tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63393314987928019482024-03-13T11:31:19.946+00:00. A Book every Six Days .This was going to be a blog which reviewed a book a week and would have been entitled 'A Book a Week' but someone had already used that. So I'll rush things a bit.Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.comBlogger508125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-6029011813829927632013-02-08T20:56:00.000+00:002013-02-08T20:56:00.465+00:00Quotations from some of my recently read books<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"></span><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">Edward Marston – The Queen’s Head</span></b><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"> (1988)</span>
</div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">Truth then caught up with Rumour and
plucked its feathers.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">"I have tried to hide my light
under a bushel but I have never been able to find a bushel big enough."</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">He had insinuated his way back into
the outer suburbs of her affections.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">John Dickinson – The Cup of the World </span></b><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">(2004)</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
wedding vow</i>) Say the truth to one another. Let your lives be as a mirror to
one another. Keep the promises you have spoken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You are man and wife.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">Tad Williams – The Dragonbone Chair</span></b><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"> (1988)</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">….and everywhere books, books,
books, dropped half-way open or propped upright here and there about the
chamber like huge clumsy butterflies.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
</div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">Penelope Fitzgerald “The Bookshop”</span></b><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"> (1978)</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">His emotions, from lack of exercise,
had disappeared almost altogether.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">The right-hand wall she kept for
paperbacks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 1s 6d each, cheerfully coloured,
brightly democratic, they crowded the shelves in well-disciplined ranks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They would have a rapid turnover and she had
to approve of them yet she could remember a world where only foreigners had
been content to have their books bound in paper.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">“I don’t know if men are better
judges than women,” said Florence, “but they spend much less time regretting
their decisions.”</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">Guy Gavriel Kay “Under Heaven”</span></b><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"> (2010)</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">At the lowest ebb, of a person or a
nation, the first seeds of later glory may sometimes be seen, looking back with
a careful eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the absolute summit of
accomplishment the insects chewing from within at the most extravagant
sandalwood may be heard, if the nights are quiet.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">The voice she also remembers, too
vividly. Why, and how, does one voice, one person, come to conjure vibrations
in the soul, like an instrument tuned?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why a given man, and not another, or a third? She hasn’t nearly enough
wisdom to answer that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She isn’t sure if
anyone does.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">Looking back, Tai would name that
day as another of those that changed his life. Paths branching, decisions made.
Sometimes, you did have a choice, he thought.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">Sometimes the one life we are
allowed is enough.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">Kim Stanley Robinson “Galileo’s Dream</span></b><span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">” (2009)</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">“It only proves that when all your
dreams come true you realise that you were an idiot to have such dreams.”</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">We all have seven secret lives. The
life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes;
our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our
dreams. No one else ever knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each
person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone.</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">The less people know and understand…
the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them; while on the other
hand, to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in
passing judgement upon anything new.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">“You need to remember what helps
you, and forget things that don’t help you. But you have not achieved that. Few
people have, I have found.”</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">But surpassing all stupendous inventions,
what sublimity of mind was his who dreamed of finding means to communicate his
deepest thoughts to any other person, though distant by mighty intervals of
place and time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of talking with those
who are in India… </i>(Possibly a quote from Galileo’s manuscripts.)</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">…all human history is a fleck of
foam on a grain of sand…</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">It made him think of Ariosto’s
stanzas about the princess confined to a walnut shell and yet holding court
there just as always.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could not help
but love such a gift for sizing one’s ambition in accordance to a real
situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had never been able to do
that.</span></div>
Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-4148503000618115572013-02-06T19:57:00.000+00:002013-02-07T07:00:26.768+00:00Another catch up<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>James Long “The Lives She Left
Behind“ </b>(2010) In a Somerset village, a teenage boy tells a teacher about a
story he should know nothing about. The boy's impossible knowledge uncovers
memories the teacher has done his utmost to forget. As the teacher relives his
past, three girls arrive in the village of Pen Selwood, one of them drawn by an
ancient instinct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her actions reignite
the love story begun in "Ferney".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An
interesting follow up to the wonderful "Ferney" but it lacks the impact and craft of the first book. 7/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Michael White “The Medici Secret”</b>
(2008) A paleopathologist makes a strange discovbery in the tomb of the Medicis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The resultant adventures searching for the
Medici Secret leave a trail of deaths in their wake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In between the thrilling action of the
twenty-first century the book flips back to the 1400s and the activities of the
Medici family at that time. 8/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea “Depraved
English” </b>(1999) A cornucopia of weird and wonderful words gleaned from a
variety of sources but all indicative of unusual (and often unpleasant) appetites
and ways of acting. Certainly not for the prudish.8/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Susie Dent “Words of the Year”
</b>(2008) (<a href="http://bookeverysixdays.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/review-susie-dent-words-of-year.html">re-read</a>)</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Peter Ackroyd “The Great Fire of
London”</b> (1982) An uninspiring Little Dorrit for the late twentieth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>6/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"> </span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>John Tingey “The Englishman who
posted himself and other curiosities”</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><b> </b>
</span>(2010) The amazing story of Willie Reginald Bray who spent much of his
life playing with the postal services and collecting autographs by post.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Post Office in the first half of the
twentieth century was obviously far more amenable to being used and
abused.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bray was clever insofar as he
had a copy of the PO rules and twisted them to his advantage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His autographs were collected by writing to
people – often in unusual ways – and he became the self-styled but undisputed
autograph king. 9/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Gustave Flaubert “The Dictionary of
Accepted Ideas” </b>(translated c1968) A wonderfully sarcastic look at the mores
and ‘appropriate’ things to say in the 1850s. One cannot grasp the mood of any oarticular entry - some are very facetious while others are almost genuine and there is an element of truth in so many of them (as there is in many cliches). A highly amusing book and a great example of plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose. 9/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Kim Stanley Robinson “Galileo’s
Dream” </b>(2009) This book mixes the exploration of a scientific discovery with
tremendous characterisation and a real joy in the use of words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also takes Galileo, and us, well into the
future to explore the planets on foot. The quotations from Galileo’s writings
are most enlightening while the plot is a science fiction and time travel novel
with a difference. Kim Stanley Robinson was born in
1952 and, after travelling and working around the world, has now settled in
California. He is widely regarded as the finest science fiction writer working
today, noted as much for the verisimilitude of his characters as the
meticulously researched hard science basis of his work. He has won just about
every major SF award there is to win and is the author of the massively
successful and lavishly praised Mars series. 10/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Daryn Lake “The Mills of God” </b>(2010)
This book is awful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Written by someone
whose grammar would have had them thrown out of my school, it only kept me
reading because the unbelievable plot had a promising murder mystery that I wanted to
solve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine my frustration when the ‘solution’
bore no relationship to the events that had gone before. I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">t is probably the only book I have ver finished that was so bad - normally anything like it would only last a few pages before being put on the pile for the charity shop. </span>2/10 and I’m not sure why I’m even giving it
2! </span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Mark Forsyth “The Horologicon”</b>
(2012) Following on from his highly successful “Etymologicon” this is a day’s
jaunt through the lost words of the English language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like its predecessor it is a must for all logophiles.
10/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>David Crystal “Johnson’s Dictionary –
an anthology”</b> (2005) A potpourri of 4000 of the most entertaining and historically
stimulating English words and definitions from Abactor to Zootomy extracted from
the world’s foremost feat of lexixography selected by the superexcellent
linguist and verbally gymnastick David Crystal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>10/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Nick Parker (Ed)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Bling, Blogs and Bluetooth”</b> (2006) Modern
language for Oldies!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A compendium of
articles about some of the words to have come into common usage </span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;">in recent times. 8/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Nigel Rees “A Word in Your
Shell-like” </b>(2006) Some 6000 curious and everyday phrases explained.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
768 pages of very small print so I have only dipped into it<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and not read it from cover to cover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought some of the explanations
questionable and some seemed to be merely copies of Brewer’s Phrase and Fable
but despite these reservations it is an essential reference work for anyone’s
shelves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>9/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>The National Trust “Mothballs and
Elbow Grease”</b> (2004) Sayings, proverbs and catchphrases which show how many of
our everyday phrases have their origins in the commonplace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8/10</span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: #984806; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Elizabeth Knowles with Julia Elliott
(Ed.s) “The Oxford Dictionary of New Words” </b>(1997) New words that have been in
the news during the decade and a half from the early eighties to the
mid-nineties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It includes about 2000
high profile words showing how each came to prominence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8/10</span><br />
<br />
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Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-62259329697701556712012-12-02T17:02:00.003+00:002012-12-02T17:12:17.933+00:00Guy Gavriel Kay and others...<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">This is a list of books I have read since I last
posted on my book blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have rated
them out of ten but not made much of an attempt to tell you about them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hopefully the best ones will be reviewed on
my book blog at some stage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Guy Gavriel Kay – Sailing to Sarantium (1998) –
Brilliant mix of history, politics, drama and fantasy set in a fictional representation
of the Byzantine Empire. 10/10 (It would get 11/10 for story-telling but like
all of Kay’s books it doesn’t stretch one’s linguistic abilities and the
quotable bits are fairly rare though there is some good philosophy in it.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Guy Gavriel Kay – Lord Of Emperors (2000) – Sequel to
the above. 10/10</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Guy Gavriel Kay – Tigana. (1990) Fantasy 9/10</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Guy Gavriel Kay – Last Light of the Sun (2004) Fantasy
evocative of the Celtic and Norse cultures. 10/10</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Guy Gavriel Kay – Under Heaven (2010). Pseudo-8<sup>th</sup>
Century China - fantasy. 10/10</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Guy Gavriel Kay – A Song for Arbonne (1992).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8/10 The first of his books I read and the
one which set me looking for more. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Guy Gavriel Kay – The Lions of Al-Rassan (1995) 8/10
Fantasy set in a version of medieval Spain.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Guy Gavriel Kay – Fionavar Tapestry series</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">1. The Summer Tree (1984)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">2. The Wandering Fire (1986)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">3. The Darkest Road (1986)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">A wonderful series with modern man (and woman)
transported across into another world – one of many woven in the tapestry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>10/10</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Guy Gavriel Kay – Ysabel (2007) If you only read one
of Kay’s books read this one or Sailing to Sarantium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On one holy, haunted night of the ancient
year, when the borders between the living and the dead are down and fires are
lit upon the hills, Ned, his family, and his friends are shockingly drawn into
this tale, as dangerous, mythic figures from conflicts of long ago erupt into
the present, claiming and changing lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although it is listed as a stand-alone novel there are characters in
this that appear in the Fionavar Trilogy so it could be considered a spoiler
for those books if you read this first.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Michael Popek – Forgotten Bookmarks (2011).
Disappointing</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Dan Simmons – Drood (2009). A fictional account of
some supposed adventures of Charles Dickens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not worth the effort. 6/10</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">John Dickinson – The Cup of the World (2004) Fantasy
8/10</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">John Dickinson – The Widow and the King (2005).
Fantasy – sequel to the above but didn’t match up to it. 7/10</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Tad Williams – The Dragonbone Chair (1988) 8/10 Fantasy
– the first part of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Good but not enough to hunt
out the next part of the series.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Lian Hearn – Across the Nightingale Floor (2002) 8/10 Fantasy
– the first part of the Tales of the Otori.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Good but not enough to hunt out the next part of the series.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Helen Spring – Memories of the Curlew (2009) 7/10 </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Historical
novel based on the life of Gwenllian, daughter of the King of Gwynedd (b 1096),
who became known as 'The Welsh Warrior Princess'. A fine adventure / romance
for older children and a good insight into Wales at that time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Penelope Fitzgerald – The Bookshop (1978). 8/10 My
main comment about this would be a spoiler so I can’t make it. Suffice it to
say but for one thing it would be rated higher. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Stewart Binns – Crusade (2012) 9/10 It is 1072 and
England is firmly under the heel of its new Norman rulers. The few survivors of
the English resistance look to Edgar the Atheling, the rightful heir to the
English throne, to overthrow the Conqueror but end up fighting in The Holy
Land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I shall definitely be reading his
other two novels – Conquest and Anarchy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Mike Ashley – The Mammoth Book of Historical
Detectives (1995). 8/10<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A collection of
short stories from some of the most famous writers of historical crime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A great book to dip into.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Edward Marston – The Queen’s Head (1988) An
Elizabethan mystery. 7/10</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Hope Mirrlees - Lud-in-the Mist (1926) 10/10 commented upon elsewhere. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">James Long – Ferney (201 )
10/10<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A sort of historical love story
with a touch of time travel / slippage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
of those books one does not want to end because it captures your imagination
and involves you with the characters in a way that only the best books can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My ‘read of the year’ (and thanks to </span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Friend-über-special</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"> for sending me it).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; mso-vertical-align-alt: auto; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric ideograph-other;">
<br /></div>
Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-67439685924230756002012-06-26T20:02:00.001+01:002012-06-26T20:02:03.894+01:00BOOKS<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">I’m catching
up on my notes about the books I’ve read since my last book post.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are as follows:- (Oops – just realised
some are duplicated from <a href="http://scriptorsenex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/books-books-and-more-books.html">the last post</a> but I’m not amending this.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Shadow of the
Wind</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"> [La Sombra del
Viento] (2004) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10/10</b> (<u>see
separate review</u>)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Carlos Ruiz Zafón – The Prince of
Mist</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"> (1992 – English
translation 2010)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">7/10</b> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">A Young
Adult novel of magic and mystery. Well written but I didn’t take to the plot.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Sally Gardner – I, Coriander</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(2005) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">8/10</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Children’s Book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The story of a girl born in 1643, the evil
which befalls her in Commonwealth England and the magic that helps her
survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <i> </i></span><i>“The world we live in is
nothing more than a mirror that reflects another world below its silvery
surface, a land where time is but a small and unimportant thing, stripped of
all its power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope to find you there.”</i>
S.G. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Mary Stewart – Touch not the Cat</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"> (1976) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10/10</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have read most of Mary
Stewart's srories two or three times before and knew what I was getting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So probably only 8/10 this time because I’ve
read it twice before and know the plot but that was the whole point of reading
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted a cosy but well-written
romantic mystery with a tinge of the uncanny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Martin Hopkinson - ‘Ex Libris, The
Art of Bookplates’</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"> (2011)
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10/10</b> See <a href="http://scriptorsenex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/ex-libris-art-of-bookplates.html">separate review.</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Neil Gaiman –
Stardust</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">
(1999) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10/10</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A book to rival Terry Pratchett.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the Victorian town of Wall the beautiful
Victoria Forester tells lovelorn Tristran Thorn that she will marry him if he
finds the falling star they have just seen. In a charming faerie world he makes
his quest and seeks his prize.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">She laughed, and the
sound was a clear rill bubbling over rocks and stones. </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">…for no one crossed
Bridget Forester: she had a tongue that could, the villagers said, blister the paint
from a barn door and tear the bark from an oak.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Every boy in the
village was in love with Victoria Forester. And many a sedate gentleman,
quietly married with grey in is beard, would stare at her as she walked down
the street, becoming, for a few moments, a boy ince more, in the spring of his
years with a spring in his step.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Tristran could smell
the distant winter on the air – a mixture of night-mist and crisp darkness and
the tang of fallen leaves.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">While clothes do
not, as the saying would sometimes have it, make the man, and fine feathers do
not make fine birds, sometimes they can add a certain spice to a recipe.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Essie Fox – The
Somnambulist</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">
(2011) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">8/10</b>. Set in Victorian
England this mystery and romance covers lost love, grief, murder, madness and a
stern morality. When seventeen year old Phoebe Turner loses her favourite Aunt Cissy
and around the same time becomes companion to the reclusive wife of a rich
merchant she finds her life changes in so many ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">James Patterson
& Andrew Gross – The Jester</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> (2003) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9/10</b>
A historical mystery and adventure set in eleventh century France where a
serf’s life is worth nothing but where one serf sets out to combat the tyranny
and oppression of the local lords.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Chivalry and honour – but not among the lords!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Terry Pratchett
& Bernard Pearson - The celebrated Discworld almanak for the year of the
prawn</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">
(2004) 129 p. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10/10</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Terry
Pratchett joined forces with Bernard Pearson to produce the definitive Almanak
to the Common Year 2005. An essential guide to all aspects of life, and a sure
means of ensuring fertility of crops and livestock. It includes recipes,
horoscopes, and an extract from the 'Cabbage Companion'.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Including homemade remedies for common
ailments, recipes, horoscopes, scientific discoveries, a calendar, strange
tales and many valuable facts about the cabbage. With witty illustrations from
Paul Kidby, this is an artistically presented package guaranteed to tickle the
funny bone of all Pratchett fans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can't understand why I
didn't get it when it came out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Martin Davies – The
Conjuror’s Bird</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">
(2005) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10/10</b> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The
novel switches between the worlds of Joseph Banks (seventeenth century English
naturalist, botanist, patron of the natural sciences and a hero of mine) and
that of a twentieth century taxidermist who is hunting for a missing bird
specimen. Not only enjoyable and informative but with a twist of the mysterious
and a hint of romance. I loved it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Markus Zusak – The
Book Thief</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">
(2005) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10/10</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">I
read this only a couple of years’ ago and it was <a href="http://bookeverysixdays.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/markus-zusak-book-thief.html">reviewed</a> on my book blog.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://bookeverysixdays.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/markus-zusak-book-thief.html"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"></span></a><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Terry Pratchett
& Stephen Baxter – The Long Earth</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> (2012) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9/10</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is very much a Stephen Baxter science
fiction with an over-glaze of Pratchett humour. Much as I enjoyed it I felt it
was unfinished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can only conclude it
is to end up as part one of a trilogy or series.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">If Humphrey
Llewellyn III could have his way, every book ever written would be treasured,
aqt least one copy bound in sheepskin and illuminated by monks (or specifically
by naked nuns, his predilection being somewhat biased in that direction).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So now, he hoped, here was a chance to bring
mankind back into the book-loving fold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He gloated. There was still no electronics in the pioneer worlds, was
there!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where was your internet?
Hah!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where was Google? Where was your
mother’s old Kindle? Your iPad 25?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where
was Wickedpedia? (Very primly he always called it that, just to show his
disdain; very few people noticed.)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Felix J Palma – the
Map of Time</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">
(2011) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">8/10</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Originally published in Spanish in 2008.
Never have I read a more infuriating and frustrating novel and yet it not only
read well with realistic expression of emotions but it was almost impossible to
put down. Part of the frustration came from the excessive biographical detail about
H G Wells – I like to learn things from a novel but I don’t want it to be
non-fiction. The other part came from trying to get one’s head around the
possibilities /impossibilities of time travel and the theories of what happens
when someone goes back in time and changes events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All in all a brilliantly conceived plot but
be prepared to be driven up the wall at times!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first two quotations below relate to
feelings upon the loss of a loved one and the fourth is the sort of book review
I wish I had written at times!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">His sorrow
intensified until it became physical torment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Suddenly it was agony to be in his body, as if he lay in a sarcophagus lined
with nails.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wanted to feel, unshackle
himself from the excruciating substance he was made of, but he was trapped
inside the martyred flesh. </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">He gazed out of the
window.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People were coming and going,
carrying on their lives without the slightest token of respect. Why did they
not notice that the world had changed, that it was no longer habitable? He gave
a deep sigh. The world had changed only for him. </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Anyone who has been
to Billingsgate fish market in the early hours knows that smell travels faster
than light.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">“In my opinion, not
only have you started out with a rather naïve premise, but you have developed
it in a most unfortunate way, stifling its few possibilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The structure of your narrative is
inconsistent and muddled, the episodes are linked only tenuously, and in the
end one has the impression that events occur higgeledy-piggledy, without any
inner cohesion, simply because it suits you. This tiresome randomness of the
plot, added to your writing style – worthy of some legal clerk who admires Jane
Austen’s romantic novels – inevitably produces boredom in the reader, or if
npt, ab profound aversion to what he is reading.”</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Jen Campbell - Weird
Things Customers Say in Bookshops</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> (2012) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">7/10</b>.
Knowing from personal experience, and from many a good story in the staff room,
what weird things customers say in libraries I had hoped for better of this
book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is fun and will be an
eye-opener to those who don’t work with the public but, perhaps, unfortunately,
many were all too familiar, like</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">“I read a book in
the sixties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t remember the
author, or the title. But it was green, and it made me laugh. Do you know the
one I mean? “ </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Or –</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Customer: I don’t
know why she wants it, but my wife asked for a copy of The Dinosaur Cookbook.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Bookseller: The
Dinah Shore Cookbook?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Customer That must
be it; I wondered what she was up to.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The one
that I loved was -</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">“Do you have this
children’s book I’ve heard about? It’s supposed to be very good. It's called
Lionel Richie and the Wardrobe’.”</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">I
was most annoyed by the page numbers which are tiny things hidden within dark
grey blobs and suitable only for those with 40/20 vision or an illuminated
magnifying glass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why do publishers so
often get the little things (literally) so wrong!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Barbara Vine</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> (pseudonym of Ruth
Rendell) – <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy</b>
(1998) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10/10</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A mystery occurs when a famous novelist dies
and one of his two overly devoted daughters decides to write his biography. He
seems to have invented himself in his twenties. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As she delves deeper she finds out he was not
the person she thought he was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I loved
the idea of quoting from the famous author’s own books at the start of each
chapter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A clever twist.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">When the
guests had gone, Peter said, quoting Goethe or someone, They are pleasant
enough people but if they had been books I wouldn’t have read them.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Our children when
young are part of ourselves but when they grow up they are just other people.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Ursula knew very
well how a penetrating comment on the incongruities of one’s behaviour, a
remark that brings home an unacceptable truth, arouses dislike for she who
utters it.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Neil Gaiman – Smoke &
Mirrors</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">
(1999) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">8/10</b> A collection of Gaiman’s
short fiction. OK but disappointing by comparison with Stardust. Mind you, I
loved it when an elderly lady found the Holy Grail in a charity shop…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Christopher Paolini
- The Inheritance Cycle</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">1.
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eragon </b>(2001) 10/10</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">2.
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eldest </b>(2005) 9/10</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">3.
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brisingr</b> (2008) 8/10 </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">4.
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Inheritance</b> (2011) 10/10</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">I
loved Eragon – written when Paolini left school at 15.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An epic fantasy of 2270 pages with the obligatory dragon and all the other characters one would expect. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The saga became a bit repetitive after a while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless, in my view, it joins
the classic fantasy sagas. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><i>Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf.</i></span></div>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-28561587817313470452012-06-26T19:16:00.000+01:002012-06-26T19:16:08.108+01:00Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Shadow of The Wind [La Sombra del Viento] (2004)<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Shadow of The Wind [La Sombra del Viento] (2004)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
(The first book in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My rating <b>10/10</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I was enthralled from the first page but who would not be when the book
involved a 'cemetery of lost books'. The further I got into it the more the
style (it is brilliantly translated by Lucia Graves, daughter of the poet Robert
Graves), the mystery and the romance. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Spain is not a country and Barcelona not a city that I would normally
pick up a book about. 1945, the
aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, is not a period I would normally read
about. But Zafon says “The city is a
sorceress, you know, Daniel? It gets under your skin and steals your soul
without you knowing it…” This book is
like that. Unputdownable, eminently quotable,
and with language which the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Observer</i> rightly
describes as purring along. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>To quote from Fantastic Fiction</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A stunning literary thriller in the tradition of Umberto Eco. The
discovery of a forgotten book leads to a hunt for an elusive author who may or
may not still be alive...</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of
lost books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have
long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son
Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the
shelves and pulls out 'La Sombra del Viento' by Julian Carax. But as he grows
up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night,
as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure
who reminds him of a character from La Sombra del Viento, a character who turns
out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax's work
in order to burn them. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a
race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to
save those he left behind. A page-turning exploration of obsession in
literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Carlos Ruiz Zafón was born in Barcelona in 1964. He won the Premio
Edebe for his first novel, Prince of the Mists and La Sombra del Viento is a
finalist for the Premio Lara. He lives in Los Angeles and works as a
scriptwriter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>A couple of my favourite quotations </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
'<i>This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every
book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote
it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book
changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit
grows and strengthens. This place was already ancient when my father brought me
here for the first time, many years ago. Perhaps as old as the city itself.
Nobody knows for certain how long it has existed, or who created it. I will
tell you what my father told me, though. When a library disappears, or a
bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who
know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place,
books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live
forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands. In the
shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see
here has been somebody's best friend. Now they only have us, Daniel. Do you
think you'll be able to keep such a secret?' My gaze was lost in the immensity
of the place and its sorcery of light. I nodded, and my father smiled.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>As I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of
books, I could not help being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldn't help
thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single
unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain
unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of
abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of
darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing
its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it
forgot.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Women have an infallible instinct for knowing when a man has
fallen madly in love with them, especially when the male in question is both
young and a complete dunce. I fulfilled all the requirements</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>'What sort of women do you like, Daniel?'</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>'I don't know much about them, honestly.' '</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>'Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even
women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't have to know how it
works to get a shock.'</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>And a few odd phrases –</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>….her eyes poisoned with tears….</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>….the day was turning out to be longer than The Brothers
Karamazov….</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>….asked herself whether that dreamy peace that filled her
days, that absence of consciousness, was what some people called happiness….</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>….those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not
with words….</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>….who had built up his fortune from nothing, by dint of
great effort and sacrifices, although mostly other people's….</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>….Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war….</i></div>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-19349841340080410932012-06-26T19:15:00.002+01:002012-06-26T19:15:19.081+01:00Some booksSome books I read in May are commented upon in <a href="http://scriptorsenex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/books-books-and-more-books.html">this blog posting</a> on my main blog.Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-46190002572768280122012-03-03T13:27:00.000+00:002012-03-03T13:27:16.508+00:00A GIVE-AWAY - my first ever !I've decided to do a 'Give Away' this week. The rules are simple. Drop a comment on any of this week's postings (Saturday 3rd to Saturday 10th inclusive) and I'll put the names of all those who have commented in a hat (assuming I can find one – it may have to be a saucepan or some other substitute) and draw out the winner on Sunday 11th. I decided to ask Google for ideas as to what I could offer as a prize. Nearly all the answers suggested using something associated with your blog topic. But I had decided to run this on both my Book Every Six Days Blog, my Once a Librarian Blog and my main, Rambles from my Chair Blog. The only consistent topic on my main blog is Me (and Partner-who-drinks-tea has said I can't give myself away) and over the years I've covered everything from Anderson's Salamander to Angry Penguins; Auctions to Blood Tests; e.e.cummings and Exeter Football Club. Grafitti in Pompeii, Hamlet and fur coats have all turned up – could there be a more diverse blog? Even the <i>Grimpoteuthis</i> or Dumbo Octopus made an appearance. I couldn't see this brief look through my blog helping me decide at all. <br />
<br />
In the end I decided to offer the winner a choice of one of the following books - all of which scored 10/10 on my book blog last year.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fy0bgLl_mAE/Tj1HnBLMtsI/AAAAAAAAbMY/84JdMHiRT_I/s1600/thousand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="325" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fy0bgLl_mAE/Tj1HnBLMtsI/AAAAAAAAbMY/84JdMHiRT_I/s400/thousand.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><br />
Helen DUNMORE - “The Siege“ (2001)<br />
<br />
Khaled HOSSEINI – “The Kite Runner” (2003)<br />
<br />
Alice HOFFMAN – “The Ice Queen ” (2005)<br />
<br />
Khaled HOSSEINI – “A Thousand Splendid Suns ” (2007)<br />
<br />
Muriel BARBERY – “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” (2008)<br />
<br />
Paul TORDAY - “The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce - a novel in four vintages" (2008)<br />
<br />
David MITCHELL – “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet ” (2010)<br />
<br />
Terry PRATCHETT - “Snuff“ (2011)<br />
<br />
I look forward to all your comments.Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-3350412919600294422012-02-16T21:06:00.004+00:002012-02-16T21:06:00.076+00:00TBRs - yet another list<i>A General Reading List</i><br />
<i>Love, romance and sex</i><br />
Barry Unsworth – Morality Play<br />
Colette – Cheri<br />
Gustav Flaubert – Three Tales<br />
Ford Madox Ford – The Good Soldier<br />
Henry Green – Loving<br />
Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook<br />
Samuel Richardson – Pamela<br />
Ivan Turgenev – First Love<br />
<i><br />
Families</i><br />
Ivy Compton-Burnett – Manservant and Maidservant<br />
Maria Edgeworth – The Absentee<br />
Oliver Goldsmith – The Vicar of Wakefield<br />
Virginia Woolf – The Waves<br />
<br />
<i>Rites of Passage</i><br />
Alain-Fournier – Le Grand Meaulnes<br />
Muriel Spark – Memento Mori<br />
<br />
<i>Heroes and anti-heroes</i><br />
Sylvia Townsend Warner – Lolley Willowes<br />
<i><br />
Making it</i><br />
Honore de Balzac – Cousin Bette<br />
Honore de Balzac – Lost Illusions<br />
George Moore – Esther Waters<br />
<br />
<i>War, violence and conflict</i><br />
Aphra Behn – Oroonoko<br />
Danilo Kis – Garden, Ashes<br />
<br />
<i>A Sense of Place</i><br />
J L Carr – A Month in the Country<br />
Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca<br />
Ronald Firbank – Valmouth<br />
George Sand – The Devil's Pool<br />
<br />
<i>Invisible Worlds</i><br />
William Golding – The Inheritors<br />
<br />
<i>Crime and Punishment</i><br />
Daniel Defoe - Moll Flanders<br />
<br />
<i>(This list was compiled from The Rough Guide to Classic Novels)</i>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-41293574956918512752012-01-28T10:02:00.025+00:002012-01-28T10:02:00.446+00:00REVIEW:- Audrey NIFFENEGGER - “The Night Bookmobile“ - And a comment on Graphic Novels<b>Year Published: - 2010<br />
Where the book was from:- My own copy (2nd hand - ex Highland Libraries)<br />
ISBN: - 978 0224 089 524<br />
Pages: - 40pp <br />
Genre: - Graphic Novel<br />
Location:- Chicago<br />
How I came across it: - Reading reviews<br />
Rating: - ***** ***** (But see below re whether it is a novel)<br />
<br />
</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ed4poyTZ9RM/TyJ3y88v81I/AAAAAAAAdec/HvG0qtS1N98/s1600/Night-Bookmobile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="261" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ed4poyTZ9RM/TyJ3y88v81I/AAAAAAAAdec/HvG0qtS1N98/s400/Night-Bookmobile.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></div><b>One sentence summary:- A cartoon format short story about a woman, the books she reads and an unusual mobile library.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Describe the plot without giving anything away:- </b><br />
A haunting tale of a girl who has an argument with her boyfriend and while wandering the streets afterwards, in the middle of the night, finds a strange mobile library with an unusual librarian.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VdqatCxSu4s/TyJ5JO9mKfI/AAAAAAAAde0/mVlxJtg8NmA/s1600/asterix1a.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VdqatCxSu4s/TyJ5JO9mKfI/AAAAAAAAde0/mVlxJtg8NmA/s400/asterix1a.JPG" width="302" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<b>General comments:- </b>I've never read a 'Graphic Novel' before and I'm not sure that a graphic novel differs much from a cartoon or comic book. So does Asterix count as a novel? I don't really think so. According to Wikipedia “<i>a graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format. The term is employed in a broad manner, encompassing non-fiction works and thematically linked short stories as well as fictional stories across a number of genres. Graphic novels are typically bound in longer and more durable formats than familiar comic magazines, using the same materials and methods as printed books, and they are generally sold in bookstores and speciality comic book shops rather than at newsstands. Such books have gained increasing acceptance as desirable materials for libraries which once ignored comic books</i>.” Even by this definition 'The Night Bookmobile' is at best a Graphic Short Story rather than a Graphic Novel. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3N3Xk74Xih0/TyJ34vyujlI/AAAAAAAAdeo/bLvrDdZySWE/s1600/NightBookmobile1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3N3Xk74Xih0/TyJ34vyujlI/AAAAAAAAdeo/bLvrDdZySWE/s400/NightBookmobile1.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><br />
With that reservation I have to agree with Neil Gaiman who says <i>“The Night Bookmobile is a love letter, both elegiac and heartbreaking, to the things we have read and to the readers that we are. It says that what we read makes us who we are. It's a graphic short story, beautifully drawn and perfectly told.”</i><br />
If only one could have one's own night bookmobile to explore in the middle of the night when sleep won't some. How would we react to seeing all those forgotten books; the ones which we didn't finish and the well-thumbed pages of those we have re-read many times? Paradise is a night bookmobile.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__qzX-0fL9Js/SyE81IZKUDI/AAAAAAAAVXU/1DA_9k_PlR4/s1600-h/niffenegger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__qzX-0fL9Js/SyE81IZKUDI/AAAAAAAAVXU/1DA_9k_PlR4/s400/niffenegger.jpg" /></a></div><b>AUTHOR Notes:- Audrey Niffenegger </b>was born in 1969 in the USA. debut novel sold nearly 5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages to date. She is also a widely exhibited artist. She lives in Chicago.Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-47267845493336419232012-01-26T20:30:00.000+00:002012-01-26T20:30:26.566+00:00More TBRs<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JFAJ-1RD_IU/TyG31hd_SKI/AAAAAAAAdeQ/AiJ4-RSLn04/s1600/welovethisbook.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JFAJ-1RD_IU/TyG31hd_SKI/AAAAAAAAdeQ/AiJ4-RSLn04/s320/welovethisbook.JPG" width="237" /></a></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">More books I want to read as a result of reading reviews in <i>We Love This Book - issues 2 and 3</i></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">James Jackson – Perdition</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Lisa Genova – Still Alice</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Lynn Shepherd – Tom-all-alone</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Roman Krznaric - The Wonderbox: Curious histories of how to live</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Steve Roud – The Lore of the Playground</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Julie Coleman – The Life of Slang</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Kathryn Erskine – Mockingbird</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Lloyd Shepherd – The English Monster</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Wendy Jones – The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Susanna Jones – When Nights were Colld</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The Slow Cooking Bible</div>Courtney Watson McCarthy – M C Escher Pop-ups <div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Cressida Cowell – How to Train your Dragon</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Cornelia Funke – Dragon Rider</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Stef Penney – No Room to Roam</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Erin Morgenstern – The Night Circus</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Morag Joss – Across the Bridge</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Madeline Miller – Achilles</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Christopher Priest – The Islanders</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">(To quote from the review - “To call Christopher Priest a science fiction author is true but doesn't quite get it – it's like calling Jane Austen a big name in chick-lit.)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Conn Iggulden – Conqueror (Genghis Khan pt 4)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>(Also recommended for Daughter-who-takes-photos who, I think, like me, has read the other three)</i></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Elly Griffiths – A Room full of Bones</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>(Also recommended for Daughter-who-loves-food)</i></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Donovan Hohn – Moby Duck</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>(Also recommended for Son-in-law-and-friend-who-loves-Otters)</i></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>Recommended for Son-in-law-and-friend-who-loves-Otters & Daughter-who-takes-photos:-</i></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Chris Seay – A Place at the Table</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Toby Musgrove & Clay Perry – Heritage Fruit and Vegetables</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-75896590770184208692012-01-25T00:31:00.001+00:002012-01-25T00:31:00.066+00:00REVIEW:- Molly COCHRAN & Warren MURPHY - “The Forever King“<div class="western"></div><div class="western"><b>Year Published: - 1992<br />
Where the book was from:- My own copy- ex-library<br />
ISBN: - 1 857980182<br />
Pages: - 364pp <br />
Genre: - Fantasy adventure<br />
Location:- Chicago, Somerset<br />
How I came across it: - Serendipity - On library sale table<br />
Rating: - ***** ***</b></div><div class="western"><b><br />
</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g4ir24WQo8g/TxwCF632CxI/AAAAAAAAdcc/8Sdk68MUc0c/s1600/Forever_King.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g4ir24WQo8g/TxwCF632CxI/AAAAAAAAdcc/8Sdk68MUc0c/s320/Forever_King.jpg" width="196" /></a></div><div class="western"><b><br />
One sentence summary:- An original take on the Camelot legend as magic is let loose in the twentieth century.</b></div><div class="western"><br />
<b>Describe the plot without giving anything away:-</b> An ex-FBI agent gets involved in protecting a 10 year old boy and his aunt after the boy accidentally stumbles across a metal cup, dropped by bank robbers in Chicago. Meanwhile, in Hampshire, a prisoner with no name escapes from a secure unit for the mentally unstable and seems to have a whole army of supporters. The boy inherits a piece of real estate in Somerset and that is where the action begins to really unfold as an old man with white hair becomes another ally.</div><div class="western"><br />
<b>General comments:</b>- "A fresh and exciting view of the Arthur legend" (Robert Jordan, author of The Dragon Reborn). <span style="font-size: small;">"Books like this don't come along very often." Marion Zimmer Bradley.</span></div><div class="western"><br />
</div><div class="western">There are two more books in the series:-</div><div class="western">1. The Forever King (1991) (with Warren Murphy)</div><div class="western">2. The Broken Sword (1997) (with Warren Murphy)</div><div class="western">3. The Third Magic (2003)</div><div class="western"><br />
<b>Quotations:- </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">nil</span></div><div class="western"></div><div class="western"></div><div class="western"></div><div class="western"></div><div class="western"><br />
<b>AUTHOR Notes:-</b> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w5xZP-EPqxE/TxwB7nqioKI/AAAAAAAAdcU/o-YNrKG1Hy8/s1600/cochrane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w5xZP-EPqxE/TxwB7nqioKI/AAAAAAAAdcU/o-YNrKG1Hy8/s200/cochrane.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="western"><br />
</div><div class="western">Born in Tokyo, Japan, <b>Molly Cochran</b> lived in Europe and was educated at the University of Pittsburgh and the Sorbonne in France. She has written 26 books, including 12 ghosted novels, and the non-fiction bestseller, '<i>Dressing Thin'</i>, before her own first novel, Grandmaster, was a New York Times Bestseller. Since then, she has written almost a dozen other suspense and fantasy thrillers. She also writes under the pen name of Dev Stryker. '<i>A Wilderness of Mirrors'</i> is published by Tor Books. (I don't understand the principle of a ghosted novel. Ghosted 'autobiography' in which someone writes a life story on behalf of a celebrity is understandable but what is a ghosted novel? Do you write a new Terrry Pratchett on his behalf and publish it under his name for him? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q4FCaWMyQ7o/TxwB0yzXHQI/AAAAAAAAdcM/U8NNIUT5Cwc/s1600/murphy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q4FCaWMyQ7o/TxwB0yzXHQI/AAAAAAAAdcM/U8NNIUT5Cwc/s1600/murphy.jpg" /></a></div><div class="western"><br />
<br />
</div><div class="western"><b>Warren Murphy</b> was born in Jersey City, where he worked as a reporter and editor. After the Korean war, he drifted into politics, "but when everybody I worked for went to jail, I thought God was sending me a message to find a new line of work." Warren Murphy writes screenplays and his film credits include '<i>Lethal Weapon 2</i>'. The first Destroyer novel followed soon after. Murphy says he has "the usual passel of snot-nosed kids, Deirdre, Megan, Brian, Ardath and Devin, some of whom now have their own snot-nosed kids." He has been an adjunct professor at Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA, and has also run workshops and lectured at many other schools and universities. His hobbies are golf, mathematics, opera and investing. He lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia. </div><div class="western"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>New or unusual words:-</b> ...the <b>hardscrabble </b>earth still sprouted clumps of hearty weeds... hardscrabble means returning little in exchange for great effort; characterized by chronic poverty and hardship.</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-50506049054164684522012-01-24T20:16:00.000+00:002012-01-24T20:16:11.500+00:00REVIEW:- Simon MASON - “Rough Guide to Classic Novels“<div class="western"><b>Year Published: - 2008<br />
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library<br />
ISBN: - 978 1 84353 516 4<br />
Pages: - 368pp <br />
Genre: - Non-fiction - Literature<br />
How I came across it: - Serendipity<br />
Rating: - ***** **<br />
</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wMTLy_XFLoQ/Tx8RQMr9ZkI/AAAAAAAAdck/vVrvuSdMFn8/s1600/ROUGH.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wMTLy_XFLoQ/Tx8RQMr9ZkI/AAAAAAAAdck/vVrvuSdMFn8/s320/ROUGH.JPG" width="228" /></a></b></div><b>One sentence summary:- One of the Rough Guides series this lists over 200 of the 'world's best fiction ever written'.</b></div><div class="western"><br />
<b>General comments:</b>- Each book has information about the plot, style and author and whilst any such choice is bound to be subjective this collection is quite traditional in its approach.<br />
<br />
<b>AUTHOR Notes:-</b> Simon Mason is the author of the Quigleys series and four novels - The Great English Nude (1990); Death of a Fantasist (1994); Lives Of The Dog Stranglers (1998); and Moon Pie (2011).</div>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-4494160484607840632012-01-24T04:32:00.007+00:002012-01-24T04:32:00.720+00:00REVIEW:- Nick RENNISON - “100 Must-read Historical Novels“<div class="western"><br />
</div><div class="western"><b>A Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide</b></div><div class="western"><b>Year Published: - 2009<br />
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library<br />
ISBN: - 978 1 408 11396 7<br />
Pages: - 176pp <br />
Genre: - Non-Fiction - Literature<br />
How I came across it: - Browsing Library shelves<br />
Rating: - ***** ****<br />
<br />
One sentence summary:- An interesting selection of historical novels that 'should be read' including a brief description of the plot and the author.</b></div><div class="western"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-__ZANUDXAGY/TxrVqX7GrsI/AAAAAAAAdcE/IRzB8ZvOvZw/s1600/rennison.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-__ZANUDXAGY/TxrVqX7GrsI/AAAAAAAAdcE/IRzB8ZvOvZw/s320/rennison.png" width="240" /></a></div><div class="western"><br />
<b>General comments:</b>- This, sensibly, does not claim to represent the best ever historical novels since that would be such a subjective view. Rennison takes a gap of 60 years between the events and the writing as a minimum which excludes some that I would consider obvious candidates but he had to draw the line somewhere. In addition to the principal 100 there are a selection of 500 'read-on' recommendations. The few small 'themed categories' are inadequate but the idea is a good one.</div><div class="western"><br />
<b>AUTHOR Notes:-</b> Nick Rennison is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in the Victorian era and in crime fiction. He is the author of many books including The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction, 100 Must-Read Crime Novels and Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography. He is currently working on his own crime novel set in nineteenth century London. </div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-89753710488611107162012-01-23T00:29:00.002+00:002012-01-23T00:29:00.577+00:00To Be Read - Historical Novels<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>To Be Read - Historical Novels</b></span></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Peter Ackroyd – The Clerkenwell Tales</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Peter Ackroyd – Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Maragret Atwood – Alias Grace</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Tracy Chevalier – The Girl with a Pearl Earring</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – White Company (re-read)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Michael Faber – The Crimson Petal and the White</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Ken Follett – The Pillars of the Earth</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Ford Maddox Ford – Ladies Whose Bright Eyes</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Margaret George – Helen of Troy</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Philippa Gregory – A Respectable Trade</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Matthew Kneale – Sweet thames</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Charles Palliser – The Unburied</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Charles Palliser – The Quincunx</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Iain Pears – An Instance of the Fingerpost</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Sharon Kay Penman – Here be Dragons</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Sharon Kay Penman – The Sunne in Splendour (re-read)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">H F M Prescott – The Man on a Donkey</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Steven Pressfield – Gates of Fire</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Michele Roberts – Fair Exchange</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Sir Walter Scott – Rob Roy</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Anya Seton – Katharine</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Belinda Starling – The Journal of Dora Damage</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Rosemary Sutcliff – The Eagle of the North</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">William Makepeace Thackeray – Barry Lyndon</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Rose Tremain – Restoration</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Barry Unsworth – Morality Play</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Sarah Waters – Fingersmith</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Sarah Waters – Tipping the Velvet</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">(This list was compiled as a result of reading Nick Rennison's '<i>100 Must Read Historical Novels</i>')</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-27696150842020819292012-01-22T00:58:00.002+00:002012-01-22T00:58:00.034+00:00REVIEW:- Sarah WINMAN - “When God was Rabbit“<b>Year Published: - 2011</b><br />
<b>Where the book was from:- Kindle edition</b><br />
<b>ASIN: B004MPRDZ4 </b><br />
<b>Pages: - 352pp </b><br />
<b>Genre: - General / romance / family life</b><br />
<b>Location:- London, Cornwall, New York</b><br />
<b>How I came across it: - Recommended by a fellow blogger (wish I could recall who so as to thank them!!)</b><br />
<b>Rating: - ***** *****</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Eg0HSfrU1kM/TxrExX0OYvI/AAAAAAAAdb0/VXl4ad1pMB4/s1600/god.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Eg0HSfrU1kM/TxrExX0OYvI/AAAAAAAAdb0/VXl4ad1pMB4/s1600/god.jpg" /></a></div><b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Three sentence summary:- A book about life that defines the cliché word 'unputdownable'. This is the book I wish I had written. Buy it!</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Describe the plot without giving anything away:- </b>Elly, the writer of the story, begins as a small child but at no time is she short of experience of life. The key relationship which the book explores through her eyes is that with her brother but the themes of friendship, growing-up, family, being gay and being guilty are among many others which are brilliantly exposed. It would be hard to describe the plot without spoiling it for you and I really think this book should be on everyone's TBR list.<br />
<br />
General comments:- Despite being full of unconventional relationships and a marvellously novel approach to writing almost all the characters are recognisable as people I've met and known. Like the very best 'first person' books there comes a time when you wonder just how much of Elly is Sarah Winman herself. Whether she had experienced some of the situations or not they are all wonderfully credible and the book, like her life, is a book of two halves. The first half is gently humorous with some black undertones and hidden secrets. When God said '<i>Ouch. S**t that hurt</i>.' I was in stitches. Elly's decision to vary the script of the school play had me in tears of laughter. The second half is darker and my tears were not of laughter but of sympathy as disaster struck. <br />
<br />
<b>Quotations:-</b><br />
<i>“He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how,” I said solemnly. “That's Nietzsche,” I continued with emphasis.</i><br />
<br />
<i>“You said I could be anything I wanted when I was older,” I said.</i><br />
<i>She smiled and said, “And you can be, But its not very easy to become Jewish,”</i><br />
<i>“I know,” I said, forlornly, “I need a number.” </i><br />
<i>And she suddenly stopped smiling.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>My mother was beautiful. She had lovely hands that lifted the conversation when she spoke, and had she been deaf, her signing would have been as elegant as a poet speaking verse. I looked at her eyes: blue, blue, blue; same as mine. I sang the colour in my head until it swamped my essence like sea water.</i><br />
(Fancy being able to write English like that - Hilary Mantel won a Booker Prize and this book got nothing. Life is unfair.) <i><br />
</i><br />
<br />
<i> He could never understand what Nancy saw in her, and all she ever said was that K.H. Had amazing inner beauty, which my father said must be extremely hidden, since an archaeological dig working round the clock would probably have found it hard to discover. </i><br />
<br />
<i>… suddenly veering away from the script. ….</i> (I can't put this one in without spoiling it for you but it's the quote of the book for me!!)<br />
<br />
<i>She darned our socks, patched our jeans, and even the tooth fairy refused to reimburse me for a particularly painful molar, even when I left it a note saying that every additional day accrued interest. </i><br />
<br />
<i>Three months before, he’d fallen in love with a holiday-maker from Beaconsfield and had stopped his </i>(therapy) <i>sessions immediately, giving credence to the myth that love cures everything (except perhaps the settlement of an outstanding bill).</i><br />
<br />
<i>And I wrote about what I’d lost that morning. The witness of my soul, my shadow in childhood, when dreams were small and attainable for all. When sweets were a penny and god was a rabbit. </i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f4Mwygm_KCU/TxrFx_e5KsI/AAAAAAAAdb8/V1SJV_okb14/s1600/Winman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="153" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f4Mwygm_KCU/TxrFx_e5KsI/AAAAAAAAdb8/V1SJV_okb14/s200/Winman.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />
<b>AUTHOR Notes:-</b> Actress Sarah Winman grew up in Essex and now lives in London. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to act in theatre, film and television. <i>When God Was a Rabbit</i> is her first published novel though not the first she has written. Come on, someone, publish her as yet unpublished first book, please. And Sarah – we need more from you please..<br />
<br />
<b>New or unusual words </b>- nilScriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-22882978459331981802012-01-21T12:30:00.000+00:002012-01-21T13:02:44.325+00:00Review:- P G WODEHOUSE- various<b>Year Published: - see below<br />
Where the books were from:- Kindle editions<br />
ISBN: - -<br />
Pages: - -pp <br />
Genre: - Humour<br />
Location:- Shropshire /London, England<br />
How I came across them: - reading my way through some Wodehouse for the second or third time.<br />
<br />
</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K7nCASQWNLs/TxcTgwTFZkI/AAAAAAAAdZA/7jVWsD0tbP8/s1600/somethingfresh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K7nCASQWNLs/TxcTgwTFZkI/AAAAAAAAdZA/7jVWsD0tbP8/s400/somethingfresh.jpg" width="271" /></a></b></div><b><br />
<br />
Something Fresh (1915) Rating: - ***** ***** </b><b>Print Length:</b> 256 pages<br />
<b> Leave it to Psmith (1923) Rating: - ***** *** </b><b>Print Length:</b> 256 pages<br />
<b> Summer Lightning (1929) Rating: - ***** **** </b><b>Print Length:</b> 256 pages<br />
<b> Pigs have Wings (1952) Rating: - ***** *** </b><b>Print Length:</b> 276 pages<br />
<b> Aunts aren’t Gentlemen (1974)Rating: - ***** ** </b><b>Print Length:</b> 196 pages<br />
<br />
<b>General comments:-</b> Typical Wodehouse humour and light-hearted looks at Blandings Castle, its occupants and visitors with a bit of Jeeves thrown in for good measure... One of the best Wodehouse quotes of all times appears at the start of ‘Summer Lightning’<br />
"<i>A certain critic – for such men, I regret to say, do exist – made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names’. He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.</i>"<br />
As Marian Keyes commented about Wodehouse:- <br />
‘<i>The ultimate in comfort reading because nothing bad ever happens in P.G. Wodehouse land. Or even if it does, it’s always sorted out by the end of the book. For as long as I’m immersed in a P.G. Wodehouse book, it’s possible to keep the real world at bay and live in a far, far nicer, funnier one where happy endings are the order of the day.</i>’ <br />
<br />
<b>Quotations:- </b><br />
<b><br />
From ‘Something Fresh’</b><br />
<i><br />
Science, with a thousand triumphs to her credit, has not yet succeeded in discovering the correct reply for a young man to make who finds himself in the appalling position of being apologized to by a pretty girl. If he says nothing, he seems sullen and unforgiving. If he says anything, he makes a fool of himself. Ashe, hesitating between these two courses....<br />
<br />
The singing in the bathroom was increasing in volume, but Lord Emsworth heard it now without wincing. It was amazing what a difference it made to a man’s comfort, this fair prospect of getting his younger son off his hands.<br />
<br />
He was as completely happy as only a fluffy-minded old man with excellent health and a large income can be.<br />
<br />
Ashe drifted out. He was conscious of a wish that he understood girls. Girls, in his opinion, were odd.<br />
<br />
This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species.<br />
<br />
‘Well, as Mr Peters’ valet, I suppose you will be rather a big man.’ <br />
‘I shan’t feel it.’ <br />
‘However large the house-party is, Mr Peters is sure to be the principal guest, so your standing will be correspondingly magnificent. You come after the butler, the housekeeper, the groom of the chambers, Lord Emsworth’s valet, Lady Ann Warblington’s lady’s maid—’<br />
‘Who is she?’ <br />
‘Lady Ann? Lord Emsworth’s sister. She has lived with him since his wife died. What was I saying? Oh yes. After them come the Hon. Frederick Threepwood’s valet and myself, and then you.’ <br />
‘I’m not so high up then, after all?’ <br />
‘Yes, you are. There’s a whole crowd who come after you. It all depends on how many other guests there are besides Mr Peters.’ <br />
‘I suppose I charge in at the head of a drove of housemaids and scullery-maids?’ <br />
‘My dear Mr Marson, if a housemaid or a scullery-maid tried to get into the Steward’s Room and have her meals with us, she would be—’ <br />
‘Rebuked by the butler?’ <br />
‘Lynched, I should think. Kitchen-maids and scullery-maids eat in the kitchen. Chauffeurs, footmen, under-butler pantry-boys, hall-boys, odd man and steward’s room footman take their meals in the Servants’ Hall, waited on by the hall-boy. The still-room maids have breakfast and tea in the still-room and dinner and supper in the Hall. The housemaids and nursery-maids have breakfast and tea in the housemaids’<br />
<br />
A fruity voice, like old tawny port made audible, said ‘Come in.’<br />
<br />
Mr Beach was too well bred to be inquisitive, but his eyebrows were not. Ah!’ he said. ‘?’, cried his eyebrows. ‘? ? ?’<br />
<br />
Lord Emsworth belonged to the people-like-to-be-left-alone-to-amuse-themselves-when-they-come-to-a-place school of hosts. He pottered about...<br />
<br />
<b>From ‘Summer Lightning’</b><br />
‘He is grossly inefficient. And,’ said Lady Constance, unmasking her batteries, ‘I consider that he spends far too much of his time mooning around you, my dear. He appears to imagine that he is at Blandings Castle simply to dance attendance on you.’ The charge struck Millicent as unjust. She thought of pointing out that she and Hugo only met occasionally and then on the sly, but it occurred to her that the plea might be injudicious. She bent over the spaniel. A keen observer might have noted a defensiveness in her manner. She looked like a girl preparing to cope with an aunt.<br />
<br />
The advance guard of the company appeared, in the shape of a flock of musicians. They passed out of the stage door, first a couple of thirsty-looking flutes, then a group of violins, finally an oboe by himself with a scowl on his face. Oboes are always savage in captivity. <br />
<br />
He still thought Pilbeam should not have been wearing pimples with a red tie. One or the other if he liked. But not both.<br />
<br />
A psychically gifted bystander, standing in the hall of the block of flats, would have heard at this moment a faint moan. It was Sue’s conscience collapsing beneath an unexpected flank attack.<br />
<br />
But there had been a decade in his life, that dangerous decade of the twenties, when he had accumulated a past so substantial that a less able man would have been compelled to spread it over a far longer period.<br />
<br />
‘Oh?’ said Millicent dully. She had dropped into a chair and picked up a book. She looked like something that might have occurred to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.<br />
<br />
Statistics relating to madness among coots are not to hand, but we may safely doubt whether even in the ranks of these notoriously unbalanced birds there could have been found at this moment one who was feeling half as mad as he did.<br />
<br />
That grey, threatening sky had turned black by now. It was a swollen mass of inky clouds, heavy with the thunder, lightning and rain which so often come in the course of an English summer to remind the island race that they are hardy Nordics and must not be allowed to get their fibre all sapped by eternal sunshine like the less favoured dwellers in more southerly climes.<br />
<br />
But the milk of human kindness, of which the butler was so full, had not yet been delivered on Baxter’s doorstep.<br />
<br />
Before, he would gladly have murdered Beach and James and danced on their graves. Now, he would have been satisfied with straight murder.<br />
<br />
Hugo squeezed her fondly and with the sort of relief that comes to men who find themselves squeezing where they had not thought to.<br />
<b><br />
</b></i><b>From Leave it to Psmith:-</b><i><br />
‘Are you really broke?’ <br />
‘As broke as the Ten Commandments.’<br />
<br />
…That low moaning sound you hear is the wolf bivouacked outside my door.<br />
<br />
Go to her and say, “Susan, you are a very pretty girl. What would you do if I were to kiss you?” If she is a detective, she will reply, “How dare you, sir!” or, possibly, more simply, “Sir!” Whereas if she is the genuine housemaid I believe her to be and only sweeps under bureaux out of pure zeal, she will giggle and remark, “Oh, don’t be silly, sir!” You appreciate the distinction?’<br />
<br />
A depressing musty scent pervaded the place, as if a cheese had recently died there in painful circumstances.<br />
<br />
</i><br />
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</i><b>From Pigs Have Wings:-</b><i><br />
‘He is stout, this Parsloe?’ <br />
‘He certainly gets his pennyworth out of a weighing machine.’<br />
<br />
Left alone, Lord Emsworth sat for a while savouring that delicious sense of peace which comes to men of quiet tastes when their womenfolk have said their say and departed.<br />
<br />
He rebuked himself for having allowed his thoughts to wander in such a dubious direction. He had received his early education at Harrow, and Old Harrovians, he reminded himself, when they have plighted their troth to Girl A, do not go about folding Girl B in their arms. Old Etonians, yes. Old Rugbeians, possibly. But not Old Harrovians.<br />
<br />
I appreciate your surprise. Strongly anti-traditional, you are feeling. Butlers, you say to yourself, don’t kiss guests. Chauffeurs, perhaps. Gamekeepers, possibly. But butlers, never. In extenuation of his odd behaviour, however, I must mention that he is her uncle.<br />
<br />
and on one cheek of that dark, saturnine face was a long scar. Actually it had been caused by the bursting of a gingerbeer bottle at a Y.M.C.A. picnic, but it gave the impression of being the outcome of battles with knives in the cellars of the underworld.<br />
<br />
</i><b>From Aunts Aren't Gentlemen:-</b><i><br />
I would gladly have continued our conversation, but I knew he must be wanting to get back to his Spinoza. No doubt I had interrupted him just as Spinoza was on the point of solving the mystery of the headless body on the library floor.</i><br />
<br />
<b>AUTHOR Notes:</b>- See <a href="http://bookeverysixdays.blogspot.com/2011/12/review-p-g-wodehouse-ring-for-jeeves.html">Ring for Jeeves</a><br />
<br />
<b>New or unusual words:- </b><br />
“…pleasure grounds and <b>messuages</b>.” A messuage in property law is a dwelling house together with its outbuildings, curtilage, and the adjacent land appropriated to its use.<br />
“<b>Gravamen</b>.” The essence or most serious part of a complaint or accusation; the substance of a charge.<br />
“No <b>jimcrack</b> work here..” Jimcrack or gimcrack means shoddily built.<br />
“so we decided we’d just slide off and spring the news in <b>our bread-and-butter letters</b>.” A bread-and-butter letter was a thank you letter written to people with whom one had been staying upon arriving home.Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-65016537559874392102012-01-20T12:56:00.002+00:002012-01-20T12:56:00.357+00:00Help!I am reading a number of books on my Kindle. As a result I no longer have page numnbers and, more importantly, I have no total number of pages. The ability to vary the size of the font (and in my case use a big one to make it easier on my double vision problem) means the number of 'pages' can vary enormously - even if one could count them. I wanted to add up my number of pages read in 2012 and future years but how to do it. Any suggestions?Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-59335230864075513932012-01-19T17:13:00.009+00:002012-01-20T14:35:44.715+00:00Review:- Wilkie COLLINS - “No Name”<b>Year Published: - 1862<br />
Where the book was from:- Kindle Edition<br />
ISBN: - -<br />
Pages: - -pp </b><b>Print Length:</b> 392 pages<br />
<b> Genre: - Classic fiction<br />
Location:- England<br />
How I came across it: - Inspired by reading ‘The Moonstone’ I am tackling more of Wilkie Collins’s works <br />
Rating: - ***** ****<br />
<br />
One sentence summary:- A rollicking good yarn with a moral and some really believable characters.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Describe the plot without giving anything away:- </b>The Vanstone family is a happy one – Mr Vanstone is a gentle and genial sort and his wife equally loving to their two daughters – the traditional and sensible Norah and her younger sister, the head-strong Magdalene. When their parents die tragedy hits in more ways than one – the girls find out their parents were not married and consequently they are not entitled to any inheritance and are turned out of their home. As bad as that is the fact that they are not entitled to use the name Vanstone. They are illegitimate, have no name. While Norah settles for the prospect of being a governess, Magdalene decides to tackle her wicked uncle and his son head on…<br />
<br />
<b>General comments:-</b> This novel, about the stigma of illegitimacy, was initially rejected as immoral by the critics of its day, but is now seen as a work of social insight, showing Collins at the height of his powers.<br />
<b><br />
Quotations:- </b><br />
<br />
<i>“Norah,” he said, after an interval, “you needn’t wait for me. Magdalen, my dear, you can go when you like.” His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately followed their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert himself in his family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably has its effect; and the will of that easy-tempered man is Law.<br />
<br />
Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.<br />
<br />
As a father, he regarded his family of three sons in the light of a necessary domestic evil, which perpetually threatened the sanctity of his study and the safety of his books.<br />
<br />
When the boys went to school, Mr. Clare said “good-by” to them – and “thank God” to himself.<br />
<br />
Few men of forty would have resisted her at that moment. Frank was twenty last birthday. In other words, he threw aside his cigar, and followed her out of the greenhouse.<br />
<br />
To Miss Garth’s horror, Magdalen’s arm was unmistakably round Frank’s neck; and, worse still, the position of her face, at the moment of discovery, showed beyond all doubt that she had just been offering to the victim of Chinese commerce the first and foremost of all the consolations which a woman can bestow on a man. In plainer words, she had just given Frank a kiss.<br />
<br />
I wonder who first picked out a mule as the type of obstinacy? How little knowledge that man must have had of women!</i><br />
<br />
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<br />
<b>AUTHOR Notes</b>:- Wilkie Collins (William Wilkie Collins) was born in 1824 and died in 1889. He is considered the author of the first detective novels in English. Although he studied to become a barrister it was never his intention to practise and by 1848 he had turned to writing, a number of short works appearing in Charles Dickens' periodicals "Household Words" and "All the Year Round". A first novel, “Iolani”, may have been written as early as 1844 but was rejected by publishers (and published for the first time in 1999). Collins’s second novel, “Antonina” (1850), set in fifth-century Rome, was a popular success, before his first venture into crime fiction with “Basil” (1852). Collins became hugely popular with the reading public thanks to his great novels which appeared in the 1860s - “The Woman in White” (1860), “No Name” (1862), “Armadale” (1866), and “The Moonstone” (1868). Unafraid of the criticism of Victorian society, he maintained two families, living with both Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd, neither of whom he married. In later life, he became addicted to opium and from 1870 his novels became less skilfully contrived.Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-89631371656241664732012-01-18T10:03:00.001+00:002012-01-18T13:52:33.392+00:00To Be ReadThis is my current ‘TBR’ list. I shall aim to read all before 2012 is out – this is my personal challenge!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JrpxJgYHl_o/TxK1lFswO2I/AAAAAAAAdYE/egFoDiqXqV4/s1600/Brisingr.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JrpxJgYHl_o/TxK1lFswO2I/AAAAAAAAdYE/egFoDiqXqV4/s400/Brisingr.png" /></a></div><br />
Christopher Paolini – Eldest<br />
Christopher Paolini – Brisingr<br />
Christopher Paolini – Inheritance<br />
Anthony Trollope - Linda Tressel<br />
Sarah Winman – When God was a Rabbit<br />
Karin Alvtegen – Missing<br />
Harold Begbie – The Bed-book of Happiness<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PWxpjzmJ8tg/TxK1y4jLkCI/AAAAAAAAdYQ/H7tP8EUsvnE/s1600/death.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="239" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PWxpjzmJ8tg/TxK1y4jLkCI/AAAAAAAAdYQ/H7tP8EUsvnE/s400/death.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Laura Childs – Death by Darjeeling<br />
Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White<br />
P G Wodehouse – Blandings Castle and Elsewhere<br />
Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Birds of Prey<br />
Aravind Adiga – The White Tiger<br />
Henri Alain-Fournier – The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)<br />
David Bellos - Is That A Fish In Your Ear?: Translation and The Meaning of Everything <br />
Tad Williams - The Dragonbone Chair<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EkZUY938-qA/TxK2EHGz2MI/AAAAAAAAdYc/txdU9c-86SE/s1600/girl_with_dragon_tattoo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="259" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EkZUY938-qA/TxK2EHGz2MI/AAAAAAAAdYc/txdU9c-86SE/s400/girl_with_dragon_tattoo.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Stieg Larssson – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo<br />
Mark Forsyth – The Etymologicon<br />
Haruki Murakami - 1Q84 <br />
S J Watson - Before I Go to Sleep <br />
Simon Van Booy - Everything Beautiful Began After<br />
P G Wodehouse - Do Butlers Burgle Banks?<br />
Audrey Niffenegger – The Adventuress<br />
Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ev662BhLMMw/TxK2aq8ydZI/AAAAAAAAdYo/CzaEF6TiLAc/s1600/The-Night-Bookmobile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="261" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ev662BhLMMw/TxK2aq8ydZI/AAAAAAAAdYo/CzaEF6TiLAc/s400/The-Night-Bookmobile.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Audrey Niffenegger - The Night BookmobileScriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-43049517681135097302012-01-15T09:39:00.001+00:002012-01-15T09:42:40.889+00:00More about 2011With thanks to <a href="http://wordsandpeace.com/">Words and Peace</a> for all these additional ideas on summarising my reading year.<br />
<br />
<b>I read an average of 7.4 books per month</b>. In 2012 I shall total the pages (though how to do this with Kindle editions I am not yet sure).<br />
<br />
<b>Books by the same author: </b>- 2 each by Muriel Barberry, Elizabeth Gaskell, Khaled Hosseini, Charles Dickens, Hilary Mantel, Terry Pratchett, Anthony Trollope, and 3 by Margaret Oliphant, David Dickinson, and Thomas Hardy.<br />
<br />
<b>Re-Reads:</b> Various non-fiction but only two fiction (I think) – P G Wodehouse – “Ring for Jeeves” ; and Terry Pratchett – “Once more ** with footnotes".<br />
<br />
<b>Favourite character of the year</b>: Jacob de Zoet<br />
<br />
<b>Which author was new to you in 2010 that you now want to read more of?</b> Mary Elizabeth BRADDON, Wilkie COLLINS, Helen DUNMORE<br />
<br />
<b>Best title:</b> “The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce - a novel in four vintages”<br />
<br />
In 2012 I shall also count up – Books coming from: my personal bookshelf; the library; borrowed from family; Kindle editions. <br />
<br />
And now to a fun wrap up:-<br />
<br />
- When I was younger I was : The Immoralist<br />
- People might be surprised to discover that I’m: Not Quite a Geisha<br />
- I will never be: The Rector<br />
- At the end of a long day I need: A Thousand Splendid Suns<br />
- Right now I’m feeling: Fludd<br />
– Someday I want to: Ring for Jeeves<br />
- At a party you’d find me: (looking for) The Skeleton in the Closet<br />
– I’ve never: (been) The Mayor of Casterbridge<br />
- I really don’t enjoy: Love Letters of Great Men and Women<br />
- My advice is to: (be) The Observant Traveller<br />
– In my next life I want to be: Lady Audley’s Secret<br />
- If you could go anywhere, where would you go: North and South<br />
– Your favourite form of transportation: A Pair of Blue Eyes<br />
- Your best friend is: The Assassin’s Cloak<br />
- You and your friends are: The Doctor’s Family<br />
- Favourite time of day: A Shadow on the Glass<br />
- If your life was : A Farmer's Year<br />
- What is life to you: Vanity Fair<br />
- Your fear: Wives and Daughters<br />
- What is the best advice you have to give: (follow) Dead Man’s Footsteps<br />
- Thought for the Day: They saw it happen<br />
- How I would like to die: An English Murder<br />
- My soul’s present condition: The Light of Other DaysScriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-62604686648073139382012-01-01T21:14:00.044+00:002012-01-14T21:43:16.947+00:002011 - A Summary<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">During 2011 I read (or at least I recorded myself as having read - I may have missed a couple) 62 fiction and 27 non-fiction.</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">This compared very poorly with the previous year, 2010 - 137 fiction and 32 non-fiction (not 125 and 32 as <a href="http://bookeverysixdays.blogspot.com/2011/06/2010-belated-summary.html">previously recorded</a>) but I have the excuse that 2010 was exceptional since I was laid up for a while after my heart by-pass.</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The 2011 total figure was also down on 2009 when I read at least 89 fiction but the non-fiction were up on that year's 21. </div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
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</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="color: #cc0000; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>NON-FICTION AWARDS</b></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Six of the non-fiction that I read in 2011 got ten stars :-</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">David Verey (Ed) – “The Diary of a Victorian Squire” (re-read)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Joan POWERS (Ed.) - "Eeyore's Gloomy Little Instruction Book" (re-read)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Ronald Blythe -"The Penguin Book of Diaries" (re-read)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Scouse Press – "An Everyday History of Liverpool" (re-read)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">E & M A Radford - "The Encyclopedia of Superstitions" (re-read)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">William Plomer (Ed.) - "Kilvert's Diary 1870-1879" (re-read) </div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Since they were all books I had read before it seemed inappropriate to make a 'Best of non-fiction award' for 2011 though if I were pressed I would give it to Kilvert's Diary which is one of those books one could read and re-read a dozen times and still enjoy.</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="color: #cc0000; margin-bottom: 0cm;">FICTION AWARDS</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The SCRIPTOR SENEX PRIZE FOR FICTION for 2011 is divided into three sections – Victorian fiction, 20<sup>th</sup> Century Fiction and 21<sup>st</sup> Century Fiction.</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Victorian Fiction that got ten stars were:-</b></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Charles DICKENS – "Dombey & Son" (1848)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Elizabeth GASKELL - "North and South" (1855)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Mary Elizabeth BRADDON - "Lady Audley's Secret" (1862)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Anthony TROLLOPE - “Rachel Ray“ (1863)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Joseph Sheridan Le FANU – “Uncle Silas ” (1864)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Margaret OLIPHANT - "Miss Marjoribanks" (1865)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Wilkie COLLINS – “The Moonstone” (1868)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i7FTsVhDxq0/TxHxMsy8srI/AAAAAAAAdXo/BPgbudwxBP8/s1600/Dickens1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i7FTsVhDxq0/TxHxMsy8srI/AAAAAAAAdXo/BPgbudwxBP8/s400/Dickens1.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">And the <span style="color: #cc0000;">VICTORIAN PRIZE </span>was shared jointly by an obscure scribbler called <b>Charles John Huffam DICKENS</b> for "Dombey & Son" (1848) and <b>Mary Elizabeth BRADDON</b> for "Lady Audley's Secret" (1862). Unlike Dickens,whowrote little and faded into obscurity, Braddon was an extremely prolific writer, producing more than 80 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is "Lady Audley's Secret" which won her recognition as well as fortune. The novel has been in print ever since its publication, and has been dramatised and filmed several times. Unfortunately neither of the above responded to my e-mails asking them to collect their prize.</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>No 20<sup>th</sup> Century books that I read in 2011 got ten stars </b>so no Prize was awarded in that category!</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The 21<sup>st</sup> Century fiction that got ten stars were:-</b></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Helen DUNMORE - “The Siege“ (2001)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Khaled HOSSEINI – “The Kite Runner” (2003)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Terry PRATCHETT - “Once More * *with footnotes” ( 2004) (re-read)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Alice HOFFMAN – “The Ice Queen ” (2005) </div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Khaled HOSSEINI – “A Thousand Splendid Suns ” (2007)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Muriel BARBERY – “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” (2008)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Paul TORDAY - “The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce - a novel in four vintages" (2008)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">David MITCHELL – “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet ” (2010)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Terry PRATCHETT - “Snuff“ (2011)</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vfxu0xG8hFw/TxH08VzjicI/AAAAAAAAdX4/PLnuG4fD7cw/s1600/mitchell+hosseini.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vfxu0xG8hFw/TxH08VzjicI/AAAAAAAAdX4/PLnuG4fD7cw/s400/mitchell+hosseini.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Like the Victorian Prize the <span style="color: #cc0000;">21st CENTURY PRIZE </span>was shared. This time by <b>David MITCHELL</b> for “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet ” (2010) and <b>Khaled HOSSEINI </b>for “A Thousand Splendid Suns ” (2007). Both deserve all the praise that has been heaped upon them and I recommend them to you most heartily. They are books not only to read but to buy and keep for ever.</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">If either of those gentlemen would care to contact me I shall be happy to forward a printed certificate and a tin of my delicious cornflake crunch.</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">What was the best book you read in 2011? </div>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-50668426116670430382011-12-30T00:31:00.023+00:002012-01-09T21:39:50.669+00:00REVIEW:- Anthony TROLLOPE - “Rachel Ray“<b>Year Published: - 1863<br />
Where the book was from:- On my Kindle<br />
</b><br />
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<br />
ISBN: - <br />
Pages: - pp <br />
Genre: - Classic Victorian fiction<br />
Location:- Devon<br />
How I came across it: - Reading the Trollope's that I have not previously read – in chronological order.<br />
Rating: - ***** *****<br />
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<br />
One sentence summary:- Rachel Ray offers a masterly and entertaining evocation of a small community living its life in mid-nineteenth-century England. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Describe the plot without giving anything away:</b>- Innocent Rachel Ray is wooed by a visitor to their village but her widowed sister, Mrs Prime, is very suspicious and the community is given reason to dislike him. Rachel's mother, swayed by Mrs Prime, discourages Rachel. But whose judgement is right? <br />
<br />
<b>General comments:- </b>An excellent Trollope - all one could ask from a Victorian romance.<b><br />
</b><br />
<br />
<b>Quotations:- </b><br />
<i>The prettiest scenery in all England - and if I am contradicted I will say in all Europe – is in Devonshire on the southern and south-eastern skirts of Dartmoor ... </i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>There are women who cannot grow alone as standard trees--for whom </i><br />
<i>the support and warmth of some wall, some paling, some post, is absolutely necessary-</i><br />
<i>-who, in their growth, will bend and incline themselves towards some such prop for their </i><br />
<i>life, creeping with their tendrils along the ground till they reach it when the </i><br />
<i>circumstances of life have brought no such prop within their natural and immediate </i><br />
<i>reach.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I think there was much in the hardness of the weeds she wore. It seemed as though Mrs </i><br />
<i>Prime in selecting her crape, her bombazine, and the models of her caps, had resolved </i><br />
<i>to repress all ideas of feminine softness--as though she had sworn to herself, with a </i><br />
<i>great oath, that man should never again look on her with gratified eyes.</i><br />
<br />
<i>"A hundred years ago there wasn't all this writing between young people, and these </i><br />
<i>things were managed better then than they are now, as far as I can understand."</i><br />
<i>and it was Cherry's voice that she first heard, "A penny for your thoughts," said </i><br />
<i>Cherry. "Oh, you have so startled me!" said Rachel. "Then I suppose your thoughts were </i><br />
<i>worth more than a penny. Perhaps you were thinking of an absent knight." And then </i><br />
<i>Cherry began to sing--"Away, away, away. He loves and he rides away." Poor Rachel </i><br />
<i>blushed and was unable to speak, "</i> (I wonder how old the expression 'A penny for your thoughts' is?)<br />
<br />
<i>All this she said, in a voice not so soft as should be the voice of woman to her betrothed.</i><br />
<br />
<i>"We have always advocated", said one of these articles, "the right of absolute freedom of choice for every borough and everycounty in the land; but we trust that the day is far distant in which the electors of Englandshall cease to look to their nearest neighbours as their best representatives."</i><br />
<br />
<i>"My own dear child!" said Mrs Rowan again; "for you know that you are to be my child </i><br />
<i>now as well as your own mamma's." "It is very kind of you to say so," said Mrs Ray. "Very </i><br />
<i>kind, indeed," said Mrs Prime; "and I'm sure that you will find Rachel dutiful as a </i><br />
<i>daughter." Rachel herself did not feel disposed to give any positive assurance on that </i><br />
<i>point. She intended to be dutiful to her husband, and was inclined to think that </i><br />
<i>obedience in that direction was quite enough for a married woman. </i><br />
<br />
<i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1440549593"></a></i><br />
<b>AUTHOR Notes:</b>- Anthony Trollope – see <a href="http://bookeverysixdays.blogspot.com/2011/10/review-anthony-trollope-orley-farm.html">Orley Farm</a><br />
<br />
<b>New or unusual words:-</b> <i>Mrs Tappitt had frequently offered to intromit the ceremony when calling upon his generosity for other purposes, but the September gift had always been forthcoming.<b> </b></i><b>Intromit</b> – introduce; admit; allow to enter; grant entry to.Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-4598451348058098822011-12-29T23:40:00.000+00:002012-01-09T20:45:31.640+00:00REVIEW:- Terry PRATCHETT - “Snuff“<b>Year Published: - 2011<br />
Where the book was from:- My own copy (although I bought the hardback for my collection I read it on the Kindle so as to be able to have the font bigger while my eyes were bad).<br />
ISBN: - 978 0385619264<br />
Pages: - 378pp <br />
Genre: - Fantasy<br />
Location:- Discworld<br />
How I came across it: - I never miss reading a new Pratchett<br />
Rating: - ***** *****<br />
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One sentence summary:- The 39th Discworld novel sees Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch slightly out of his depth as he holidays in the innocent countryside.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Describe the plot without giving anything away:-</b> Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven. But not quite all... <br />
<br />
<b>General comments:-</b> Probably the best Discworld novel for a while.<br />
<br />
<b>Quotations:- </b><br />
<i>It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday will barely have time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse.<br />
<br />
Ramkin Hall... Apparently it had a mile of trout stream and, Vimes seemed to recall from the deeds, a pub. Vimes knew how you could own a pub but he wondered how you could own a trout stream because, if that was your bit, it had already gurgled off downstream while you were watching it, yes? That meant somebody else was now fishing in your water, the bastard! <br />
<br />
...weather as cold as charity and rain coming down so fast it had to queue up to <br />
hit the ground.<br />
<br />
And so he grinned and bore it while they fluttered around him like large moths, and he waved away yet more teacakes, and cups of tea that would have been welcome were it not that they looked and tasted like what proper tea turns into shortly after you drink it.<br />
<br />
And now, if you will excuse me, I’m going down to the pub.’ Automatically, his wife said, ‘No, dear, you know drink doesn’t agree with you.’ The colonel was all smiles. ‘This evening I intend to settle my differences with drink and make it my friend.’ <br />
<br />
Of course, the white marble lovelies were dignified with urns, bunches of marble grapes, and the ever-popular length of gauze which had, happily, landed in just the right place to stop art becoming pornography.<br />
<br />
Thus satisfied, he waited for the onset of sleep, against a chorus of howls, shrieks, mysterious distant bangs, surreptitious rustlings, screeches, disconcerting ticking noises, dreadful scratching sounds, terrible flappings of wings very close, and all the rest of the unholy orchestra that is known as the peace of the countryside.</i><br />
<br />
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AUTHOR Notes:- See <a href="http://bookeverysixdays.blogspot.com/2008/09/terry-pratchett-nation.html">Nation</a>Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-46575708850298955182011-12-29T17:41:00.021+00:002012-01-09T20:47:23.086+00:00Review:- P G WODEHOUSE – “Ring for Jeeves”<b><br />
Year Published: - 1953<br />
Where the book was from:- My own copy<br />
ISBN: - 9780099513926<br />
Pages: - 240pp <br />
Genre: - Humour<br />
Location:- England<br />
How I came across it: - Read (for the second or third time) as part of a challenge to read a book from each year of my life<br />
Rating: - ***** ****<br />
<br />
</b><br />
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One sentence summary:- Classic English humour from the classic English humourist.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Describe the plot without giving anything away:-</b> Jeeves is on loan to the Ninth Earl of Rowcester while Bertie Wooster is learning how to cope with life without a man servant. The Ninth Earl is somewhat impoverished but a plan to make money as a bookie goes awry when they (temporarily) find it necessary to cheat a big game hunter. It hardly spoils the plot to advise you that all comes right in the end!<br />
<br />
<b>General comments:-</b> “You don’t analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour.” Stephen Fry.<br />
<br />
<b>Quotations:- </b><br />
<br />
<i>“The Oaks, Madam.”</i><br />
<i>“And what are the Oaks?”</i><br />
<i>It seemed incredible to the waiter that there should be anyone in England who could ask such a question, but he had already gathered that the lady was an American lady, and American ladies, he knew, are often ignorant of the fundamental facts of life. He had once met one who had wanted to know what a football pool was.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Its architecture was thirteenth-century, fifteenth-century and Tudor, its dilapidation twentieth-century, post-World War Two.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Monica regarded her husband with that cold, wifely eye which married men learn to dread.</i><br />
<br />
<i>“Coming out! The dear old getting-ready-for-market stage! How it takes one back. Off with the glasses and the teeth-braces.”</i><br />
<i>“On with the things that push you in or push you out, whichever you needed.”</i><br />
<i>This was Rory’s contribution, and Monica looked at him austerely.</i><br />
<i>“What do you know about it?”</i><br />
<br />
<i>“Potty what?”</i><br />
<i>“The lady does appear to diverge somewhat from the generally accepted norm, Sir Roderick.”</i><br />
<br />
<i>Arriving in the living room, he found that the number of ladies available for being jouined there had been reduced to one – reading from left to right, Jill.</i><br />
<br />
<i>“Socialistic legislation has sadly depleted the resources of England’s hereditary aristocracy. We are living now on what is known as the Welfare State, which means – broadly – that everybody is completely destitute.”</i><br />
<br />
<i>… was a skinny stripling of some sixteen summers on whom Nature in her bounty had bestowed so many pimples that there was scarcely room on his face for the vacant grin which habitually adorned it.</i><br />
<br />
<i>He thought nostalgically of his young manhood in London at the turn of the century… Butlers had been butlers then in the deepest and holiest sense of the word.</i><br />
<br />
<i>“I suppose what’s happened is that you’ve had one of these lovers’ tiffs.”</i><br />
<i>Jill did not intend to allow without protest what was probably the world’s greatest traghedy since the days of Romeo and Juliet to be described in this inadequate fashion.</i><br />
<br />
<i>At the sight… no fewer than three hairs of his left eyebrow quivered for an instant, showing how deeply he had been moved by the spectacle.</i><br />
<i>… Four hairs of Jeeves’s right eyebrow stirred slightly, as if a passing breeze had disturbed them.</i><br />
<br />
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<br />
<b>AUTHOR Notes:- </b>P G Wodehouse (1881 - 1975) Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be widely read. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of pre-war English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.<br />
<br />
Pelham (Plum) Grenville Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guildford, Surrey. Having spent his early years in Hong Kong he was sent to Dulwich College and worked as a banker and journalist before embarking on a career as a prolific and popular writer. He became an American citizen in 1955 and was knighted in 1975 a few weeks before his death in Southampton, New York.<br />
<br />
An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Stephen Fry, Douglas Adams, J. K. Rowling,and Terry Pratchett.<br />
<br />
<b>New or unusual words:-</b> A word one doesn’t hear nowadays – bally - adjective, adverb British Slang - damned (euphemism for bloody ).Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6339331498792801948.post-64440163361627719122011-12-28T00:35:00.010+00:002012-01-08T14:38:10.636+00:00REVIEW:- Gina OCHSNER - “The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight”<b>Year Published: - 2009<br />
Where the book was from:- My own copy – ex-library<br />
ISBN: - 978 1 84627 007 9<br />
Pages: - 370pp <br />
Genre: - General fiction<br />
Location:- Russia<br />
How I came across it: - Serendipity<br />
Rating: - ***** <br />
<br />
</b><br />
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One sentence summary:- A strange and disturbing account of some of the problems of poverty, war and the unreal approach to life in post Soviet Russia. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Describe the plot without giving anything away:- </b>In the yard of a crumbling apartment building in post-Soviet Russia, there’s a corpse who won’t keep quiet. Mircha fell from the roof and was never properly buried, so he sticks around to cause hassle to the living including Azade, keeper of the Little Necessary; Olga, a disillusioned translator/censor for a military newspaper; Yuri, a young army veteran who always wears an aviator’s helmet and thinks he’s a fish; and Tanya, a student of hope, words, and colour.<br />
<br />
Tanya carries a notebook everywhere, recording her dreams of finding love and escaping her job at the All-Russia All-Cosmopolitan Museum, a place that holds a weird and wonderful collection of rubbishy art replicas created with the materials at hand, from foam and chewing gum to lollipop sticks and tomato juice. When the museum’s director hears of the visit of an American group seeking to fund art in Russia, it looks as if Tanya might get her chance at a better life, if she can only convince them of the collection’s worth. Enlisting the help of her strange assortment of neighbours with their different backgrounds and cultures, Tanya scrambles to save her dreams.<br />
<br />
<b>General comments:-</b> A nominee for the Orange Prize for Fiction <br />
<br />
<b>Quotations:-</b><br />
<i><br />
When a man loses his dream, he ceases to be a man, he ceases to be alive.<br />
<br />
He was a good man in a tangential way. You could feel that behind the vitriol, the bile, and rage, really he meant well.<br />
<br />
Outside, darkness settled on rooftops, gathered in corners.<br />
<br />
Patience is what you get when you divide the number of days you’ve gone without eating by the temperature outdoors.<br />
<br />
Faith was not about knowing where the path led, but believing the path led somewhere.</i><br />
<br />
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<br />
<b>AUTHOR Notes:-</b> Gina Ochsner’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Non-required Reading, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other magazines, and have received awards such as the Raymond Carver Prize and the Chelsea Award for Short Fiction. Her first collection of short stories, The Necessary Grace to Fall, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. It also won the Oregon Book Award for Short Fiction and the PNBA Book Award for short stories and was an Austin Chronicle Top Ten Pick.Scriptor Senexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17795521284516432520noreply@blogger.com0