53 posts tagged “books”
I am weak; whenever I come across a new detective series, and I just have to start buying them up. This summer's discovery is Wallander but my plan is to read three from the stack and then allow myself to buy a new Wallander (or whatever takes my fancy). I had hoped to read fifty books by fall but I haven't even broken double figures. I am hopeful that my upcoming vacation will allow me to get a bit further into my stack, but we shall see.
When I saw the film trailer for Blindness my interest was piqued. I love a good dystopian thrillers and I thought I'd try to read the book first because these days it is fairly hit or miss if I am going to make it to movies. Though given my stack of to be read books it is long shot whether or not I am going to get to it at all. I digress, I took Blindness on vacation with me, and it was so the wrong choice. Ultra depressing and quite disturbing.
I really liked the premise - what would happen if the majority of the world went blind. But, for me, it was the wrong point of view. I wanted big picture stuff like what was the government doing to identify the cause, and why were some people immune. Instead it was all touchy feelie and claustrophobic - yuk! It also didn't help that none of the characters have names. It is all 'blind man', 'blind girl with sunglasses', 'soldier', 'boy with squint', etc. It was hard to keep track, and they all seemed to blend together by the end. I forced myself to keep reading even though there were several points when I was willing to give up because it was too bloody bland and bleak.
Hey ho you live and learn, and I wont be reading any more of Saramgo's works.
Woo Hoo
- The Unit
- Winter sun
- House punking Foreman
- The excitement of a shuttle launch
- Lazy afternoon spent clearing out the DVR
Meh
- The end of vacation
- Blindness by Jose Saramago
- The piles of laundry I need to put away before bed
If you were stranded on an island, what five books would you bring?
submitted by CJP
Funnily enough one of my friends was recently stranded in the British Virgin Islands during a hurricane, and all she had was her blackberry for entertainment.
- The Odyssey by Homer
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- I Captured the Castle by Dodie Smith
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
- House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Alex has had a Kindle for the last few months, and he loves it to pieces. He goads me over how wasteful and outdated my paper books are, and how much space they take up in the flat. Well you know what the Kindle is a pretty antisocial device. It is all well and good that you have instant access to any number of tomes at the click of a button but you can't share them. Alex has the two Obama books on his Kindle, and I really want to read them before November. I am either going to have to mooch them via BookMooch (as I am not meant to be buying any more books for a while) or get some timeshare situation going. I have a feeling that the former will be the easiest solution. The biggest pain though is not knowing what Alex is reading (unless he gives an electronic update somewhere). He could be rocking it with Henry James and Dickens for all I know. I really miss being able to see the cover of the book he's reading, and congratulating myself one what a smart husband I have. I have a fear that when the price drops the subway train will be full of them. I wont be able to spend my time scanning the titles being read and making a note of the ones that catch my eye because everyone will be glued to their little ecru boxes.
18. Harnessing Peacocks by Mary Wesley
To say that Mary Wesley was a late bloomer is something of an understatement, she had her first adult novel published when she was in her 70s, and managed to knock out 10 books between 1983 and 1997. Not bad for a septuagenarian. Harnessing Peacocks is about an upper class gal called Hebe who turns to cooking and light prostitution in order to live independently from her family, and raise her illegitimate son. She works hard to compartmentalize her life: the men in her syndicate, the old women she cooks for, the son at boarding school and her friends from the past. I've read a fair few books written in the mid-80s, and this feels old fashioned and outdated. Wesley is stronger when she is not writing contemporary fiction.
19. Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
This is one disturbing book, even more so than her first book Out which heavily featured chopping up of bodies. This is a tale of two sisters, one disarmingly beautiful and the other a real plain Jane. They end up at the same prestigious high school, and the narrative focuses on their relationships with other students and their struggles in adulthood. There were parts that dragged, and I was far more interested in one the school chums who was sucked into a cult but only got a cursory glance. I don't think that it is as good as Out but it's not a bad read.
20. In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner by Elizabeth George
As much as I love the Inspector Lynley series I find Elizabeth George's books to be too long. I would love to be able to work my way through all her books but I know that realistically I am never going to catch-up. Each book comprises of over 700 pages of tightly woven plot involving the detectives Lynley and Havers, and I have just finished the tenth in the series. The previous book (Deception On His Mind) ended with Havers on suspension for disobeying a senior officer so that she could rescue a drowning child the ramifications of that incident hangs heavily overhead. Havers has been bumped down a rank, and Lynley pushes her to the periphery of his current investigation. It's quite a complicated plot, and I need to go clean my oven before putting the Sunday roast in so I will just link to this description.
that makes me want to claw my eyes out.
I've read Howards End and A Passage to India, and have Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View on my to be read stack. I don't know why I keep trying with E.M. Forster when his books drive me insane. Slow, and painful is one way to think of them. Today after watching Transformers (awesome movie) I thought I should clear a little Masterpiece Classic from the DVR, and settled down to watch the Andrew Davies adaptation of A Room with a View. I am now thinking that ARWAV is best enjoyed after you've spent the morning watching pain dry. Only then can you fully appreciate the nuances...
If I didn't already have an unhealthy amount of unread books lurking around the flat then I might me tempted to read my way around the world with The Independent's list of global crime fiction. I've read Edinburgh, Oxford and Rome but that leaves 73 cities and detectives for me to discover. Two shocking omissions are Maisie Dobbs for London, and Inspector Brunetti for Venice. I promised Alex that I wouldn't buy or mooch any more tomes until I get my TBR pile under control.
So far this year I have only managed to read 17 novels. Not bad but every year since I started studying (and working full-time) the numbers have dwindled. I decided to join the 50 in 365 group on Vox to see if that would help keep me on track. Though perhaps my days of getting through a novel a week are well and truly behind me but I have to keep reading otherwise I will never get through my TBR* pile.
This week I got through two books 'Secret Smile' and 'Killing Me Softly' both by Nicci French. I mooched these books, and they will both be going back up on my Book Mooch inventory as I doubt I will ever read them or anything else by Nicci French again. I saw the TV adaptation of Secret Smile last year, and thought I'd give French a whirl but her style didn't really suit me. Both books are psychological thrillers centered around a successful, professional woman who meets a man with a screw loose and sets about to destroy her. I found her prose to be rather blah and just not a rich and challenging read. Plus, these the protagonists are very silly women who really should know better. To cleanse my palate my next two reads will be a half finished Ian McEwan that I started last year, and one of the Ripley novels because Patricia Highsmith really knows how to weave a superior psychological thriller.
I was chatting away with my mum this week, and we got onto the subject of how the British PM had likened himself to Heathcliff. My mum summed it up as ""Fantastic, we're being governed by a fictional character from a Yorkshire farming ghetto". I don't quite get why Gordon would go for Heathcliff. Has he read Wuthering Heights? Did he fall into the pre-GCSE trap of seeing Heathcliff as a brooding, misunderstood character than roams the moors and not the inarticulate chav that sets out to destroy all around him. Perhaps Gordon is trying to imply that he is a closet farmer, a man's man who wants us to get back to a simpler time when there were foundlings in Liverpool. Of course it could be something more sinsiter if Gordon is Heathcliff then is the British populous Cathy - being held captive as Heathcliff takes out his revegne and expands his empire. The flip side to Gordon 'Heathcliff' Brown is an article about how much of a reader Obama is, and if he wins in November he could be the most well read President and that is an exciting prospect. I'll over look that he favors Melville because I don't think that he will fall into the trap of comparing himself to Ahab, Ishmael or Queequeg.
And finally, before I got to lament the near passing of my laptop, how the hell did Rushdie win best of Booker? How many people have actually managed to finish Midnight's Children. Come on be honest is it sitting on your shelf next to A Brief History of Time?
