SandDune's books in 2012

J

Hi - I'm Rhian - 50 years old living in Hertfordshire in the UK (but originally from Wales) with my husband of 23 years, my 11 year old son, cat and recently acquired dog (after 22 years 11 months persauding my husband that getting a dog would be a really, really good idea).

I'm doing an Engish Literature degree with the Open University at the moment and a lot of my reading is governed by that: children's literature now and then Victorian novels for my next module. Otherwise I read mainly fiction: literary, science fiction, some fantasy mostly - I'm not keen on chick-lit, thrillers or detective books. Non-fiction is usually either science or history based.


Books Read in 2012:
28. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott **1/2
27. French Children Don't Throw Food***1/2
26. A Passage to India E. M. Forster ****
25. The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited Stephen Armstrong ***
24. Junk Melvin Burgess ***1/2
23. Lady John Madeleine Robins **1/2
22. Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami ****
21. Wool Omnibus edition Hugh Howey****
20. The Other Side of Truth Beverley Naidoo***1/2
19. The Sisters Brothers Patrick DeWitt ****1/2
18. Jamrach's Menagerie Carol Birch ***1/2
17. The Tale of Peter Rabbit Beatrix Potter *****
16. Coram Boy Jamila Gavin ***
15. Quarantine Jim Crace**1/2
14. Voices in the Park Anthony Browne ****1/2
13. Mr Gumpy's Outing John Burningham ****
12. Dogger Shirley Hughes ***
11. The Arrival Shaun Tan *****
10. Pigeon English Stephen Kelman ***1/2
9. The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes ***
8. Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry. Mildred Taylor ****
7. Shipwrecks Akira Yoshimura ****
6. Sophia's Secret Susanna Kearsley ***1/2
5. Tom's Midnight Garden Philippa Pearce****1/2
4. Invitation to the Waltz Rosamond Lehmann****
3. Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome****
2. 100 Best Poems for Children ed. Roger McGough ***
1. Peter Pan and Other Plays J.M.Barrie ***




Books Acquired in 2012:

39. The Keys of Babylon Robert Minhinnick
38. Wild Abandon Joe Dunthorne
37. The Last Hundred Days Patrick McGuinness
36. Gillespie and I Jane Harris
35. Foreign Bodies Cynthia Ozick
34. The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
33. Pollyanna Eleanor H. Porter
32. Fortune's Daughters Elisabeth Kehoe
31. A Far Cry from Kensington Muriel Spark
30. The Magic of Reality Richard Dawkins
29. Children's Picturebooks The Art of Visual Storytelling Martin Salisbury
28. The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited Stephen Armstrong
27. The Complete Maus Art Spiegelman
26. Persepolis Marjane Satrapi
25. The Night Circus Erin Morgenstern
24. Wool: Omnibus Edition Hugh Howey
23. Lady John Madeleine Robins
22. Angry Arthur Hiawyn Oram Satoshi Kitamura
21. The Rabbits John Marsden Shaun Tan
20. The Complete Cosmicomics Italo Calvino
19. Mrs Harris goes to Paris Paul Gallico
18. True Grit Charles Portis
17. The Story of The Little Mole who knew it was none of his business Werner Holzwarth Wolf Erlbruch
16. The Magic Bed John Burningham
15. Gorilla Anthony Browne
14. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
13. The Invention of Hugo Cabret Brian Selznik
12. Blow on a Dead Man's Embers Mari Strachan
11. The Small Mine Menna Gallie
10. The Flood Maggie Gee
9. New Finnish Grammar Diego Marani
8. Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout
7. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Ransom Riggs
6. Sophia's Secret Susanna Kearsley
5. Union Street Pat Barker
4. Call the Midwife Jennifer Worth
3. Pigeon English Stephen Kelman
2. Invitation to the Waltz Rosamond Lehmann
1. Dear George Helen Simpson

Welcome to the group, Rhian, and Happy New Year!

Welcome! Glad you decided to join us.

FYI, we've added a couple of wikis to the mix this year. The first is where we keep important threads. The second is the Threadbook where we have a directory to all the members' threads. Both help keep a handle on the chaos! :)

starred :)

*waves* Welcome!

2,3,4,5 - Thanks for the welcome - this is my first serious attempt at logging my reading - I'm not sure I'll get anywhere near 75 but this group seemed to suit - I just need to stop panicking about the number of posts and come to terms with the fact that I can't read them all!

Hi Rhian, welcome!

Congratulations on finally getting a dog!
I already HAD a dog when I met my husband, and in our 28 years together we haven't been without a dog around ;-)

Anita

Welcome, Rhian, from another UK-based member (Newcastle).

Don't worry about necessarily reaching 75 - many don't, and many read far more than that, but the numbers are not the main thing really. For many of us the group is about the conversations and interactions - though it can be a bit overwhelming when there are so many members and so many threads to try to follow. People have different strategies for coping with the volume - in my first year I starred a fairly small number of threads and only followed those, which kept it fairly manageable.

1. Peter Pan and Other Plays J.M.Barrie ***



Strictly speaking I only read Peter Pan - part of my Children's Literature module for my degree.

I'm not really quite sure how to review it or whether I enjoyed it or not. The problem with something like Peter Pan is that the basic story is so familar that it's difficult to look at it wth fresh eyes. So I probably didn't enjoy reading the actual play that much - reading plays isn't really my thing anyway. But what I did find interesting on my course was the way we were comparing the different interpretations of Peter Pan that there have been since the play was originally written from different theatre productions, pantomimes, films etc.

Anyway, this was read for my assessment which was finished half an hour ago - now that's done I can do a bit of reading for leisure.

2. 100 Best Poems for Children ed. Roger McGough ***



Again read as part of my Children's Literature module

I don't think this is the best anthology of poetry for children - but I think I'm prejudiced against it by the illustrations - there's nothing wrong with the actual poems. The illustrations are all really small -just little vignettes really - all in the same style and all by the same artists. My view is that illustrations for a children's poetry anthology can really make or break it. The one that my son had was The Hutchinson Treasury of Children's Poetry which has some beautiful illustrations all in very different styles and by a selection of different artists. My favourite is a full double spread illustration by John Burningham to a tiny poem 'The Fog' by Carl Sandburg.

Anyway the poems I chose for my assessment (contrasting mothers and motherhood in the poems and Peter Pan) were 'The Lion and Albert' by Marriott Edgar and 'Wha me Mudder Do' by Grace Nichols. 'The Lion and Albert' was picked partly for sentimental reasons - I remember my father having an old 78 record of Stanley Holloway doing this when I was a small child. 'Wha me Mudder Do' was chosen for the more boring reason that we had a reasonable amount of critical opinion on it, and apparently in my last assessment I didn't refer to critical opinion enough.

Anyway here is Stanley Holloway in an old recording of 'The Lion and Albert'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3jXMsfLxhI

Your children's literature module sounds interesting. I agree with you about the need for good, diverse illustrations in a children's poetry anthology.

>11 alcottacre: It is good course - I'm really enjoying it

These are the blocks we are studying with the set books:

Instruction and Delight

Northern Lights Philip Pulman
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J.K. Rowling

Books for Boys and Books for Girls

Little Women Louisa May Alcott
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson

Poetry and Performance

Peter Pan J.M.Barrie
100 Best Poems for Children

The Prestigious and the Popular

Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
Tom's Midnight Garden Philippa Pearce
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Mildred D. Taylor

Words and Pictures

The tale of Peter Rabbit Beatrix Potter
Voices in the Park Anthony Browne

Contemporary Trends

The Other Side of Truth Beverly Naidoo
Coram Boy Jamila Gavin
Junk Melvin Burgess

I've just completed Block 3 so exactly half way through apart from the final assignment. In the autumn I'll be on to Victorian novels.

Oo, the Victorian novel module sounds interesting too. *sigh* Let's just face it - I like all manner of books!

Welcome, Rhian. Your children's literature module looks excellent. I did the OU's humanities level 1 paper a few years ago now (I think it was A103 then) but didn't go on to level 2. Still, I was amazed at how much it broadened what I read, and I'm still reading things now that I never would have thought were "me" before I did it. I've been impressed with the materials for all their courses that I've done (one maths, four science short courses in addition to humanities). Good luck with the rest of your TMAs!

14 - My studies at the OU are a bit back to front. I started with A210 Approaching Literature and enjoyed it so much that I decided to do the degree, which meant I had to go back to do Level 1 AA100 The Arts Past and Present. Children's Literature is my first Level 3 course.

After that my plans are:
The Nineteenth Century Novel
Twentieth Century Literature
Worlds of English

Panic this morning as I realised that we had our reading group Christmas dinner tonight and I had forgotten to buy my Secret Santa book so emergency trip to Waterstones was needed. (I know Christmas is dead and gone but we always have our social in January as we all have children and there's just too much going on before Christmas. We're supposed to buy a book we have read and enjoyed in the last year and I spent much time staring at the shelves in Waterstones trying to remember what I had read in the last year and then when I did remember something they didn't have it.

Eventually came out with:
Stalin ate my Homework Alexei Sayle from me
Game of Thrones George R.R. Martin from my husband (also in book group). I'm not 100% sure about this choice - I'm not sure anyone else in the reading group reads fantasy, but that was what he wanted.

If I'd remembered about this last week I'd have probably ordered

Miss Buncle's Book D.E.Stevenson or
The Unit Ninni Holmqvist

Also ordered my first book of the year for me Invitation to the Waltz Rosamond Lehmann which is our next reading group choice.

Hi Rhian, welcome to the group :-)

I'll be following your progress and the reading for your OU course with interest. I find the idea of studying English Lit fascinating but I've always worried that having to read things and write essays afterwards might diminish my enjoyment of the books.

The blocks you've listed in msg#12 look really, really interesting though and the Victorian novels module also draws a sigh of longing from me.

#16 Miss Buncle's Book was one of my favourites from last year too. Did you know there's a Persephone group on LT?

And I'll be interested in your thoughts on the Lehmann. I have The Weather in the Streets which I think features the same characters but I haven't read either yet.

17 - Reading overload can be a problem - I have a friend who did an English Literature degree over 20 years ago and virtually hasn't read any books since. But since my course is modular and I'm really doing it for enjoyment I can always stop if that looks like happening to me.

Came home from reading group social with my secret santa being Dear George by Helen Simpson. I didn't remember hearing about this writer before but apparently she was strongly recommended by Susan Hill in Howard's End is on the Landing which we read in our reading group just before Christmas so I suppose I must have done. Anyway, the stories look interesting so I think I will start reading them soon.

Found your thread at last Rhian - I'm really looking forward to seeing what you read this year. I am very unlikely to get to 75 (I've nearly made it the last 2 years, but this year I'm studying so will be much busier) but it doesn't matter at all.

We have the Hutchison's Children's Literature book in the same series as the poetry one and it's gorgeous. Your courses look excellent.

#19: I've heard of Helen Simpson but just clicked the link and don't think I've read anything of hers. A nice secret Santa, though!

20,21 Welcome to my thread. I don't think I'll make 75 either - I think on average I read a book a week but you never know.

3. Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome ****



Written in 1930 this is the story of the adventures of a family of children while on holiday in the Lake District, sailing and camping alone on an uninhabited island in the Lake District. They're given permission to go by their father's telegram 'Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers won't drown' which I don't think would pass muster with health and safety today. It's one of those idyllic summers of childhood, where the weather is hot every day and the only bad weather is a storm dramatic enough to be interesting, totally unlike the normal cold damp British summer.

This was a book that I remembered enjoying from my own childhood - I have a vague memory of wanting my mother to make tents in the same way as the mother in the book so I could go camping in the garden. It does stand up to the test of time reasonably well - the girls as well as the boys play an active role - but I think that to enjoy it fully at least a passing interest in boats is needed. Especially in the first couple of chapters it does introduce a lot of nautical jargon. I did have an interest in boats as a child and went sailing occaisonally, but I'm sure I wouldn't have had a clue about sentences like 'Is there a cleat under the thwart where the mast is stepped' - and I still don't.

One thing that the book does really well is to explore the imaginative life of children, taking the everyday world around them and turning it into something much more exciting and exotic. And the appeal for the children of having their very own island really rings true - perhaps another reason why the book appeals to me as I've had a fascination for islands ever since childhood.

This was a series that I never got to when I was young, and I'm not sure why. I remember seeing them at the library, but just never borrowed one. A friend's daughter is enjoying them, though, so they must continue to appeal. I do like the sound of the island, something which also featured in the Famous Five books (although I don't suppose they form part of the OU curriculum!!)

I don't think I've ever heard of that series. It does sound like one I would have enjoyed as a child.

#24 It's interesting to see that these books are being enjoyed today - they don't appeal to my son but he's more into fantasy. They are slightly dated and describe a world that's long gone but I think they would appeal to many children if they can get past the technical language. I read an article recently which suggested that one of the reasons that books like this still appeal to children today is that they describe a golden age of children roaming free which they find incredibly appealing. Although, reading this as an adult I can't help thinking that maybe all that freedom might have had a downside - letting a seven year old boy who can't swim go sailing with no life jacket? Hmm, not sure about that one.

#25 I think the series is much less popular in the US than the UK - here they are very much considered children's classics and apparently have never been out of print. There are 12 books in total - mainly based in the Lake District or the Norfolk Broads.

Re-reading this book has reminded me that I saw a review of a biography of Arthur Ransome a while ago which looked interesting. Apparently he wasn't exactly what you would expect from reading the books. He was a foreign correspondent in Russia at the time of the Russian revolution, had an affair with and later married Trotsky's personal assistant, was in the pay of MI6 and there were rumours that he was a double agent. I'm adding this to my wishlist and here's the review from The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/13/arthur-ransome-double-agent

I think I read the same article - was it the one in the Guardian? Some of the comments underneath were quite funny, from people saying they had never been able to roam around, even years ago, and that the books must have been describing a time gone by even when they were written. I wonder, too, whether they're popular today because people like me buy them as presents, because they seem "safe" and uncontroversial. When I'm looking for books for children I do wonder about some of the modern ones, which seem very miserable and downbeat (not to mention vampire-filled), and I'm reluctant to give them as presents. I tend to buy things that either I can remember reading, or that have been around for years and presumably survived many literary fads. There is a lovely series of Puffin (I think) reprints which children seem to love, and also I can be fairly sure that no-one else will buy them, as the kids are all nagging for Twilight.

#27 I wonder, too, whether they're popular today because people like me buy them as presents, because they seem "safe" and uncontroversial.

To be honest I've wondered that myself. I think some older childen's classics still work really well for today's children - like Winnie the Pooh or Paddington Bear for younger children. I'm less sure about this series. I think you'd have to pick your child carefully.

There are some really good newer books for children though - my son has really enjoyed Un Lun Dun, The Graveyard Book, Philip Reeve's Larklight series, as well as the ever present Percy Jackson, Artemis Fowl and Alex Ryder.

A trip to the emergency dentist this morning left me with an hour to kill in town and no particular jobs to do - always a dangerous situation when the best place for just browsing is Waterstones. Came out with:

Pigeon English Stephen Kelman - Booker shortlisted book
Call the Midwife Jennifer Worth - currently being televised on the BBC on Sunday nights. Not my usual sort of read but I quite enjoyed the first programme of the series and looks like the sort of book you can dip in and out of, which I need at the moment.
The Last Dragonslayer Jasper Fforde - a children's book which I hadn't heard of but which looks fun - this one for my son.

I bravely resisted buying I am a cat by Soseki Natsume when I saw the price - £18.99!!!. How can you charge £18.99 for a paperback!!!

I've now bought more books than I've read so I can't buy any more until my reading catches up. Although I've spent so much in Waterstones over the past couple of months I qualified for a £10 gift voucher which means I can get at least one new book for free (maybe two if I add in the value on my points card?).

Ow, I hope your tooth is better now.

I read Pigeon English a couple of weeks ago and thought it was excellent. And Call the Midwife is extraordinary - did you get the three books in one, or just the first one? They're all well worth the time. I have recorded the first episode of the TV version and must watch it. I bet it looks a lot cleaner than she describes, though! A lot of the area in the book is now the Canary Wharf estate, so all shiny and new. I work there, and when I was reading the books spent quite a bit of time trying to work out where everything would have been. I didn't get very far, though.

I've read a couple of references to Un Lun Dun now - I'll keep an eye out for it.

Just dropping by to star your thread; I look forward to following your reading this year!

#31 Welcome karspeak.

#30 The tooth is fine - not such an emergency as I thought it might be - but I was annoyed as it's only 4 months since I was in the dentist last and I thought I'd be safe for at least another couple of months. (I'm a real wimp when it comes to dentists).

Call the Midwife seems to be the single volume - I'm not sure that they made it much cleaner on the TV though - the housing conditions looked dreadful. One of the reasons that I got the book was I was really suprised that the conditions in the East End were as bad as that as late as the 1950's - it reminded me more of what I picture the 1930's to be like. I've only read the introduction so far but I was also struck by how large the families seemed to be - again I thought family size had dropped much earlier than this. I don't know Docklands (either the old or new versions) very much at all - I've probably only been to Canary Wharf once or twice at most.

Yet another book to add to the Books Acquired list Union Street by Pat Barker received via ReadItSwapIt.

4. Invitation to the Waltz Rosamond Lehmann ****



Published in 1932, but set in 1920 just after the First World War, Invitation to the Waltz follows Olivia Curtis, a naïve and inexperienced middle class girl living in a small English village, from her seventeenth birthday to attending her first ever grown-up dance with her sister a week or so later. Part one follows Olivia on her birthday to a visit to the dressmaker; part two chronicles the arrival of the somewhat disappointing partner acquired by Mrs Curtis to accompany her daughters; and part three describes the dance itself. Nothing much happens. But what the author does beautifully is show Olivia’s navigation through the minefield of class consciousness and manners that rules her small world. The agony of not knowing what to do in a social situation (especially when you’d been brought up to be polite at all costs), of not fitting in, of knowing that your clothes aren’t right, is vividly brought home. The world in which Olivia lived has completely vanished but that feeling of awkwardness (albeit in different circumstances) could apply equally today.

Olivia’s village is not one of the comfortable, reassuring one often found in novels of this period – people are trapped within their circumstances and there’s a real sense of claustrophobia. Miss Robinson, the rather incompetent dressmaker who Olivia feels obliged to patronise for fear of giving offence, has missed her chance of going to London to earn a living as she had wanted to, and trapped by the needs of her family has developed ill health as a way of relieving the boredom of her life. Olivia’s father, who likes music and travel and reading books in French and German, has spent his life as owner and manager of a paper mill. It’s clear that Olivia too, isn’t really suited to the world in which she finds herself – only her sister Kate seems to truly fit.

The class structure of the time is also vividly portrayed. Olivia and Kate are daughters of a local businessman, but it’s clear that the family is not as prosperous as it had been. While they are friends with Marigold, in whose honour the dance is being held, Olivia and her sister are very conscious that once she has left school behind Marigold is going to be moving in a wealthier world which they can’t aspire to. Miss Robinson too has her already limited social world limited by considerations of class: she can talk to one neighbour who was the wife of a market gardener but not to the other who was the wife of a bricklayer.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I think it’s one I will read again – I’ll definitely be looking out for the sequel The Weather in the Streets. This was read for my Book Group – I have a feeling that it might prove to be a popular book.

#34: I wish my local library had that one! Glad to see you enjoyed it, Rhian!

I’ve added French Children Don’t Throw Food by Pamela Druckerman to my wishlist after reading an article in Saturday’s Guardian. Written by an American married to an Englishman it describes her experiences of motherhood in Paris, and in particular the different approaches of French mothers to feeding their children and bringing up children in general.

I find the topic of food for children interesting – after university I was an au pair in Italy for a year and I think I unconsciously absorbed some Italian ideas about children and food. I know that when my own son was small a lot of our approach to mealtimes and food in general was often quite different from the norm locally. Certainly from the article there are things that I disagree with - it suggests that French restaurants do not have children's menus, which is simply not true - but looks an interesting read none the less.

Anyway, here is the article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/20/french-children-food-pamela-druckerm...

My son has been at home ill the last two days so Lulu is making the best of the fact that he has moved his duvet down on to the sofa:





Interesting - I have no idea at all why these photos are different sizes - they started out as the same size.

Today, Lulu is being much more co-operative at sitting down quietly with him on the sofa - which is what he wants at the moment. Yesterday, she refused to go out for her walk because it was raining so I had a hyperactive dog who wanted to play and a son who definitely didn't. Not a good combination. I've never come accross a dog who is so reluctant to go out in the rain. I did get her outside briefly yesterday although she looked quite dubious about there being puddles, but it started raining again after about 100yds and she refused point blank to go any further.

Bought Sophia's Secret by Susanna Kearsley for my kindle. Recommended by SusanJ (but as The Winter Sea - why do publishers's insist on changing the name of books?)
looks like the sort of read I need while my son's still poorly.

#37 Aw! Lulu is cute. I particularly like the second picture. I'm sorry to hear you son is doing poorly, though. I hope he feels better soon.

(Around here it's the husband who doesn't like going for walks in the rain. Most of the time he goes anyway, just to please me, but the walks frequently end up being shorter than they would otherwise.)

Awww, bless her. She doesn't want to get wet feet! Can't say I blame her about the not going out in the rain.....I'm not a fan of the 'damp down to the skin' feeling either.

Funny LT coincidence for today: I woke up and realized I didn't have a book on the go (apart from my Kjndle ones). So I scoured the bookshelves and took a little pile of books back to bed to fund one, and invitation to the Waltz was one of the six! I have tons of Virago Modern Classics that I haven't read yet. I hope I like it as much as you did - I have a couple of her other books also waiting patiently...

Lovely pics of Lulu!!

Ooh, I added Pamela Druckerman's book to my TBR, that topic interests me very much, as well.

#39,#40 It's funny - when we were deciding what sort of dog we wanted as a family we settled on a nice outdoorsy type of dog, and we definitely didn't want a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. So what did we bring home from the rescue centre? - a Staffordshire Bull Terrier who doesn't like the rain and isn't at all sure about getting her feet muddy! She's getting better with mud though - on our first walk she completely refused to go through a muddy patch - now she picks her way through daintily. She definitely thinks that her role in life is to be a lap dog. My husband didn't really want a dog in the first place - it's taken me years and years to persaude him - but she's so affectionate that she's completely won him over.

#42 It's interesting how bringing up children can vary so much from country to country. When I spent my time in Italy I remember being really shocked that really small children didn't go to bed until quite late as all the small children I'd come accross up to that time had been in bed by 7.30 at the absolute latest.

> 37: Our Chow Chow (Chimay) absolutely agrees with Lulu! She refuses to join Ari (the Pekingese) and me for a walk when it is raining. She can hold it for 24 hours if it keeps raining ;-)

#37: There's a funny article by Robert Crampton in today's Times about Staffordshire terriers.

I hope you enjoy Sophia's Secret. I don't know why they change the names like that either - my library has it under both titles, which is confusing. I'm about to start Season of Storms by the same author.

Invitation to the Waltz sounds like a great read! I'm trying not to log on to the library site right now.

Awful, awful few days. Lulu was knocked down and killed when she was out for a walk with my husband and son at the weekend. We all feel devastated. I can't think of anything else.

Rhian, I'm so very sorry about Lulu. She sounded like such a sweet, affectionate dog from your posts. What a terrible thing to happen.

That's terrible. I'm so so sorry. I can only imagine how dreadful you must be feeling. How awful for you all. I hope you get to a place where you are able to remember all the good times, and it doesn't hurt quite as much.

Oh no! How terrible Rhian that you lost Lulu :-(
Vale Lulu....

Oh crap. Just. Crap.

#48,49,50,51 Susan, Jenny, Anita, Steven - many thanks for your sympathy. It was such an unlucky accident. My husband and son were at least 150 yds away from the road on the other side of a field, with a big bank and hedge between the field and the road. And then a muntjac deer sprang out of the hedge on the other side of the field about 5 feet in front of them and bolted straight for the road and Lulu just gave chase. The deer must have found a gap in the hedge and by the time my husband and son caught up with Lulu she had been already been knocked down. Some passing motorists took them straight to the vets but she had massive internal injuries and died almost immediately.

My son is taking it very badly - well I think we all are really - he's swinging every hour or so between wanting to get another dog exactly the same as Lulu and call her Lulu, to never wanting another dog at all because she won't be the same. I think he's finding school very difficult this week. On Monday his German lesson had to cover pets - such bad timimg - and he was one of the children asked to describe what pets he had. When he said 'eine Katze' he was corrected by his german teacher as he'd previously always said 'eine Katze und ein Hund'. They're not supposed to speak English in the German lesson and of course he didn't know the German for 'my dog has died' and he just didn't know how to deal with it.

Not really doing any reading at all at the moment.

Wow. That *was* unfortunate timing. I hope things better soon!

Oh, I'm so sorry... I just want to give your family a hug and cry with you. How utterly devastating.

I'm so so sorry :( My condolences

37: Interesting - I have no idea at all why these photos are different sizes - they started out as the same size.
Maybe one is the thumbnail and one is the full picture?

47, 52: So sorry about Lulu, and for you son. I hope his German teacher understands now what he was dealing with.

Your poor son, being put in that position in the German class. That's heart-breaking. It's not surprising you don't feel like reading - it must be hard to concentrate on anything when you're all so sad.

#56,#57 - His German teacher is a really nice man and I don't blame him at all. It was just really bad timing. My son can be very literal - he's been told he's not supposed to speak English in the German class as they do immersion teaching - an adult would realise that that wouldn't apply to a situation like this and would have explained in English and that would have been OK - but I think my son just didn't say anything at all because he couldn't say it in German and got more and more flustered.

Something to cheer my son up today. Woke up to around 3-4 inches of snow. We have snow quite rarely so a major event. And I've never really got used to it snowing in the winter at all - where I was brought up we were too near the sea for the snow to stick and so I only remember it snowing on three occasions during my entire childhood. Anyway here is our garden in the snow:



And Wales beat Ireland 23-21 in the last minute of a really exciting rugby match, so that was even better.

i'm back to reading again - a third of way through Sophia's Secret which I'm enjoying.

Rhian - so sorry to hear about Lulu, and your poor son's additional ordeal in the German class. It's hard enough losing beloved pets at the end of their natural lives, but to lose one so suddenly and violently must be just awful.

I guess the snow hasn't stayed long - it was only around for a day up here in the North East - but I'm glad it (and the rugby) brought a little cheer to your household.

I've just started reading Invitation to the Waltz - I suggested it to my bookgroup as it is one of many Viragos I've been collecting and not got round to reading yet. I've never before suggested a book to the group, so I'm anxious now that people will like it!

#60 I'd read Invitation to the Waltz for my book group as well. We had the meeting last night and everyone who was there really enjoyed it, so probably bodes well for your group. It doesn't happen very often that everyone likes the chosen book but when it does we do seem to have rather less interesting discussions though. The best discussions are always when there's a major difference of opinion. I came away with the sequel - The Weather in the Streets borrowed from another book group member.

5. Tom's Midnight Garden Philippa Pearce ****1/2



I loved this book as a child and I still love it now.

Written in 1958, it's the story of Tom a young boy sent away to stay with his aunt and uncle while his brother recovers from the measles. Initially being confined to a gardenless flat with no other children to play with seems the worst way to spend a summer holiday, but at night while unable to sleep he discovers that the house has a garden after all, but one which was destroyed long ago and which he can only enter at night. Soon he thinks of nothing else but playing in the garden every night with Hatty, the orphan girl who lives there and the only person who can see him. But he doesn't notice that Hatty's growing up and he's staying the same...

I find there is an air of great sadness about this story, and a great sense of times passing, and maybe not passing for the better. It makes me cry every time.

I must have first read it about 1970 when Tom's daytime hours seemed much more normal. Now they read much more as a period piece - but I think the book is still really accessible for today's children. I read it to my son a couple of years ago and he enjoyed it as well.

#62 THat was one of my favourites too - I know what you mean about the air of sadness.

Thanks for the reassurance about the book group choice - but I agree, if we do all like it, we'll probably have a less lively discussion.

6. Sophia's Secret Susanna Kearsley ***1/2



When Carrie McLelland, a bestselling author of historical fiction travels to Scotland to research her latest book about the 1708 Jacobite rebellion, she finds a strange connection to the past at Slains Castle. After inventing (so she thinks) the character of Sophia Patterson based on her own ancestor, she discovers that she seems to have Sophia's own memories - the book seems almost to be writing itself, with even minor details of her plot and characters proving to be historical fact rather than fiction. Sophia's story and Carrie's story seem to mirror each other and become intertwined with Carrie's real life having strange connections to the past, and with a love story in both past and present to be resolved.

I enjoyed this book, but at times I think the connections between the current day and the past were sometimes not strong enough and it felt slightly like reading two different novels at the same time. I lost enthusiasm for a time in the middle when the idea that Carrie could have her ancestor's memories by some kind of genetic memory was put forward. If a scientific explanation is offered in a book then I tend to get very rational and start thinking -, so how is that going to work exactly???. I'd have preferred there to have been no explanation and then I wouldn't have started worrying about it. Anyway, I loved the descriptions of Slains Castle and the area around - I'm a real sucker for clifftop castles - and I felt I could visualise the book really strongly, having spent several holidays round the coast of Scotland.

I looked up a picture of Slains Castle (a real one) after finishing the book, and it does look like an ideal ruined castle.

All rights reserved - www.traveladventures.org

This book is also known as The Winter Sea which personally I think a much better title - with the title Sophia's Secret I was on the look-out for a secret from the start and I think suspected what the ending might be much earlier than I would have done otherwise.

Added two new books:

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. I have had this on my wishlist for ages and I bought it with the £10 reward voucher that I had a couple of weeks ago from Waterstones, so I can avoid the guilt trip at buying a hardback.

Also, Violent Earth, one of those really nice big DK books with lots of pictures. Strictly speaking this was a present for my son, but I will look at it too so I’ve listed here. On offer for £5 with The Book People rather than the £25 list price which I thought was a really good deal. In the restless ocean section it has a wonderful picture of the pier in my home town being swamped by a freak wave. Not so impressive but the following picture gives you some idea.



Last time I walked to the end of this pier with my son I checked very carefully that there were no waves splashing onto it, but unfortunately the first large wave of the day struck it just as we walked along. As the main walkway along the pier is on the landward side and there is a large wall between the walkway and the direction the waves are coming, from we didn’t see the wave coming at all, until we were hit by the spray. My reaction was to try and shelter as much as possible against the wall, while my son said we should run. When it had stopped we realised that the spray had only hit in about a twenty feet section along the walkway so if we had run we would have been much better off. As it was we couldn’t have been any wetter if we had stood in a shower fully clothed for 5 minutes but no-one else on the pier got wet at all. My son was hugely embarrassed and refused to talk to me for about an hour.

Glad you enjoyed Sophia's Secret, but I agree with you about that title. When I read it as The Winter Sea I didn't see the ending coming at all, and I was amazed, which I think added to the enjoyment for me.

Your snow was impressive last weekend! It started here again on Thursday night, but didn't end up as much. Today is apparently the coldest day in London in the history of the world (I may be exaggerating - all the weather forecasts blur into one) but at least it has been sunny. I ran some errands for about 15 minutes and that was enough outside.

#66 We had some more snow last Thursday night as well - enough to cover everything again but no more. I've just come back in and the car temperature gauge said -0.5, but it felt colder to me.

7. Shipwrecks Akira Yoshimura ****



I started this in the New Year but I put it to one side because of course work reading I had to do, and later because it was fairly clear right from the start that things were not working out well, and I wanted to read something more cheerful. Having finished the book I think I can safely say that this is one of the saddest books I have read in a long time. It's the story of Isaku, a nine year old boy, living in an impoverished fishing village in medieval Japan. Periodically the villagers have to sell themselves or their children as indentured labourers for up to 10 years to keep their families from starvation and the book follows the events of Isaku's life as he struggles to be the man of his family during the three year period that his father is away. The only brightness in their lives is the occasional bounty provided by O-fune-sama or shipwreck, which we learn early on is caused by the villagers lighting fires on the beach to entice ships on to the rocks.

At the moment I find it difficult to know how to rate this book. With my knowledege of medieval Japan being absolutely zero I struggled to have a context to put the villagers lives into. They seem to be totally trapped by their environment and constantly on the verge of starvation. I would have liked to have known more about Japan at that period to know if there was any alternative for them. The villagers belief systems are so very different - they believe that to cause the shipwrecks and murder the surving crew is a practice that has been handed down from their ancestors and so must be followed at all costs.

This is a beautifully written book and one which I think I might reread - but perhaps after having read somthing about the history of Japan first.

Decided to rationalise my star system:

* I hated this book. Can’t understand why anyone would read it. No literary merit. I wouldn’t usually even start a one star book as it would be obvious I wouldn’t like it.

** I didn’t like this book. I can see that it might appeal to some people but certainly didn’t appeal to me. Possibly a reasonable book from a genre that I don’t like.

**1/2 Book was just about passable but wouldn’t read anything by the same author if I didn’t have to.

*** Book was OK – wanted to get to the end of the book but I wouldn’t be going out of my way to read anything else by the author

***1/2 Book was good – enjoyed the book although it didn’t set the world on fire. I’d be happy to read something else by the author.

**** Book was very good – a well written book that I really enjoyed. I’d be looking out for more books by the author.

****1/2 Book was very good – a well written book that I really enjoyed. Favourite books of the year.

***** One of my favourite books ever. I’d want everybody I met to read this book.

Yes, I'd say our star system is very similar SD. Though ***'s for me might be slightly more generous.

I shall put Shipwrecks on my list of interesting finds in 75 Books Challenge threads, but make sure I am in the appropriate mood for something sad.

#70 I would definitely recommend Shipwrecks. While I wouldn't say that I exactly enjoyed it I think it is one of those books that will stay with me for a long time.

8. Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry Mildred Taylor ****



The story of Cassie Logan, a young African-American girl growing up with her three brothers on their family's farm in 1930's Mississippi. The Logans own their farm, unlike most other black families at the time and the book deals with their struggles to keep it against a background of the blatant and institutionalised racism of the time.

I read this book as part of my Children's Literature course - in particular this section was looking at children's books starting to deal with more controversial social and political issues from the 1960's onwards. Initially the book didn't particularly appeal - it seemed to be covering familiar territory - but after the first few pages I was hooked. While I was expecting the level of racism that the Logan's encountered I was really shocked by the effect that this had on the school system for their children - for instance older children had to walk up to four hours to school - buses were only provided for white children - not surprisingly many black children dropped out. I suppose that I thought that there wouldn't least be lip-service paid to the idea that all children needed to be educated even if there were differences in the resources allocated.

From the number of copies of this book on LT I'm assuming that this book is much better known in the U.S. then it is in the U.K. . I certainly hadn't heard of it before and I would say that I was reasonably knowledgeable on children's books. Most of the reviews that are on LT seem to be of the class project type and focus on the book's importance in teaching children about racism. However, while I think that it is useful in looking at racism in a historical context I'm not sure whether it would be helpful in looking at the situation today. I think that by focusing on such blatant examples, children might miss the more subtle examples of racism that they may encounter in reality. Certainly I would imagine that for children in the UK, looking at this era in the US when there was such complete segregation, would be so foreign that it may not seem at all relevant to their daily lives.

I'd be interested to know what any one else thinks of this idea.

9. The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes ***



Another book that I'm really not sure how to rate. The main character, Tony Webster, is constantly being told that 'he doesn't get it ' and I feel the same about the book.

Recently retired Tony Webster, divorced from his wife for some years, feels his life is a fairly straightforward one. But as he reminisces about his school and university days it seems that things may be more complicated. In particular his relationships with his brilliant friend Adrian who seems destined for great things, and with his girlfriend Veronica, seem complex. So far, so good - followed as far as this. But then a tragic event intervenes and forty years later Tony is left a legacy that seems to throw light on what happened.

Tony is an unreliable narrator and it is clear that his recollection of events is not always correct. But it was not at all clear to me at the end of the book what had actually happened. I finished with two possibilities - neither of which seemed to make total sense. I was left with a sense that the book was full of small incidents which were really significant to its understanding which I was missing the point of totally and so I ended up feeling irritated. My husband suggested that the book is like a puzzle which you must work out - perhaps one of the reasons that I didn't 't like it as I don't much like mysteries.

I have read other Julian Barnes books before and enjoyed them (particularly A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters) but I would probably not be inclined to read another Barnes novel on the strength of this. But me and my husband discussed the novel for a good 30 minutes on a car journey today and I always think that a good novel needs to be thought-provoking.... So I've rated the book as *** at the moment - but I may need to change after more thought.

#72 - I encountered Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry in grade school, and it mostly just convinced me that USians were really stupid once upon a time. Applicability I could see to my own personal life --> Zero.

For the record, I'm Canadian. So although the situation wasn't quite so far removed for me as it is for UK children, it wasn't something from right out of my backyard either.

#74 Thanks for dropping by LShelby. I suppose I've been thinking about this book in relation to what I think my son would get out of it as at age 12 I suppose he's the target audience. I would like him to recognise and challenge racism and any form of discrimination if he comes accross it, but I think if he did encounter people acting in a racist way it would be much more subtle, and within a much more complex racial mix, and so that's what he needs to be able to recognise.

We watched the film 'Invictus' with him which showed Nelson Mandela's years as South African president in the years up to the 1995 Rugby World Cup and it was obvious that he just didn't get a lot of the relationships between black and white because he just didn't understand the extent of Apartheid. To him 1995 is history and people often behave very oddly in history and I think he would feel the same about this book.

#75 That seems sound reasoning to me. Although, exposing people to the reality that "people often behave very oddly in history" is something I feel is probably very good for them. :)

#76 I wouldn't disagree with that at all. I've been encouraging my son to read the book (although whether he will or not is another matter - he's much more into fantasy at the moment). I suppose that the point I was making was that while it is a really good book to show children what the situation was like at that time and in that place, if it's used to discuss racism in general then because the racism involved is so extreme, and the situation has changed so much since that time, they may get the view that racism is no longer an issue. A book focusing on today's situations may seem more real to them and they might understand better that more subtle ways of acting can be racist as well.

10. Pigeon English Stephen Kelman ***1/2



I'm supposed to be reading the Booker prize short list in time for a discussion meal with my Book Group mid-March. As this is only the second one I've read I don't think I'm going to get through them all but I should manage another two.

Pigeon English is the story of Harrison who has travelled to London from Ghana with his mother and older sister, while his father and baby sister remain behind in Ghana. It's soon apparent that the better life that his mother is looking for is illusory. The book begins with a boy on Harrison's estate being knifed and killed, Harrison's estate and school are riddled with gang violence and his mother is in debt to the violent Julius, his aunt's boyfriend. Harrison, a likeable eleven year old, attempts to make sense of his new world and tries to discover the identity of the boy's killer.

Another sad book which echoes the Damilola Taylor case, and really brings home the lack of opportunities for children on these sink estates. I noticed that some reviewers felt that Harrison was unrealisticly naive for his age but given that he had recently arrived in the UK from a different culture, I felt his lack of understanding about some issues were realistic - if anything he seemed to have settled into his new life with suprisingly few problems. Despite being narrated in Harrison's own words it's a fairly easy read, and one which is well worth reading.

I had a few reservations overall. There was a type of supernatural 'guardian pigeon' theme which really didn't work for me. And to me Harrison had settled into his new life far too quickly with very little sign of homesickness. I do think as well that from very early in the book it was fairly clear what the outcome was going to be. So overall a good read but not a great one.

I'm looking forward to your review of Pigeon English. I think I've heard of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry although I haven't read it. I see what you mean about it being so extreme that it might not appear relevant to young people today, though. I read a bit about the Julian Barnes in the context of the Booker discussion, but it didn't sound like anything I'd be able to understand!

Have splurged on book buying in the last few days for the following reasons:

- was at a exhibition in Islington at the weekend and found a large Waterstones just outside the conference centre when I had half an hour to kill at lunch
- found another large Waterstones in Swansea when we were down in Wales at the weekend visiting my Mum. In my defence on this one I have to say that it was my husband who wanted to go and buy a book but once we were in the shop we couldn't leave for some time because it was raining so hard.

Anyway bought the following:

Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout - saw this recommended on someone's thread recently - can't remember whose.
New Finnish Grammar Diego Marani - same reason
The Flood Maggie Gee - if you knew how many books I've read where civilisation as we know it comes to an end in a massive flood then you know why I had to have this book- also I like Maggie Gee as a writer.
The Small Mine Menna Gallie - resolution to read more Welsh books - I'm the only person on LT to have this - this has never happened before.
Blow on a Dead Man's Embers Mari Stracan - as above and I loved her The Earth Hums in B Flat a couple of years ago.

17.5°C yesterday when I was driving home at 3pm. That just doesn't seem right for February - half the time it's colder than that in July.

Well, apparently it was hotter than Australia. Somewhere quite cold in Australia, no doubt, but still :-)

Your book haul looks excellent. I have only heard of Maggie Gee, but have looked up some of the others.

Returned from the library with a haul of picture books (I am now on the picture book module of my course) - some favourites from my son's earlier years and some recommended on my course:

Tuesday David Wiesner
The Arrival Shaun Tan
Mr Gumpy's Outing John Burningham
Beegu Alexis Deacon
The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith
The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith
Handa's Surprise Eileen Browne
Dogger Shirley Hughes

Also bought The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick - I particularly wanted this one and there were about 15 people in front of me on the library reservation list.

11. The Arrival Shaun Tan *****



I'm not sure if I can really say that I have read this book as it has no words at all. But I can say that I found it quite amazing and my first ***** book of the year. I would recommend any one with an interest in graphic novels or picture books or the experience of being an immigrant in a strange country to read this book. I can't recommend it too highly.

Halfway between a graphic novel and a picture book the story of a father's travel to a strange country in search of a better life for his family is told completely in black and white and sepia pencil drawings, some aged and crumpled like an old photo. At first my assumption was that the man was emigrating from a European country to the United States, but on arriving at the destination a far more surreal experience awaits. Tan captures the strangeness of the immigrant experience by giving us a country where very little is recognisable from the food, to the animals people keep as pets, to the written and spoken language. But people are the same and the book celebrates the power of friendship as the man meets other immigrants who tell him their stories and help him make his own way in his new world. Much of the book was apparently inspired by Tan's father's experience emigrating from Malaysia to Australia in the 1960's but he clearly draws on many other experiences as well.

This is certainly not a picture book for young children as there are some quite graphic images of war and death. But older children might find it really thought provoking once they got over the lack of words (and the lack of colour).

I'll be looking out for anything else Shaun Tan has done. I definitely want my own copy of this book.

I've found that Shaun Tab has a really interesting website with many illustrations from his books.

http://www.shauntan.net/books.html

Good review, Rhian. The Arrival blew me away, too, and got me started on reading as much of Shaun Tan as I could find.

P.S. You should post this on the book page for it.

Returning the visit Rhian, interesting mix of books. I look forward to seeing what else turns up on this thread.

So sorry to hear about Lulu she looked like a beautiful dog.

12. Dogger Shirley Hughes ***



13. Mr Gumpy's Outing John Burningham ****



Still going through a review of picture books. I've rated these two for their target audience - a parent reading to a small child - unlike The Arrival which warrants a ***** rating purely on its own merits. Both of these were ones that I read to my own son and so I'm very familiar with them both.

I find it interesting that Mr Gumpy's Outing was published in 1970 while Dogger was published in 1977, but of these it's the earlier book that is standing the test of time better. There's something really timeless about the illustrations of Mr Gumpy's boat trip through archetypal English countryside with increasingly restless and badly behaved passengers (and it's definitely English countryside, not Scottish or Welsh), and it could almost be written at any time in the last fifty years. Dogger however shows real family life as it was lived in the 1970's and consequently looks much more dated - did 1977 really look like that? I suppose it must have done - but it looks a very long time ago. Dogger was apparently the public's favourite Kate Greenaway medal winner of all time (I assume British public) and I can see why it retains its popularity. It tells the simple story of a very young child, Dave, who loses his favourite soft toy Dogger. Dave's feelings will resonate with the child listening to the story who almost certainly will have their own favourite toy which they can't bear to be without, and the story will also resonate with parents who know the problems that can arise when a favourite toy is lost. I can remember my complete horror on an overnight ferry with my 5 year old son when I discovered that his teddy bear was nowhere to be seen - eventually discovered in the restaurant about 11 o'clock at night.

Overall though, I think Dogger loses out to Mr Gumpy's Outing with me for a number of reasons. Firstly, the realistic illustrations look too old fashioned to be contemporary, but for me are not old enough to evoke any feeling of nostalgia. And the fact that they are realistic means that there is no element of magic - something that always appeals to me in picture books. Secondly, and this is purely personal, I don't particularly like Shirley Hughes's style of illustration. She's been a tremendously successful illustrator, but there's something about her drawings that don't appeal to me.

Hi Rhian. Just catching up on some threads and wanted to say that I am so sorry to hear about Lulu.

#87 I don't remember Mr Grumpy's Outing but I do remember loving Dogger as a child. I was a 1981 baby though so it's possible that the 1977 illustrations didn't seem as dated when it was being read to me.

#88 I'm far too old to have encountered either of these first time around, so I really going on how they appeal to me now or when I was reading them to my son about 7 or 8 years ago. A book written in 1977 just isn't quite old enough for me to feel nostalgic about my own childhood (I was born in 1961 so would have been 16) whereas one from 10 years earlier would probably give me a warm fuzzy feeling. All very illogical.

#85 welcome Joe - I must admit to bring a little bit nervous of posting reviews- somehow it seems that reviews on a book's own page should be more profound and thoughtful than on your own thread, and as I'm quite new to the idea of writing about books I'm never quite sure that my reviews are up to it.

90: An official review on LT can be as brief as a sentence. Yours are thoughtful paragraphs. I agree with jnwelch -- you should post them for all to see.

14. Voices in the Park Anthony Browne ****1/2



Continuing on the picture book theme I've been looking closely at this book by Anthony Browne, which is a set book for my course. For those people who aren't familiar with his work he is probably best known for his inclusion of gorillas instead of people in his books, but going about their normal day-to-day activities as people would do in towns and cities. Like a more peaceful planet of the apes in modern day Britain. I'd seen his books recommended a few times when my son was still at the picture book stage, had glanced at one or two, but they hadn't appealed and I'd put them back on the shelf. So I was suprised to find that I loved this book.

In Voices in the Park a father takes his young daughter and her dog for a walk in the park, and a mother takes her son and their dog to the same park. The children meet, they play, the dogs play and then everyone goes home - nothing much happens. But in four separate stories each participant views the events from their own very different viewpoint - the father is clearly unemployed and short of money - the mother is well off and concerned to see that her son plays with the 'right sort of children'. What really makes the book are the illustrations which echo the viewpoints of each participant. At first glance the pictures are quite simple but as you look at them more closely you can see more and more surreal images and notice lots of details which reflect the point of view of that particular story - for instance the father's newspaper has a picture of Munch's 'The Scream' on the front cover which seems to reflect his desperation that he can't find a job. Admittedly I was looking very carefully at the book as I have to write a 2000 word essay comparing the illustrations in this book with those in Peter Rabbit, but I think that with a child's favourite picture book a parent does have plenty of time to look at the pictures - as you read it again ... and again ... and again. In a very simple book Anthony Browne has said lots of quite profound things about class and social structure and what you need to be happy. My one reservation is that I think the target audience (probably 5 year olds?) wouldn't notice a lot of what the book seems to be about. Perhaps this is intentional - I looked at his website and he'd made the following comments about who his books were for:

'Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.'

Received Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe in the post today. Swapped this with ReadItSwapIt.

I have a conflict at the moment between what I'm supposed to be reading and what I want to read. What I'm supposed to be reading is Quarantine by Jim Crace but I just can't get up any enthusiasm for it. I have to read it though as it's my husband's choice for our next book club meeting that's in our house next week. What I want to read is one of my new book acquisitions probably The Small Mine or The Flood.

We've been watching a five part BBC4 series 'The World against Apartheid: Have you Heard from Johannesburg?' this week. Really interesting and recommended if it's repeated. It made me realise that while I was probably reasonably well aware of the social conditions in South Africa during the apartheid years, I wasn't very aware of the history of the anti-apartheid movement. I'd heard vaguely of a lot of the key people spoken about in the series but if you had asked me why I had heard of them or what they had done I wouldn't have been able to tell you.

So to try and improve my knowledge in this area I've added the following books to my wishlist:

Long Walk to Freedom Nelson Mandela - I'd read the first couple of chapters previously but got put off by its length.
No Future without Forgiveness Desmond Tutu
Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country Gillian Slovo

If anyone can recommend a more general history book about this time I'd be very interested.

Edited to say I've decided to read Long Walk to Freedom one section at a time - allowing one week per section - eleven sections so eleven weeks - that makes it seem a bit less daunting.

St David's Day today so here are some daffodils to celebrate:

15. Quarantine Jim Crace**1/2



I really struggled with this book. I just couldn't get up any enthusiasm for it at all - it's very well written - I can see that - and looking at other people's reviews I can see that a lot of people have liked it but it really didn't do it for me. I would have given up half way through if it hadn't been my husband's choice for our next book group meeting and so I felt I needed to read it in a sense of family solidarity. I've read Continent by Jim Crace before and hadn't been taken by that either - I've one more sitting on the shelf - The Pesthouse - which I do feel more hopeful for as I like dystopian fiction. But if I don't like that either then I think Jim Crace has definitely got to be crossed off my list of authors to read. Anyway back to Quarantine:

In the Palestine of 2000 years ago the sadistic (but successful) merchant Musa has been abandoned by his family and the rest of his caravan as he lies dying of a fever in his tent. Despite his success and riches he is not liked and will not be missed - his pregnant wife Miri who remains with him out of duty is already looking forward to her widowhood. The tent is pitched below a series of caves used by pilgrims coming to pray in the wilderness and as Miri waits for Musa to die they are joined by four pilgrims: a Greek man who sees god in everything; an old Jewish man looking for a cure for the cancer that is killing him; a Jewish woman looking for a cure for her childlessness (as usual she is being blamed and about to be divorced by her husband when it is obvious that it is he who has the problem); and a 'badu' seemingly a Bedouin who speaks a language that no-one can understand. A fifth pilgrim follows - a Gallilean boy called Jesus who is obssessed by prayer and is determined neither to eat or drink for the forty days of his quarantine - unless something is miraculously provided by God. Before starting his fast Jesus asks for water at Musa's tent where he lies delirious with his fever while his wife is digging his grave - when Miri returns Musa has recovered and feels convinced that he has been miraculously healed by Jesus.

As Musa beomes obsessed with reconnecting with Jesus and simultaneously with fleecing the other travellers of every penny that he can get out of them, it becomes clear that he is the Satan of the gospel story, providing Jesus with temptation to break his fast. But who is Jesus? Crace's presentation of Jesus is not a particularly appealing one: he is an immature boy who although he wants to heal the sick and do good works seems to be motivated by a desire to prove himself to his family rather than anything else. It is never clear whether Musa's recovery is miraculous or not so it is equally unclear whether Jesus's desire to heal is merely the dream of a religious fanatic. Jesus's insistence on his absolute fast seems obsessive and ludicrous rather than divinely inspired.

Depsite my overall negative opinion of the book, it did have some redeeming points. Without putting in any spoilers I can say that the ending is ambiguous but very thought provoking. The descriptions of the wilderness, which I pictured as the hills above the Dead Sea, were very atmospheric and evocative. I've been to that area and it really brought back some of the scenery to me. As often happens the cover illustraion on my edition bears little resemblance to the description in the book - it's a mountaineous, desperately dry rocky area - not at all the rolling sanddunes pictured. But overall the book was more of a slog than anything else.

16. Coram Boy Jamila Gavin ***



Another read for my children's literature course. I was rather disappointed by the book overall. I was interested in the subject matter and it was a winner of the Whitbread Children's Book award and shortlisted for the Carnegie medal so I was really looking forward to it. But while the book had some good ideas, I was left with the impression of an opportunity missed.

Initially we are introduced to Mesak 'a simpleton' who in 1741 together with his pedlar father Otis travels the highways and byways of Gloucestershire. But Otis is not just a pedlar: he is a Coram Man who for a payment undertakes to deliver the unwanted and illegimate babies of rich and poor alike to the Coram Hospital in London where they will be cared for. But while Otis always arrives at the Hospital with some babies, they are never the same ones that he started with, as why should he bother to take care of them when there are always so many new babies who can take their place? There is a particularly horrific scene at the start of the book where the babies, both living and dead are buried together in a ditch. The story then switches to Thomas and Alexander, the first the son of a carpenter, the second the son of a rich man and the heir to a great estate, who are both choristers at Gloucester cathedral, and follows them on a visit to Ashbrook, Alexander's ancestral home. Despite Alexander's seeming advantages - it is he who has to deal with a father adamant that he should not become a musician. A jump in time of nine years finds both Alexander and Thomas working as muscians in London with the great composer Handel, while two new boys are introduced: Aaron brought to the Coram Hospital by his protector Mish; and Toby, an African boy born while his mother was on a slave ship. Eventually, the different threads of the story intertwine among themes of black slavery, white slavery, illegitimacy, with an underlying current of music.

I have a number of problems with the book. By trying to tell the story from the point of view of too many characters Gavin doesn't seem to make any of the characters really come alive. The timing is also very strange - at times there is a lot of description giving the characters back history which does get quite dull, and at other times much more exciting elements seem hugely rushed. The ending in particular almost reads as if the author had got bored with the book and just wanted to finish it as quickly as possible - the fate of the villain is left completely blank. I don't mind an ambiguous ending if it's there for a purpose but this reads as if the author just couldn't be bothered to put it in. And I wasn't 100% convinced by some elements of the eighteenth century atomosphere. So overall - an OK read - but could have been done so much better.

Just now catching up with your reviews, Rhian. Shipwrecks sounds interesting and fits with my goal of reading more Japanese authors. I'm sorry to hear that you did not care for Quarantine. I enjoyed it and everything else that I have read by Crace, so far.

Welcome Linda. I can't really put my finger on why I didn't like Quarantine (or Continent for that matter). The basic idea of each book appealed quite a lot. But somehow it didn't work for me in practice.

On the grounds that it fits in with my children's literature reading (we've been looking at reimagining fairy tales) I'm copying this link to The Guardian newspaper's new advert shown on UK TV. Do watch it. It's really, really good.

http://gu.com/p/35zdg

We had our tutorial on picturebooks this morning so I was inspired to get some more picturebooks:

The Story of The Little Mole who knew it was none of his business Werner Holzwarth & Wolf Erlbruch
The Magic Bed John Burningham
Gorilla Anthony Browne

Working my way through some threads I don't visit often enough and wanted to stop and say your review and the further comments posted about Quarantine has left me with some food for thought as I have this one currently on my TBR bookcase. I will get around to reading it at some point but appreciate your thoughts as I haven't seen this book mentioned in my LT travels so far.

Welcome Lori - I can see from your thread that you really liked The Sense of an Ending which I wasn't so keen on, which suggests that you might like Quarantine more than I did. Although the subject matter is quite different I think they might appeal to the same sort of readers. They are both quite ambiguous in what exactly is going on and open to different interpretations. I have my book club meeting for Quarantine on Tuesday and I'll be posting more thoughts on it after that.

Update on Quarantine

We had our book group yesterday when we were discussing Quarantine. Out of the 7 people who attended nobody really liked it - not even my husband who had picked it. Most thought it interesting and thought provoking but no one really liked reading it. We usually read literary fiction, with the odd classic or Virago type book thrown in, so it shouldn't have been really outside our comfort zone. But not a popular choice.

What was interesting was how many different interpretations people had got out of the same book. Some thought the description of Jesus in the book was a really profound and touching portrayal of the son of God wrestling with his humanity - others thought it was a portrayal of a obsessive teenager with delusions of grandeur. Some thought that the book was compatible with Christianity - others that it suggested that Christianity was a fraud based on a charlatan's stories. One of the problems that people seemed to have with the book was that it was really difficult to pin down and they didn't like that.

I've read that Jim Crace is much more popular in the U.S than in the U.K. despite the fact that he's British. It would be interesting to know what in paricular about his writing appeals to a U.S. market, unless it's pure chance.

17. The Tale of Peter Rabbit Beatrix Potter *****



I've given this five stars as I do think that the best Beatrix Potter's are just perfect little books for small children. I loved this as a small child and my son loved it as well. I think of all the Beatrix Potter's this is one of my favourites, probably equal with The Tale of Tom Kitten and The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher. I particularly love the way that the language can be so adult and yet because the text is very brief the child is able to cope with it. I can remember being very proud of knowing the meaning of the word 'soporific' as a child because I'd read it in The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies.

I've found it so interesting studying these books aimed at very young children in an academic light. Looking at picture books as a parent I obviously had views on which ones worked and which ones didn't but I didn't have the tools to analyse exactly what it was that made one book successful and another less so. This is an area that I think I'm definitly going to continue looking at when I finished this module. Apparently British picturebooks are quite conservative when compared to European ones so I'm going to see what might be available in other languages. I think I could manage a picture book in French and Italian at least.

Rhian - Thanks for posting the update on what your group thought of Quarantine. Good information I will keep in mind for when I get around to reading it!

Hi Rhian! I finally have time to check out threads. Sorry it took me so long to get here.
I'm so, so sorry about Lulu. From the photos she looked beautiful and full of personality. My condolences to your family.
You've read some good books already this year. I've added Tom's Midnight Garden and Quarantine to my wish list. I'd never heard of Jim Grace before your review. I know you didn't like Quarantine, but your review made it sound interesting enough to give it a try. I gave your review a thumb up. I'm glad you decided to post your reviews on the book page.
Looking forward to seeing what you'll read the rest of the year.

Finally finished a 3D jigsaw that my son had for Christmas. It feels like a major achievement as it's been sitting on the dining room table since two days after Christmas. First layer has London in 1666 and second layer has current day London, with model buildings to go on top. Much more difficult than it looked on the box.

Welcome Kelly - we're still all sad about Lulu but we're getting to the stage now where we're thinking of getting another dog. We all just miss having a dog about the place, even my husband who didn't really want one in the first place. We're debating what breed to go for. I'd quite like to have another staffordshire bull terrier as Lulu's temperament was just so sweet, but my son has his eye on a cocker spaniel.

108: Cool!

#108: The jigsaw looks amazing! I've seen that one in a shop, and wondered what it would look like made up. I've always loved jigsaws, but space constraints now mean that I have to rearrange the living room to do one. Have you seen the 24,000-piece world's biggest jigsaw? (I would have to buy a new house to have room for that).

I am enjoying your reviews of the books for your OU course. I hope your TMA for the children's module goes well!

That's an interesting jigsaw puzzle. I enjoy putting those together around Christmas with family members. I keep saying that I'm going to put up a card table in the living room and put one together here, but I haven't done so because I would need to rearrange furniture a bit to make it work.

18. Jamrach's Menagerie Carol Birch ***1/2



If you'd asked me to predict which of the Booker short list I would have most enjoyed I would have suggested this one. In the end I enjoyed it, but it didn't quite grab me as I was expecting.

Eight year old Jaffy, very new to the neighbourhood of Ratcliffe Highway in London, encounters a tiger on the street, and reaches out to stroke it. I loved the way that the uneducated and inexperienced Jaffy assumes that the tiger was a normal resident of his new home, an area where exotic birds are sold:

'Just as the birds of Bermondsey were small and brown, and those of my new home were large and rainbow-hued, so it seemed that the cats of Ratcliffe Highway must be an altogether superior breed to our scrawny south-of-the river mogs. This cat was about the size of a small horse, massively chested, rippling powerfully about the shoulders. He was gold and the pattern painted so carefully all over him, so utterly perfect, was the blackest black in the world'

The tiger picks him up in his jaws but not being hungry, drops him unharmed. To make amends for his experience, Jamrach, an importer an exporter of exotic animals, from whom the tiger has escaped offers him a job caring for the animals of his menagerie. And there Jaffy stays until he's grown, making friends and being teased in turn with Tim, Jamrach's existing keeper, and falling in love with Ishbel, Tim's nail-biting twin sister. When the chance comes to go on a sea-voyage to bring back a semi-mythical dragon (evident to the reader as a Komodo dragon) both Jaffy and Tim jump at the chance. But perhaps capturing a dragon is as unlucky as killing an albatross and things start to go badly wrong.

I felt like I should have liked this more than I did. The book splits into three main sections and while I liked the first section in London and was interested in the second section about catching the dragon (I've always had a bit of a thing about Komodo dragons), the third section (which is quite gruesome) didn't hold my interest as much.

19. The Sisters Brothers Patrick DeWitt ****1/2



This is probably the book from the Booker short list that I would have thought I wouldn't have enjoyed, not usually reading westerns and having a low tolerance for violence in books, but it's the one that I actually enjoyed the most.

Eli and Charlie Sisters are hired killers, paid by the 'Commodore' in Oregon City to kill a man named Herman Kermit Warm in San Francisco at the time of the California gold rush. Much of the book is taken up with their journey to San Francisco and their encounters on route, some of which are violent and some merely bizarre. The younger brother Eli narrates the story and initially seems a somewhat suprising killer: a thoughtful man who has dreams of leaving the violence behind and setting up a trading post, and who is concerned for his horse's welfare. I particularly enjoyed Eli's minor experiences en route: discovering the joys of tooth brushing or trying to order a low-fat meal in a frontier town. Eli as well as Charlie is an extremely efficient killer however, and I think for me this is what gave the book its strength, as by making him an attractive but at the same time extremely violent character the author opens up all sorts of questions about the causes of violence. The relationship between Charlie and Eli, characterised by constant bickering combined with their sense of responsibility for each other is also really well portrayed.

I've now read four out of the six Booker short list books and not going to get Half Blood Blues or Snowdrops read before my Book Group discussion next week. My vote will definitely be going to The Sisters Brothers which I think was a worthy short list contender. While I enjoyed Pigeon English and Jamrach's Menagerie I can't help feeling that there must have been better books published last year and I wasn't keen on The Sense of an Ending ( although a very Bookery book so I can see why it won).

A trip to Ely yesterday meant a trip to my favourite bookshop: Topping & Co. A lovely bookshop and they make you free cups of tea and coffee in proper china cups and saucers while you read their books. Also spent some time in the cathedral where the choir was practising for a concert - lovely.

Bought the following
True Grit Charles Portis - after enjoying The Sisters Brothers so much I thought I'd try it.
Mrs Harris goes to Paris Paul Gallico - I've had that on the wishlist for ever.
The Complete Cosmicomics Italo Calvino - I had this book years ago and left it on a train by mistake. I've looked for it again several times but never found it as i'd forgotten its name, and now I can see why. I'd only read one story which had really stuck in my mind but I'd completely forgotten the overall premise of the book so I hadn't recognised it from the blurb.
The Rabbits John Marsden Shaun Tan - I'd really enjoyed The Arrival so wanted to look at more of Tan's work.
Angry Arthur Hiawyn Oram Satoshi Kitamura - another picture book - I just liked the pictures.

#108 Oh wow! I've not seen 3D jigsaws before. Well done on getting it finished.

#113 I've heard good things about Jamrach's Menagerie but other people have also commented on the gruesome section and I am really not good with gruesome.

#115 A bookshop that serves proper tea? If I go to Ely I will definitely swing by the bookshop.

#110,#111,#112,#116 We found the jigsaw pretty difficult. London in the present day was fine as there were lots of irregular shaped pieces but 1666 was a nightmare. (I should say we are not very good at jigsaws so it might just have been us) Everything was either dark brown or sepia coloured and a large part of the map was just empty countryside as London didn't stretch out very far then. It does look good now it's finished though - the streets glow in the dark which my son likes a lot. Apparently they do a lot of other major cities as well - I imagine that the New York one would be impressive.

#111 I couldn't do a 24,000 piece jigsaw to save my life. 1000 pieces is my absolute limit.

#116 Apparently they have a bookshop in Bath as well which I never been to but looks nice on their website.

Received Lady John by Madeleine Robins as an Early Reviewers book. Looks like a Georgette Heyer lookalike and I love Georgette Heyer - she's my standard comfort read if things aren't going well.

We've made a decision on the puppy front. We are getting a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Now all we have to do is find a nice puppy.

#113: Ratcliffe Highway is very near where I live (although it's now just "The Highway", but there is an alley off it called Ratcliffe Orchard, which maintains the historical connection (if not an actual orchard)), and I know the local story about the tiger, but didn't realise it was the subject of this book. It sounds intriguing, although maybe a little gruesome?

I was wrong about the world's biggest jigsaw - there is now one with 32,000 pieces, but fortunately I don't like the picture :-)

My Book Group's Booker shortlist discussion dinner was last night and the results were as follows:

1 - The Sense of an Ending - voted the winner by 4 out of the 5 attendees on the grounds of its complexity and the quality of its language (I was the only fly in the ointment here). I wouldn't say that people really loved it though - more in terms of a literary prize they thought it was the only contender.

2 - The Sisters Brothers - 4 out of 5 really loved this book and enjoyed reading it, but overall felt that it didn't have the literary credentials of The Sense of an Ending. Again I was the exception here as I felt that it was the better book. Perhaps because of the subject matter we assume it's genre fiction and therefore it can't be good enough to stand against a very literary writer like Julian Barnes.

3 - Snowdrops - voted the most readable book but again not with the literary credentials of the Barnes.

4 - Pigeon English - enjoyed by 4 out of 5 readers (probably enjoyed is the wrong word as everyone found it very sad). Everyone thought it brought home the lives of children on a London sink estate really well.

5 - Half Blood Blues - everyone thought that the subject matter for this book sounded interesting but this wasn't sustained in the actual writing.

6 - Jamrach's Menagerie - least popular book, and least read. People thought it had started well with the scenes in Victorian London, but they'd lost interest when story moved to being onboard ship.

Overall, felt to be a weakish list in terms of literary quality. I have to say that we didn't like last year's list either which a slightly different collection of people found higher in litererary quality but low in readability and interest. We all thought that the best shortlist in recent years by a long way was 2009 when virtually all the shortlisted books seemed to combine both.

My husband's school is doing a reading list for year 12's (that's 16 to 17 year olds) to encourage them to read more - I thought it was quite interesting so I'm posting it here. My thoughts are it's a very male dominated list but some interesting choices.

1. The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
2. Pigeon English Stephen Kelman
3. Child 44 Tom Rob
4. The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes
5. Empire Niall Ferguson
6. Wild Swans Jung Chang
7. All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque
8. The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafron
9. Lenin’s Tomb David Remnick
10. Visions Michio Kaku
11. The Shock of the New Robert Hughes
12. Information is Beautiful David McCandless
13. My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes Gary Imlach
14. The Old Patagonian Express Paul Theroux
15. The Lost Heart of Asia Colin Thubron
16. Stranger in the Forest Eric Hansen
17. The Motorcycle Diaries Ernesto Che Guevara
18. The Family of Pascual Duarte Camilo Jose Cela
19. Slaughterhouse 5 Kurt Vonnegut
20. Sophie’s World Jostein Gaarder
21. Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
22. Persepolis Marjane Satrapi
23. The Road Cormac McCarthy
24. The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy
25. Collected Essays George Orwell
26. The Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
27. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
28. Tales of Mystery and Imagination Edgar Allan Poe
29. Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
30. The Feast of the Goat Mario Garcia Llorca
31. The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins
32. The Jeeves Omnibus – Vol. 1: No. 1 PG Wodehouse
33. Mother Tongue Bill Bryson
34. Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
35. Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel
36. Life of Pi Yann Martel
37. Mill on the Floss George Eliot
38. A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe
39. Far from the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
40. A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
41. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
42. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
43. Perfume Patrick Suskind
44. The True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey
45. The Black Swan Nassim Taleb
46. The Seven Daughters of Eve Bryan Sykes

Edited to add my thoughts - definitely needs a few more books by women - I might have added the following (although I'm not sure what I'd take out - certainly all the fiction choices seem to warrant a place - I'm not so sure about the non-fiction mainly because I'm less familiar with some of these):

Oranges are not the only fruit Jeanette Winterson
A Handmaid's Tale Margaret Attwood
The Stone Diaries Carol Shields
Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
Ethan Frome Edith Wharton
The Girl with the Pearl Earring Tracy Chevalier
Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I've added Stranger in the Forest by Eric Hansen and The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes to my wishlist - I'd not heard of them before and they look interesting.

I wish we had reading lists like that when I was that age. Interesting but also challenging. I wonder how much difference there is between the UK and US school systems in their selections.

#122 I don't know if this list would be characteristic of UK schools in general. There are quite a few international students so they have probably tried to make sure that there are plenty of non U.K. writers.

Non-uniform day at my son's school. I hate non-uniform day! I have a husband who is quite clothes conscious and thinks it's really important what they wear on non-uniform day in terms of having the right sort of brands and projecting the right sort of image etc and a son who is totally uninterested in what he wears as long as its comfortable. Actually it has to be very comfortable: no jeans, no shirts, nothing scratchy. If he had his way he'd go around in pyjamas all day. Balancing the two different sets of requirements is quite tricky especially as clothes shopping isn't really my thing. I can sort myself out a smart outfit for a special occasion but to be honest I haven't got the interest or the patience to do it most of the time and prefer the jeans and T-shirt option. What I'm supposed to be buying to turn my son out suitably dressed for non uniform day is a complete mystery to me. I've always done my son's clothes shopping but I think I'm going to have to turn it over to my husband to supervise in future, as his opinons on the subject seem much more developed than mine.

We got our car back from the garage yesterday and are now £700 worse off, which is very upsetting. But to be honest, the car had been in the garage for such a long time (about 10 days) that that was probably the minimum that we were going to get away with. It's had one of those intermittent faults for the last couple of months which irritatingly disappears as soon as you take it in for someone to look at it, so its been in and out of the garage a few times without any real progress being made. This time they got a technician from Skoda to come and investigate and they seem much more confident that they've fixed the problem. Certainly it seems much better so far - fingers crossed that it's properly fixed this time.

We're going puppy hunting this afternoon which will cheer me up. We're going to look at a litter of 9 staffies - all blue, 5 girls 4 boys. When I phoned up last night only two had been sold so I'm hopeful that one will be suitable. If so it'll be ready to leave its mother on 1st April which will be lovely.

#120 I don't make the same effort to read the Booker shortlist as I do for the Orange Prize but the 2009 Booker shortlist interested me much more than the 2010 and 2011 shortlist. I'd like to read The Sisters Brothers though and I'll probably read Half Blood Blues because it made it onto this year's Orange longlist too.

#121 I like the international flavour to the list but more women would have been nice. I like your additions but I'd have to add something by the Brontes.

#124 Hope the puppy hunting goes well!

Puppy pictures!





We went to see the litter of puppies this afternoon and picked this lttle girl. She's a 6 weeks old Stafforshire Bull Terrier and will be ready for us to have in two weeks. It was so difficult deciding on which one to have. I got quite overwhelmed by the sheer number of puppies at first as they were all incredibly similar - all blue staffies with little bits of white - and they all seemed quite confident outgoing puppies as well - no really shy or backward ones. Quite often there is more variety in the colouring for staffies. Eventually we just eliminated them one at a time and put the ones we didn't want back in their box to stop them escaping again and messing up our puppy sorting. By the time we'd made a final decision about our puppy and put her back in as well all the other ones had given up protesting about their confinement and all fallen asleep in a little heap. So sweet.

Now we've got two weeks to puppy proof the house, get a stair gate and buy some puppy toys.

It was quite strange as the breeder lived only a mile or so from where me and my husband first rented a flat together and just four miles from where we'd bought our first flat, so we took our son on a little tour of where we used to live. We moved from that area about 1992 and probably haven't been back since about 1994. I didn't really feel much sense of nostalgia - I was so pleased when we moved to where we are now. My son obviously considered some parts to be a bit of a dodgy area - but he hasn't really got much experience of that sort of thing.

So a really good afternoon which ended even better when we came back to watch Wales beat France 16-9 to win the Six Nations Championship with a Grand Slam.

#125 you're right it does need some Bronte. I think I'd add Wuthering Heights - I found that worked much better for me when I read it aged about 20 than when I re-read it 20 years later.

#126 Aw, so cute! Good luck with the puppy proofing!

#127 Probably because I read all the Bronte novels in my teens, I've always thought of them as quite teenagerish books because of all the raw emotion sloshing around.

That's a very cute puppy! It sounds like they come from a good home if they were all happy and outgoing. The school list is interesting - I must count up how many I have read. Some seem pretty advanced for 16-17 year olds, but then again I would have been insulted if someone had said that to me when I was that age. I sometimes wish I had a list of what I did actually read back then, but it's just a dim and distant memory :-)

#129 They did seem very happy. When we went into the sitting room where they were they all spilled out into the hall like a little sea of puppies and immediately started trying to climb the stairs (they couldn't - too small), playing tug of war with my husband's shoelaces and trying to pull a shoe out of a cupboard that wasn't closed properly. We saw both parents as they were family pets and they seemed friendly.

124: What I'm supposed to be buying to turn my son out suitably dressed for non uniform day is a complete mystery to me.
Makes sense to turn the job over to the one who cares.
126: Too cute! How did you choose?

#131 It was incredibly difficult to choose. We decided to have a girl as male staffies can be very muscular and we thought a girl might be more affectionate, but that still left us with five to choose from. In terms of appearance they were all incredibly similar - the only way we could tell them apart was by the different sized patches of white on their paws. Ours has three white toes on her back right paw. When I've seen puppies before there always seemed to be a couple that were quite shy and not as outgoing as the rest but these all seemed quite confident. The breeder has a young daughter and they were obviously used to being played with. Eventually we went for the two that seemed most interested in playing with us rather than trying to eat the doormat or anything else and we were left choosing between the two that were playing tug of war with my husband's shoe laces. Choosing between them was really hard.

A litter of nine seems really big for staffies - the average size is about five.

I was reading my puppy book last night - according to that the ages between weeks 8 and 12 are a crucial time for puppy socialisation, and giving her all the new experiences she's supposed to have looks like a full time occupation. She's supposed to meet: all ages and ethnicity of people; men with beards and moustaches; motorcyclists with helmets; people on motorbikes, bicycles and skateboards; people in wheelchairs; cats, horses, small animals - the list goes on and on and that's before you even look at the sort of places she's supposed to experience. Staffies are very friendly with people but can be a bit aggressive with other dogs sometimes if they're not socialised properly with them at an early age so I'll need to enroll her in puppy classes as soon as her injections kick in.

LOL you can make socialising a puppy into a day job, but I think you will end up witha WAY to tired puppy ;-)

Don't take lists like that too serious, a wel balanced dog will adapt to any situation.
Our little Ari, the Pekingese, came to us at 13 weeks and had never seen anything outside his birthplace and he had never met other dogs, besides his parents and his littermates.
At fist he was a bit skittish around other dogs, but he learned fast and nowadays he is a confident little doggie, and he knows very well wich dogs he can challange and get away with it and those who won't tolerate too much from him.
He adapts to different envioments, as long as we are patient enough to let him exprore and take things at his own time.

Socialising is important, but don't over do, puppies need to sleep a lot and two outings a week to expose to mentioned new experiences are more than enough, being one of these the puppy class.

Good luck with the little girl!!!

#133 I don't think that there's much chance that we'll do all that so i think she'll get plenty of time to sleep as well. I suppose I noticed all the ideas about socialisation because that seems to have really changed since the last time I looked at a puppy book (which was about 30 years ago). I don't remember any talk about socialisation at all then.

We've had somebody running puppy and dog classes locally recommended to us by several people so I'll be putting her name down in the next few days.

At the moment we're struggling with a name. I like Seren (which is Welsh for star) and we're also thinking about Molly.

20. The Other Side of Truth Beverley Naidoo ***1/2



Very slow reading over the past week as I was recovering from a blitz with the Booker shortlist, searching for puppies and sorting out a new ipad, which was taking up most of my spare time. But have eventually finished another book.

In Lagos twelve year old Sade and her ten year old brother Femi are getting ready for school when they hear the sound of shots: they find their mother lying dead in their father's arms in their driveway, after getting in the way of a bullet meant for her husband, a journalist on an English language newspaper who has received death threats for his criticism of the Nigerian government. Within hours further death threats have been received and Sade's father, Folarin Solaja, decides that both he and his children must leave the country at once. The same night the children are given into the care of a woman who will smuggle them into Britain where they can live with their uncle who teaches at a London college, while their father will travel separately under a false passport as his own has been siezed by the government. But when the children arrive in London their uncle does not meet them at Heathrow and they are abandoned by their so-called protector; when they attempt to trace their uncle at his college he has disappeared and has not been seen for a week. Wondering alone late at night on the streets of London the children are eventually found by police, and passed into the hands of social services to find them emergency accomodation. Not knowing whether their father has escaped from Nigeria they are frightened to give their real names, but as they are clearly traumatised they are granted temporary permission to stay in Britain and placed with a foster family. But what has happened to their uncle and will they be reunited with their father...

Much of the book deals with Sade's experience as she attempts to settle at her new school, where she is bullied by some of her new classmates, and the parallels between this and her father's experiences standing up to the authorities in Nigeria, give the books its title. Because she is from Africa she is assumed not to speak English, and not to able to spell her own name, whereas in fact Sade has been brought up speaking English as well as Yoruba from birth, and is a well-educated girl who attended a good school in Lagos. These assumptions don't seem particularly racist in character, as some of the bullies are Caribbean in origin, but seem more to reflect the stereotypes that children might pick up about Africa given what is normally seen on the television. I was particularly interested in the portrayal of schools in the U.K. versus schools in Nigeria as I work closely with someone of Nigerian origin who has sent her own children to boarding school there in preference to them attending the schools locally. Saying that in my son's class there are three children from Nigeria who have gone the other way.

Altogether a good read, with some similarities to Pigeon English that I read earlier in the year.

Happy Birthday, Rhian! Very nice review of The Other Side of Truth; I'll add it to my wish list. Did you also get the new iPad?

#136 No I bought the old one - I couldn't justify the extra cost for the new one at the moment. The main difference seemed to be the graphics and comparing the two in the shop I decided that I could cope with the graphics on the IPad2.

I've realised that I should have mentioned that The Other Side of Truth was a YA novel. I've only got one book left to read now before finishing my Children's Literature course: Junk (Smack in the US) by Melvin Burgess so I'll be back on the adult stuff soon.

21. Wool Omnibus Hugh Howey ****

I'd seen this ebook recommended a few times on LT but have always been quite dubious of cheap ebook only publications. But I've really enjoyed this series - much better than other things in this line that I've read recently (The Passage for instance which I found very disappointing). Although theoretically there are five books in the series the first couple are really short - more the length of a long short story.

In a clearly post-apocalyptic world Hulston is sheriff of the Silo, an underground community, but commits the ultimate crime for his community: he asks to go outside as his wife has done before him. This means certain death as outside is a poisoned, dead and grey world. No one survives for long enough to get out of sight of the silo's cameras and the ground around is scattered with the bodies of those who went outside before him. To say much more would give away many of the twists in the plot which are the book's main strength but I would strongly recommend to anyone who likes dystopian fiction.

My birthday today and had the following books:
The Complete Maus Art Spiegelman
Persepolis Marjane Satrapi
The Night Circus Erin Morgenstern

I'm experimenting with graphic novels which I hadn't really paid much attention to previously.

Happy Birthday Rhian!

I liked the other two, so I should read Persepolis someday :-)

and Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Rhian!! Thanks so much for stopping by my thread! I'll be back later to chat on your thread - for now I've got it starred! :) For the moment I'll just say that's a very ambitious reading list for 16 to 17 year olds! Wow! I have two sons, 27 and nearly 22, and I can tell you that they would find that very daunting.

In Canada, there is a much greater focus on CanLit - or literature written by Canadians. Often that is literature that has the immigrant experience to Canada as a topic.

Lord of the Flies seems to be staple for highschool reading, both when I attended school, and for my sons.

Back later in the day!

Welcome Deborah! It does seem an ambitious list doesn 't it? At the school they do the International Baccalaureate rather than the more normal A Levels that we do 16-18 in the UK - it's supposed to be a bit more difficult so they will be fairly high achieving teenagers but even so .... I think I would have struggled with quite a few.

I think they're trying to get them to look at more adult books and it looks to me like they've excluded things that they might have come accross anyway like Lord of the Flies or Of Mice and Men which is the one that everyone seems to do in UK schools at the moment.

I had a book token for my birthday so I have bought Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn which I have heard good things about and tales from outer suburbia by Shaun Tan. I'm starting to really love Shaun Tan's work.

Countdown to puppy continues - only 5 days to go.

Hey! Thanks so much for calling me Deborah!! That's what I actually go by, but here on LT, I used the name VancouverDeb, and so most everyone calls me Deb - but IRL I have always been Deborah!

As for the list - it's a good one. My sons both were taken with the sciences and my youngest is just about to graduate from university with BSc in Computer Science and has already landed an excellent job. I'm afraid he has read only text books and my eldest likely only reads about hockey! Sigh! One day.... maybe!
Oh so exciting!!! How fun to get your puppy! We have a nearly 12 year old bichon friese that we got from a shelter, but she is really a dear. Prior to that we had a Border Terrier, and he was a real love too! The boys loved him -and we had him for 15 years. I wish you much happiness with your puppy!

Surprisingly, I've got an Early Reviewers book - The Outcast and the Little One. Surprising, because I can't remember requesting it at all. I suppose I must have done. I haven't read my book from last month yet - and I've got at least a couple of other books that I must read first...

Very little reading going on this week but I need to have a concerted effort on Kafka on the Shore, my next book club book. The weather is still absolutely lovely - 22 degrees when I left work yesterday.

I was very annoyed today when I forgot my lunch (which I virtually never do) so needed to pop out to the nearby supermarket to get a sandwich at lunchtime. I hadn't bargained on panic buyers of petrol clogging up the entire supermarket access road and causing major traffic chaos back onto the main road as well. I had to give up without even getting into the supermarket car park.

We're still debating on a name for the puppy. Favourites so far are Molly, Daisy, Zoe and Bella. My son's suggested Bluebell or Annabeth which have been vetoed by my husband. I've suggested Hester, Seren (Welsh for star) and Islay which have been vetoed by everyone.

Names are never easy... of those I like Molly.
Sometimes the right name just pops up after you have had her a few days at home.

Rhian, Just checking in and starring your thread. I read and very much liked The Night Circus and I have Persepolis sitting on my nightstand, on loan from a colleague who strongly recommended it. I have not yet read Maus but hope to do so. Graphic Novels are also a bit new for me; I highly recommend Fun Home and Stitches, both of which I read last year. They are graphic memoirs, a sub-genre with which I'm becoming very intrigued.

I look forward to seeing pictures of the new puppy!

We collected the new puppy on Saturday and she is already making herself at home. We have decided to call her Daisy - her pedigree name is Misty Sapphire Gem so we briefly considered calling her Misty once we discovered that, but then decided that Daisy was better. We took her to the vet's yesterday for her first injections and he confirmed that she seems healthy and well socialised, which is good. She has her second injections in two weeks time and can go out a week after that. Here are some pictures:









So far, interactions between puppy and cat have been going okay - Ruby doesn't seem too nervous of her, and isn't keeping her distance too much - she seems to find the puppy annoying rather than anything. She even gone so far as to hiss at her once or twice which has made Daisy back off - very brave for Ruby who usually runs away from most things.

Here is Ruby's last evening of freedom, on Friday night:

Ohhhh puppy-power!
Daisy looks adorable, beautiful silver-blue in the picture where she is in the sun.

Congratulations with your new family member :-)

#151 She is a beautiful colour - she has a lovely soft coat as well.

Last night we had our first good night's sleep since Daisy's arrival as the first few nights she wasn't happy about being left on her own. I think she would quite like to curl up with the cat but Ruby's not having any of it. Whenever Daisy does her 'Let's Play' posture with her front legs on the ground and her bottom in the air the cat just hisses at her.

Just had an outing to see The Hunger Games which me and my husband both enjoyed but my son was less keen. He felt there was too much romance in it compared to the book and the capital city wasn't so dark. I haven't read the book so can't comment.

Daisy looks very cute!

I think I'm one of the last people not to have read The Hunger Games but the film certainly seems to be doing good business. Your poor son with the romance!

That is one adorable puppy. My sympathies to the cat.

22. Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami ****

I read this for my April Book Group meeting - I hadn't read any Murakami before - I think I'd picked up some of his books and put them down again a few times but never actually bought one. In retrospect it's quite strange that I hadn't read anything by him before as his books seem to fall into one of my favourite sub-genres which I would loosely describe as 'literary but weird'. I suppose I would include magic realism in this category, as well as books by literary authors which have elements of science fiction or fantasy. Kafka on the Shore should have ticked all the boxes for me as it is definitely literary and definitely weird but for some reason there was something about it which didn't quite work, hence only a **** rating.

Kafka on the Shore starts as a troubled 15 year old boy (the Kafka of the title - not his real name which we never learn) runs away from his home in Tokyo where he lives with his father - his mother has disappeared with his older sister years previously and he doesn't even know her name or what she looks like. He ends up at a town in the south of Japan where he discovers an unusual library and is befriended by the people who run it: Oshima and the enigmatic Miss Saeki. Kafka's story is initially interspersed with documents relating to an investigation into a strange incident in the Japan of the 1940's where a number of children collapsed simultaneously for no apparent reason, and later with the contemporary story of Mr Nakata, who had been one of the children affected in the incident, now an elderly man. Not so very weird at first - but then Mr Nakata can talk to cats, Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders appear and strange things fall from the sky A shocking turn of events forces Mr Nakata to flee Tokyo and it gets stranger and stranger. Anyone who likes everything to be crystal clear at the end of a book should probably leave this one alone.

There were elements of the book that I really loved - the strangeness for a start - and Nakata's story, particularly his relationship with the lorry driver who helps him on his quest. However, there were parts that didn't work for me. There are some quite violent scenes (any cat lovers who are at all squeamish should beware) and I'm not very good with that. Kafka also didn't really come accross as a 15 year old boy, even a very literary one - and in particular the relationship between him and Oshima just didn't ring true. In fact, Kafka's relationships as a whole didn't seem to make sense - he is obviously a troubled teenager who has never made real friends - and yet he is able to develop a fairly successful relationship with everyone he meets after leaving home.

So not a perfect read but one that I really enjoyed and I'll be reading more of Murakami's work.

23. Lady John Madeleine Robins **1/2

A Regency Romance received as an Early Reviewers Book. I really wanted to like this book as it looked a very Georgette Heyer sort of book and she is one of my favourite authors (although I don't read a lot of romance generally). She's very much a comfort read if I'm feeling stressed or ill but I've read virtually all her books and I was hoping to find something in a similar vein that I could turn to when I needed a bit of comfort. Unfortunately I didn't find that this book was anything like as successful.

Set shortly after the Battle of Waterloo, Lady John, a widow in her early twenties, travels to meet her late husband's family. Their attempts to find a suitable match for her and to disentangle her true love from his fiancee do not go smoothly, in true Georgette Heyer style. But the book seemed to really drag at the beginning: Lady John's initial indifference to her husband's death was not explained and made her seem a rather callous and unappealing character. Too many characters were introduced early on and the first part of the book seemed very much a hurried series of events, with little explanation of the heroine's feelings, which is surely essential in a romance. The sense of period wasn't as well drawn as it could have been: the actions of some of the characters just didn't seem to ring true given the period in which it was set.

The book picked up halfway through and I was keen to see what happened at the end. So an OK read. I wouldn't particularly be looking out for this author again but I might pick up another of her books if it was in front of me. But overall I found it to be too much a copy of Georgette Heyer rather than showing much originality.

#153 Since we saw the film everyone else in the house has been reading Hunger Games books. My husband's on number 2 and my son's on number 3. I think it's made me more inclined to read the book - it didn't particularly appeal before.

#154 The cat is even more out put out as Daisy has learnt to go out the catflap. That won't last long as she'll be too big soon - but the cat looks on the cat flap as her domain and isn't happy about the change.

My oh my, where is the world going if dogs start to use your catflap???
Hush kitty, these days will be over soon ;-)

And how is Daisy doing?

#158 Daisy's doing fine. She's developed a taste for my son's toes unfortunately, which he doesn't help by hopping about on one foot whenever she has a chew, and refusing to put any shoes on. Generally she's being quite good though - she really likes to play out in the garden and seems to be much more able to cope with wet weather than Lulu was. We're looking forward to the time she can go out for a walk.

Quite an unusual Easter. I can't remember the last time we were actually at home for Easter - we pretty much always go away for a week. But staying at home this year because of the puppy and so spent yesterday and today decorating my son's bedroom. Nearly finished now - just another coat of paint tomorrow on the window and door and we'll be done. I've got all week off work so we'll be able to do something nicer later in the week.

Interesting take on Kafka on the Shore, Rhian. I'm a Murakami fan, and that's one of my faves, but I can see where it might throw you off, especially when it comes to the violence. If you like literary but weird, he certainly fits the bill. I started with his slim short story volume, After the Quake, which I don't remember as featuring any notable violence, but I may not be as sensitive to that as you. Probably my deplorable American upbringing.

#161 I didn't find Kafka on the Shore so violent that I didn't enjoy it. It's more that I would have enjoyed it better without it. I think what let the book down for me was that I didn't really believe the character of Kafka, rather than the violence. Still I did enjoy it and I'll definitely be reading some more Murakami.

Gotcha. Yeah, I could do with less of the overt violence in a lot of books (and movies). Because of the surreal elements in his books, I seem to view his characters differently than I might otherwise. They're surreal, too, so my belief in the character is of a different kind. But it's an interesting thought. I certainly found it easier to buy into and follow Nakata.

Meant to have a nice quiet morning studying this morning but it didn't go quite according to plan. While I was holding Daisy she managed to pull out one of my earrings - I found the back but couldn't find the front anywhere and thought she might have swallowed it so we had to have a trip to the vets to investigate. I was worried it might do some damage to her but there was no sign of it after the vet had made her sick and they didn't seem too worried - seems likely she didn't swallow it after all. She was not at all happy with me for the rest of the morning after that trip.

ahhh poor Daisy and poor you!

puppy picture update time???

#163 I am particularly squeamish when it come to violence - I'm even worse when it's on the screen. It doesn't really matter whether it's realistic or not - I've always been particularly bad with zombie films!

Hi Rhian. First of all, Daisy is absolutely adorable! Congrats on adding her to the family (oh, and Ruby is a very pretty and sweet-looking little cat, too!).

I have not yet tried Murakami and have been thinking that I would like to start with Kafka on the Shore but I don't know if I can do violence involving cats. Any violence involving animals is hard for me, and I'm a cat-lover through and through..... so, scenes that would stay with me? Torture of cats? I'm glad you included this warning in your review; I'll have to consider closely whether to take the risk.

Hi Rhian! What an adorable puppy! Our dog's name is Daisy too! We adopted her from shelter and she is lovely! Our last dog was " Twiggani Jackpot Geordie" but we just called him Geordie. He was a Border Terrier, so the name suited him perfectly!

#167 You wouldn't call Ruby a little cat if you saw her in real life! She's been on a diet for the past three years to no avail. The vet says we should try to get her to take more exercise which is easier said than done - she's the laziest cat I've ever come across. We bought her a 'kibble nibble' a few years ago to try and get her to work harder for her food - basically a ball with holes in that the food falls out of when you roll it about. She didn't get the idea at all - she just miaowed at my son for him to roll it for her so she could eat the food.

Kafka on the Shore does involve scenes of extreme violence towards cats - if this would worry you you might want to try something else. It is a fairly critical scene as well so you can't just go on to the next chapter without losing the sense of what's going on.

#168 We would have probably gone for another rescue dog as well if it hadn't been for the cat. We decided that it would be a lot easier to get a puppy used to the cat rather than an adult dog.

Daisy's first outing to play with another dog today. We took her to meet my friend's labradoodle and that seemed to go quite well. She was quite frightened at first, tail between her legs and making herself very small and submissive, but she soon got used to the idea of another dog and they spent a happy twenty minutes playing in the garden. She's now completely exhausted.

169> LOL about Ruby. Abby will watch me throw "suedy-mouse" back and forth many many times. She enjoys watching me get the exercise.

I will definitely not buy or read Kafka on the Shore. Thanks for the tip. I'll try a different Murakami.

Lovely pictures of Daisy and Ruby Rhian! Our cat has one of those balls you put treats in and she will use it but unfortunately she has worked out that the treats come out more quickly if she rolls it really slowly so I'm not sure it works as an exercise toy.

I have Kafka on the Shore in my TBR pile - not sure whether I'm brave enough to suggest it for reading group as one member hates books which aren't realistic. I loved Norwegian Wood when I read the year before last so I really should pick up Kafka soon.

169: You wouldn't call Ruby a little cat if you saw her in real life! She's been on a diet for the past three years to no avail.
I have one of those. I swear he's living on air, or has a secret stash of food somewhere.

#172 Kafka on the Shore was a choice for my reading group as well and of the people there two absolutely loved it, four really liked it and one (my husband) felt it was very irritating.

We got back from a couple of hours at a friend's house this evening leaving my son in charge of Daisy to find that she had got into her food cupboard and eaten all her treats. She is now looking very full and sleepy.

Oh, I would've loved to hear a reading group discussion of Kafka on the Shore.

Ohhh, adorable pictures of Daisy (and Ruby)!!!! I'm sure Ruby knows Daisy is a baby and that's why she's not afraid to put her in her place. :)

>173 qebo:: It's the carbs in commercial cat food... cats can't process them, and it makes them fat. :( Cats are carnivores and really, all they need is meat, but to buy cat food that caters ONLY to their specific digestive needs you're going to pay through the nose for it. We considered giving our cat a natural-food blend (ie. something that's all protein, with some grit for digestion, just as if she'd be eating a whole mouse carcass or whatnot), but we simply can't afford it right now. Instead, we try to give her the best commercial brand with highest protein, but it still is full of useless crap like wheat and corn. Dogs can eat that stuff because they're omnivores, but cats? Nope. It's just cheaper for the companies to produce it that way. But that's what we get for living in a world where corn is used as filler in just about *everything*.

173 and 176> We have transitioned our Abby from all dry food to some dry and some wet food. She loves Weruva and has lost some weight. The vet explained exactly what you're saying, dk, that cats really don't metabolize carbs well.

#176,#177 Ruby's on Royal Canin Light cat food which is designed for fat cats. I think it's quite a good quality one but when I looked at the ingredients it does have a lot of carbohydrates in it. I'll ask the vet whether the wet food might be better.

Before we had Ruby I always thought that cats regulated their own food intake and didn't overeat. Certainly the cat we had had before did so - but he was much more active - I think he had some Siamese or something of that sort in him. So when we had Ruby we gave my son the job of feeding her - which to be fair he has always done conscientiously - but he tended to give her very generous amounts. We are regulating her intake carefully now and she has lost some weight over the last few years. Apparently she is not quite overweight enough for it to be worth while attending the vet's weight loss clinic, but she could do with losing a bit more. But as the vet says, she is never going to be a slim cat.

> 176: Dogs can eat that stuff because they're omnivores
Well, actually, no, dogs are carnivores too, but most dogs have a bit more tolerance for carbs, although it is known to cause diabetes in dogs.

Cats need taurine and that is found in meat (I haven't had cats for years now, but as I recall taurine is mostly found in heart)

#179 Cats need taurine
As far as I can see the food that she is getting does contain taurine - but I will ask the vet if the wet food might be better.

>179 FAMeulstee:: You are right, of course. :) I should have said "since domestication, dogs have a higher tolerance for a wide variety of foods." Their commercial pet food still tends to have plenty of disease-causing garbage in it as well!

24. Junk Melvin Burgess***1/2 (published as Smack in the U.S.)



A cheerful tale of underage runaway teenagers in 1980's Bristol in a downward spiral of drug abuse, crime, prostitution and drug dealing. Sorry - I'm being sarcastic - not very cheerful at all really. This is the last book that I've read for my Children's Literature course (although this is definitely a YA book). I wasn't really expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did - I don't usually go for gritty realism - but I actually stayed up late to finish it.

Tar runs away from an abusive father and alcoholic mother and his girlfriend Gemma follows some weeks later when her parents overreact about their relationship. Initially befriended by Richard, an anarchist (whose main act of anarchy seems to consist of putting super-glue in the locks of banks to stop them opening), Gemma feels patronised by the slighly older people in their squat who she accuses of acting like her parents and both her and Tar move out into another squat with the younger Rob and Lily, both heroin users. And everything goes downhill from there. Gemma and Tar both become locked into a cycle of self-deception that they are not really junkies and could stop any time they want to, and Gemma ends up working as a prostitute to pay for her habit while Tar steals from everyone he knows. The cycle is only broken when Gemma becomes pregnant and wants to keep the baby.

I found this a very well written book. Both Gemma and Tar were believable fairly normal teenagers who had got themselves into circumstances they could not cope with because of their family circumstances. Each chapter is narrated by a different character including the parents of Gemma and Tar and it is clear that everyone is deceiving themselves to a certain degree.

SPOILERS
Edited to add: the book raises some interesting issues about the destructive nature of illegal versus legal drugs. Tar's mother is an alcoholic and we learn at the end that Tar's father is an alcoholic as well. Alcohol has been equally destructive in the father's life as heroin has been in his son's and both seem equally unable to face the consequences of their actions. Very thought provoking.

New books:

Road to Wigan Pier Revisited Stephen Armstrong - retracing George Orwell's iconic journey through northern England.

Children's Picturebooks The Art of Visual Storytelling Martin Salisbury - I've been eyeing this one up for several weeks - I enjoyed the picturebooks element of my course so much.

The Magic of Reality Richard Dawkins - bought this on a visit to the Science Museum in London with my son last week. Strictly speaking it's his book but I'll probably read it as well.

#164 The missing earring has been found - Daisy hadn't swallowed it after all! But she very nearly did - I actually found it in her mouth this afternoon when I went to investigate what she was eating. She's usually eating something she shouldn't be.

And horror of horrors - book chewing has been going on! Luckily only a second hand book. I get very possessive about my new books - I like them to be in a pristine condition when I read them.

Hi Rhian. Well, I'm glad you found the earring before Daisy could swallow it this time! Hmmm, book chewing. Not good. I don't suppose she could be hinting that she needs a new chew toy, could she? Or maybe you need to leave a pair of slippers lying about for her.... Ha.

I finally have found your thread and what a cute new puppy you have! And some nice books too.

#185 She does have quite a lot of things to chew already. But of course the forbidden things are more interesting. She's not really allowed in the sitting room where the books are unless under very close supervision, but of course my son's not very good at remembering to keep the door shut! It's only been one book so far, thank goodness. For some reason she's fascinated by tea- towels. I will put one down for 10 seconds and it's been ferretted away back to her crate.

#186 welcome to the thread Anne.

Here is the thing that everyone else has been doing:

Hardback or paperback?
Used to be hardback but paperbacks are so much more compact that I've converted.

Amazon or bricks and mortar?
Bricks and mortar - although I do resort to Amazon as well - I'd struggle in a world with no bookshops.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?
Neither - Waterstones

Bookmark or dogear?
Neither - I can always remember where I am.

Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random?
Split into fiction & non-fiction, then hardback and paperback, then alphabetically.

Keep, throw away, or sell?
Usually keep if I've liked the book - I used to give lots to the charity shop or swap them on ReadItSwapIt but I'm now want to read lots of books that I've previously given away so I'm tending much more towards keep.

Keep dust jacket or toss it?
Keep

Read with dust jacket or remove it?
With

Short story or novel?
Definitely novel

Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)?
Collection - but I don't read huge amounts of short stories

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?
Harry Potter

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?
Chapter breaks if at all possible

"It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time"?
It was a dark and stormy night

Buy or Borrow?
Buy - I do try to borrow from the library but I'm not very good at it. I often pay more in fines than the book would cost to buy. It drives my husband mad - his mother was a librarian.

New or used?
Ideally new - I love nice crisp unread books.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse?
Book reviews (Saturday Guardian Book pages usually), LT recommendations.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger?
Tidy ending usually

Morning reading, afternoon reading or nighttime reading?
Anytime. Until 3 years ago I read mainly on my commute into London - it took me a while to find the time when I would read now.

Stand-alone or series?
Stand-alone. I don't read that many series.

Favorite series?
His Dark Materials Philip Pullman

Favorite children's book?
Loads of them - maybe A Bear Called Paddington The Weirdstone of Brisingamen Un Lun Dun

Favorite book of which "nobody" else has heard?
Random Deaths and Custard Catrin Dafydd

Favorite books read last year?
The City and the City China Mieville

Favorite books of all time?
Difficult - Persuasion Cold Comfort Farm The City and the City A Brief History of the Dead

Least favorite book you finished last year?
I wasn't recording my reading last year so I can't remember everything but I remember I didn't enjoy Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. I'm not a Niffenegger fan but it was a Book Group read.

What are you reading right now?
The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited Stephen Armstrong
Tales from Outer Suburbia Shaun Tan

What are you reading next?
Maybe Island of Wings or Maus

> 188: it is fun to see these on all the threads, I just finished mine ;-)

Hi Rhian! I found you
What an adorable puppy!! I miss having a puppy around, now I have a dog instead! Still cute but I miss the tiny fluffy stage!

#190 I miss the tiny fluffy stage

I think I'm wishing the tiny fluffy stage didn't have such sharp teeth at the moment!

Oh! I really enjoyed Island of Wings - but I cannot say for sure if you will. I enjoyed Pigeon English last year too, when I was reading some of the Booker shortlist. I just ignored the talking pigeon. I can't I think he added anything to the novel. I think the author just though - I will add a fancy literary device. But that did not work so well.

Enjoyed catching up Rhian. Very illuminating on the diets of cats and dogs - I often feel our cats eat far better than I do -and I eat like a king at the worst of times!
Enjoyed also the Melvyn Burgess review and will look that one up.
The meme (whatever one of those is) was also interesting. I wonder what it tells us about each other? Liked the one about never forgetting your place - impressed, I must say.

A busy weekend coming up. We've got a family christening (my great-nephew) on Sunday so we've got my Mum (age 90) and my aunt (age about 87 I think) staying for a few days so that we can take them to the christening. Balancing the needs of older people and a 11 week old puppy isn't the easiest thing in the world I've discovered. My aunt isn't at all used to dogs either which makes it more difficult, whereas my Mum has had puppies in the past so she at least knows what to expect. Normally they would have gone to my sister's instead under these circumstances but she is looking after one of her grandson's this week aged 2 which is keeping her fully occupied - her daughter is home from Thailand for the christening with her youngest child but is combining it with a working trip, hence the need for my sister to babysit.

Managed to get very stressed yesterday - left work an hour early to pick some things up at the supermarket and make sure place was clean and tidy before going to pick visitors up at the airport but the first thing I did when I got home was knock a pack of glass bottles of beer out of the fridge - beer everywhere, glass everywhere and Daisy trying to paddle in it all. Put Dasiy in the utility room while I cleared everything, but the minute I let her back in I realised that she'd been out through the catflap playing in a very muddy garden and she got nice little muddy paw prints everywhere. So I had to clean the floor again. Had to leave to collect visitors without even having put my shopping away with the place looking like a bomb had hit it.

#193 I used to find my husband's need of a bookmark quite strange. I thought why can't he just remember where he is like I do? But I'm coming to realise that it's probably me who's the unusual one. That's just how I've always done it.

#192 I have quite a fascination for Scottish Islands and I've visited several of them in the Inner and Outer Hebrides a few times, as well as a couple of holidays on Orkney. I've never been to St Kilda though, it still takes some getting to even today. But I do find its story fascinating so I hope I will enjoy Island of Wings. Incidentally, my sister sailed past St Kilda a couple of years ago but failed to see anything at all because of thick fog. She also failed to see much of the Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands and Spitzbergen. Not her most successful cruises ever!

My husband's been reading The Blackhouse and The Lewis Man recently which are set on the Outer Hebrides and says he's got a hankering to go back so we might be off for another Scottish Island holiday - you never know.

*waving* at Rhian

Rhian - I would definitely have got glass on my tongue lapping up all that beer from the floor!

Your other half's idea of a holiday on the highlands and islands of Scotland makes me yearn for the summer and some spare cash so I can go somewhere similar - great part of the world.

Have a great weekend and don't spill anymore.

#194 - oh dear, I hope you didn't have any more domestic disasters! It will be lovely to have everyone together for the christening, though.

#197 Hi Stasia, thanks for visiting.

#198 We've had some lovely holidays on Scottish Islands. My favourites have been:
- Islay and Jura in the Inner Hebrides - Islay is where the whisky comes from and Jura is where George Orwell wrote 1984 and pretty much the least inhabited place in Britain.
- the Orkney Islands - Much greener than the Hebrides and with lots of interesting Neolithic and Iron Age sites.
I'd love to go to the Shetland Islands as well some day.

Well - took my Mum and Aunt back to catch their coach this morning and am now feeling absolutely exhausted. I feel like I've been on peacekeeping duties policing an exclusion zone between puppy and visitors. To be honest my Mum was fine with Daisy and took her in her stride (her last dog was a very bouncy springer spaniel) but my Aunt has obviously not really been around dogs much at all. Whenever they were in the same room she would keep up a running conversation with Daisy which of course had the effect of attracting her attention, but whenever Daisy came within a few feet she'd wave her arms about in an effort to make Daisy go away, which didn't have the desired effect at all.

Anyway the christening went well - everyone enjoyed it - pictures to follow. My husband's interest in a holiday on the Outer Hebrides has increased a lot over the weekend. He's got as far as pricing flights and working out driving times, but I'm not really sure when he's expecting to go. We've already booked our holiday for this summer and next year is our 25th wedding anniversary and I was rather hoping for something a bit more exotic - possibly going to Thailand to see my niece.

Anyway very little reading being going on over the past week but hope to remedy that soon.

Hi Rhian! Just managed to catch up on your thread. You've read some interesting books this year, I'll have to keep an eye on it. :) I think the list of books you gave in post 121 was quite fascinating...I always love those lists. I had a similar list for my "honor's English" class in the 11th grade. (Don't remember what was on it, though...more classics and less international I think.) Such lists are always very helpful!

Adorable puppy by the way!

#202 Welcome Rachel - glad you enjoyed the list. There are a lot of non-UK students at my son's school as it is a specialist language school so I think they wanted to make sure the list had an international element.

Here are some christening photos:

My youngest great-nephew who was the one being christened:



My second youngest great-nephew over from Thailand:



And with my son:

What a bunch of sweeties! Thanks for sharing the pictures with us! Darlings!

How interesting that your husband and you may be taking a cruise on the outer Hebrides! It sounds like such a fascinating place!

Great pictures!! Sorry to hear your aunt was a bit off with your puppy. My fiance's aunt always squealed when our dog would go near her. Mind my pup is a large (70lbs) beastie but he is gentle and loving, but she was scared of his looks I guess. Lots of squealing!

#206 it wasn't really my aunt's fault . Daisy was just too energetic and - well - puppy-like for someone her age to cope with. She'd got a lot frailer since I saw her last as well - I was terrified Daisy was going to trip her up and cause a nasty fall.

Your Daisy is a darling! And your nephews and son are quite the handsome young men. I love looking at pictures on LT.

Rhian, that was a most interesting book list you posted upthread. I'm glad you added some choices by female authors. It would be interesting to find out how many of those books actually get read by the intended teens.

25. The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited Stephen Armstrong *** (touchstones not working)



I've read George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier a couple of times and always found it interesting. In this book Stephen Armstrong sets out to look at how the poorest in our society, whether unemployed or those on low wages, maybe the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those people visited by George Orwell in the 1930's, are coping in the 21st Century. His research was carried out in the summer of 2011 as riots flared up all over England and so the book also addresses the question of why the riots occurred. A topical read in the U.K. today when there are major concerns about the reduction in social mobility, and when even this week, there's been controversy about various London boroughs trying to ship people on their housing lists out of London to cheaper areas because of changes in housing benefit.

Dealing with the problems that people on benefits or low incomes have in living their lives, the book covers the usual areas of the difficulty of getting a healthy diet, housing, lack of support in obtaining a job, while at the same time being faced with a culture which praises conspicuous consumption above all else. The book's main strength is in its stories of individuals who are caught up in a system that they are unable to deal with. One aspect really rang true with me, about the lack of help and even hindrance given by job-centres.

Here is a conversation that I had with the job-centre over the phone when I was made redundant in 2008:

Jobcentre: we've noticed that you're overdue for a review - you need to come in and have one on Wednesday so we can review your job searching.

Me: I've got a job - I start next week. I told you yesterday.

JC: You still need to come in so we can review your job searching and help you find a job.

Me: I've got a job - I can't search for another one - I start in 6 days time. Wouldn't you be better helping people who haven't found a job yet?

JC: You can't get the jobseekers allowance unless you're looking for a job. You could get a temporary job.

Me: I can't get a temporary job for six days. I'm an accountant. It would take longer than that to register with an agency and for them to interview me and take up my references. So why don't we say that I'm starting my job today and you can stop my jobseekers allowance from yesterday.

JC: We can't do that - it may impact you claiming jobseekers allowance in the future.

And it went on and on... For me it didn't really matter, I wasn't going to struggle to feed my children if I didn't get the jobseekers allowance for a week, but it was clearly very much a matter of them ticking a box rather than providing useful help to the people who need it.

Ultimately, while a reasonable read for people interested in social issues, I think the book failed in its objectives. Very little of what was said was new or came as a huge surprise, and the book jumped around from topic to topic in a fairly confused way. Lynsey Hanley's Estates: An Intimate History deals with similar issues and is much more successful at offering real insights into the lives and outlook of people in this situation.

Hmmm, I might not rush to get this one, but I've always meant to read Orwell's original book. And I've read Estates: An Intimate History, which I agree was good. I loved your conversation with the Job Centre! It sounds very much like the experience of one of my friends a couple of years ago. Fortunately she also found something new very quickly and never went back, but she felt sorry for people who really needed them to do something useful.

Have you read The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists? It's set earlier than The Road to Wigan Pier and was one of those books that I read because I thought I ought to, but it was one of my top reads of recent years - totally gripping.

What a frustrating conversation with the job center! I’m currently unemployed and I have to say that the Ohio Unemployment agency has been surprisingly helpful. Not in helping me find a job…but in clearing up the mess my boss made when he lied about my layoff (he claimed I took termination in lieu of resignation in order to avoid filling out the proper paper work because he’d fired so many people against policy that he was having trouble with human resources—this, of course, disqualified me from unemployment benefits). Other than the normal woes one has when telephoning a government agency, I’m quite pleased with them. :)

Hi Rachel

My daughter lives in Beavercreek, OH. My son in law works for the Air Force. They love living in Ohio.

What a crooked x boss you had!

Well, at least he's my X-boss now! :)

#211 Welcome Rachel - I hope you're not unemployed for too long. When I lost my job it was a real shock as I'd been with the company 19 years but in retrospect it worked out fine. I really benefitted from doing something different but I'd never had done it without actually being pushed!

#210 Susan The Road to Wigan Pier is definitely worth a read if you're interested in the 1930's or social history. Orwell's definitely looking at the worst case scenario though - my parents were born in 1920 and 1921, and both came from South Wales mining families and while they certainly had hardships during that period I don't think either of their families' living conditions were anything like as bad as some that are described in the book. I haven't read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - it's one of those ones I keep meaning to get around to.

A brief respite in the rain meant we could take Daisy for her first walk in the park off the lead today - very exciting. She was very good at coming back when called and all went well until she walked into a flooded ditch and nearly had to be rescued. Luckily she discovered how to swim before one of us had to go in after her. She looked very suprised when she came out - she's never been that wet in her entire life - I think she was just totally confused as to where the ground had gone. We've actually got an official drought at the moment and a hosepipe ban, but it's been raining solidly pretty much all month and there's more water standing around on the ground than I can ever remember seeing before.

First puppy class yesterday was cold and wet but Daisy was not the worst behaved puppy in the class! Puppy party at the vet's on Wednesday - it's all go at the moment!

Well, I'm glad little Daisy learned to swim! It sounds like loads of fun watching her figure out the world.

Glad that Daisy wasn't the worst dog in class! (Ours was! He is a good boy now though!)

My new aquisition of a sheltie puppy has been very time consuming. She is stubborn, strong willed and affectionate and intelligent. It is a powerful combination and I feel that at 59 I have a baby.

Puppy training? I think I'll check into this.

#218 I feel that at 59 I have a baby

At 51 I feel much the same.

The puppy training class has been recommended to us by a few people. I would never have thought to let Daisy off the lead yet but the trainer was saying that it was actually better to let puppies off the lead early as at this stage they won't run away whereas by 5 or 6 months they might do if they have not already learnt to stay close to their owners. And she was right - Daisy stays very close to us.

Puppy party at the vets last night - all the puppies were between about 10 and 12 weeks old - golden retriever, weimaraner, collie, springer spaniel, French bulldog, Staffordshire bull terrier (Daisy), and one other which I wasn't sure about, maybe a staffie cross. All very cute. It was interesting to see all the different characters of the puppies. The golden retriever was probably the biggest but quite nervous and didn't want to go down on the floor with the other puppies for some time. The French bulldog was tiny but very feisty with everyone else! Daisy was pretty confident after an initial bout of nervousness at so many other puppies.

I'm behind with reviews at the moment. I'm trying to finish my final assessment on my children's literature course - 3000 words to be written - at the moment I've done about 1600 so half way there.

Just popping in down here to say that I have found your thread and starred it - thanks for visiting mine. I will be back after I have read through your posts. Lovely puppy, handsome son!

26. A Passage to India E.M. Forster ****



This was my reading group choice for May. I've read it before - maybe even read it twice - back in my late teens / early twenties and I would have said that of E.M. Forster's books it was one which I enjoyed least. But reading it again at a much older age it appealed much more. I think one of the reason I didn't like it originally might have been that there are no totally sympathetic characters - coming to it now that seems an asset rather than a flaw and the book seemed totally believable.

Set in India in the years of the British Empire perhaps just before the First World War the book tells the story of Miss Quested, an Englishwoman who has travelled to Chandrapore in India to decide whether or not to marry Ronny Heaslop, the City Magistrate, whom she has known in England. Both Miss Quested and Mrs Moore, Heaslop's mother who has accompanied her on her trip, want to see something of the 'real' India. But this proves difficult as the British and Indian communities are completely separate and a 'Bridge' party put on for their benefit to bridge the gap between the two cultures proves a disaster. But through Fielding, the headmaster of the local school, they become acquainted with his friend Dr Aziz, a surgeon at the local hospital, by whom they are invited on a trip to the Marabar Caves, the only local site of interest. Fielding is already a person of suspicion in the British community for his unusually close relations with Indians and his suggestion that rather than being white, the British are really 'pinky-grey' in colour. The trip to the caves goes badly; Miss Quested returns alone accusing Dr Aziz of assault. The community becomes polarised along racial and national lines with Fielding ostracised for supporting his friend, and violence seems likely to ensue.

I found this a really rewarding book, and much more than a portrait of a society that has long gone. The relations of the British to the Indian communities, both Hindu and Moslem and the relations of those communities to each other seem well drawn. The racism of the English is bound up strongly with the power politics of their presence in India - while they are happy to treat educated Indians on equal terms in England it is a very different case in India itself. Initially the book does seem to be dealing solely with the consequences of a racist society, but at the end seems rather more complex - dealing with the possibilities of friendship between the two nationalities in the political situation of British India.

Interestingly of the people at the meeting several had read this in their late teens as well. We're all of a similar age and I wonder if Forster was just one of those writers that you were supposed to read at that time. We all agreed though that it wasn't a book that we would recommend to that age group - bette to be a bit older.

Finally finished my End of Module Assessment for my Children's Literature course. I may change it a bit but it's got the requisite 3000 words and if I had to submit it tomorrow I'd be reasonably happy with it. I've really enjoyed the course but I'll be glad now to have this assessment finished and have a break. I'll have to do some preparatory reading over the summer for my next module - the nineteenth century novel - as it has a HEAVY reading list.

Rhian - I remember thinking A Passage to India much the best of Forster's work. Probably my favourite such novel on India from the English perspective. Reminds me that I have been planning to read The Raj Quartet for the longest time. The Far Pavilions is a rewarding read too although a long one.

Congratulations on finishing the assessment! I know it's a great feeling to get them out of the way, and I'm just talking about the 10-point science short courses :-)

#223 I've read The Far Pavilions years and years ago and remember enjoying it. The Raj Quartet is one of those things that I can't remember whether I've actually read or just seen on TV (again a very long time ago).

#224 I went straight into my current course from my last one without a break so I'be been studying solidly from January 2011. I'm so looking forward to having a break now.

Nice review of A Passage to India, Rhian. Count me among those who read it many years ago. But I also recently obtained a copy, as I enjoyed it then and think it deserves a re-read.

27. French Children Don't Throw Food Pamela Druckerman *** 1/2

Written by an American woman with a British husband bringing up her children in Paris, this book contains reflections on the differences between French and British/American styles of parenting. She paints a beguiling picture of a world where pre-school children in a state-run nursery sit down to a four-course lunches like this:

Palm heart and tomato salad
Sliced turkey au basilic with rice in a provençal cream sauce
St Nectaire cheese
Fresh kiwi

I found this an interesting and enjoyable read but I have to admit that a major reason for this might be that it played to my own prejudices. Perhaps prejudices is too strong a word but there were certainly aspects of French parenting that I found particularly appealing and which reflected to some extent my own parenting style. Other aspects I found a little strange.

While much of the book focuses on French children's relationship with food, it also deal with why French babies apparently sleep through the night from a much earlier age than British/ American ones, why French mothers are more hands-off generally and why they feel it much more important to have an separate existence even when their children are small.

There were certain aspects that I found really interesting as I discovered that I wasn't the only person to do things the way I did them when my son was small. Time after time when I was on some group outing I used to feel slightly inadequate as the other mothers always seemed to be so much more prepared for all eventualities than I was. Other people always brought snacks which I had never even considered were needed. I remember once being on a group picnic when another mother asked if anyone had brought some Calpol. I thought 'who on earth would bring Calpol to a picnic' but several people had. But in France apparently my approach would have been seen as more normal - they take a rather more hands-off approach to parenting and children eat their four meals a day rather than graze.

I've seen several reviews on Amazon criticising the fact that the author bases her opinions on a small cross-section of prosperous Parisian society, as well as prosperous families in the U.K. and U.S.. This is true, but I don't think the book sets out to be more than her personal experiences backed up by some statistics. There are certainly aspects of child-rearing in the U.K. which she mentions that ring true with me, so I don't see why her thoughts on similar parents in France should be any less valid. She does tend to generalise though. Certainly I've found children's menus in France more often than you might think from reading this book. But it is usually true that they are more adult in nature than would be found in the U.K. and more adventurous - bowls of mussels make a frequent appearance in seaside towns.

I would have benefitted from reading this book when my son was a baby but it would not be for everyone. One of our key aims was for him not to be a fussy eater and for us to be able to eat out in restaurants with him from an early age and this book would have provided several useful pointers.

Got up this morning to receive a phone call from a finance company about non-payment of debt which was not a good start to a bank holiday Monday. It related to a computer which we ordered from Dell last summer. We were away for three weeks over the summer and before we even placed the order we explained that to them and checked that it wouldn't be a problem to deliver outside that window. Of course, when we did place the order, that was completely forgotten. They delivered screen and speakers before we went but the PC itself did not materialise and after hours (literally) on the phone to them we eventually got them to agree to deliver the day after we got back. When we did get back we found that delivery had been attempted four times while we were away and Dell had cancelled the order because suprisingly 'they hadn't been able to get hold of us'. Apparently, it was then going to take several more weeks to reinstate our order at which we lost it and cancelled the order completely and asked them to take the screen and speakers away. Which they eventually did but only after I had stayed in all day on three separate occasions waiting for their courier.

We had taken advantage of a buy now pay later scheme but now it seems Dell never actually cancelled this with the finance company when we cancelled the order and they presumably received the money from the finance company but neglected to inform them that they hadn't actually supplied the goods. I've never come across a company that makes me want to pull my hair out more. Thankfully, we've got all the documentation so we should be able to sort it out but it's a bit much being asked to pay for a computer which we've never actually had.

Took Daisy out for her first trip to Hatfield Forest which is the best bit of dog walking countryside nearby. As the sun came out this morning for the first time in weeks everyone with a dog for miles around were there as well so it did wonders for Daisy's socialisation. Suprisingly, quite a few people thought see was a Weimaraner because of her colour, but she's much smaller and less leggy. Her character is really starting to come out now - she's really fond of people and I think she'll be quite calm once she's older. Training's going well and the play-biting is getting much more manageable.

28. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott

Apologies to all for whom it was their favourite book as a child but (whispering very quietly) I didn't like it. This was a re-read as I needed it for my final assessment and I suppose that familiarity made it a little better than when I read it last year but not much. I can't actually remember if I read this as a child - I certainly had a copy and it would have been unusual for me not to soldier through and finish a book that I actually possessed - but although I remember starting it a few times I can't definitely remember actually finishing it. It's one of the books where you know the story anyway from film and TV so it's difficult to be sure.

Well, Dell has now confirmed to the finance company that they had cancelled our order last summer and did not supply any goods, so we're just waiting for the finance company's confirmation that we don't actually owe them any money.

I'm getting so fed up with the weather here. Apparently it has been the wettest April since records began in the UK, and May hasn't started any better. My son signed up for cricket this summer, which apart from paying for the coaching, cricket whites and a new cricket bat, also needed helmet, pads and gloves which I sort of naively assumed would be provided by the club at his age. So far in the month since coaching began he has managed one session and it started raining in that one as well.

More spending is required as he now has a sports dinner to go to and apparently there will be a Prom at the end of term so I will have to buy him a suit. I'm really not looking forward to that experience!

Hate finance companies Rhian and especially the obnoxious third-party characters that invariably call at their behest. Glad it is sorted out in time to give you a good weekend.

#231 To be honest it's not so much the finance company but Dell that I feel irritated with. The whole experience of dealing with them probably ranked as one of the most stressful of the last few years. Dell do seem to have been sitting on the finance company's money for over six months without telling then that they haven't actually supplied any goods.

Anyway Dell are firmly on the list of companies which I will not be dealing with again, along with our Pet Insurance company for Lulu. We had notification this week that our claim has finally been settled (when Lulu was run over the van was damaged so the owner was claiming the costs). Initially, the pet insurance help desk tried very hard to convince me that we had no cover for third party liabilities even though it was clearly stated in black and white in our policy document. Then when they did agree that maybe we were covered after all they had no idea how to deal with the claim. I'm sure a dog causing damage to a car by running into the road can't be that unusual an occurrence but you'd think it had never happened before the way the insurance company carried on. I don't know how much the claim was for but a friend of mine ran over a muntjac in virtually the same spot in a very similar sort of accident as happened to Lulu and that caused nearly three thousand pounds of damage to her car. It all added a lot of stress at the time when we were all so upset about Lulu.

About time for a new thread I think - I must try and sort that out over the weekend.

I started reading Little Women several times throughout childhood/teen years too, but never finished it. I didn't understand why people loved it so much! But someday I really will finish it. :)

#233 I wasn't a great fan of this type of domestic dramas as a child full stop. I did like What Katy Did though, although when I read it recently I found it very moralistic. I also really liked Pollyanna. I think I missed out on other things like Anne of Green Gables as i read mainly fantasy or historical fiction. Some friends of mine were quite shocked when we spent a week on Prince Edward Island without visiting the Anne of Green Gables House, even though it was within walking distance of where we were staying. I know people who've made a special trip to Prince Edward Island (from the U.K.) purely because of the book.

Not being doing any reading this week - been feeling stressy and bad-tempered for no very good reason. Exacerbated yesterday by going to give a blood donation and feeling quite washed out in the evening, as well as having an aching arm. I completely lost it this morning when my son couldn't find one of his school shoes. The fact that only one is missing points the finger at Daisy- she is often seen trying to take my husband's slippers out of the cat flap but they are too big. She might have managed it with my son's shoe. I've had a quick look in the garden but can't see it anywhere obvious - I'll have to get him to have a look under the bushes when he comes home.

I think basically I need a holiday - we're going to Greece (Ithaka and Kefalonia) in seven weeks time - hopefully it doesn't go into political meltdown first. The last couple of holidays we've had have been quite active and it will be nice to have a really relaxing beach holiday.

Thanks for visiting my thread, I can't believe I haven't posted on your thread yet. Anyway congratulations on finishing your children's literature paper. You've read lots of wonderful books, I'm just pleased that I've either read them or they are already on my tbr list.
A holiday on a Greek island sounds like an ideal way to relax.

The single missing shoe does seem to point to Daisy! She might be making a collection of things belonging to her people. I hope you find it :-)

#236 Welcome Kerry - I've been enjoying reading about all your children's books on your thread as well.

#237 Daisy has been cleared of the shoe stealing charges! The missing shoe was discovered this evening in the mop bucket - don't ask!

Have discovered today that far from owing the finance company money, they have admitted that they actually owe us money as we had paid a deposit that we had completely forgotten about.

Good news both about the missing shoe and the deposit.

Regarding Melvin Burgess, I've read most of his books and recommend his first one, Cry of the Wolf, it's for younger readers and quite wonderful. I see on his website news that Andersen Press is working through reissuing all his older books.

Have a backlog of books to be added over the past few weeks:

The Keys of Babylon Robert Minhinnick
Wild Abandon Joe Dunthorne
The Last Hundred Days Patrick McGuinness
the shortlist for the novel section of the Wales Book of the Year 2012.

Gillespie and I Jane Harris
Foreign Bodies Cynthia Ozick
just seen good things about these.

The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
Pollyanna Eleanor H. Porter
free kindle downloads needed for my final assessment.

Edited to add:
Fortune's Daughters Elisabeth Kehoe
A Far Cry from Kensington Muriel Spark
next two Book Club books. I'm looking forward to the Muriel Spark but to be honest Fortune's Daughters doesn't appeal at all. It's a bigraphy of the Jerome sisters (one of whom was Winston Churchill's mother) - American heiresses who all made successful marriages in England. All very well in Downton Abbey but in real life I can't say that I'm that interested.

More pictures of Daisy?

Rhian - great news about the finance company coming a cropper. Hope and trust Greece will be great - one place I really want to visit.
Big admirer of Robert Minhinnick and will also look for his latest book.

#242 Greece islands can be lovely - probably my favourite holiday destination for a Mediterannean beach holiday. Ithaca and Kefalonia (at least in the north) both have quite small pebbly beaches which mean that they haven't had the over-develolopment of some, but are great for snorkelling and pottering about in litttle boats. And small beaches means there are usually some trees within easy reach for shade if it gets too hot. I could post some pictures from our last trip, but unfortunately when we changed computers last time I managed to lose all the photos from that holiday.

It's our third trip to pretty much exactly the same place - the last time was 2007. Usually I'm quite independent in booking holidays and end up with something quite complicated, but sometimes it's nice to go on a simple holiday where the travel company does everything.

#241 I'm so bad at taking photos! I will try and sort some out soon.

Discovered that J went round school yesterday wearing one black school shoe and one brown boot. Apparently he thought it would look less conspicuous and he would only get into half as much trouble for not wearing his school shoes because he was at least wearing one! The minds of 12 year old boys are a mystery at times.

Here are some more pictures of Daisy - not very good ones I'm afraid as she's not very good at keeping still to have her photo taken:







She's definitely getting more teenagery.

Those are such cute pictures! I wish I had the patience to take pictures of my cats more often.