mind that I am the most risk-averse person you will ever meet!)
121ronincats
I'd say go for the interviews. If they don't sound like something you would enjoy, don't accept them if you are offered them. If they do, take one and do the classes and however much more you feel like. You may get inspiration from your experiences there. But go for your dream long term.
122HanGerg
Thanks you very much for the advice. After this and the friends we went and had dinner with last night, the verdict is pretty unanimous. I'll go for the interviews, and see what happens. Of course, there's no guarantee I'll get offered either of the jobs, though I think I've got a good chance with both. If I don't get either of them I can have a re-think, if I do then I can start saving my pennies towards my long term goal. It was a silly problem really, one of the good kind of problems to have, but I did feel completely unable to make a decision one way or the other, so thank-you Susan and Roni for taking the time to read, inwardly digest and offer advice. It's much appreciated.
123feca67
Hi, I enjoyed your thoughts on Norwegian Wood, it's definitely the best book I've read so far this year. Glad you've decided to do the interviews - you've got to go for these things if only to see where they lead.... right, I'm off to check out bookshelfporn.com, but I'll be back
124souloftherose
Decisions like that are so tough Hannah. I say go for the interviews too - if anything else it's always good practice! If you don't get either of these positions could you look for a part-time teaching post to give you more time to focus on developing your photography skills?
125avatiakh
I'm with the others on going for the interviews, you still have all options open and maybe the interviews themselves will give you more clarity in your decisions. I have a friend who is in her final year of a graphic design degree, she decided to go for it when she turned 50 and has loved every creative minute of it.
126HanGerg
Thank you all for the advice. It's a great comfort to think of all you lovely LTers puzzling over my dilemma with me! I especially love the story of the lady doing a graphic design course at age 50. If it's not too late for her to do it, it's definitely not too late for me!
The interviews are approaching now, and I am starting to get a bit nervous, but then I remember all the other exciting options I have and I relax a bit. I will keep everyone posted with what happens!
The interviews are approaching now, and I am starting to get a bit nervous, but then I remember all the other exciting options I have and I relax a bit. I will keep everyone posted with what happens!
127HanGerg
OK, so back to the books!
20. Enna Burning - Shannon Hale 3/5
I wandered into the junior section of the library the other day, with a vague plan to read some Joan Aiken, but then spotted this, the second in Hale's YA fantasy series about the fictional kingdom of Bayern after the really excellent The Goose Girl. I read that a few years ago and loved it, and only recently found out it was the start of a series, so I was very happy to discover this. I couldn't really remember Enna being a character from the first book, so thought maybe it was just a book set in the same fictional universe, but in fact it is a direct sequel, just one with the focus slightly shifted onto more minor characters from the first book.
This book is the story of Enna, friend and handmaiden to princess Isi, the heroine of the first book. Enna has had to leave the city and return to her forest home to nurse a sick parent. We join her living there with her brother, restless and yearning for something exciting to happen to her. One day her brother discovers a mysterious scroll that teaches the reader how to control fire. He soon masters this power, but as Enna herself discovers, it is a terrible one that takes as well as gives, and like flame itself, can easily rage beyond the wielder's control. War against a neighbouring kingdom looms, and soon Ennna is embroiled in adventures that more than fulfill all her earlier wishes for excitement and finding a roll for herself, but at what cost to herself, those she loves, and even her own kingdom?
This is a good young adult fantasy read with some sophisticated themes and quite an original story line. Hale also writes great male romantic leads - I can imagine reading this as a young teenager and developing quite a crush on at least two of the male characters. However, for me it didn't come anywhere close to matching the perfection of the first book in the series. The plot seems to leap forward too quickly at times, glossing over moments that are central to the plot. The character of Enna also makes some puzzling choices, and although it's fine to have a flawed central character, she is far too morally compromised at times for me to fully root for her. Overall though, a satisfying YA read, and I will keep an eye open for the next in the series, though I won't rush out and hunt it down immediately on this evidence.
20. Enna Burning - Shannon Hale 3/5
I wandered into the junior section of the library the other day, with a vague plan to read some Joan Aiken, but then spotted this, the second in Hale's YA fantasy series about the fictional kingdom of Bayern after the really excellent The Goose Girl. I read that a few years ago and loved it, and only recently found out it was the start of a series, so I was very happy to discover this. I couldn't really remember Enna being a character from the first book, so thought maybe it was just a book set in the same fictional universe, but in fact it is a direct sequel, just one with the focus slightly shifted onto more minor characters from the first book.
This book is the story of Enna, friend and handmaiden to princess Isi, the heroine of the first book. Enna has had to leave the city and return to her forest home to nurse a sick parent. We join her living there with her brother, restless and yearning for something exciting to happen to her. One day her brother discovers a mysterious scroll that teaches the reader how to control fire. He soon masters this power, but as Enna herself discovers, it is a terrible one that takes as well as gives, and like flame itself, can easily rage beyond the wielder's control. War against a neighbouring kingdom looms, and soon Ennna is embroiled in adventures that more than fulfill all her earlier wishes for excitement and finding a roll for herself, but at what cost to herself, those she loves, and even her own kingdom?
This is a good young adult fantasy read with some sophisticated themes and quite an original story line. Hale also writes great male romantic leads - I can imagine reading this as a young teenager and developing quite a crush on at least two of the male characters. However, for me it didn't come anywhere close to matching the perfection of the first book in the series. The plot seems to leap forward too quickly at times, glossing over moments that are central to the plot. The character of Enna also makes some puzzling choices, and although it's fine to have a flawed central character, she is far too morally compromised at times for me to fully root for her. Overall though, a satisfying YA read, and I will keep an eye open for the next in the series, though I won't rush out and hunt it down immediately on this evidence.
128sibylline
Going for the interviews takes some of the pressure off you vis a vis the other project -- gives you more time to prepare and think and plan for it too.
129HanGerg
So....I got the job from interview number one! Eek! So, come September I will be "Senior Teaching Assistant for EAL students" (EAL=English as an additional language) The job is quite a lot of responsibility- more than I expected if I'm honest, and I just hope I can repay the faith of the people that hired me. Although I did a lot of EAL teaching when I lived in Hungary, that is a different proposition from helping children in the British school system with their language skills. Also, there's a degree of pupil tracking and programme development that I haven't really done before, but I guess that was apparent from my application, and they still think I can do the job. I'll obviously have to give this my all, so where that leaves all the graphic design plans I'm not sure. I guess I'll just have to be really determined to keep both projects on the go together, and not loose track of my long term goals. I just hope I can keep up my energy levels to give both things my full attention.
132susanj67
Well done for getting the job, and I'm sure you'll settle into it. All new jobs are a bit daunting at first. Line up some treats for your first week - a couple of books or a DVD box-set!
133HanGerg
Thanks for the reassurance Lucy, Rhian and Susan. I'm already thinking about the job a lot, and figuring out ways I can do various things, plus I've arranged with my current workplace to have a few days there shadowing the person I'll be replacing, which I'm sure will help a lot.
On the book front, I'm stuck into two non-fiction titles, and making rather slow progress. This is my problem with NF, it doesn't quite have that "pull" that keeps you coming back to the story and makes you want to pick up your book at any spare moment of the day. So A Time Travellers Guide To Medieval England and Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media are slowing me up a bit, but I'm afraid that if I start a fiction book at the same time they might stall completely.
In some other book related news, I went to an author talk at a local school today, attended by about 200 primary school children and their attendant adults. The authors were "The Two Steves", Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore. Their work doesn't exactly look like the finest children's literature - together they have created the "IHero" series, one of these role playing style series where you have to choose which route the story takes. However, as speakers to a group of children, I think they were absolutely excellent. They had the children in stitches with their double act style readings from their stories, and turned the second half into an interactive game show for the kids, that also cleverly featured their books. They also seemed heartfelt in their desire to get children enthused about reading, and probably have as good a chance of suceeding as anyone, with their accessible style of books and really engaging presentation. I get the feeling Steve Skidmore was probably a teacher himself in an earlier incarnation, whereas a quick check on LT shows that Steve Barlow has loads of other titles to his name, so he's probably the main writer in their partnership, and perhaps some of his other books might be worth a bit of investigation.
On the book front, I'm stuck into two non-fiction titles, and making rather slow progress. This is my problem with NF, it doesn't quite have that "pull" that keeps you coming back to the story and makes you want to pick up your book at any spare moment of the day. So A Time Travellers Guide To Medieval England and Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media are slowing me up a bit, but I'm afraid that if I start a fiction book at the same time they might stall completely.
In some other book related news, I went to an author talk at a local school today, attended by about 200 primary school children and their attendant adults. The authors were "The Two Steves", Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore. Their work doesn't exactly look like the finest children's literature - together they have created the "IHero" series, one of these role playing style series where you have to choose which route the story takes. However, as speakers to a group of children, I think they were absolutely excellent. They had the children in stitches with their double act style readings from their stories, and turned the second half into an interactive game show for the kids, that also cleverly featured their books. They also seemed heartfelt in their desire to get children enthused about reading, and probably have as good a chance of suceeding as anyone, with their accessible style of books and really engaging presentation. I get the feeling Steve Skidmore was probably a teacher himself in an earlier incarnation, whereas a quick check on LT shows that Steve Barlow has loads of other titles to his name, so he's probably the main writer in their partnership, and perhaps some of his other books might be worth a bit of investigation.
134HanGerg
OK, I can't resist a list, so I'm going to join in with all the list-making fun, despite the fact that I don't really feel qualified to make one, as I haven't read so many of the contenders. I've mainly steered clear of genre fiction, and have only included slightly genre-y books where they also have mainstream appeal.
So, my best novels of 2000-2009. (In no particular order)
1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Everything is Illuminated - Jonathon Safran Foer
3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
4. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
5. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
6. Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norell - Susanna Clarke
7. Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris
8. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
9. Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters
10. The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
Like a lot of people I have other things on my TBR pile that may make their way into the list eventually, but I find myself strangely untempted by many of the books on lots of the lists I saw. Notable exceptions are; The Corrections (I have his latest on the TBR pile), and a couple by Micheal Chabon, an author I'd never even heard of until I started perusing these Best of.... lists.
So, my best novels of 2000-2009. (In no particular order)
1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Everything is Illuminated - Jonathon Safran Foer
3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
4. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
5. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
6. Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norell - Susanna Clarke
7. Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris
8. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
9. Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters
10. The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
Like a lot of people I have other things on my TBR pile that may make their way into the list eventually, but I find myself strangely untempted by many of the books on lots of the lists I saw. Notable exceptions are; The Corrections (I have his latest on the TBR pile), and a couple by Micheal Chabon, an author I'd never even heard of until I started perusing these Best of.... lists.
135avatiakh
Congratulations on getting the job, at least you will be sorted financially and may be able to take a few short term graphic design courses.
That's a great list, I've read 6, have 2 more on my tbr pile and now must check out Mr Ferris. Love Michael Chabon.
That's a great list, I've read 6, have 2 more on my tbr pile and now must check out Mr Ferris. Love Michael Chabon.
136souloftherose
#129 Congratulations! It sounds like a rewarding role - I hope you can keep up your graphic design projects too.
#134 I like your list - I've started and given up on Then We Came to the End several times, just couldn't quite get into it. But there are lots of others on your list that I really enjoyed, and some titles to look out for.
#134 I like your list - I've started and given up on Then We Came to the End several times, just couldn't quite get into it. But there are lots of others on your list that I really enjoyed, and some titles to look out for.
138HanGerg
#135 and #136. Thanks for the kind congrats Kerry and Heather. Re: Then We Came to the End, it's not a typical novel for me, and I didn't immediately think of it when putting this list together, I just came across it on one of the critics' lists and thought "Oh yeah, that was really good....". It's basically a comedy about office life, shot through with a fair amount of tragedy. I thought it had some interesting things to say about modern life, but did have a fairly unusual style that might rub some up the wrong way.
#137 I can't recommend The Invisible Bridge highly enough Lucy. Moving and unforgettable is my verdict.
Isn't life full of strange co-incidences sometimes? The very day after I learnt about Michael Chabon, particularly his book that topped many of the critics' lists of the decade The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I wondered into a couple of charity shops near my workplace, as I often do when killing a couple of hours before my evening job in a youth club. It crossed through my mind to check for Chabon, but I scanned the C's and saw nothing. I did however spot a lovely illustrated, hardback edition of The Ladies of Grace Adieu a collection of short stories set in the same universe as "Jonathon Strange..." by Susanna Clarke. Then I unearthed 24 Party People as I had very much enjoyed the film (Further investigation when I got home made this not seem like such a good buy - it's actually a novelisation of the screenplay rather than, as I'd assumed, the autobiography the film was based on. A small difference perhaps, but somehow it made me loose interest.)
#137 I can't recommend The Invisible Bridge highly enough Lucy. Moving and unforgettable is my verdict.
Isn't life full of strange co-incidences sometimes? The very day after I learnt about Michael Chabon, particularly his book that topped many of the critics' lists of the decade The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I wondered into a couple of charity shops near my workplace, as I often do when killing a couple of hours before my evening job in a youth club. It crossed through my mind to check for Chabon, but I scanned the C's and saw nothing. I did however spot a lovely illustrated, hardback edition of The Ladies of Grace Adieu a collection of short stories set in the same universe as "Jonathon Strange..." by Susanna Clarke. Then I unearthed 24 Party People as I had very much enjoyed the film (Further investigation when I got home made this not seem like such a good buy - it's actually a novelisation of the screenplay rather than, as I'd assumed, the autobiography the film was based on. A small difference perhaps, but somehow it made me loose interest.)
139HanGerg
#135 and #136. Thanks for the kind congrats Kerry and Heather. Re: Then We Came to the End, it's not a typical novel for me, and I didn't immediately think of it when putting this list together, I just came across it on one of the critics' lists and thought "Oh yeah, that was really good....". It's basically a comedy about office life, shot through with a fair amount of tragedy. I thought it had some interesting things to say about modern life, but did have a fairly unusual style that might rub some up the wrong way.
#137 I can't recommend The Invisible Bridge highly enough Lucy. Moving and unforgettable is my verdict.
Isn't life full of strange co-incidences sometimes? The very day after I learnt about Michael Chabon, particularly his book that topped many of the critics' lists of the decade The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I wondered into a couple of charity shops near my workplace, as I often do when killing a couple of hours before my evening job in a youth club. It crossed through my mind to check for Chabon, but I scanned the C's and saw nothing. I did however spot a lovely illustrated, hardback edition of The Ladies of Grace Adieu a collection of short stories set in the same universe as "Jonathon Strange..." by Susanna Clarke. Then I unearthed 24 Party People as I had very much enjoyed the film (Further investigation when I got home made this not seem like such a good buy - it's actually a novelisation of the screenplay rather than, as I'd assumed, the autobiography the film was based on. A small difference perhaps, but somehow it made me loose interest.) Then I scanned down a little further, and there it was! The very book I had just discovered I wanted! What a great find!
From there I went to the other charity shop next door and unearthed another treasure - a book about Japanese graphic design I've had on my Amazon wishlist for ages Japanese Graphics Now!. An absolute steal at £1! Along th same lines, I also bought a really good-looking book on illustration Drawing from your Imagination, and another book I'm looking forward to read, The Time of the Hero by an an author I've long wanted to read more of Mario Vargas Llosa. So, a productive afternoon - 6 lovely books, including two I really wanted, and all for about £6. I love charity shops!
#137 I can't recommend The Invisible Bridge highly enough Lucy. Moving and unforgettable is my verdict.
Isn't life full of strange co-incidences sometimes? The very day after I learnt about Michael Chabon, particularly his book that topped many of the critics' lists of the decade The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I wondered into a couple of charity shops near my workplace, as I often do when killing a couple of hours before my evening job in a youth club. It crossed through my mind to check for Chabon, but I scanned the C's and saw nothing. I did however spot a lovely illustrated, hardback edition of The Ladies of Grace Adieu a collection of short stories set in the same universe as "Jonathon Strange..." by Susanna Clarke. Then I unearthed 24 Party People as I had very much enjoyed the film (Further investigation when I got home made this not seem like such a good buy - it's actually a novelisation of the screenplay rather than, as I'd assumed, the autobiography the film was based on. A small difference perhaps, but somehow it made me loose interest.) Then I scanned down a little further, and there it was! The very book I had just discovered I wanted! What a great find!
From there I went to the other charity shop next door and unearthed another treasure - a book about Japanese graphic design I've had on my Amazon wishlist for ages Japanese Graphics Now!. An absolute steal at £1! Along th same lines, I also bought a really good-looking book on illustration Drawing from your Imagination, and another book I'm looking forward to read, The Time of the Hero by an an author I've long wanted to read more of Mario Vargas Llosa. So, a productive afternoon - 6 lovely books, including two I really wanted, and all for about £6. I love charity shops!
140HanGerg
21. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media - Susan J. Douglas4.5/5
This book examines the way women have been portrayed in the media roughly since the author's teenage years in the 1950's, up to the time the book was published in 1994. She justifies this approach by explaining that she was part of the great post-war baby boom, and being part of such a large cohort at such a time of rapid change made her generation uniquely influential on our culture, as advertisers and cultural producers started to gear everything to this huge potential market, hence the invention of "the teenager" amongst other cultural shifts.
She starts by looking at the TV programmes and pop music that she first became aware of her teenage years, which to hear her describe it, was pretty unsubtle in its insistance that a woman's place was in the home, and that for women, satisfaction was to be found in looking really great to ensnare a husband, then settling down into a life of being a selfless martyr to your family. Yet a mere ten years later, women who were raised on this cultural diet were saying things like "marriage is slavery" and protesting outside the Miss World competition. The opening chapters do a great job of explaining how this generation became those women, dealing with how they saw that this selfless work for family wasn't actually working out for their mothers, not least because during the war years they had been told that they could do a man's job whilst the men were away, but as soon as the men returned from war were told very firmly to get back in the kitchen. She also examines the effect of the Cold War, and the fact that American schoolchildren were having it drilled into them that in order to compete with the Ruskis they were going to have to strive to be the very best they could be - and rather stupidly "The Man" didn't just broadcast this message to boys - girls' radar picked it up too. This caused a bit of a split in the female psyche of the day - on the one hand being told domestic bliss was the best the could and should hope for, and on the other, being told they were the brave new hope that was going to take America into the future. This kind of contradiction seems to repeat itself again and again over the course of the book, and one of the key themes is how women during this time have been forced into an impossible position, where their own personality is divided against itself in many ways.
I thought this book was full of great insights, and for someone like me that wasn't particularly aware of the full history of the women's rights movement, it was very illuminating. Even for those that were there, the author has some really incisive things to say about the media's treatment of the emerging movement. Some of it was so obviously biased and ill-informed that it's enough to make your blood boil. Some of the coverage was more subtle, but equally damaging in the long term, and this was the bit of the book I found really interesting. Douglas explains how many media commentators of the time, although being largely hostile to the women's movement, did have to concede that they had a point when it came to some of the economic arguments that the movement made regarding the need to pay women the same wage for the same work, and the need to provide good quality childcare to free more women up to join the workforce. However, the same commentators, often completely dismissed the movement's insistence that "the personal is political", and the legacy of that can still be felt to this day I think, where economic attitudes towards women have, by and large been reformed (although many of us are still waiting for that equal pay etc...), but it's in the domestic sphere, where the rates of domestic abuse, for example, are still pretty appalling, that very little progress has been made. Anyway, there's loads of equally interesting and thought provoking arguments advanced in this book, which I will not go into here, but if this is a topic you're interested in, I would recommend it most heartily. It's written by an academic, and is academic in tone, as in it's very thoroughly researched and advances quite detailed arguments, but at the same time it's very readable and written with a light touch that makes it very accessible. The only reason it didn't get the full 5 stars is that it is very American-centric, and occassionally mentions celebrities or famous legal cases that I've never heard of, and gives no background info, instead taking it for granted that the reader was familiar with them. Apart from that small fact, I ate up every word.
143HanGerg
Why thank-you ladies. I think you would both enjoy it very much.
A quick current reading review - I'm slowly inching through The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, which I'm sadly not enjoying that much, so it's dragging a bit. I fact I've all but abandoned it to dive into Chanur's Homecoming the final part of the brilliant Chanur Saga, which is racing along quite nicely with an opening game of razor's edge diplomacy with our Hani heroines bargaining like crazy for the life of their allies with the deliciously awful Kif.
A quick current reading review - I'm slowly inching through The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, which I'm sadly not enjoying that much, so it's dragging a bit. I fact I've all but abandoned it to dive into Chanur's Homecoming the final part of the brilliant Chanur Saga, which is racing along quite nicely with an opening game of razor's edge diplomacy with our Hani heroines bargaining like crazy for the life of their allies with the deliciously awful Kif.
144sibylline
Glad you are loving your time with the hani - I miss Pyanfar, wish there were more But I guess I'm happy they exist at all!
145HanGerg
So, I don't currently have any books read to report on, but I have discovered some exciting finds at the charity shop today!
We had a boring appointment at the bank today, which did at least mean we were in the vicinity of probably the best second hand bookshop in the city, so of course that was our reward once the boring stuff was concluded. I foud some great treasures, not least a whole shelf of Virago Modern Classics. Having only found out about them via LT, I was eager to start my collection, and came away with two good ones today. Firstly, Pilgrimage 1 by Dorothy Richardson. Although this is a collection of short stories, which I'm not usually such a fan of, this was really a must buy for me, as someone that did a dissertation on Virginia Woolf and the stream of consciousness, as the back cover makes the bold claim that Richardson was the first to use this technique, predating VW and James Joyce, putting her on a par with Proust as a great literary innovator. High praise indeed, so I really must investigate. Secondly, Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, which is a tale of a woman who becomes a witch as part of a wider quest to free herself of the ties of patriarchial society, which sounds interesting. Then there's Seven Japanese Tales by Junichiro Tanizaki, more short stories, but equally irresistible as these stories, written between 1910 and 1959, sound from their description like they are a major source of inspiration for two of my favourite people - writer Haruki Murakami and film director/artist/tv host/maverick genius Takeshi Kitano. Finally, yet another book that I just heard about on LT, and then discovered almost immediately after, spooky. After reading Heather(souloftherose)'s review, I had wishlisted A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon, and then there it is, in the charity shop for £1! My book finding mojo is amazing at the moment!
We had a boring appointment at the bank today, which did at least mean we were in the vicinity of probably the best second hand bookshop in the city, so of course that was our reward once the boring stuff was concluded. I foud some great treasures, not least a whole shelf of Virago Modern Classics. Having only found out about them via LT, I was eager to start my collection, and came away with two good ones today. Firstly, Pilgrimage 1 by Dorothy Richardson. Although this is a collection of short stories, which I'm not usually such a fan of, this was really a must buy for me, as someone that did a dissertation on Virginia Woolf and the stream of consciousness, as the back cover makes the bold claim that Richardson was the first to use this technique, predating VW and James Joyce, putting her on a par with Proust as a great literary innovator. High praise indeed, so I really must investigate. Secondly, Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, which is a tale of a woman who becomes a witch as part of a wider quest to free herself of the ties of patriarchial society, which sounds interesting. Then there's Seven Japanese Tales by Junichiro Tanizaki, more short stories, but equally irresistible as these stories, written between 1910 and 1959, sound from their description like they are a major source of inspiration for two of my favourite people - writer Haruki Murakami and film director/artist/tv host/maverick genius Takeshi Kitano. Finally, yet another book that I just heard about on LT, and then discovered almost immediately after, spooky. After reading Heather(souloftherose)'s review, I had wishlisted A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon, and then there it is, in the charity shop for £1! My book finding mojo is amazing at the moment!
146sibylline
Lolly Willowes is terrific!
147HanGerg
Oh, that's great to know Lucy, thanks! I was trying desperately to remember the Virago published author that you were recommending so highly the other day. I had an inkling it may have been Richardson, but maybe not...?
148souloftherose
#140 Excellent review of the Susan J. Douglas book. I started Natasha Walters' Living Dolls which so far I've found fascinating but quite disturbing. It's been on hold until I work up the courage to pick it up again!
#145 A whole shelf of VMCs?! And A Spot of Bother to boot - woo!
#145 A whole shelf of VMCs?! And A Spot of Bother to boot - woo!
149HanGerg
#148 I've read Living Dolls Heather, and know what you mean about it being disturbing. I think it has got a lot of really valuable points to make though, so keep preservering with it when you've got the strength.
I often get quite depressed when I read those kinds of books, thinking how far we still have to go to achieve any kind of equality. I have another such book on my TBR pile, speaking of which.....
My TBR pile was beginning to spiral a little out of control (it's still only a small hillock compared to many people's I know, but our house is not blessed with a lot of bookshelf space, so my TBR pile was literally a pile of books on our sitting room floor) After a lot of recent purchases it was beginning to get a litle unwieldy, so I've sorted it out a bit, and resolved to enforce a little order. Hence a list of books I'm hoping to tackle next. Still only the tip of the TBR iceberg, but if I work methodically throught this little lot, at least I will have made a start...
General Fiction
1. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
3. Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter (Re-read)
4. Wise Children - Angela Carter (Re-read)
5. A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon
6. Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
7. The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas
8. The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
Science Fiction
9. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
10. Ilium - Dan Simmons
11. The Chrysalids - John Wyndham
Non-Fiction
12. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper - Fuschia Dunlop
13. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher - Kate Summerscale
14. The Equality Illusion - Kat Banyard
15. Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud - Shaun Considine
I often get quite depressed when I read those kinds of books, thinking how far we still have to go to achieve any kind of equality. I have another such book on my TBR pile, speaking of which.....
My TBR pile was beginning to spiral a little out of control (it's still only a small hillock compared to many people's I know, but our house is not blessed with a lot of bookshelf space, so my TBR pile was literally a pile of books on our sitting room floor) After a lot of recent purchases it was beginning to get a litle unwieldy, so I've sorted it out a bit, and resolved to enforce a little order. Hence a list of books I'm hoping to tackle next. Still only the tip of the TBR iceberg, but if I work methodically throught this little lot, at least I will have made a start...
General Fiction
1. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
3. Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter (Re-read)
4. Wise Children - Angela Carter (Re-read)
5. A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon
6. Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
7. The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas
8. The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
Science Fiction
9. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
10. Ilium - Dan Simmons
11. The Chrysalids - John Wyndham
Non-Fiction
12. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper - Fuschia Dunlop
13. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher - Kate Summerscale
14. The Equality Illusion - Kat Banyard
15. Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud - Shaun Considine
150sibylline
Very nice list for your upcoming reads. I have to read The Chrysalids - let me know when you get to it.
151HanGerg
22. Chanur's Homecoming - C.J. Cherryh 4/5
A fine and satisfying finale to the series. After a succession of breathless encounters, it manages to tie things up nicely, whilst hinting at tantalising new beginnings that make you hopeful for the future of these fine felines. A great fun, fast-paced and thoughtful space-opera series, that served as a great introduction to the huge back catalogue of C.J.Cherryh. I shall certainly be investigating a few more of her series, and the good news is, there's lots of them to discover.
152ronincats
Glad you finally made it through the Chanur series, Hannah. I do love those books and am happy you enjoyed them.
153HanGerg
Thanks Roni! What others by Cherryh would you recommend?
The Warrior's Apprentice appeared in the post the other day, eek! I'm going to have a little sujorn from SF now, which will serve to really build up a nice anticipatory feeling for this one!
The Warrior's Apprentice appeared in the post the other day, eek! I'm going to have a little sujorn from SF now, which will serve to really build up a nice anticipatory feeling for this one!
154HanGerg
Well I'm in danger of becoming a full-blown Tour De France widow, so I have taken the opportunity while the other half is engrossed to analyse my reading of the year so far.
22 Books read (A pretty paltry total, but I have a big summer holiday coming up, so I'm hopeful of improved stats in the near future.)
Genre: Fantasy - 3, Contemporary Fiction - 5, Horror - 1, Sci Fi - 8, Young Adult - 2, Historical Mystery - 1, Non-Fiction - 2. Not a very varied reading list, but fairly typical for me. The 3 fantasy titles are all in the George R.R Martin series, and 5 of the SF titles are part of a series. (4 Chanur and 1 Mars)
Gender: Male 12, Female 10.
Nationality: USA - 16, UK - 4, Canada - 1, Japan - 1. A surprisingly high number of American authors, which is partly explained by the fact that all the series I have been reading recently are by US authors. This also makes me think I could make my reading a lot more international in the second half of the year.
Source: Bought (new) - 2, Bought (second hand) - 9, Library - 2, Gifts - 3, Borrowed - 2, Bookmooch - 1, Readitswapit - 1, TBR pile - 2. Yes, the charity shops of Exeter and environs have done pretty well out of me this year, the library has not had has many visits as usual, and my new discoveries Bookmooch and Readitswapit have yielded a few reads. The old TBR pile has been added to far more than it's been depleted so far this year.....sound familiar anyone ; )
Decade published: 1970's - 1, 1980's - 6, 1990's - 10, 2000's - 3, 2010's - 2. This quite surprised me. I know I'm often reading books that aren't quite cutting edge, but I didn't realise most were more than a decade old! Conversely, I'm not exactly wall to wall with classics either.
This was the first analysis of my reading I've done like this, and it was inspired by LT friends. I must say it was quite revealing, especially on the nationality and age of the books I tend to read. So as a medium term goal I'm going to try and read a bit more internationally, and to read some fiction that's more than a few decades old.
22 Books read (A pretty paltry total, but I have a big summer holiday coming up, so I'm hopeful of improved stats in the near future.)
Genre: Fantasy - 3, Contemporary Fiction - 5, Horror - 1, Sci Fi - 8, Young Adult - 2, Historical Mystery - 1, Non-Fiction - 2. Not a very varied reading list, but fairly typical for me. The 3 fantasy titles are all in the George R.R Martin series, and 5 of the SF titles are part of a series. (4 Chanur and 1 Mars)
Gender: Male 12, Female 10.
Nationality: USA - 16, UK - 4, Canada - 1, Japan - 1. A surprisingly high number of American authors, which is partly explained by the fact that all the series I have been reading recently are by US authors. This also makes me think I could make my reading a lot more international in the second half of the year.
Source: Bought (new) - 2, Bought (second hand) - 9, Library - 2, Gifts - 3, Borrowed - 2, Bookmooch - 1, Readitswapit - 1, TBR pile - 2. Yes, the charity shops of Exeter and environs have done pretty well out of me this year, the library has not had has many visits as usual, and my new discoveries Bookmooch and Readitswapit have yielded a few reads. The old TBR pile has been added to far more than it's been depleted so far this year.....sound familiar anyone ; )
Decade published: 1970's - 1, 1980's - 6, 1990's - 10, 2000's - 3, 2010's - 2. This quite surprised me. I know I'm often reading books that aren't quite cutting edge, but I didn't realise most were more than a decade old! Conversely, I'm not exactly wall to wall with classics either.
This was the first analysis of my reading I've done like this, and it was inspired by LT friends. I must say it was quite revealing, especially on the nationality and age of the books I tend to read. So as a medium term goal I'm going to try and read a bit more internationally, and to read some fiction that's more than a few decades old.
155kgodey
I just read The Pride of Chanur! Good to know that the series is good all the way through :)
156sibylline
Isn't it great to see 'patterns' in your reading? - Kind of leads to reading more 'consciously' - which is very rewarding somehow.
157HanGerg
#155 Yeah, they're great Kriti, and actually I think the series gets stronger as it goes along, so plenty more to look forward to.
#157 Reading more "consciously" is LT all over for me. Before I discovered this place, my strategies for discovering new reading material revolved around picking things off library shelves based on whether the spine design made it look like a good read, getting recommendations from friends and acquaintances and working my way randomly through the SF masterworks series. Now I have piles of books on my living room floor just begging to be read!
#157 Reading more "consciously" is LT all over for me. Before I discovered this place, my strategies for discovering new reading material revolved around picking things off library shelves based on whether the spine design made it look like a good read, getting recommendations from friends and acquaintances and working my way randomly through the SF masterworks series. Now I have piles of books on my living room floor just begging to be read!
158HanGerg
23. A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon 3.5/5
This is funny novel on a series of very serious subjects - depression, anxiety, growing older, and disfunctional families. George is married to Jean. He's a British stiff-upper-lip, solid and dependable type, newly retired and looked forward to a life of sketching in his new garden studio. Well, at least until he learns his daughter is going to re-marry after her disastorous first marriage, to the unsuitable boyfriend who was only supposed to be a rebound fling. Around the same time George finds a strange growth on his hip, and his world begins to crumble around his ears. Jean is his solid and dependable wife, and a model mother. Except she's having an affair with one of George's old colleagues and feels she never really understood her children. Katie is the single-parent, headstrong and quick to anger daughter, and Jamie the calm and in control - though secretly uptight and not yet come to terms with his own homosexuality - son. They and their respective partners all have chapters devoted to their lives, but really this is the George show. This is a strength of the novel, but also a failing, as George seems so clueless and at sea with his emotional inner life that he can be a pretty unbelievable character at times. The humorous tone in which some of his more extreme behaviour is related to the reader sometimes makes you feel like you're reading the script to one of those tragi-comic sitcoms we Brits seem to do so well, which doesn't always sit comfortably with the material to my mind. On the other hand, the novel tackles some pretty important and heavy themes head on, and still manages to encase it within a family drama that never feels forced or untrue, and also provides some genuine chuckle-worthy moments, normally from the niceness of the phrasing rather than the more physically comedic actions of the characters. I must also say, despite being a fairly hefty volume, I raced through it in a few days, such was the compelling nature of the story. All in all an enjoyable read, though not an amazing one.
160HanGerg
For all those that have read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, you will understand my excitement when I stumbled across these photos. These are from a probe sent to Mars by NASA. Full details and panoramic pictures can be obtained from their website. To me they somehow pull off the trick of simultaneously looking like a painting for the cover of every SF novel ever written about Mars, and at the same time so realistic you could close your eyes and imagine standing there yourself, much like you were Nadia, or even Ann the ultimate Red, hypnotised forever by the beauty of Mars....
161beserene
Hello Hannah! Since you popped over to my thread, I thought I would return the call. Those Mars rover pictures are fascinating. :)
162HanGerg
#161 Greetings! Thanks for the visit! Please make yourself at home! I have a wide range of teas and excellent, stove-brewed coffee available for guests : )
24. The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer 2.5/5
I found this book frustrating, as it could have been amazing, but was only OK. There's no doubt the writer is skillful, and has done an awful lot of painstaking research. The idea behind the book was brilliant, and the subject matter is largely fascinating. What is wrong with it is the way the material is presented. In the book's introduction the writer states that his aim is to transport the reader back in time to the medieval period, and give us a real feel for what it would be like to live in that time and place. For a non fiction book this feels like a fresh and exciting way of approaching history, and he illustrates it very evocatively by inviting the reader to imagine arriving at a medieval market town as dusk is falling, and to wonder about where they would sleep that night, what the street they are standing on looks like, even what they are wearing. At this point the reader is excited about what is to come, as the realisation hits that you know so little about how day to day life was lived in that distant time, and feeling immediately transported there by the skillful writing. But then, for me, that feeling is...well, squandered. This idea of the reader being a time traveller that witnesses things at first hand, although present as a device, is really underused, and instead, at its worst moments the book just becomes the recital of a boring list of possessions, or towns, or ranks of the church and so on.There is a lot of very interesting information included, and it's true that many history books do neglect to look at the life of the ordinary people which this book does seek to address, it just promised so much more. And then, just to make the frustration complete, he ends with a fascinating chapter about medieval writers, Chaucer foremost amongst them, and then writes an incredible epilogue where he manages to widen out the focus of his examination of the medieval period to emcompass the whole of history, plotting an unbroken line between the people of the past and the present, and how the actions of historical figures continue to echo today that almost moved me to tears. A could-have-been-brilliant book that instead was just a intermintently interesting one. Sigh.
24. The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer 2.5/5
I found this book frustrating, as it could have been amazing, but was only OK. There's no doubt the writer is skillful, and has done an awful lot of painstaking research. The idea behind the book was brilliant, and the subject matter is largely fascinating. What is wrong with it is the way the material is presented. In the book's introduction the writer states that his aim is to transport the reader back in time to the medieval period, and give us a real feel for what it would be like to live in that time and place. For a non fiction book this feels like a fresh and exciting way of approaching history, and he illustrates it very evocatively by inviting the reader to imagine arriving at a medieval market town as dusk is falling, and to wonder about where they would sleep that night, what the street they are standing on looks like, even what they are wearing. At this point the reader is excited about what is to come, as the realisation hits that you know so little about how day to day life was lived in that distant time, and feeling immediately transported there by the skillful writing. But then, for me, that feeling is...well, squandered. This idea of the reader being a time traveller that witnesses things at first hand, although present as a device, is really underused, and instead, at its worst moments the book just becomes the recital of a boring list of possessions, or towns, or ranks of the church and so on.There is a lot of very interesting information included, and it's true that many history books do neglect to look at the life of the ordinary people which this book does seek to address, it just promised so much more. And then, just to make the frustration complete, he ends with a fascinating chapter about medieval writers, Chaucer foremost amongst them, and then writes an incredible epilogue where he manages to widen out the focus of his examination of the medieval period to emcompass the whole of history, plotting an unbroken line between the people of the past and the present, and how the actions of historical figures continue to echo today that almost moved me to tears. A could-have-been-brilliant book that instead was just a intermintently interesting one. Sigh.
163sibylline
I've spent HOURS at the Nasa site devouring the photos -- some of the shots of various moons of Jupiter are riveting as well!
164HanGerg
I hadn't been to the actual Nasa site until just now. It's fascinating stuff isn't it?
This is all relatively new to me, to be the kind of person who is absorbed by the official Nasa website. I've always been the artistic, daydreamer type, lost in a world of imagination. It took a fictional book about Mars to awaken this interest, but now I begin to see the reality is just as fascinating. I've even liked the Mars Exploration Rovers on Facebook to get future updates. This could be an interesting new chapter in my personal development! : )
This is all relatively new to me, to be the kind of person who is absorbed by the official Nasa website. I've always been the artistic, daydreamer type, lost in a world of imagination. It took a fictional book about Mars to awaken this interest, but now I begin to see the reality is just as fascinating. I've even liked the Mars Exploration Rovers on Facebook to get future updates. This could be an interesting new chapter in my personal development! : )
165beserene
Ooh, I do love a good cup of tea! Pity about the medieval book, though. You know, one of the best evocations of the medieval period that I've read recently was actually in a children's book -- Crispin: the Cross of Lead by Avi. Sometimes fiction does a better job of that sense of immersion. It's really too bad, though, that the nonfiction book wasted its promising set up.
Have you read Connie Willis' Doomsday Book? Again, fiction, but actually about a time traveler going back to the middle ages. It's intense. I LOVED it. Thought I'd throw that in there, in case you are still in the mood for the period. :)
Have you read Connie Willis' Doomsday Book? Again, fiction, but actually about a time traveler going back to the middle ages. It's intense. I LOVED it. Thought I'd throw that in there, in case you are still in the mood for the period. :)
166HanGerg
I read Doomsday Book last year actually, at the urging of several Lters. It was a great book, and I think about it often. In fact, it's probably the reason that I was interested enough in the medieval period to pick up this book. I do feel like I'm not done with the medieval period yet though, so may have to check out your recommendation, thanks! : )
167thornton37814
The Time Travelers Guide to Medieval England is on my wish list. I hope I like it better than you did when I get to it.
168HanGerg
#167 Greetings! I was aware as I wrote the review that several Lters had warmly praised the book, and it has a good average score of 4.14, so it seems most people like it a great deal more than me. If you're a medieval history buff, it certainly has a lot to recommend it. My issue with it was that I really wanted it to bring the past alive for me, and I think it could have done that better.
169souloftherose
#158 Glad you enjoyed A Spot of Bother. I wanted to thumb your review but I couldn't find it on the work page :-(
#160 Wow - thank you for sharing the photos. I've just liked the Mars Exploration Rovers on facebook too.
#162 Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy The Time Traveller's Guide as much as you hoped to. I keep seeing it in the library and would like to read it at some point but hopefully better expectations of the book will help.
#160 Wow - thank you for sharing the photos. I've just liked the Mars Exploration Rovers on facebook too.
#162 Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy The Time Traveller's Guide as much as you hoped to. I keep seeing it in the library and would like to read it at some point but hopefully better expectations of the book will help.
170HanGerg
Hi Heather! I just posted the review to the book page. My general rule of thumb for posting reviews is I tend to only do it when I feel like I had a reasonable amount to say about the book and I've written a fairly in depth review, or if the book has very few or no reviews already posted. This one was somewhere in the middle, but after your kind offer to thumb it I decided it warranted posting!
Book update: Almost finished my NF Chinese cooking and travelogue Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper which started very promisingly but has tailed off a bit, and I'm about half way through Jonathan Frantzen's Freedom, which I think is outstanding.
Book update: Almost finished my NF Chinese cooking and travelogue Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper which started very promisingly but has tailed off a bit, and I'm about half way through Jonathan Frantzen's Freedom, which I think is outstanding.
171HanGerg
25. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper - Fuschia Dunlop 3.5/5
This fascinating travelogue/ cookery memoir follows the adventures of an English journalist who decided to change her life by inventing a reason to study Chinese culture at university in the backwater of Sichuan province in the mid-1990's. However, she soon finds herself neglecting her official studies and instead coming under the spell of Chinese cuisine. This starts her out on a journey that has lasted until the present day, and has taken in becoming the first non-Chinese person to enrol in an official Chinese cookery school, becoming a fluent Mandarin speaker, travel to many of the regions of China with a rich culinary heritage, friendship with many of China's foremost chefs, food writers and historians, and of course many,many incredible meals, everywhere from the lowliest roadside shack, to banquets in the equivalent of a Michelin starred restaurant. This has lead to her making many trips back to China over the years, and publishing several cookery books of regional Chinese cuisine, as well as this book. As well as all the descriptions of amazing meals and cookery processes, we also get some fascinating glimpses into how modern China is developing, the character of the Chinese people and some great insights into just how different the whole approach to cooking and eating in China is. Add in a recipe at the end of every chapter and you have a real treat of a book. In fact, maybe I've been a little harsh in my rating. My quibble with the book was how it seemed to loose it's way a bit in the mid section, and meander around a bit. I think this is due to the fact that it doesn't describe one discreet part of the writer's life, but rather several different periods of time that are interrupted by lots of time spent doing other things in other countries. Somehow this lack of focus does creep into the book a bit, and after racing through the first half I got bogged down in the second. I also found myself getting a little annoyed with the author in places, like when she doesn't realise until AFTER enjoying a luxury meal with officials in an impoverished region that the local people might not be too impressed with that (and then only because her Chinese friend gently had to explain it to her), and another when she has an attack of conscience AFTER eating a banquet at a restuarant that is part of China's booming trade in engandered species. She claims for herself a lot on expertise of China and the Chinese, and then commits howlers like that, which does make you wonder.....However, these are minor quibbles really, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone interested in cooking, eating or travel. Maybe not to committed vegetarians though....the Chinese really DO eat pretty much everything, and often the way they dispatch it isn't exactly what I would call humane. Oh, and the chapter on how China's food chain has been polluted by their rapid industrialisation coupled with widespread corruption is enough to put you off your dim sum entirely. All fascinating stuff though.
172thornton37814
The title of Dunlop's book caught my attention. I clicked through to read a description and a few reviews of it, and I added it to my TBR list. I'm not sure that I would be as adventurous in my eating as she was. I would definitely not knowingly eat cat.
173HanGerg
26. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemison 4/5
A fantasy novel, the first of a series, that I picked up at the library whilst browsing the Fantasy/Sci-Fi shelves for something tempting (and also because fantasy buff Beserene was singing its praises), and raced through in no time at all, as it was so compelling. It tells the story of Yeine, who soon after the mysterious death of her mother, is plucked from being ruler of her obscure little kingdom by her maternal grandfather, who shockingly names her as one of the three people that could suceed him as unofficial ruler of the world. However, the palace where the ruling family lives is a very strange place, perched on its impossibly high pedestal above the main city, where gods that have been made to take human form as a punishment roam the corridors, and the humans who dwell there are hardly less deadly...
My first helping of fantasy for a while, and it had a refreshingly modern feel at the same time as a convincingly created mythological, (or is that theological?) framework that allows the novel to span thousands of years in the history of its magical world. Best of all are the characters, especially the banished god Nahadoth, or "the Nightlord" who is simultaneously the most chilling baddy, one of the most tenderhearted goodies, and a totally hot love interest all wrapped up in a cloak of darkness filled with stars from the depths of cosmic canyons. Bring on the next installment I say.
174sibylline
We just bought those the other day -- all three are out and available.
Here is one of my favorites. I just like to go study this now and then.
Where the Heck Are We Anyway?
This is another one I look at almost every day.
Photo of the Day
Here is one of my favorites. I just like to go study this now and then.
Where the Heck Are We Anyway?
This is another one I look at almost every day.
Photo of the Day
175HanGerg
Those are great links Lucy, thanks. The astrology photo of the day is wonderful - my favourite was "the pillars of creation". Truly mindblowing. The other site, with its constant zooming out into th wider universe, is the kind of thing that freaks me out if I think about it for too long. It reminds me of that moment in one of Douglas Adams' "Hitchhikers Guide....." books, where someone is made to stand in a booth where they are shown their location in relation to the whole of the rest of the universe as a punishment. (As I recall, it nearly always results in instant insanity for the viewer).
176HanGerg
27. Freedom - Jonathan Frantzen 4.5/5
I keep wavering over the rating for this book, as now I've finished it, it doesn't quite feel like anything more than the sum of its parts, but at the time I read it I was hooked in one hundred percent and totally along for the ride. How resonant it will prove to be in the future, I'm not sure. I almost feel like I should re-review it in a few weeks time. Anyway, in the here and now, I'll try and record the impressions I had as I was reading it, which were that this is a great book. Not a truly exceptional one, but a very good one. It got bogged down a bit in the sections that dealt with the environmental issues that were so important to one of the main characters, although their presence in the book, I suspect is due to the fact that they are causes close to the heart of the author as well, and perhaps that was the problem, they weren't entirely necessary for the story.
The plot is a fairly minimal one, which is why I had the impression that this is a good book, because it manages to make something as vague and general a storyline as "a middle-aged couple with grown up children have marital difficulties" into a highly compelling and brilliantly nuanced story. The narrative switches viewpoints and hops about the timeline of the family's life quite a lot, plus brings in a rich cast of supporting characters, and manges to bring it all to life very convincingly and intricately. But...I still have a few nagging misgivings. Despite being probably the central character, I never felt we really got under the skin of Patty, the wife. She is admired greatly by many of the other characters, who see her as an exceptional person, but it's hard to see why at times. She seems to have no particular talents outside her college basketball career, and carves out no niche for herself in life apart from that of devoted mother. The author hints at the roots of this lying in her unhappy upbringing, but I'm not sure that cuts it. I cannot quite escape the feeling that the male characters are generally more rounded and realisticaly portrayed. There are also a few moments where the artifice of the author can be glimpsed in the plot, in slightly contrived occurences that serve the story more than they create a feeling of realism. I keep wavering in my judgement and wanting to revise my score to something more modest, but then I remember how engrossed I was..... this one is a real puzzle.
177sibylline
Gosh, how I love Doug Adams, what a genius he was. Glad you are enjoying the photo of the day.
178jolerie
So many great books on this thread! Many of them are sitting on my shelves so even more motivation to read more books off my shelves!
It's nice to see a positive review of Freedom. Even though I haven't read the book, for some reason I keep seeing a lot of negative ratings so your perspective is refreshing. :)
It's nice to see a positive review of Freedom. Even though I haven't read the book, for some reason I keep seeing a lot of negative ratings so your perspective is refreshing. :)
179souloftherose
#173 Glad you enjoyed the Jemisin - that's another series I've been remiss about finishing.
I saw Hungary win a gold medal for the pommel horse today and thought of you!
I saw Hungary win a gold medal for the pommel horse today and thought of you!
180alcottacre
#173: I got that one from PBS not long ago. I need to give it a read!
181HanGerg
Ooh, look at that! I go away for a few days, and when I come back I have a clutch of lovely posts waiting for me. How wonderful! I'm rather shattered after a long drive home tonight, but I have a couple of finished books to review, and want to respond to all these lovely messages, so I shall endeavour to do both, plus give a full account of my exciting trip, tomorrow!
182HanGerg
Right, where were we? Oh yes...
# 177 I love Douglas Adams too! In fact, thinking of that scene and then your praises made me resolve to re-read "The Hitchhikers Guide..." series, although I don't know where others stand on the sometimes expressed idea that Mostly Harmless the fifth book, should be disregarded. Without giving anything away, the ending of that book is somewhat distressing for fans of the series.
(Having just done some research here on LT, it's seems there may be a sixth book, written by another author, though apparently following Adams' intention to write another part...if I do re-read the series, that might be an interesting angle to explore.)
# 178 Hi Valerie! Yes, I thought Freedom was good, but..... I understand where negative reviewers are coming from. It really was a strange book to review, as my opinion did keep wavering.
#179 "I saw Hungary win a gold medal for the pommel horse today and thought of you!" Oh, bless! That's so sweet Heather! We LTers do become quite attached to our online friends don't we? When I was watching the opening ceremony I kept thinking about Lucy whenever a Corgi appeared on screen. My resident Hungarian was skyping with his mum the other day, and they were discussing the Hungarian gold in the pommel horse - the opinion is that we Brits were not very gracious about ceding that one to Hungary, because of course it was so close with the British gymnast with the adorable hairstyle (that's my opinion, not hubby's!). The sentiment was something like - don't be greedy, look at how many gold medals you have already!!
# 180 Hi Stasia! Well, I'm not sure what PBS is, but jolly well go for it I say! ; ) I'm already getting impatient to read the second part - I went to the library the other day to get it, but they had the third one on the shelves but not the second. Gah!, don't you just hate it when that happens!
# 177 I love Douglas Adams too! In fact, thinking of that scene and then your praises made me resolve to re-read "The Hitchhikers Guide..." series, although I don't know where others stand on the sometimes expressed idea that Mostly Harmless the fifth book, should be disregarded. Without giving anything away, the ending of that book is somewhat distressing for fans of the series.
(Having just done some research here on LT, it's seems there may be a sixth book, written by another author, though apparently following Adams' intention to write another part...if I do re-read the series, that might be an interesting angle to explore.)
# 178 Hi Valerie! Yes, I thought Freedom was good, but..... I understand where negative reviewers are coming from. It really was a strange book to review, as my opinion did keep wavering.
#179 "I saw Hungary win a gold medal for the pommel horse today and thought of you!" Oh, bless! That's so sweet Heather! We LTers do become quite attached to our online friends don't we? When I was watching the opening ceremony I kept thinking about Lucy whenever a Corgi appeared on screen. My resident Hungarian was skyping with his mum the other day, and they were discussing the Hungarian gold in the pommel horse - the opinion is that we Brits were not very gracious about ceding that one to Hungary, because of course it was so close with the British gymnast with the adorable hairstyle (that's my opinion, not hubby's!). The sentiment was something like - don't be greedy, look at how many gold medals you have already!!
# 180 Hi Stasia! Well, I'm not sure what PBS is, but jolly well go for it I say! ; ) I'm already getting impatient to read the second part - I went to the library the other day to get it, but they had the third one on the shelves but not the second. Gah!, don't you just hate it when that happens!
183HanGerg
Right, now onto reviews:
28. The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold 4/5
Well, this was recommened most highly by Roni and Lucy, and I can see why. This is my first taste of the Vorkosigan series, and it's just as addictive as Lucy warned me it would be!
Basically what we have here is a great, rollicking space opera. It's not the first in the series, but the previous books dealt with the parents of this novel's central character, Miles Vorkosigan. This is really the story of his coming of age, so I'm guessing later novels in the series deal with his adult adventures. Miles is a brilliant character - dealing with all sorts of issues relating to the fact he was born a dwarf, and brittle-boned due to poison gas inhaled by his pregnant mother in a failed assassination attempt. At the beginning of the novel these impediments stop him achieving his dearly held wish of entering his planet's military academy. After this failure he heads to a neighbouring planet to visit his grandmother and lick his wounds a little. However, before he has even left the spaceport he has got himself embroiled in a well intended but potentially disastorous scheme to save a spaceship and its pilot from the scrapheap, that soon spirals into involvement in a full scale inter-galactic war! Luckily, though lacking in some of the physical attributes to make a solidier, Miles is blessed with more than his fair share of daring, cunning, bravery, charisma, integrity and intelligence - all attributes he will need to utilise to their upmost if he is to get himself, his travel companions, and his rapidly expanding "crew" out of the predicament he has landed them in.
A great fun read, written with real heart and intelligence - I can't wait for the next instalment!
29. The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Men and Women Today - Kat Banyard 4/5
Goodness me, this is a depressing read. That's not a criticism, this is a non fiction book, and it's simply that the facts it details are all true, and very depressing facts they are. Here's just a few to get you started:
"Women in the UK are paid 22.6 per cent less per hour than men.
Women do two-thirds of the world's work, yet recieve 10 per cent of the world's income and own 1 per cent of the means of production.
At least 100,000 women are raped each year in the UK and the rape conviction rate is 6.5 per cent.
Only 18.3 per cent of the world's members of parliament are women.
During the 1990s the number of men paying for sex acts in the UK doubled."
Depressed yet? That's just a few facts thrown at you in the introduction, there are plenty more where that came from. Want to know the percentage of anorexics who are women? It's here - 90%. Or maybe, how many scenes in porn films feature some sort of physical aggression towards the women in them. That's here too - 88.2%. Or how about the average age at which boys are exposed to pornography on their computers. Ok, get ready for this one.... 11 years old. This is in the chapter that is the most depressing of all, the one that deals with the effect of the absolutely exponential rise of pornography and it's bedfellows like lap dancing clubs and prostitution in our culture in recent years. This is the chapter to show to all those people that contend that pornography and feminism can co-exist, that to be anti pornography is to be simply prudish or anti-sex. Here's a few choice paragraphs for you "(a meta-analysis of studies into pornography consumption) found that consuming pornography increased aggressive behaviour in the viewer. A separate meta-analysis of forty six studies found that exposure to pornography reliably had the effect of making viewers more likely to commit sexual offences, experience difficulties in intimate relationships, and accept "rape myths" as true." Ok, so that's what the incresed sexualisation of our society is doing to the men. And to the women? "(In a survey of) 1,000 UK young women aged fifteen to nineteen in 2005 about their ambitions, 63 per cent said they would rather be a glamour model than a nurse, a doctor or a teacher. And while just 3 per cent aspired to a teaching role, a quarter thought lap dancing was an appealing profession."
This chapter is, as I said, probably the most depressing of all, but it is far from the whole picture. Other chapters cover a full range of ways in which women are still unequal in our society - from being discriminated against in the workplace, to the unfair division of domestic labour, to the beauty myth, to the way gender roles are enforced in the education system. If you are familiar with modern feminist thought there won't be anything particularly new here, but if you have never read a book like this before, it might open your eyes wide about many things. It is also a great source of facts and figures for those people that have always felt the arguments put forward here are true, but haven't had the raw data to back them up.
One of the points the book makes very well is the way that so many of the inequalities detailed here are so deeply entrenched in modern life that we just don't question them, which is the reason that even well intentioned people can sometimes dismiss the idea that these inequalities exist. Some examples: women are judged on their appearance - normal. Women aspire to be thin and beautiful, above almost anything else - nomal. Wome aren't as interested in maths, science and sports as men - normal. Boys and girls don't like playing together - normal. Men find it arousing to watch women being objectified - normal. Women should do the majority of the childcare and housework, even if both she and her partner have a full time job - normal. Women are too meek to really get ahead in business - normal. And so on. These ideas are embedded very deep into our culture, and as this book traces very well, they contribute a huge amount towards the more distressing symptoms of a culture that doesn't value women as much as men, such as domestic violence, rape and murder, as well as the more mundane and every day unequal pay and unfair divison of labour.
In case this is all getting a bit too depressing, the final chapter of the book looks at some of the ways that people can try to tackle these problems, as well as examples of people who have done just that. There is also a comprehensive list of websites, charities and institutions who are committed to tackling the issues raised in the book. After reading this, it's very likely that you will want to join one of them, as the alternative of just allowing things to continue on as they are is just too....that's right, depressing.
28. The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold 4/5
Well, this was recommened most highly by Roni and Lucy, and I can see why. This is my first taste of the Vorkosigan series, and it's just as addictive as Lucy warned me it would be!
Basically what we have here is a great, rollicking space opera. It's not the first in the series, but the previous books dealt with the parents of this novel's central character, Miles Vorkosigan. This is really the story of his coming of age, so I'm guessing later novels in the series deal with his adult adventures. Miles is a brilliant character - dealing with all sorts of issues relating to the fact he was born a dwarf, and brittle-boned due to poison gas inhaled by his pregnant mother in a failed assassination attempt. At the beginning of the novel these impediments stop him achieving his dearly held wish of entering his planet's military academy. After this failure he heads to a neighbouring planet to visit his grandmother and lick his wounds a little. However, before he has even left the spaceport he has got himself embroiled in a well intended but potentially disastorous scheme to save a spaceship and its pilot from the scrapheap, that soon spirals into involvement in a full scale inter-galactic war! Luckily, though lacking in some of the physical attributes to make a solidier, Miles is blessed with more than his fair share of daring, cunning, bravery, charisma, integrity and intelligence - all attributes he will need to utilise to their upmost if he is to get himself, his travel companions, and his rapidly expanding "crew" out of the predicament he has landed them in.
A great fun read, written with real heart and intelligence - I can't wait for the next instalment!
29. The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Men and Women Today - Kat Banyard 4/5
Goodness me, this is a depressing read. That's not a criticism, this is a non fiction book, and it's simply that the facts it details are all true, and very depressing facts they are. Here's just a few to get you started:
"Women in the UK are paid 22.6 per cent less per hour than men.
Women do two-thirds of the world's work, yet recieve 10 per cent of the world's income and own 1 per cent of the means of production.
At least 100,000 women are raped each year in the UK and the rape conviction rate is 6.5 per cent.
Only 18.3 per cent of the world's members of parliament are women.
During the 1990s the number of men paying for sex acts in the UK doubled."
Depressed yet? That's just a few facts thrown at you in the introduction, there are plenty more where that came from. Want to know the percentage of anorexics who are women? It's here - 90%. Or maybe, how many scenes in porn films feature some sort of physical aggression towards the women in them. That's here too - 88.2%. Or how about the average age at which boys are exposed to pornography on their computers. Ok, get ready for this one.... 11 years old. This is in the chapter that is the most depressing of all, the one that deals with the effect of the absolutely exponential rise of pornography and it's bedfellows like lap dancing clubs and prostitution in our culture in recent years. This is the chapter to show to all those people that contend that pornography and feminism can co-exist, that to be anti pornography is to be simply prudish or anti-sex. Here's a few choice paragraphs for you "(a meta-analysis of studies into pornography consumption) found that consuming pornography increased aggressive behaviour in the viewer. A separate meta-analysis of forty six studies found that exposure to pornography reliably had the effect of making viewers more likely to commit sexual offences, experience difficulties in intimate relationships, and accept "rape myths" as true." Ok, so that's what the incresed sexualisation of our society is doing to the men. And to the women? "(In a survey of) 1,000 UK young women aged fifteen to nineteen in 2005 about their ambitions, 63 per cent said they would rather be a glamour model than a nurse, a doctor or a teacher. And while just 3 per cent aspired to a teaching role, a quarter thought lap dancing was an appealing profession."
This chapter is, as I said, probably the most depressing of all, but it is far from the whole picture. Other chapters cover a full range of ways in which women are still unequal in our society - from being discriminated against in the workplace, to the unfair division of domestic labour, to the beauty myth, to the way gender roles are enforced in the education system. If you are familiar with modern feminist thought there won't be anything particularly new here, but if you have never read a book like this before, it might open your eyes wide about many things. It is also a great source of facts and figures for those people that have always felt the arguments put forward here are true, but haven't had the raw data to back them up.
One of the points the book makes very well is the way that so many of the inequalities detailed here are so deeply entrenched in modern life that we just don't question them, which is the reason that even well intentioned people can sometimes dismiss the idea that these inequalities exist. Some examples: women are judged on their appearance - normal. Women aspire to be thin and beautiful, above almost anything else - nomal. Wome aren't as interested in maths, science and sports as men - normal. Boys and girls don't like playing together - normal. Men find it arousing to watch women being objectified - normal. Women should do the majority of the childcare and housework, even if both she and her partner have a full time job - normal. Women are too meek to really get ahead in business - normal. And so on. These ideas are embedded very deep into our culture, and as this book traces very well, they contribute a huge amount towards the more distressing symptoms of a culture that doesn't value women as much as men, such as domestic violence, rape and murder, as well as the more mundane and every day unequal pay and unfair divison of labour.
In case this is all getting a bit too depressing, the final chapter of the book looks at some of the ways that people can try to tackle these problems, as well as examples of people who have done just that. There is also a comprehensive list of websites, charities and institutions who are committed to tackling the issues raised in the book. After reading this, it's very likely that you will want to join one of them, as the alternative of just allowing things to continue on as they are is just too....that's right, depressing.
185HanGerg
Ok, so where next with the series? The stuff on the page is rather confusing. There's a novella, but then it seems his next main novel is The Vor Game, is that the next one I should track down?
186SandDune
#182 the British gymnast with the adorable hairstyle - My husband voted him as having the stupidest hairstyle of the whole games. I do think he has grumpy old man tendencies sometimes!
#183 I think I'd better give The Equality Illusion a miss. I've got really strong feelings about women picking up all the domestic chores and childcare. I think I'd just get really, really annoyed.
#183 I think I'd better give The Equality Illusion a miss. I've got really strong feelings about women picking up all the domestic chores and childcare. I think I'd just get really, really annoyed.
187alcottacre
#180: Yes, I do hate when that happens!
PBS = PaperbackSwap
PBS = PaperbackSwap
188beserene
PaperbackSwap is a website where you can post books of your own that you are willing to get rid of, and "swap" them through the mail for books that others would like to get rid of. It has been a hit with several people here on LT, though when I tried it I didn't get as much out of it. Mostly because I hate getting rid of books, but also because there wasn't much available that I really wanted. I think it works particularly well if you have very broad reading tastes, don't keep books anyway, and live in the United States. But that's just my assessment. Others may have a different view.
Also, I thought your review on The Equality Illusion was great. It totally made me not want to read the book. Which is supposed to be a compliment, even though it might not seem so. :)
Also, I thought your review on The Equality Illusion was great. It totally made me not want to read the book. Which is supposed to be a compliment, even though it might not seem so. :)
189SandDune
I've done ReadItSwapIt which I think is the UK version. I've got quite a few books through that site. Although I only get rid of books now if I really hated them, my son's always got a conveyor belt of books to be swapped.
190souloftherose
#183 Re The Equality Illusion, I really struggled with the chapters covering those topics in Living Dolls - as a subject I find it incredibly depressing to read about although I think it's also really important...
191ronincats
Ah, excellent, Hannah. Another Vorkosigan convert.
Chronologically, the Mountains of Mourning is next, but it is collected in Borders of Infinity with several other novellas that take place later. You can find it for free online and go ahead and read it--I'd recommend that--and then read The Vor Game next, then Cetaganda, Brothers in Arms and then Borders of Infinity.
There's a pretty good description of the sequence under "Vorkosigan Saga" in Wikipedia, if you want to check it out. YOu can save Falling Free and Ethan of Athos until after you run out of all the other books in that universe, as they aren't in the direct storyline, and at some point you will want to fill in the backstory of Miles' parents, but do it when you are ready.
Enjoy yourself!
Chronologically, the Mountains of Mourning is next, but it is collected in Borders of Infinity with several other novellas that take place later. You can find it for free online and go ahead and read it--I'd recommend that--and then read The Vor Game next, then Cetaganda, Brothers in Arms and then Borders of Infinity.
There's a pretty good description of the sequence under "Vorkosigan Saga" in Wikipedia, if you want to check it out. YOu can save Falling Free and Ethan of Athos until after you run out of all the other books in that universe, as they aren't in the direct storyline, and at some point you will want to fill in the backstory of Miles' parents, but do it when you are ready.
Enjoy yourself!
192sibylline
Oh I love Cetaganda that might be my favorite.
Thanks for the Inequality review - well done. It's shocking to me how many men and women accept certain things unquestioningly as 'how it is' - no thought to how it could be otherwise.
Thanks for the Inequality review - well done. It's shocking to me how many men and women accept certain things unquestioningly as 'how it is' - no thought to how it could be otherwise.
193HanGerg
Hello all. Well, it's been a busy few weeks, which partially explains my absence from these boards. Firstly there was a lovely trip to Manchester, to see the place that is soon to become our home. It's quite a strange feeling, to walk around a city that you are visiting for the first time, and which you know you will be coming to live in. You feel an extra sense of urgency in soaking up all the details, and can get quite carried away painting pictures in your head of what life will be like there. Of course, the unspoken fear for me and the husband was that, after committing ourselves to living there for the best part of three years, we wouldn't like the place, but happily if feels like it might be just our kind of town - that's to say, a vibrant, lively feel with lots of arts venues and plenty of independent places to eat and drink. I didn't take any really good pictures of the place, but we did get a few holiday style snaps, so I will try and post one or two at some point. The biggest part of the trip for the husband was meeting the professor who has been instrumental in helping him to get his research fellowship at Manchester uni, plus having a bit of a nose round his new "workplace". He was rather nervous about this first meeting - most of the relationship to this point has taken the form of emails, but happily the whole thing went swimmingly. He and another prof from his department took us to lunch at a little cafe on campus, and they both couldn't have been more kind, helpful and down to earth.
So, after returning home from that trip, we didn't have long at home, and then we were off again, this time to North Devon. My mum was off to Tenerife, which meant that her stunning house right next to one of the areas best beaches was free, so we took the opportunity to have another mini-break. Happily, our stay coincided with one of this summer's rare extended spells of good weather, plus it turned out that, by chance, some of our friends were in the area, so we had a brilliant time, playing a variety of beach sports, paddling, barbecuing, hunting for our supper in rockpools, hiking and assorted other fun things. Another good reason to go is that my mum has a pretty well stocked wine cellar, which we also took good advantage of, so all in all it was a most relaxing few days. Now it's another brief spell at home, then it's off to Kent for a camping trip for a London-based friend's birthday, and then early next week we are off to Hungary for a week to see friends and family. Ah, the summer holidays! May they never end!
So, in my absence there has been quite a lot of activity here, which I was thrilled to see. Right, so let's see...
#186. Hi Rhian! Ha! i know a little bit about grumpy old man tendencies - they could also be called "Hungarian" tendencies I think...... That may sound a little harsh, but I think any Hungarian would admit that the national temperament is a little on the glum side. Here is an actual conversation I had with a friend of my mother-in-law last time I was in Hungary:
Friend: Hi, how are you?
Me: Fine! And you?
Friend: Oh, you know, struggling with the difficulties of life...(sigh)
Me: Er....yes.
#187 and 188. Hi Stasia and Sarah! thanks for clearing up PBS for me ladies! I'm part of Bookmooch and Readitswapit, but I must say, neither have really been the book shower I was hoping for. I tend to only hold onto books I really rate, as I have limited shelf space, so it is a good way to get rid of books I don't have room for, but so far I haven' t got that much back in return. Thanks for the review praise, Sarah!, as Heather says (Hi Heather!), these books are necessary reads, but never very enjoyable ones.
#191 Hi Roni! Yep, count me among the converted! As usual, you are a font of wisdom that nourishes the rest of us! Or er, some less overblown metaphor...thanks for all the good info, is what I'm trying to say! ; )
#192 Hi Lucy! Yes, armed with the knowledge in this book, I'm going to take to task the next person that dismisses a feminist viewpoint - I've met many in my time, and they do rather like to suggest it's a lot of fuss about not much. Well, they won't get away with it with me in future!: )
So, after returning home from that trip, we didn't have long at home, and then we were off again, this time to North Devon. My mum was off to Tenerife, which meant that her stunning house right next to one of the areas best beaches was free, so we took the opportunity to have another mini-break. Happily, our stay coincided with one of this summer's rare extended spells of good weather, plus it turned out that, by chance, some of our friends were in the area, so we had a brilliant time, playing a variety of beach sports, paddling, barbecuing, hunting for our supper in rockpools, hiking and assorted other fun things. Another good reason to go is that my mum has a pretty well stocked wine cellar, which we also took good advantage of, so all in all it was a most relaxing few days. Now it's another brief spell at home, then it's off to Kent for a camping trip for a London-based friend's birthday, and then early next week we are off to Hungary for a week to see friends and family. Ah, the summer holidays! May they never end!
So, in my absence there has been quite a lot of activity here, which I was thrilled to see. Right, so let's see...
#186. Hi Rhian! Ha! i know a little bit about grumpy old man tendencies - they could also be called "Hungarian" tendencies I think...... That may sound a little harsh, but I think any Hungarian would admit that the national temperament is a little on the glum side. Here is an actual conversation I had with a friend of my mother-in-law last time I was in Hungary:
Friend: Hi, how are you?
Me: Fine! And you?
Friend: Oh, you know, struggling with the difficulties of life...(sigh)
Me: Er....yes.
#187 and 188. Hi Stasia and Sarah! thanks for clearing up PBS for me ladies! I'm part of Bookmooch and Readitswapit, but I must say, neither have really been the book shower I was hoping for. I tend to only hold onto books I really rate, as I have limited shelf space, so it is a good way to get rid of books I don't have room for, but so far I haven' t got that much back in return. Thanks for the review praise, Sarah!, as Heather says (Hi Heather!), these books are necessary reads, but never very enjoyable ones.
#191 Hi Roni! Yep, count me among the converted! As usual, you are a font of wisdom that nourishes the rest of us! Or er, some less overblown metaphor...thanks for all the good info, is what I'm trying to say! ; )
#192 Hi Lucy! Yes, armed with the knowledge in this book, I'm going to take to task the next person that dismisses a feminist viewpoint - I've met many in my time, and they do rather like to suggest it's a lot of fuss about not much. Well, they won't get away with it with me in future!: )
196souloftherose
#193 Good news - do you have accommodation lined up?
197HanGerg
Hi Rhian, Valerie and Heather! We are moving from Exeter Valerie, a pretty little city, but not very lively. The main thing it has to recommend it is all the stunning countryside and pretty villages nearby, but whilst we are still young (ish!) the husband and I are keen for a bit more big city living.
Accommodation is a real puzzler Heather. The husband will be moving there sooner than me, and will perhaps just rent a room in a shared house until I go to join him a few months later. Whether we sell our house here and buy there, or let our house here and rent there, or let here and buy there, are things we are just beginning to think about. We went to see our financial advisor today as a matter of fact. We are leaning towards letting here and buying there if we can somehow afford it.
Ok, onto the books!
30. Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter 5/5
Ah, to be young again! I first read this book when I was about 16 or 17, and at that time it absolutely blew my mind, and quickly lept to the top of the table entitled "Best Books I Have Ever Read". But how would it strike me now...quite a number...of years later and bearing in mind that since then I have read many books that can contend to top that table? Well, rather well as it turns out. Seems my 16 year old self did know a good thing when it saw one (guess I shouldn't be that surprised - it was only about a year later I met my now-husband!). My take on it may have changed a bit - the underlying themes reveal themselves perhaps a little more now, and the older and wiser version of me can indentify more with some of the experiences and ideals of the characters perhaps a bit better, but overall, the sense of wonder at the strange and splendid story, and my slack-jawed admiration at Carter's absolute mastery of language remains pretty much as vivid as ever.
So, what's it all about? Well, the novel begins in the London dressing room of Fevvers, or "the Cockney Venus", as she relates her life story to Walser, a clean cut young American journalist who is trying to discover whether this unique winged trapeze artist is a sham or a marvel of the Victorian stage. This relating of her bizarre life in a house of ill repute and then a sinister freak show takes up the first third of the book. The other two thirds become even more baroquely weird, as Fevvers makes the aquaintance of the Colonel, an eccentric American circus master and Sybil, his fortune telling pig. Sybil advises the colonel that it is his destiny to take his troop of weird and wonderful acts across the wilds of Siberia, which is where we find Fevvers and her mysterious foster mother Lizzie, Walser (who is travelling incognito as a clown), and a whole host of others, on the cusp of the new century and heading into a future that is about to become even more odd....
The story is unique, marvellous and marbelled through with some creepy magical realist touches. The characters are fabulous, feisty and unforgettable. And the language...oh wow, the language is utterly brilliant. I don't normally feel the need to do this whilst reading, but I underlined a few key sentences to try and give you a taste..
"At that, she turned her immense eyes upon him, those eyes "made for the stage" whose messages could be read from standing room in the gods. Night had darkened their colour; their irises were now purple, matching th Parma violets in front of her mirror, and the pupils had grown so fat on darkness that the entire dressing room and all those within it coud have vanished without a trace inside those compelling voids."
(On an escaped tiger) "It came out of the corridor like orange quicksilver, or a rarer liquid metal, a quickgold. It did not so much run as flow, a questing sluice of brown and yellow, a hot and molten death."
How marvellous!
I'm currently reading Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud about those two Hollywood legends, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. So far, neither is emerging as likable characters, but there are some deliciously bitchy moments. This is a typical set of quotes, making reference to the fact that there seems to be, ahem, some debate about Joan's actual birthdate. Joan, about moving to Hollywood, with wide eyed innocence "I was 17 and still wet behind the ears" Bette, on the same event "She was 21 and already jaded!". At the moment my sympathies are marginally with Bette, but husband, who has already finished the book, is very much in the Joan camp, so we'll see.
Accommodation is a real puzzler Heather. The husband will be moving there sooner than me, and will perhaps just rent a room in a shared house until I go to join him a few months later. Whether we sell our house here and buy there, or let our house here and rent there, or let here and buy there, are things we are just beginning to think about. We went to see our financial advisor today as a matter of fact. We are leaning towards letting here and buying there if we can somehow afford it.
Ok, onto the books!
30. Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter 5/5
Ah, to be young again! I first read this book when I was about 16 or 17, and at that time it absolutely blew my mind, and quickly lept to the top of the table entitled "Best Books I Have Ever Read". But how would it strike me now...quite a number...of years later and bearing in mind that since then I have read many books that can contend to top that table? Well, rather well as it turns out. Seems my 16 year old self did know a good thing when it saw one (guess I shouldn't be that surprised - it was only about a year later I met my now-husband!). My take on it may have changed a bit - the underlying themes reveal themselves perhaps a little more now, and the older and wiser version of me can indentify more with some of the experiences and ideals of the characters perhaps a bit better, but overall, the sense of wonder at the strange and splendid story, and my slack-jawed admiration at Carter's absolute mastery of language remains pretty much as vivid as ever.
So, what's it all about? Well, the novel begins in the London dressing room of Fevvers, or "the Cockney Venus", as she relates her life story to Walser, a clean cut young American journalist who is trying to discover whether this unique winged trapeze artist is a sham or a marvel of the Victorian stage. This relating of her bizarre life in a house of ill repute and then a sinister freak show takes up the first third of the book. The other two thirds become even more baroquely weird, as Fevvers makes the aquaintance of the Colonel, an eccentric American circus master and Sybil, his fortune telling pig. Sybil advises the colonel that it is his destiny to take his troop of weird and wonderful acts across the wilds of Siberia, which is where we find Fevvers and her mysterious foster mother Lizzie, Walser (who is travelling incognito as a clown), and a whole host of others, on the cusp of the new century and heading into a future that is about to become even more odd....
The story is unique, marvellous and marbelled through with some creepy magical realist touches. The characters are fabulous, feisty and unforgettable. And the language...oh wow, the language is utterly brilliant. I don't normally feel the need to do this whilst reading, but I underlined a few key sentences to try and give you a taste..
"At that, she turned her immense eyes upon him, those eyes "made for the stage" whose messages could be read from standing room in the gods. Night had darkened their colour; their irises were now purple, matching th Parma violets in front of her mirror, and the pupils had grown so fat on darkness that the entire dressing room and all those within it coud have vanished without a trace inside those compelling voids."
(On an escaped tiger) "It came out of the corridor like orange quicksilver, or a rarer liquid metal, a quickgold. It did not so much run as flow, a questing sluice of brown and yellow, a hot and molten death."
How marvellous!
I'm currently reading Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud about those two Hollywood legends, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. So far, neither is emerging as likable characters, but there are some deliciously bitchy moments. This is a typical set of quotes, making reference to the fact that there seems to be, ahem, some debate about Joan's actual birthdate. Joan, about moving to Hollywood, with wide eyed innocence "I was 17 and still wet behind the ears" Bette, on the same event "She was 21 and already jaded!". At the moment my sympathies are marginally with Bette, but husband, who has already finished the book, is very much in the Joan camp, so we'll see.
198HanGerg
Oh, I also wanted to detail earlier my books from today. As I've mentioned before, when flying I like to take my mind of the fact that I'm trapped in a narrow metal tube with no hope of escape until the pilot lets me off at the other end, by reading a compulsive page turner. I was hoping for the second and third installments of N.K. Jemison's excellent Inheritance trilogy from the library, but someone had got there before me and snapped them up. My local bookshop also couldn't help me out, so no Jemison for me at least until I get back. So, in her place I discovered Kate Griffin, with her London-based urban magical series about the exploits of sorcerer Matthew Swift. I picked up the first two books, A Madness of Angels and The Midnight Mayor. I also picked up a steampunky SF by Alastair Reynolds, Terminal World. After the library I went to the bookshop, and being thwarted in my Jenison hunt, I gave into temptation and took advantage of their "Buy one, get one half price" offer, and splashed out on Murakami's IQ84 (parts 1 and 2) and Martin's Storm of Swords. Both are books I've been really looking forward to, although I just realised that I bought part one of SofS when I need part two! Argh! And I'm off camping until Sunday night early tomorrow, so I won't be able to exchange it until Monday!!! Doh!
Also, I was very excited to spot a new Kim Stanley Robinson whilst I was there. It's called 2312 , and very excitingly it appears to be set in the same universe as his Mars trilogy. I'm so excited about this I might even go crazy and buy it in hardback!
Also, I was very excited to spot a new Kim Stanley Robinson whilst I was there. It's called 2312 , and very excitingly it appears to be set in the same universe as his Mars trilogy. I'm so excited about this I might even go crazy and buy it in hardback!
199sibylline
Well I'm crazy too, I didn't know about Kate Griffin either but wow! A new Robinson, YAY!
200jolerie
I have the Mars trilogy books and have every intention to read them. I also have every intention to purchase 2312 which is firmly on my WL. :)
201HanGerg
Greetings from stiflingly hot Hungary. I've dropped most of my current reads for this trip, and instead have a Storm of Swords:Part 2 waiting in the wings, but first I'm really enjoying my chance discovery from the library, A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin, a really compelling Urban Fantasy (if that it the correct name for the genre), set in contemporary London, and detailing the quest of recently resurrected sorcerer Matthew Swift to take revenge on those that killed him two years earlier. His enemies are formidable, but what they haven't entirely realised, is how he's changed since he's been away..... Great stuff. (Sorry, no touchstones in this post, I'm on the Hungarian keyboard at the in-laws house, and I can't find the appropriate keys).
202sibylline
I've just succumbed to getting the Griffin - can't wait to read it. Hope the rest of your trip goes well.
203HanGerg
Finished the Griffin, after staying up extra late last night - first time I've done that in a while. It wasn't perfect from a writing craft point of view, but full of wonderful, marvellous, amazing, creepy and thrilling things, and I enjoyed it immensely. Longer review to follow when I get back from Hungary.
204HanGerg
Right, so I'm back in England, and good old English weather, which right on cue has greeted our return with a grey and rainy day. It's quite a shock to go from 35 degrees and never ending sunshine, and a wardrobe of shorts and sleeveless T-shirts, and then return to about 20 degrees lower temperatures, and therefore a wardrobe of jeans and a jumper. I kind of know now how my Hawaiian friend used to feel when she returned to her flat in the Budapest winter after visiting family in Hawaii at Christmas, although in this case, both countries are theoretically in the same season. There's a reason English people talk about the weather so much, and it's not just that we're emotionally awkward and ill at ease with more intimate topics like everyone else thinks. It's also because English weather is bizarre. But I digress.....
31. A Madness of Angels - Kate Griffin 4.5/5
This was a chance discovery from the library, and what a discovery it turned out to be! This was a hugely enjoyable book that was my introduction to a genre I've only really heard about since joing LT, which I guess you would call Urban Fantasy, or Urban Magic, or something like that. Definitely the word urban needs to feature prominently, as in this book the setting of contemporary London is as much a character in the book as the main protagonists. The system of magic in the book is really satisfying and well explained, and is based on the idea that in big cities magic builds up in all those places where life congregates, be it human, animal or otherwise. Because different areas of the city are used for different purposes, the magic that builds up there is different, so the magic one can harness on the underground for example, is different from that in a hospital. Also, there are different types of people that harness these magics in different ways. Some are skilled in spoken magic in the form of spells and curses, others in the drawing of magic images, some of which can take on a life of their own. Others understand the magic of the open road, and can travel in seemingly impossible ways. Probably most powerful of all are the sorcerers, that can just instinctively sense the magic of places through a deep intuitive understanding and careful study. Our hero is one such sorcerer, Matthew Swift. He awakens suddenly one day with a series of very violent memories of his own death etched in his mind. He wakes up in his own house, but everything is different to how he left it. Also, when he looks in the mirror he notices his eyes are now blue, when they used to be brown. On top of all that, the reader will notice that he sometimes refers to himself as "we"......
I have some minor stylistic quibbles with this book, not least the writer's habbit of showing...
disjointed...thoughts
through weirdly placed
.................and sometimes italicised........text, which was
a bit
annoying..........at times,
but otherwise I strongly recommend this as a hugely entertaining, spooky, fantastical and well told tale. Happily, I've got the second of the four books in the series already in my possession, so I don't think it will be long before I come back for another installment.
In the meantime I'm racing through A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold, at least partly because George R.R is being crafty and hasn't resolved the main cliffhanger he left us with at the end of the last book yet, the sly old dog. In the meantime, things have taken a turn for the unexpected in terms of major character killing off. Well, I say unexpected but I suppose it shouldn't be, he already has form in this area, but I can't help wondering who there's going to be left to root for come the end of the series if he keeps on at this rate. I suppose it's posers like that that are part of the fun. I always thought it was a bit of a failing of The Lord of the Rings that apart from poor old Boromir who gets killed off fairly early, none of the main characters (Gandalf aside) get much more than a scratch.
31. A Madness of Angels - Kate Griffin 4.5/5
This was a chance discovery from the library, and what a discovery it turned out to be! This was a hugely enjoyable book that was my introduction to a genre I've only really heard about since joing LT, which I guess you would call Urban Fantasy, or Urban Magic, or something like that. Definitely the word urban needs to feature prominently, as in this book the setting of contemporary London is as much a character in the book as the main protagonists. The system of magic in the book is really satisfying and well explained, and is based on the idea that in big cities magic builds up in all those places where life congregates, be it human, animal or otherwise. Because different areas of the city are used for different purposes, the magic that builds up there is different, so the magic one can harness on the underground for example, is different from that in a hospital. Also, there are different types of people that harness these magics in different ways. Some are skilled in spoken magic in the form of spells and curses, others in the drawing of magic images, some of which can take on a life of their own. Others understand the magic of the open road, and can travel in seemingly impossible ways. Probably most powerful of all are the sorcerers, that can just instinctively sense the magic of places through a deep intuitive understanding and careful study. Our hero is one such sorcerer, Matthew Swift. He awakens suddenly one day with a series of very violent memories of his own death etched in his mind. He wakes up in his own house, but everything is different to how he left it. Also, when he looks in the mirror he notices his eyes are now blue, when they used to be brown. On top of all that, the reader will notice that he sometimes refers to himself as "we"......
I have some minor stylistic quibbles with this book, not least the writer's habbit of showing...
disjointed...thoughts
through weirdly placed
.................and sometimes italicised........text, which was
a bit
annoying..........at times,
but otherwise I strongly recommend this as a hugely entertaining, spooky, fantastical and well told tale. Happily, I've got the second of the four books in the series already in my possession, so I don't think it will be long before I come back for another installment.
In the meantime I'm racing through A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold, at least partly because George R.R is being crafty and hasn't resolved the main cliffhanger he left us with at the end of the last book yet, the sly old dog. In the meantime, things have taken a turn for the unexpected in terms of major character killing off. Well, I say unexpected but I suppose it shouldn't be, he already has form in this area, but I can't help wondering who there's going to be left to root for come the end of the series if he keeps on at this rate. I suppose it's posers like that that are part of the fun. I always thought it was a bit of a failing of The Lord of the Rings that apart from poor old Boromir who gets killed off fairly early, none of the main characters (Gandalf aside) get much more than a scratch.
205SandDune
It is a shock to come back to the British weather isn't it? It's just the unpredictably of it gets me - just sometimes it would be nice to be able to plan even a day ahead and be certain what the weather would actually be like.
I like the look of the Kate Griffin books by the way - I'm starting to enjoy urban fantasy a lot.
I like the look of the Kate Griffin books by the way - I'm starting to enjoy urban fantasy a lot.
206sibylline
It was cold here this morning too, for the first day of school, right on schedule. Socks, sweater, the whole caboodle. I don't think I've had the heat on in the car for three months.
207HanGerg
32. A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold - George R. R. Martin 4.5/5
I raced through this despite its bulk as Mr Martin knows how to pull his reader along with him through a tale, and what a tale it is! I don't really feel like I should spill any details of the plot for those that are a little behind me in the sequence, but needless to say it's as entertaining as ever. As mentioned above, there are some big shocks in store in terms of character's fates. And there was a possible final appearance by one of my personal favourite characters that I thought was a little unsatisfying, so I'm hoping he will resurface again, although he wasn't looking too healthy last time we saw him, and it seems that it doesn't pay to get too attached to anyone in this series. That, really I think, is its lasting appeal, just when you think you have a good idea where the story if going, Martin is still able to wrong foot you, and take the narrative off in a different direction. My only concern now is I'm rapidly closing in on the most recently published books, and then I'll be left waiting impatiently for the concluding parts, but apart from that I have no complaints.
In other news...at a bookstall at a local market I found myself a real prize - a box set of the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide series, Mostly Brilliant, which I plan to re-read pretty soon. Right, off to bed with me soon, it's the first day of the new job tomorrow, so keep your fingers crossed for me!
209HanGerg
Thanks Roni! Work has been crazily hectic so far, but I'm enjoying it. Today was the first day the kids were back in, and we had a few lost and scared looking students for me and my colleague to shepherd around. Trouble is, I hardly know my way around any better than the students, but hopefully I'm on a steep learning curve!
210SandDune
Glad your first day at schools's going well. I succumbed to A Madness of Angels on my kindle and am about 30 pages in. It looks promising so far.
211susanj67
I reserved A Madness of Angels from the library after reading your review, and I've just picked it up. I'm looking forward to it!
I hope work continues to go well.
I hope work continues to go well.
212HanGerg
So glad I've managed to get a few more interested in this fine series. I hope you both enjoy it! I'm currently reading part two, The Midnight Mayor which is just as exciting and scary.
Work has been great this week. It's been absolutely breathless, and thank goodness my colleague has worked in the EAL department before, otherwise a few key issues would have completely passed me by, but I've really enjoyed it. It's early days yet, so I don't want to get too excited, but I think I might have found a job that really suits me, finally. On the other hand, I'm hoping things will settle down a bit once our new students settle in and we don't don't get too many more mid-term admissions, as if I have to keep working at this pace I might be burnt out by Christmas!
Work has been great this week. It's been absolutely breathless, and thank goodness my colleague has worked in the EAL department before, otherwise a few key issues would have completely passed me by, but I've really enjoyed it. It's early days yet, so I don't want to get too excited, but I think I might have found a job that really suits me, finally. On the other hand, I'm hoping things will settle down a bit once our new students settle in and we don't don't get too many more mid-term admissions, as if I have to keep working at this pace I might be burnt out by Christmas!
213HanGerg
Well, I was very skeptical, but I have just seen the Cloud Atlas movie trailer, and am officially VERY EXCITED! See for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWnAqFyaQ5s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWnAqFyaQ5s
215HanGerg
EAL= English as an additional language. It's my job to oversee the support (both academic and pastoral) our school gives the roughly 60-odd students that don't speak English as their first language. Seeing as there is only myself and another TA to give that support, I have quickly learnt that it can feel like juggling with far more things than even a trained circus perfomer could manage! The students are all great though, so it's very easy to get motivated to give it your best effort.
216SandDune
#215 EAL= English as an additional language. Oh, I should have guessed that. 60 students sounds a lot - I'd sort of assumed Exeter would be the sort of place that wouldn't have a lot of immigration - but that's obviously not correct?
217beserene
That's interesting -- 'round here the subject area is referred to as ESL, which is "English as a Second Language", but "Additional" makes much better sense instead, especially when for some students English might be a third/fourth/fifth language. I never thought about what an American assumption that phrasing was. Fascinating!
218ronincats
Here in southern California, ESL has been phased out and replaced by ELL, English Language Learner. Have they given you any training in supporting ELL students? There is a whole literature out there.
220HanGerg
#216 "60 students sounds a lot - I'd sort of assumed Exeter would be the sort of place that wouldn't have a lot of immigration" Well, that is 60 out of 1200! Also, not all are EAL in the sense they come from abroad originally, that also includes British born kids who could more fairly be described as bilingual rather than EAL, but they still clock up on my radar as kids that might be eligible for help from the Devon EMA office (EMA = Ethnic Minority achievement) although they've had a lot of their funding cut recently, like so many other agencies that work with young people, or they may simply be kids that might want to take a GCSE in a language they are fluent in from sources other than school. Also, I do think it's only been in the last 5 - 10 years that the numbers have been anything like enough to justify having two full time members of staff devoted to their support.
#217 It is sometimes still referred to in ESL in some circles here too, but I think the more accepted term is now EAL for exactly the reasons you outlined most perceptively!
#218 If you have more wisdom tucked away up those sleeves of yours Roni, I'm all ears! I've been reading up on the subject a lot myself and am supposedly booking myself on some training at some point (although that will probably involve going to London, which would pretty much blow my departmental budget for the year in one fell swoop, so....) So, if you have any great links to share, I'd be very grateful!
Right, what an exciting moment...hem hem....
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very proud to announce that my thread will now reconvene on a new page. Feel free to join me there, where refreshments, book reviews and witty banter will be served shortly"
#217 It is sometimes still referred to in ESL in some circles here too, but I think the more accepted term is now EAL for exactly the reasons you outlined most perceptively!
#218 If you have more wisdom tucked away up those sleeves of yours Roni, I'm all ears! I've been reading up on the subject a lot myself and am supposedly booking myself on some training at some point (although that will probably involve going to London, which would pretty much blow my departmental budget for the year in one fell swoop, so....) So, if you have any great links to share, I'd be very grateful!
Right, what an exciting moment...hem hem....
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very proud to announce that my thread will now reconvene on a new page. Feel free to join me there, where refreshments, book reviews and witty banter will be served shortly"
This topic was continued by HanGerg really gets into her stride in 2012!.