HanGerg really gets into her stride in 2012!

Welcome to my first ever second thread! Yipee!
Above is one of my weird peeling paint pictures. If you like weird pictures of peeling paint (quite nicely aliterative that, might have to work it into my artist's statement somewhere), please allow me to insert a blatant plug for my new Facebook page, entitled "Photo Abstracts" Likes, comments, critiques or any other interactions welcome!

Ok, so down to business!


Not a great book haul so far, but hey, it's been a busy year, with not one but TWO new jobs, plus a load of other stuff!

Some highlights of the reading year so far:
The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
Affinity - Sarah Waters
Blue Mars - Kim Stanely Robinson
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media - Susan J. Douglas
Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter (Re-read)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K Jemison

The reading haul in full:

January
1.A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin 5/5
2.The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer 5/5
3.Anno Dracula - Kim Newman 4/5

February
4.Pride of Chanur - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
5.No Great Mischief - Alistair Macleod 3/5
6.A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin 4/5

March
7. Chanur's Venture - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
8. Holes - Louis Sachar 4.5/5
9. Worldwar: In the Balance - Harry Turtledove 3/5
10.Affinity - Sarah Waters 5/5

April
11. The Kif Strike Back - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
12. The Dispossessed - Ursula Le Guin 4/5
13. A Storm of Swords 1:Steel and Snow - George R.R Martin 4.5/5
14. Mr Vertigo - Paul Auster 3.5/5
15. The Dervish House - Ian McDonald 4/5

May
16. The Silver Pigs - Lindsay Davis 3.5/5
17. Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson 4.5/5
18. Superfreakonomics - Steven D.Levitt 2/5

June
19. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami 4.5/5
20. Enna Burning - Shannon Hale 3/5
21. Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media - Susan J. Douglas 4.5/5

July
22. Chanur's Homecoming - C.J.Cherryh 4/5
23. A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon 3.5/5
24. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer 2.5/5
25. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper - Fuschia Dunlop 3.5/5
26. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemison 4/5
27. Freedom - Jonathan Frantzen 4.5/5

August
28. The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold 4/5
29. The Equality Illusion - Kat Banyard 4/5
30. Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter 5/5 (Reread)
31. A Madness of Angels - Kate Griffin 4.5/5

September
32. A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold - George R.R.Martin 4.5/5
33. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins 4/5
34. The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga 2/5
35. The Midnight Mayor - Kate Griffin 4/5
36. Catching Fire - Suzanna Collins 3.5/5

October
Shamefully, NO books read in October!

November
37. Terminal World - Alastair Reynolds 4/5
38. Fifty Shades of Grey - E .L. James 1.5/5
39. Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud - Shaun Considine 2/5
40. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House - Kate Summerscale 3/5
41. The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas 3.5/5

December
42. The City and the Stars - Arthur C. Clarke 3.5/5
43. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins 3/5
44. The Chrysalids - John Wyndham 4/5
45. The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes 3/5

While it's been a relatively quiet year for reading books, buying them has proved much easier:

January
1.Tiffany Masterworks - Camilla de la Bedoyere Late Christmas present
2.No Great Mischief - Alistair Macleod First ever ReadItSwapIt swap! READ
3.Black Star Rising - Frederik Pohl Bookmooch
4.Waged Work: A Reader - ed.Feminist Review Brilliantly, bought from the charity shelf in my local pub

February
5.Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media - Susan J. Douglas Second hand bookshop, St. Nicholas Market, Bristol. READ
6.The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer Oxfam, Bristol READ
7.Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami Oxfam, Bristol READ
8.Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card Oxfam, Bristol
9.Worlds of IF Magazine: Vol 21 No 6 Jul - Aug 1972 - inc.The Merchants of Venus - Frederik Pohl et al Monthly book market, Bristol
10.Matisse - Volkmar Essers Monthly book market, Bristol
11.The Chanur Saga - C.J. Cherryh Bookmooch READ
12.The Pride of Chanur - C.J.Cherryh Very kindly sent to me by the lovely Sibyx , when it looked like the above was not going to show up in time for our group read, which it then promptly did.Doh! READ
13.Heechee Rendezvous - Frederik Pohl Bookmooch
14.A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin Amazon READ
15.A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf Amazon
16.Gino's Pasta - Gino D'acampo The Bookpeople, from my workplace
17.Holes - Louis Sachar Hospicecare Charity Bookshop READ
18.The Silver Pigs - Lindsay Davis Hospicecare Charity Bookshop READ
19.Happenstance - Carol Shields Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
20.The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas Charity shelf in my local pub READ

March
21. The Dervish House - Ian McDonald Secondhand through Amazon READ
22. Chanur Homecoming - C.J. Cherryh Secondhand through Amazon READ
23. Chasing the Monsoon - Alexander Frater ReadItSwapIt swap
24. A Time of Gifts - Patrick Leigh Fermor Cancer Force Charity shop
25. Small Hands Big Ideas - Tony Hart Cancer Force Charity Shop
26. Peace and War - Joe Haldeman Market bookstall

April
27. The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene The Topsham Bookshop
28. No Full Stops in India - Mark Tully The Topsham Bookshop
29. A Storm of Swords 1:Steel and Snow - George R.R Martin The Topsham Bookshop READ
30. The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury ReadItSwapIt
31. Wise Children - Angela Carter Bookmooch

May
32. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole Charity shelf in my local pub
33. Minoan and Mycenaean Art - Reynold Higgins Cancer Force Charity Shop
34. The Chrysalids - John Wyndham Cancer Force Charity Shop READ
35. Ilium - Dan Simmons Cancer Force Charity Shop

June
36. The Number of the Beast - Robert Heinlein Bookcycle tent at Exeter Respect Festival
37. Helliconia Summer - Brian Aldiss Bookcycle tent at Exeter Respect Festival
38. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - Kate Summerscale Oxfam, Teignmouth Read
39. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon Charity Shop
40. The Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna ClarkeCharity Shop
41. 24 Party People - Tony Wilson Charity Shop
42. Japanese Graphics Now! Cancer Force Charity Shop
43. Drawing from your Imagination Cancer Force Charity Shop
44. The Time of the Hero - Mario Vargas Llosa Cancer Force Charity Shop
45. Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter Bookmooch READ
46. Pigeon English - Stephen Keman Given away by work colleague
47. Pilgrimage 1 - Dorothy Richardson Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
48. Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
49. Seven Japanese Tales - Junichiro Tanizaki Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
50. A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon Hospicecare Charity Bookshop READ

July
51. The Warrior's Apprentice - Louis McMaster Bujold Secondhand via Amazon READ

August
52. We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
53. Hyperion - Dan Simmons Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
54. The Fig Eater - Jody Shields Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
55. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness Hospicecare Charity Bookshop
56. IQ84 - Haruki Murakami Waterstones
57. A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold - George R. R. Martin Waterstones READ

September
58. Mostly Brilliant (Hitchhiker's Guide Boxset) - Douglas Adams Stall at Tiverton market

Also in September I had a lovely haul of loads of wonderful books, but I won't list them all as it was a lot, and it wasn't books I consciously acquired, it was my inheritance from my late great-uncle. I've just listed a few of my very favourites here.

59. The Virago Book of Wicked Verse - ed. Jill Dawson
60. The Virago Book of Fairy Tales - ed. Angela Carter
61. John Betjeman: Selected Poems - John Betjeman
62. Richard Bell's Britain - Richard Bell
63. Lord Emsworth's Annotated Whiffle - ed. James Hogg
64. A World History of Art - Gina Pischel

October
65. Városjelek: Signs of the City 1971 - 2012 - Bálint Szombathy Irok Boltja, Budapest
66. Downbelow Station - C.J. Cherryh Bookmooch

November
67. RUR and War with the Newts - Karel Capek Birthday present
68. Dangerous Visions - ed. Harlan Ellison Birthday present
69. Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911 to 1918 - Leonard Woolf The Topsham Bookshop
70. A World of Pattern - Gwen White The Topsham Bookshop
71. Faeries - Brian Froud and Alan Lee The Topsham Bookshop
72. Ronald Searle's Golden Oldies - Ronald Searle The Topsham Bookshop
73. A Country Camera 1844-1914 - Gordon Winter Hospicecare Charity Bookshop

Dropping in to be first, despite the fact I am most often a serial lurker :P

Ha! I see my decision to not drop in while you only had one message on the thread was a wise one, Hannah.

Oh, my first visitors! And I haven't even finished making the canapés! (Blush!)
Actually, that's rather fitting, as that does happen to me in real life fairly often : )

Ok, after all this initial excitement, I actually have a book the review!


33. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins 4/5
Oh my gosh, this book was addictive! Honestly, for the last few days all I've done is eat, sleep, go to work and read this (oh, and play netball for a couple of hours, although I really didn't want to go, and I was late meeting my team mate who was picking me up as I couldn't tear myself away from it!). It really is ridiculously compelling, even though a small child could probably work out what the likely ending is. So, for the few that don't know, the story goes like so - 16 year old Katniss lives in a nasty dystopic society where most people never have enough to eat, being ruled over as they are by evil overlords that control all flows of food and other precious resources from their base, the far off "Capitol". Once the land was divided into 13 districts apart from this Capitol, but then the districts revolted, and they wiped the 13th from the face of the earth to teach the others a lesson. They also invented the hunger games, in which every year a boy and girl from each district would be randomly selected to compete against the others until only one was left alive. The whole thing is broadcast live on television from the moment the "tributes" as they are called, are selected. They are subsequently sent to the Capitol, trained, given a fancy makeover and some proper food for once in their lives, interviewed, and then set loose in the arena to fight to the death.
The best thing going for this book is how ridiculously compelling it is. With all the media furore that follows the tributes everywhere and their reliance on sponsors once they get inside the arena, there is also a good line in critiquing the nature of the media, and how it distorts certain events to fit its own preconceived narratives. The nature of the games themselves are well thought out, and the characters are believable and memorable. The one problem I have with the book really, is how similar it is to the film, and also therefore presumably the book that it was based on, Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. There's an inteview at the back of my edition with the author in which she says she was inspired by watching footage of war zones juxtaposed with a reality TV survival type programme, which I do believe. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and say it was an original idea...to her anyway. Plus I guess there's nothing new under the sun - you could look at the Stephen King short story of "The Running Man" and the subsequent crappy Schwarzenegger movie, or even Lord of the Flies for other "fight to the death for the audience's entertainment" or "survival of the fittest" style narratives, but Battle Royale is uncomfortably close in content and major themes. That's my only negative point, apart from a slight lingering suspicion that it won't prove that memorable in the longer run. In the shorter term I've got two sequels to read and right now I can't wait to get started!

How delightful to be here so early. Congratulation on your first second thread. (that's fun to write) - I raced through the first one, read the second one soon after, and then lost momentum while waiting for #3 to emerge. I'm sure we'll eventually watch the movie, but we haven't yet.

Back to add I really like your peeling paint photo.

Just checking into your new thread! I totally missed the last half of your first thread, but I'm sure you've done some great reading in the meantime.

That is a new cover of THG that I haven't seen before. Is it a European edition?

Happy New Thread!!!
I really, really like your Peeling Paint Picture! I'll check your facebook page for sure!

*delurking* - I love the "Peeling Paint" picture.

And a good review on The Hunger Games - I quite enjoyed the Trilogy as well and I am actually rereading it with my son at present.

Nice new thread! I started A Madness of Angels this morning and so far, very intriguing! I am only up to page 8, though, as my trains were working well (unlike other parts of the Underground, which are back to their usual breakdowns after the Games). I am going to try and read some more at lunchtime to get into the story properly.

#8 Valerie, it must be, as that's the cover I've got as well.

Thanks for all the praise on the photo, it's always such a lovely feeling to know your strange take on the world chimes with others sometimes too!

Ok, so although I raced back to the school library where I got THG from and picked up the second book straight away, I decided I should try and finish off a few other books I'd already started before I get stuck in to that. So the first one I polished off was....


34. The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga 2/5
Well, I've just looked on the page for this book, and most of the reviews are very favourable, plus it did win the Booker prize, but I really didn't enjoy this book. I read it in fits and starts in between other things, so perhaps that coloured my judgement somewhat, but for me it is one of those mean spirited books that just leaves you with a sour taste in you mouth. I understand the point that the author is trying to make, that the narrator did what he did because for the poor to get ahead they have to be prepared to do terrible deeds as that is the only way to buck the system, so therefore it's the system that should be condemmed, not the individual, but still...I think a man that murders someone for their money, knowing full well that it will lead to the murder of the rest of his family, just so he can be free of the bonds of servitude that would otherwise shape his entire life, is not a character that I want to spend too much time with. I'm not really giving any spoilers here, the book opens with our narrator, Balram, freely confessing to the murder, and soon enough he reveals who the victim is too. The puzzles that remain for us the audience to figure out is how the circumstances of the murder come into being, and what he has done with his life since, as he keeps telling us he is now an "entrepreneur", but not much else. The book is framed as a series of letters Balram is writing to the Chinese prime minister over several nights, telling him the story of his life so as to instruct him in the true nature of modern India and its rapidly growing army of businessmen. Of course he is also instructing us readers too, and the story he has to tell is a squalid and depressing one, and one that is seldom told about India. In this story, those that live in the country are trapped in endless cycles of poverty and corruption, living in a place where the school teacher embezzles the money that's meant to be spent on equipment and books, where a local policeman beats a man to death in full view of the rest of the village just because he claims his right to vote, knowing full well that is vote has already been traded by the very people that are supposed to ensure free and fair elections. Then there are the landlords, who treat the villagers like serfs, claiming a cut of the meagre earnings they make, and beating, raping or murdering those that dare defy them. Yes, this is an India rarely seen in fiction, and perhaps it is closer to reality than many of the portrayals we in the West are shown. That doesn't make it a particularly edifying fictional world to inhabit. Nor is it a particularly subtle one. The author's message seems to be a very black and white one about the evil, corrupt rich exploiting the poor and ill-educated for their own gain. In the background there are constant rumblings of civil war and people that want to overthrow the system, which perhaps is what the author thinks is the solution, as it seems India's rapid development is only benefitting those that are already in a strong position. This seems to me an overly simplistic way of looking at life, even in a country of such extreme poverty, and perhaps because it is just so depressing, I find myself rejecting this nightmarish vision of what India is.

So important to trust your own judgements. This is a good and considered review.

Thanks Lucy!

So, I've just acquired a large number of lovely books. Let me tell you how. My great uncle died over the summer, and in his will he gave the job of getting rid of his possessions to my Dad and Uncle. My Mum was helping sort out his flat and noticed that there were a lot of books about art, so put a few on one side for me and invited me to come and have a look at the rest of his library, where I found all kinds of treasures. Turns out my great uncle was a lover of poetry, which was one of those interesting facts that emerges about someone only after they're dead, and makes you wish you'd known them better when they'd been alive. Other members of the family had already claimed a lot of other great things - I saw some lovely Folio Society versions of some classic children's literature and lots of great historical books on the piles, but I still got some amazing things. I think rather than listing them I should just show you. Here is the mighty book haul once I unloaded it onto our dining room table, and just before I had to re-arrange all our bookshelves to acommodate them all:

Some of the highlights include: over on the far left, that's a box set of Folio Society Blandings stories, three of which we don't own in another format. Related to that is the slim pinkish volume in the centre pile, which is a Whiffle "On the Care of Pigs", annotated by Lord Emsworth himself! (This will mean something to you if you're a P.G.Wodehouse fan). Above the pinkish volume you can clearly see another treasure, a collection of Betjeman poems from the Folio Society, and just below it is perhaps my favourite of all the books we got, it's sort of a replicated artist's sketchbook of one man's journey around Britain, where he has done a number of small sketches of flora, fauna, architecture or whatever took his fancy, all in one sitting on a single day, with the aim of capturing the spirit of that particular place at that particular moment in time. It's just a lovely, lovely thing to behold. The big pile of thin, white volumes on the bottom right are a series on the great masters of painting, all with full colour reproductions. Yes, I know, I'm a very lucky girl. Thanks Uncle Dick.

What a lovely book haul indeed! Especially the Folios, and the other Wodehouse item! As for that Richard Bell's Britain volume, I have a copy of that, it was a gift many years ago when I was a teenager I think. I haven't looked at it for ages - I don't think I've got to the relevant shelf in my long-term slow cataloguing process. Your comments make me want to dig it out again and have another look.

I also love your semi-abstract peeling paint photo - I must look at your Facebook page. I'm frequently taking close up pictures of colours and textures, so I understand the appeal!

I agree, it's a wonderful selection of books. We have a copy of the Art Treasures of the World, it came from my father-in-law's house. Sad, as you say, that sometimes you never know the interests of someone till it's too late.

I'll have to check out your FB page as I also love your opening photo. I really enjoy photographing decaying or ruined buildings.

I've just gone back to catch up on your first thread, which I had sadly neglected. How exciting to read about your husband's new post and the move to Manchester. I don't know that city, but several friends have enjoyed living there as students or early on in their professional lives - and now one of my goddaughters is about to move there for a year's work experience as a gap year before going to uni, so she's also just been off to look for accommodation there. Good luck with the decisions you have to make re accommodation as you make the transition yourselves! And I'm glad to hear you are enjoying the new EAL job meanwhile, that was definitely a good decision to go for that interview.

On the book front, I see you've got to the same point as me with the George R R Martin series - I read the first three books (four volumes in UK terms) fairly rapidly earlier this year, but have paused since then, not wanting to catch up with all the published books too soon as it will clearly be a long wait for the next volume after that. I liked the discussion between you and Lucy about the differences between the TV serial and the books - my first encounter was with the TV version, which I certainly was gripped by from the first episode, but when I got to the book I certainly found that there were far fewer sex scenes - plenty of implied sexual activity but mostly left to the reader's imagination whereas in the TV serial they seem to put as much on screen as possible and leave nothing to the imagination!

You're the only other person I know who's read the Shark's Fin book, which I also read earlier this year and found fascinating. It's one of the few books I've read about China at all (the main other ones being a series of detective stories by a Dutchman, Robert van Gulik who was a Chinese scholar and diplomat, and based his stories on traditional Chinese detective fiction). I too found particularly interesting Dunlop's description of the changes in Chinese culture and society over recent decades, as reflected in the food she was writing about.

Lovely book haul, Hannah!

Wow, your review of The White Tiger actually makes me want to read it a bit more. :) Funny how sometimes it's not even a glowing review, but the opposite that can make us curious about a book. That's a nice thought that your mom was able to set aside some books for you to browse through. It would be interesting to see how the books we read, reflect the people we are, or at least our taste. Mine would be, this girl is all over the place... :)

Hi Hannah. Catching up after a too long absence from your thread. I love the paint peeling picture and the books you inherited (Folio Blandings!!). Also glad to hear your new job is going well so far.

You've been reading lots of books I want to read! Nights at the Circus sounds great - I managed to get a copy of The Bloody Chamber through bookmooch which will be my first Angela Carter, I've had a copy of A Madness of Angels in my TBR pile for 2 years but somehow not read it yet and I need to make my way through the rest of GRR Martin's series. Phew! Thankfully, The White Tiger sounds like a book I would probably struggle with too.

#7 "I raced through the first one, read the second one soon after, and then lost momentum while waiting for #3 to emerge. I'm sure we'll eventually watch the movie, but we haven't yet." Lucy, I completely misread your post the first time and thought you were still talking about Hannah's threads until you mentioned the movie! I understand now :-)

Great haul and I enjoyed the write up too.

35. The Midnight Mayor - Kate Griffin 4/5
Book two in the Matthew Swift series, which picks up very soon after the first finishes and carries on in much the same vein. In fact, a little too similar in some respects, particularly in regard to the basic structure. What we have here is a detective style narrative where strange things are afoot that Swift has to traipse from location to location unearthing clues about, occassionally doing magical battle with a minor baddie, or having a little skirmish with the big boss. The structure is one that would actually fit a modern day style computer game, which isn't necessarily a damning criticism; computer games are very sophisticated these days. I just hope the author does shake things up a bit for the next installment, otherwise the series might be a bit in danger of going flat. In the meantime, the plot of this one ticks away nicely enough, with the city of London itself under threat from a mysterious super villain in a pinstripe suit that kills people by flaying them alive without even touching them. His first victim is a man who holds the office of "Midnight Mayor", the semi-mythical post of protector of the City, who with his dying breath manages to pass the job onto a candidate that doesn't exactly have the support of everyone within the magical community. To make matters worse, rumour has it that his killer isn't even a man at all, but an idea that has existed ever since humans have lived in groups, an idea that takes human shape when diaster comes to these places, in the shape of a bomb, or an army, or a fire, or a plague, or any other cataclysm; and now it has come to London.....

I'm not being very communicative at the moment, either here or in other's threads. I think it's because I'm expending a fair amount of my mental energy on my new job, but hopefully things will settle down into a bit more of a routine soon and I will become a bit more sociable again. In the meantime, I have finished another book, which I'm just about up to sharing my garbled thoughts on:

36. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins 3.5/5
This book was not quite a match for the first part of the trilogy, in my view. Maybe I was just a bit impatient for everyone involved to realise they had to get on with overthrowing their evil overlords, but I felt that the first half of the book went round in narrative circles before finally setting off in a purposeful direction. It wasn't the direction I had expected (I'm being purposefully vague here to avoid spoilers), and for me it didn't quite work. It relied a bit too much on that old device of withholding some really key pieces of information from the main character, and therefore the audience. In this case, the reasons the other characters produced for doing so were a bit flimsy, so were really just there to bamboozle the reader. Also, Katniss was a little annoying in this book, as she misses some pretty obvious clues about what's really going on - but then perhaps that's a strength of the book, in that realistically a seventeen year old girl might not always catch the hidden subtleties of adult conversation. The romance element of the book has been ramped up somewhat, which might displease some of the scores of boys I see reading this series at school, but on the other hand the characters remain strangely chaste in their love for one another, so although there's lots of sleeping in the same bed, it's all "holding each other until they fall asleep" style stuff. And yet the book is very violent in places, with lots of people being quite nastily taken out by characters both good and bad. It seems strange to me that Collins is happy for her protagonists to violently murder people, but not do anything more than kiss. After all, the target audience for this book is far more likely to be grappling with some x-rated thoughts about the opposite sex and what to do about them than facing the possibilty of a ruthless fight to the death with multiple opponents, so I don't understand the reluctance. Maybe that's just me. Overall, still a cracking yarn that carries you along at breakneck speed, and also manages to be thought provoking at the same time, if not quite up to the breathless pace of the first part.

Glad to know you enjoyed the second Matthew Swift book even if it was more of the same in some ways. I can understand your new job taking up a lot of mental energy at the moment so don't feel under any pressure to post a lot of keep up with people's threads. Do you get a break for half-term next month?

Hannah, that kind of a job can suck up ALL of your energy for the first year or two on the job, so don't worry about us, just get here when you can!

I hope that you settle into your job soon. And I agree absolutely about Catching Fire. Personally, the second and third don't live up to the first, but I know a fair number of people like the third nearly as much.

Good to hear from you - though it's quite understandable that the new job is taking up most of your energy, so don't worry about keeping up on LT until you are ready. I hope you are settling into the new routines a bit more now.

I haven't read any of the Hunger Games trilogy yet. Interesting thoughts on the acceptance of violence but not sex - there was a discussion on someone else's thread a while back about differences between US and UK/European tolerance (esp what is regarded as acceptable for teens/young adults) in books and films on these issues - how in general on this side of the Atlantic we are ok about sex but worry about too much violence and in the US it is the other way round.

Hi friends, thanks for being so kind and generous, as ever. Just a quick check in to let you know I'm still out there, and still reading, albeit rather slowly.
I'm inching my way through Terminal World which is a Steampunky Sci-fi/Western by Alastair Reynolds - the first thing I've read by him. I'm enjoying it, but it has that indefinable quality that means it can't be rushed - a certain denseness of text where you feel like you've read a lot but when you look at the page number realise you've hardly progressed at all. I'm also dawdling at a snails pace through Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud, which given that it seems to be little more than regurgitating rumours and bitchiness, isn't nearly as juicy as you might think.
Then there's.....the other thing I'm reading. You know the thing.....that book that all the restless married ladies are reading. Not that I'd really put myself in that category, but I'll admit to being curious and then I went to my friend's house, and there was an obviously already finished copy just lying about, and so..... I'm reading it. It's just as badly written as everyone says, and as I haven't got to any of the saucy bits yet, I can't say whether they make up with in tittilation what they lack in credible writing style of any kind whatsoever. Also, the feminist inspired misgivings I had about a book with a dominant man and submissive female in a BDSM relationship (as I belive it is called these days), have in no way been assuaged by what I've read so far. She seems ridiculously compliant and timid for a 21 year old, not to mention unbelievably inexperenced about all matters of a sexual nature (21 and never even held anyone's hand before - seriously!?!), and really it's the same old "good girl led astray by a wicked man" narrative that's been played out since forever; so I'm not sure that it will ultimately be a sexually empowering book for women; which after all, must surely be the point, because as I said already, the point is definitely not a well crafted story. Anyway, more thoughts as and when they occur....

Great to hear from you! We are all here when the busyness from your work subsides. :)
I think I'm an anomaly. I liked The Hunger Games, but wasn't blown away from it. I liked Catching Fire more as a sequel, but didn't care for Mockingjay.

Haha! I see you are reading Fifty Grades of Shadiness (it's just so much more fun to call it that!).

Fifty Grades of Shadiness He! He! Yes, that's it exactly! In my house, so shall it now be known from now on ; )

You've nailed the Reynolds density exactly on the head..... I do read him a little bit faster now after seven or so books, but it still varies. Some seem to move more smoothly and swiftly than others.

Wow, well that was a long absence! I didn't plan it that way at all, but I just got into a bit of reading and posting inertia, and then I've been in Budapest for the past week, having so much fun that I haven't had much time to check in. Also, I must shamefacedly admit that I haven't finished a single book in October! Eeek! That is awful. I've been juggling four different ones, all of which I should finish soon, so hopefully I will have a better set of stats for November. In the meantime, here's some of the fruits of my trip to BP, made with my latest toy - the Instagram photography app for my new fancy-phone. Right, after that I'm off to do some serious thread catching up......

#33 Oooh, Budapest! I've never been but those are some great photos. Who is the incredibly handsome dog in the bottom row?

Great fun with the photos, Hannah! Can't blame you for having fun in Budapest instead of hanging out here.

Oh, hanging out here is just as fun as Budapest : ) It is a really great city though Heather. I can thoroughly recommend it for a city break - the Christmas markets are really great if you're thinking of getting away soon!
I thought the dog might attract some comment, given all the animal lovers here. She is called Brioche, and she belongs to the family of one of my husband's oldest friends. She's a really friendly and rather comical dog, but somehow she seems to be giving me some pretty serious scrutiny in this picture.

She does! What a great name. I hope I get to Budapest someday - Olivia Manning wrote about it so vividly and lovingly in her Balkan trilogy. Somewhere in this house we have a book of photographs of the city, heaven knows whether from my mother's or mil's bookshelves, and it looks v. beautiful and mysterious.

Hi Lucy. Beautiful and mysterious just about sums it up. I find it an endlessly inspiring place to take photographs - those above are a tiny sample compared to the ones I took on my "proper" camera. I've never heard of The Balkan Trilogy - onto the ever growing wishlist it goes : ) I have currently in my TBR pile the first two books in the On Foot to Constantinople series by Patrick Leigh Fermour , recommended to me by my brother for its brilliant documentation of post-war Budapest.

Lovely photos - I've never been to Budapest either but it's somewhere I'd really like to get to someday. I'm another Patrick Leigh Fermor fan as well - I'm quite interested in reading his biography which has been published in the last few weeks as he sounds like someone who had a very interesting life.

Finally, a finished book to review!

37. Terminal World - Alastair Reynolds 4/5
My first Alastair Reynolds, and I really enjoyed it, although it was hard work at times. It's a really clever mash-up of different styles. At first it's quite a Crime/Noirish style story, then it rapidly shifts into a kind of Sci-Fi Western, and a while after that it becomes an air born Steampunky tale. Then, at the very end, it hints at a more straight SF basis for all the strangeness that has proceeded it. It has a really original plot that is rather complicated and would be full of spoilers to follow too closely, but the very bare bones is that Spearpoint is a unique city that is a towering cone that reaches up into the heavens. In it there are different "zones", which the people very rarely cross, as there are profound dangers and health implications in crossing a zone boundary, so they instead live most of their lives in one place, and have only a very hazy idea of what happens in the other zones, and almost none at all of the world beyond Spearpoint. Each zone has a different level of technological development, from the upper levels where the inhabitants have been raised almost to the level of gods by the technological development, down to a very basic base level where even simple steam powered machines struggle to work.
So, of course, something must happen to shake up this super regimented world. It starts conventionally enough, with the main character recieving a wholly unexpected message from a secret friend about a common enemy that is about to move against him and reveal his hidden past, forcing him to get the heck out of dodge. From these basic beginnings things get progressively weirder and therefore more fun. It's by no means perfect - the pacing is a little stop-start at times, and the main character is a bit anonymous, plus, the ending basically leaves everything unresolved to such an extent that one can only conclude it is intended to be the beginning of a series, which is kind of annoying, but not overly so as I liked this enough to want to know what happens next.

Terminal World is one I've got sitting on my kindle that I really must get around to.

That sounds excellent - Reynolds has a real fascination with 'layered' worlds.

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday, Hannah!!

Happy Birthday Hannah!

I've only read one Alastair Reynolds book, Revelation Space and thought it was pretty good, but the timeframe he covers is pretty daunting. I didn't realize that it was part of a series until I finished the book!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HANNAH! I'm still in time, barely, over here. Hope you had a great day!
I need to get to Terminal World too! Thanks for the review.

Hi Lucy, Roni, Valerie and Peggy. Many thanks for the birthday wishes. It was quite a low key celebration, as it rather snuck up on me after my lovely week away and then a hectic return to work. Also, on the evening itself I had the first of my new evening classes aimed towards project: Graphic Designer, which was a 3 hour long Photoshop class, but we are going to a really good Thai restaurant with a few friends on Saturday night so that's kind of the real celebration.
Ok, back to books, well, kind of.....


38. Fifty Shades of Grey - E.L.James 1.5/5
Well, where to start?
The writing: is terrible. Honestly, truly horrible. It actually says things like "he smirked smirkily", well maybe not quite that bad, but pretty appalling for a published novel anyway.
The plot: is utterly ridiculous. 21 year old pretty-but-not-show-stopping English lit student who's never even held hands with a boy, catches eye of gorgeous twenty-something multi-millionaire entrepreneur who flies her around in his private helicopter, showers her with gifts and gives her mind-bending orgasms. Oh, and in the meantime she moves into an awesome penthouse apartment in Seattle that her rich college housemate has bought outright, and lands her dream job in publishing from her very first job interview. Actually, it's the latter part that I find most annoyingly unrealistic in the current job market, but it's all rather silly.
Is it pro women? No, not really. Wouldn't it be nice if the multi-zillion selling novel that's being read by so many people right now could pave the way for society to start to have a more open and honest dialogue about the idea of women's sexuality, and embrace the reality of it, rather than the titilating version of it that is shown to us by the media, and which is basically for the consumption of men, but this is not the book that is going to break down those barriers. The woman, however much she may seem to stand up for herself, eventually always goes along with the man's idea of what her sexuality should be, and allows it to be shaped by him to a worrying degree. Without giving away too many spoilers, it perhaps isn't that cut and dried by the end, but basically, being a non-sexual being before she met him (and how realistic is that? A 21 year old who suddenly becomes super horny when under the influence of a particular man, but otherwise has no sexual identity of her own), her sexuality is basically created for her by the male character. Plus, there was so many times when I wanted to shake her, because she meekly agrees to going along with things she clearly isn't comfortable with just to please him, or initially resists but then gives in once he turns on the sexy moves (the old "no isn't really no" idea), or even, on occassions, APOLOGISES for not being more into the stuff that he's done that has made her feel uncomfortable and unhappy.
Also, to look at another aspect of the book I found troubling, I'm not really part of the BDSM community, but I like to think I know a little about it, being as I am, an avid listener to the Savage Love podcast, which deals, amongst other things, with every known fetish and kink imaginable (and some you really couldn't. Honestly. Check out the podcast if you don't belive me. Well, check it out anyway because it's awesome. Very liberal though. You kind of have to be a Democrat to like it. And totally unshockable wouldn't hurt) But, I think it's a tad offensive to that community to say that all people that like to be Doms in those kind of relationships do so because of some deep seated trauma, and use it as a kind of therapy. Some do, I'm willing to conceed, I can't know their motives, but I think the point is that Christain Grey uses BDSM to relate to sexual partners, seemingy because it is the only way he CAN relate to them, and it is fully part of him, as seen by the fact that he will never allow Anastasia to touch his chest (the site of some hinted-at awful deeds). I imagine, that for most members of the BDSM community, being that way is a role that they choose to play in certain situations, and one that they can take or leave at will. This book rather gives the opposite impression though. Sorry, maybe this is a little unclear, and I can't really speak for that community, but that was my gut feeling about it.
OK, but I hear you cry, what about the sex?! Is it SEXY??? Well, yes, in places, I'm willing to conceed to a certain frisson, and at least it is pretty graphic, unlike many ahem, romance novels, but even so the sex scenes become pretty repetitive over time, and also are rather over reliant on the usual tired cliches to describe sexual acts and pleasures. I have a work colleague that decided to share with us the fact that this book had pretty much single-handedly revived her and her husband's waning sex life, so I guess it's done some good, even if it hasn't really contributed anything to either the world of literature or women's lib, although it's hard to imagine that many of the hundreds of sex-laced modern romance books you can find tucked away inside any bookstore couldn't have done just as good, if not a better job of the same.

It's kind of depressing to think that this may well be the longest review I've written here on LT, but it is a book that provides you with plenty to talk about, if not much else. It does have a funny way of getting under your skin at times. There were moments when I got a bit caught up in Christain and Anatasia's story, before something patently ridiculous or annoying dragged me back to reality. I kind of hate myself for saying it, but I haven't entirely ruled out reading the other two..... keep watching this space, I guess.

What a great review - it's the first one I've bothered to stop and read about this book, which struck me from the get go as probably awful...... what I liked about yr. review was the actual information (I had no idea even what it was about) and interweaving of your own thoughts and reactions and the honesty of admitting something, despite its awfulness, hooked you a little! Bravo.

The best books and the worst books seem to elicit the longest reviews......

I missed your birthday. Happy birthday for whenever it was! And great review of you know what!

Definitely a good, thoughtful review--it told me a lot about the book, the sort of things I wanted to know but wasn't willing to read it to find out!

Nicely done regarding Fifty Grades of Shadiness , Hannah. ;)
There will definitely be people who love this book and people who hate this book. I, myself will never really know I guess. I feel like I've read enough reviews though that I feel like I've read the book without ever actually having to pick up a physical copy myself.

I just saw an article where a woman used Fifty Shades as grounds for divorce as her husband didn't want to suddenly be as adventurous as she did after reading it.

Thank you Kerry, for my first laugh of the day!

He he! Fifty shades is good for a laugh if nothing else.
Well, I've finished off a few more books. This isn't because I've had a sudden surge in my reading, it's just that these are the books I should have finished in October.

39. Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud - Shaun Considine 2/5
This book was just a bit meh. Perhaps if you were already a Bette Davis or Joan Crawford expert this book would add something to your knowledge, but for a beginner like me it was just a bit incoherent. It didn't really tell either's life story, except in the most basic fashion, and then tried to set up this idea of them having this huge feud, which I just didn't really buy at any stage. Yes, they clearly didn't like each other, but they were both famously very difficult women who had fraught relationships with any number of people. They hardly met for most of the their careers, indeed, seemed to go out of their way to ignore each other, so the book spends most of its time flitting back and forth between the two of them and just describing what they were doing at that point in their careers, with a few bitchy quotes from the other or another notable of the period.
When the big showdown does arrive, in the shape of the film "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", that's a bit anti-climatic, with lots of heresay about what went on that is refuted by someone in the other camp. That's the trouble with large parts of the book, you're sympathies keep shifting as you get favourable or unfavourable information, but then it's contradicted by the next thing you're told, so you never know where you stand. Also, as the book moves into the twilight years of the two stars' careers it doesn't really have anything fresh to tell you, and so just kind of fizzles out. One for super-fans only, I think.


40. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at the Road Hill House - Kate Summerscale 3/5
An OK book, but not the one I was hoping for from the cover and blurb. I was hoping for a lurid fictionalisation of a real-life Victorian murder mystery. I got a little sprinkling of that, but I also got lots of asides about the Victorian's burgeoning interest in detectives, both real and fictional, and lots of details of the press reaction to the crime itself. All very interesting stuff, but not quite the rollicking tale of horrid murder, shifty servants, mean masters and mistresses, bungling local policeman and a brilliant detective from the big smoke, that I was hoping for. It had all these ingredients and more, including some surprising revelations uncovered after many of the central protagonists were dead, but somehow it still added up to less than the sum of its parts. I'm not sure why, perhaps it just wasn't the right book at the right time for me, and bigger crime fans may well enjoy it much more.

Oh I missed your birthday - I will wish you many belated birthday wishes instead!

#40 I still haven't read any Alistair Reynolds but he is definitely on my list for next year.

#46 I think your review confirms that 50 Shades of Grey is everything I wish it wasn't so I will pass.

#47 The best books and the worst books seem to elicit the longest reviews......

Very true...

#53 I enjoyed The Suspicions of Mr Whicher but I think I'd read enough of the negative reviews to know what to expect and I currently have a bit of a fixation on Victorian crime novels so it really fit the bill for me. For some reasons the publishers decided to market it as if it were a novel (or novelised) which probably did result in more sales but also some disappointed readers...

OK, so I've been meaning to mention for a while that I have acquired some delicious new books this month. First, a couple of new books my lovely husband bought me from my birthday. Though not much of a SF fan himself, he understands and encourages my SF mania, enabling me with shots of classic SF goodness like these two books from the SF Masterworks series, which has still never let me down yet. They are:
RUR and War with the Newts - Karel Capek Weirdly, the first part of this is a play, and is the work that apparently gave the world the word "robot". This is just the kind of geeky fact my husband adores, and no doubt he'll store it away in his brain somewhere, to be pulled out years from now to help us triumph in a pub quiz or something. I, on the other hand, will probably read the book, but shortly after forget the author's name, thereby being of no use to anyone in said quiz.
Dangerous Visions - ed. Harlan Ellison is the other book he got me. It's a collection of short stories by lots of SF heavy hitters including Frederik Pohl, Larry Niven, Phillip K. Dick and Brian Aldiss. A kind of SF greatest hits.
Interesting trivia fact about Brian Aldiss: he is an old boy of my old school. He visited whilst I was still there, and had some of the pupils involved in a hunt for a tin of mildy saucy short stories he had written whilst a pupil at the school and then burried in the grounds. Well, that's what he told us anyway. I'm not certain he didn't make the whole thing up just for a bit of a laugh. Alas, at the time I hadn't really discovered SF and didn't realise quite what a big deal he was. Our school didn't really seem to know either, to be fair. Guess that tells you all you need to know about the status of SF amongst public school teachers in the UK. None of the above will be of any use to you in a pub quiz, but I include for your interest nonetheless.

Also this month we had a day out to the local village of Topsham, that has a great second hand bookshop, and I managed to unearth a few gems.
Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911 to 1918 - Leonard Woolf Great for VW fans like me, this is the key years where Leonard met and married her, and they set up the Bloomsbury Group and the Hogarth Press.
A World of Pattern - Gwen White An absolute treasure this: a 1961 re-print of a 1957 book about illustration. I notice there is no cover image on the book's page, so I may have to submit one, as it's absolutely beautiful.
Faeries - Brian Froud and Alan Lee I have a bit of a thing about fairies, and here's a stunningly illustrated book about them, full of traditional fairy folk tales with a faintly menacing edge. Delightful.
Ronald Searle's Golden Oldies - Ronald Searle A master of blackly comedic cartoons that inspired Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

Right, so that's the new additions to the library taken care of. I also have a finished book to review, a rare thing these days, but it will have to wait for tomorrow, as I now have to go and ready myself for the bizarrely early work Christmas party. À demain my friends.

What a fabulous haul!!!!! It's funny isn't it - realizing later that you met someone truly great in some area of the arts or sciences, when you were too young to get it.
War with the Newts is a great classic and I have it somewhere, about halfway read, and then Dangerous Visions is a CLASSIC anthology. I raced through the Woolf autobios even though they were kind of dry, when I was in my worst crush phase on VW, I love the way Froud and Lee draw, and Ronald Searle is/was a great favorite - my parents always had stuff of his around the house.

Good-o getting those parties over with EARLY that's good! Spreads out the eating, for one thing, and more time for your own affairs later, I hope.

Your husband gave you some true classics! RUR, of course, is famous for just the fact you cite. When, in high school and many miles from any bookstore in the middle of Kansas, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club, my first three selections (for $1) were The Foundation Trilogy, Lord of Light, and the brand new, way out there Dangerous Visions!

Yikes, where did that week go?....I'll just carry on as if I've only been gone 5 mintues, I think that's the best course of action...
Thanks Lucy and Roni for all the info on my birthday presents! Yes, he does know how to pick 'em, my husband (just look who he married ; ) )
So, onto the promised review, although I think part of the reason why I haven't been here for several days is that I was trying to marshall my thoughts into a coherent opinion about this book. I leave to you to judge whether I've been successful....

41. The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas 3.5/5
This is plot-wise quite a slight tale, but it's packed full of real-feeling human life in all its sometimes ugly and gritty details, and that's enough to make it quite a page-turner. The story begins from the viewpoint of a forty-something married father of two getting ready for a barbecue where many of his closest friends will gather at his suburban home. We learn a lot about him, including the fact that he seems to be having some sort of extra marital liaison with a teenager, who is also attending the barbecue. The setting is Australia, although the man is from a Greek background, and as it emerges as the party gets under way their friends are quite a mixed bunch. There is the Aboriginal man, once something of a drunken trouble maker, but now a Muslim, with a white working class (if that's the correct term in an Australian context) wife who has also converted. The man's wife is originally from India, and several of their other friends are also from a melting pot of backgrounds. This was already my first surprise about Australian society, if this is indeed typical. I can't help thinking that it isn't really, it's just the author's way of getting his all-human-life-is-here angle covered, but I guess it's a minor quibble. The act upon which the whole novel hangs happens at the barbecue, the titular "slap", which is delivered by the man's cousin against the three-year-old son of one of their friends. This act will devide the loyalties of all who witness it, some thinking the man was justified (The boy is a horrid little brat who had already made two kids cry, and was at the time brandishing a cricket bat in the general direction of the slapper's son, his parents being hippy dippy types that don't believe in imposing discipline on their child, obviously weren't about to step in and do the right thing), others thinking the opposite (a grown man never has the right to hit a child, the 3 year old wasn't really a danger to the slapper's 8-year-old-son etc etc...).
What you think about this debate will of course colour how you read the following chapters, even as we jump from viewpoint to viewpoint of all the main players, and learn a lot more about their emotional inner lives and the hidden motivations of each of them, which of course, are not in many cases as straightforward as they first appear. It's all very well done, especially the chapter told from the point of view of the man's ageing father, as he comes face to face with his own mortality, and reflects on how the world that his children and grandchildren are inheriting is unrecogniseable from the one he knew, ultimately not in a good way. My main problems with the novel are twofold. Is this REALLY what middle-aged Austalians are like? Because if it is, that's a messed up place. All of the forty-something characters, are pretty much to a man and woman, deeply unlikable, self-obssessed and shallow, even the ones that can recognise these unpleasant traits in others don't seem to realise that they are afflicted with the same problem. Drug taking and alcohol abuse are rife, the only difference amongst the richer and poorer characters are the type of drugs they take. Children are a source of happiness and pride, but more of a lifestyle accessory than a central focus, and everyone just seems so selfish. The only likable characters are the two young teenagers, and the older man but all those in the middle, the ones with all the power, that are at the centre of things, seem very disfunctional. This may well be the author's point. Indeed, I suspect it is, but perhaps a little more light and shade would have made this a better story.
The second quibble I have, is to do with the child at the centre of the slapping row. His behaviour is never really fully explained or entirely consistent. We see that at other times he can be a nice boy, which does ring true, but the moments when he becomes a little terror seem strangely motiveless. There is some vague talk amongst the other families about how his parents have a particular parenting philosphy that makes him the way he is, but I didn't really see any evidence of that in the story. The author's feelings about this family are pretty ambiguous, and so were mine. They clearly have a lot of problems, but they are also pretty feckless and invite others to see them as victims. The hatred that some of the other characters seem to feel towards them is a little inexplicable though.
Overall, a good book with a few niggling flaws.

#58.All of the forty-something characters, are pretty much to a man and woman, deeply unlikable, self-obssessed and shallow, even the ones that can recognise these unpleasant traits in others don't seem to realise that they are afflicted with the same problem.

Mr SandDune read this a little while back and that was pretty much exactly his verdict. Enough to make me think I probably wouldn't like the book.

The Faeries book looks amazing... added to the Wishlist!

To me books like The Slap never quite work - it's really 'social problem debate' disguised as fiction. There was a book like that The Good Mother where a divorced mother's child reports to the father that she saw the mother's new boyfriend naked. YOU know it was innocent, but it turns into a total sh..storm. And even though a part of me thought, yeah, another part of me found it tedious and contrived.

Well, today is an auspicious and happy day - the day my LT membership became lifetime! Now I can go on adding new books to my heart's content, which will include basically all the books I have bought this year, as well as many others I haven't entered in yet. Well, at least I'll know what to do with myself to fill a spare few moments, although I don't see many of those in my immediate future, what with Christmas right around the corner.
Anyway, turning about slightly to look at the recent past, I have a couple of finished book to report back on:


42. The City and the Stars - Arthur C. Clarke 3.5/5
This is an enormously inventive tale of a very, very far future Earth, where the last vestiges of mankind have retreated inside a sealed, virtually eternal last city, called Diaspar, in which computers keep everything perfectly maintained and unchanging, and have done so for the past billion years. Humans are no longer born, but created almost fully grown; emerging from the computer's memory banks as reincarnations of people that have lived many times before. They live for a thousand years before returning to the computer's memory, to be given a new body a hundred thousand years into the future, which to them passes in the blinking of an eye.
After some long-ago cataclysm, humans have basically had curiosity and adventurousness taken out of their genetic make-up, and are content to live out every moment of their many lives inside the same unchanging mega-city. All of them except Alvin. He is unlike any other person in Diaspar because he is "Unique", that is, has never lived before but is a newly created human mind. And for some reason, his mind cannot stop wondering if there might be something worth exploring beyond the city walls......

A really interesting and unique story, which is even more incredible when you realise Clarke wrote it in the 1950's. I guess it's no surprise that the man that thought up the idea of satellites should also anticipate computer modelling amongst several other things on display here, but it's still highly impressive. Plus, you can see here very clearly the influence he obviously still exerts over today's SF authors, Iain M. Banks in particular, with the idea of human personalities being created inside a computer for a specific purpose, the incomprehensibly huge and sophisticated computer mind running a city and the sentient floating robots all being ideas that crop up in his work time and time again. The only criticism I have of this work is how clinical and unfeeling it is at times. Like the people of Diaspar, with their narrowed down range of human emotions, the emotional palette of the book feels rather limited, despite all the fantastical things that happen. That aside, a feast of delights for SF fans, but maybe not one to convert those non-fans that do often charge SF with being emotionally uninvolving.


43. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins 3/5
I'll keep my description of the plot vague to non-existent to try to avoid giving away any spoilers for those further back in the series, but this is the third and final part of Collins' "Hunger Games" trilogy. It's not as compelling as the first two installments, and has a curious structure that intercuts bursts of thrilling action with slightly meandering down-time that doesn't really go anywhere. I think the author's background is in television, and it really shows here, as there is a lot of media related plot developments based around filming anti-government propoganda pieces featuring our heroine Katniss Everdeen. These media related themes were cleverly woven into the first two books, but here their inclusion feels more contrived and is therefore less welcome. They also create the problem that although she is our heroine, Katniss is considered too vital as a media star to risk in the real meaty action set pieces that are taking place throughout the novel, a problem the writer struggles with but ultimately fails to resolve. Also, the dramatic conclusion to the whole series feels rather rushed and incoherent, as the author sacrifices sense for a feeling of excitement and peril, and as a consequence rather fails to deliver on the dramatic promise of the earlier books. That said, the fighting elements reveal the full horror of combat, and the terrible emotional toll it takes on all those involved, and the final resolution of the story feels fitting and emotionally truthful in a way that transcends what young adult story conventions might lead you to expect (sorry, the being deliberately vague is making this quite hard to describe!). Overall, a slightly disappointing end to a potentially brilliant series, but one that will ultimately stay with me perhaps longer than something that was concluded in a neater but less emotionally truthful way.
I do think it is significantly darker than the first two, so those reading it with young people might want to brace themselves for some pretty tough moments.

Congrats on becoming an LT lifer!!!

That Clarke tickles the back of my mind, pretty sure I read it back in the day - but I think my perspective on it would be so different now. Another reread must!

#62 Like the people of Diaspar, with their narrowed down range of human emotions, the emotional palette of the book feels rather limited, despite all the fantastical things that happen.

I read The City and the Stars in the summer and very much agree with you about the range of emotions being a little limited. And I found the explanations presented at the end quite disappointing. But overall a very good read.

I've only read a little bit of Clarke (The Deep Range last year and one or two whose titles I've forgotten many years ago), but I've realised that with his kind of writing it is the ideas that one reads him for rather than the portrayal of fully rounded human beings with emotional depth. And the ideas are usually interesting and worth it; but it does take some getting used to when you are accustomed to writers who attempt to explore character's emotional life. I'll have to try The City and the Stars one day...

Hi Genny, Lucy and Rhian! Yes, Clarke is very much big ideas kind of SF writer, and he does do it incredibly well.
So as we nearly reach the end of the year, my thoughts already start to turn to next year's reads, and having a bit of a better attempt at the magic figure of 75, which I comprehensively failed to reach this year.
In the meantime though, I may be able to squeeze in a few more books to spare my blushes a little.

44. The Chrysalids - John Wyndham 4/5
First, a word about the cover. It's rubbish, obviously, but it also has absolutely nothing to do with the book! I'm a bit stumped as to why the publishers choose it. It's pretty clear that the illustrator hadn't read the story, and simply made a wild guess as it what the Chrysalids are - crazy wasp/lobster/Santa hybrid aliens seemingly being what sprang to mind. In fact, the truth is much more mundane, but therefore more interesting. We are in a dystopian future society, which has reverted back to a basic agricultural model after some unexplained "Tribulation" that happened centuries before. It sounds rather like a nuclear war, as it has left huge patches of charred, lifeless ground, and beyond that areas where both flora and fauna have mutated to a great extent. David, the narrator of the tale, lives in one of the areas where this mutation is being tamed by religiously influenced zealots who burn mutated crops, kill mutated animals, and banish mutated humans in the name of preserving God's proscribed "True Image". The first part of the book simply details David's childhood in this harsh society, made all the worse by the fact that his father is the biggest zealot in all the area, even when it involves his family. Luckily, David looks just like everyone else, but the truth is, he and several other people in the community have developed abilities that make them very, very different. But with people everywhere constantly on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary, how long will their powers be able to remain a secret?
A thoughtful book, that builds this rather strange but somehow very recognisable future society very convincingly and chillingly. The story is really engaging and has a lot of depth to it, in terms of delivering a message about humanity's fear of the unknown and intolerance, and the dangers of religious fundamentalism. This message is slightly muddied by the events of the final quarter of the book, which becomes more of a action adventure story with a message about human evolution and obsolescence - which is where the story title comes from I guess, although the link is never made explicitly. Overall, a very well written book that creates an unforgettable atmosphere and tells a scarily plausible tale.

Hannah, I agree with you about The Slap - it would be hard to find a book more full of awful people than that one!

#62 "Well, today is an auspicious and happy day - the day my LT membership became lifetime!" Hooray! (There's no escape from us now...)

The City and the Stars sounds interesting and has reminded me that I still haven't read Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust which I've had for years...

#66 That really is an awful cover isn't it - you'd think that someone, somewhere would have realised that giant green wasps with spears had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the book. I loved The Chrysalids as a teenager - I was thinking it was about time for a reread.

Oh, I've got The Chrysalids on my must read list.

Covers REALLY MATTER to sf and fantasy readers!

#70 Covers REALLY MATTER to sf and fantasy readers!

It's not just sci-fi and fantasy readers either - when I was young I was very interested in the history of costume and fashion (not that you'd guess it today by the state of my wardrobe). And that's left me with a pretty good idea of whether any historical costume is right for the period in question. It drives me mad when the cover of a historical novel shows the characters dressed in something that's completely wrong for for the period.

Hi Susan, Heather, Rhian and Lucy!
#67 I know! Aren't they a pile of rotters?! I've never been to Australia, so I don't know how representative of the general populace they are, but I begin to get an inkling of why my Australian ex-pat friend shudders at the thought of living there again.
#68 Thanks Heather! Yep, I'm all set to become a pretty permanent part of the landscape!
#69 I'm not sure The Chrysalids and Christmas cheer go together Rhian. One for the new year, I say!
#70 Writing this, I was thinking of the recent exchange between yourself and Roni about how pleased you were that the illustrator had obviously read the book - this is a crystal clear case of what happens when they don't bother.
#71. I'm intrigued Rhian. What turned the fashionista of yesteryear into the insouciant dresser of today? One too many things with doggy paw prints on them? ; )

I mentioned a few posts back a wonderful book I bought recently A World of Pattern by Gwen White. It didn't have a cover image, so I took a picture of it and uploaded it, as it's such a lovely cover I wanted people to be able to see it. I'll also re-produce it here in a larger form as the details bear a closer look. While I was at it I took a few pictures of some of the illustrations inside, as well as pictures from a few other books, which I think I will use to adorn my thread heads next year.

Bizarre thing: The touchstone is resolutely failing to co-operate, for some reason known only to itself it will actually take you to...well, click it and see if you like, but it isn't to the book concerned, that's for sure.

That's gorgeous, Hannah!

Nice cover!

#72 What turned the fashionista of yesteryear into the insouciant dresser of today? I was never a fashionista! Everything was much more theoretical than practical! I just never had the patience for all the shopping.

Glitterfy.com - Christmas Glitter Graphics

I want to wish you a glorious celebration of that time of year when we all try to unite around a desire for Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward All. Merry Christmas, Hannah!

Happy Christmas Hannah!

Can you find the shark, the gray cat and the tan cat too?

Hope you had a merry day.

Happy Third Day of Christmas, Hannah! Actually, I think it is the Fourth Day now since it is well past midnight, and I should be in bed...

I love that cover design you posted earlier.

Thank you for all the lovely messages of festive goodwill. I would have been here spreading cheer myself, except I was Christmassing in an internet blackspot with no computer. This is just a brief return home before popping out again, this time back to Hungary to spend New Year with the family out there, so let me get in an early "Happy New Year!" as well.
I have really enjoyed my first full year in the 75ers. I got nowhere near the total, but my life has been greatly enriched by the exchange of ideas, recommendations and warm, caring friendships here. And long may it continue! Here's wishing you all a fabulous 2013!

Just time for one final read of 2012 to be documented, although I might not stretch to a review:

45. The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes 3/5
This is exactly the sort of Booker Prize nominated PROPER LITERATURE that I'm a bit wary of. Well written, well characterised and full of the big themes of life, but ultimately it feels a little mannered, too conscious of its own cleverrness, and most unforgiveably, a bit dull. Not my cup of tea, but not bad.

Right, well I have lots of other books on the go at the moment, most notably the next instalment of the George R.R.Martin series, A Feast of Crows, but I'm sure I won't finish any before the end of the year, so I will soon switch to my new thread for 2013, which you can find here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/146962
In the meantime, I wish you all a very happy end to 2012, and a great start to 2013! I'm currently in Hungary where I largely spend my time catching up with friends and family or walking around and taking photos, then stopping to drink ridiculously excellent coffee or strange drinks distilled from rotted fruits, eating a lot of soups with beans/pork/cabbage/hot peppers/sour cream in them, and generally having a fine old time, so I might be off to a rather slow start to the New Year, but I look forward to interacting with you all again shortly. xx

Here's to a great new year ahead, Hannah! I've really enjoyed following your thread too.

#73 Wow! Happy New Year!