Books Everyone Should Read

I found this today.

Now, like most people I know, I’m a sucker for a good list/set of ticky boxes, so I went through and crossed out all the books I’ve already read.

mmm, cloud-y

Which is maybe a little less than half the titles there, not counting the ones I’ve started but not finished or bought with the full intention of reading and have left to gather dust on my shelf for years. The latter two categories would bump it up to about 70% of the books there.

So, as I’m fond of being able to cross things off a list (I like to write “write to do list” somewhere on my to do lists, just so I can cross it out as soon as the list is done), I think I’ll try to read all the books on the cloud, including those I’ve read before as they’re some of my favourites. One a month in no particular order for now. With one exception – I’m not trying to read Blood Meridian ever again. I tried, I really truly did, and I never ever worked out what was supposed to be going on. I read the first chapter no less than four times, going back to the start to read it again each time I finished in an effort to figure out who all these people were and why they were interacting the way they were. If memory serves, a Kid arrives in a small Western town, walks around a bit, gets pushed into the mud near some toilets and then goes to set fire to a stranger’s hotel room with someone he’s just met. And at no point did any of that make any sense to me. So, no. Just… no.

I’ll need to try to look through the source data to find out exactly who some of the authors are for the more generic titles though. Which sucks.

Anyway, I’ll be starting in  April, once I’ve finished reading some of my library books and those lent to me by nice work friends who keep asking how I’m getting on with them. So my March To Read list looks like this:

• Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
• One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
• Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford
• Saturday by Ian McEwan (is the next book group book)

And then, as I have an awesome-looking copy of Don Quixote on my bookshelf, I think I’ll get started on my new project with that. Wish me luck!

Hiatus

So, I’ve been promising to update this blog in every one of the very few posts I’ve made in the last 6 months.  And it’s time I faced facts, it’s simply not going to happen.  Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not abandoning this blog forever!  I entirely intend to come back to it at some point and start regularly updating again.  Just… not for maybe another 6 months to a year.

I’ve not been reading so much since my ex- and I broke up, to be honest, and what I have read hasn’t captured my imagination enough to compel me to my keyboard and write up a review of it.  Even Monsters of Men, which I was so excited about getting from the library, took me over 2 months to read – a page or two a day, if that.  There are a multitude of reasons for this:

• I started a new job 7 or 8 months ago that, unlike my last one, leaves very little time in the day for sneakily writing blogposts
• I’ve been writing short stories and taking NaNoWriMo seriously this year, so have spent a lot more time with a pen and notepad than a book in my hand
• I’ve been vastly more social – making new friends in my job, through the book group I joined and at the NaNo meets means I have even less free time in the evenings for things like reading and forming opinions
• When I have been reading things, it’s been mostly fanfic rather than “proper books” – I hate to admit it, but I kinda prefer the slightly more interactive experience, watching a story form, engaging with the authors
• And finally, I’ve been less-than-healthy for about 6 months now, with a series of colds leading on from one another and a bizarre, mildly-debilitating muscle condition that means I’m exhausted all the time

So, I’m sorry if you’ve been waiting for updates.  It will happen, eventually.  I’ll get back into reading paper-based stories and telling you why they’re awesome, but it’s unlikely to be soon.

But really do go read Ella Minnow Pea, it’s all kinds of awesome.

xx

Free books

Right, according to my father, I can’t bring “all those books” to his place when I move back in.  So here’s a list of what’s being got rid of, if you want anything let me know in a comment (please, I’d rather that than emails or whathaveyou – means I can keep track easier!) and I’ll pop it into the post for you.  Send me a cheque of however much the postage is, plus £2 for P&P and we’ll be sorted!  If you’re some sort of random person who’s stumbled onto my blog (hi, btw *waves*), I would kindly request that you send the cheque in advance because I can’t afford to lose the money on postage if you turn out to be…um…how do I put this nicely?  Forgetful?  If you live locally to me, am happy to drop them off cost-free.

I’m getting taking anything that hasn’t been claimed to a charity shop on 18th/19th September, so that’s your deadline for deciding what you want, folks.

On to the list!  It’s in alphabetical order by author, so everything available by each person is grouped together.  First come, first served – by comment only.  Anything crossed out has been claimed already.

Stoopid personal life

So, I’ve not updated my blog in aaaaages.  Shocking, no?  Please accept my sincerest apologies.  You see, that cold I was complaining about before lasted for nearly 3 months, also my boyfriend and I broke up a couple of months ago and since then I’ve been mostly packing and trying to reorganise my life rather than reading *sadface*

So please bear with me while I shift everything I own across the city – and several things I didn’t previously own, but managed to shout “mine” faster than the ex, mwahahahahaaaaa – and I swear I’ll get to updating this again soon.  Not least because I’m anxiously awaiting the third and final installment of the Chaos Walking Trilogy, I’m 2nd in the queue at the library (and have been 2nd for about a month and a half now, grrr).  I’m sure that’ll kick start my inner reviewer!

I will try to get a review up for Ella Minnow Pea in the interim, largely because it’s all kinds of awesome and you should read it (that’s a little preview for you there).

oooooh, I’ve just checked and now I’m 1st in line for Monsters of Men!  *bounces up and down*

re: the breakup, it’s very much a friendly, mutual thing.  My ex is a lovely, lovely man and he’s still my best friend.  Just so no-one thinks I’ve legged it with half of his stuff, we did split the DVD collection together and agreed on almost everything that went into each of our piles.  2 exceptions: he got In Bruges, the git, and neither of us wanted to own up to buying American Pie 2.  So I made him take it.  I maintain I wasn’t responsible for it being in the house.

Also, I’ve been informed by my soon-to-be flatmate (OK, my Dad, I’m moving back in with him… happy now?  *grumbles*) that I am not allowed to bring all my books with me.  So if anyone wants to have a looksee at what’s getting left behind, please let me know.  If you want anything – I may well post a list on here in the near future – then I’d just ask that you cover P&P and I’ll send it to you.

The problem with Serieses

Serieses?  Serii?  Does anyone know the plural for this?

Anyway.  So I’ve been catsitting for my mother this week and she left me a pile of books to read, including two new series* of supernatural fiction.  One of which is very interesting – it’s set in a world where humans only make up 1% of the population, the rest being werewolves, vampires and golems – and I would like to continue reading it when more are published.  Then I checked out the library website this morning and discovered that they have the latest Patrick Ness book on order, the third in the Chaos Walking trilogy, which I have been very very very excited about reading *bounces a little*.  Then I was looking up colours for a friend to paint her nails, which led me very naturally to the Jasper Fforde website (or more specifically, the Chromatology page in the section devoted to Shades of Grey) and learned that he has a new series for children, starting with The Last Dragonslayer in November 2010.

So in the course of about 20 minutes, on my lunchbreak at work**, I realised that I’ve got 2 new serieses to follow and the latest installment of a third to track down.  And that doesn’t take into account all the other serieses that I actively follow and tend not to post about as regularly as I (re)read them – the Sookie Stackhouse books, anything published by Tamora Pierce or Simon R Green, Jasper Fforde’s 3 ongoing stories, the Stephanie Plum series – or the ones that friends and family follow and therefore lend to me.  That list is a lot longer, and includes Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld series, Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series and Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series, among others.  And then there are serieses like Earth’s Children by Jean M Auel which are written so slowly that continental drift overtakes them.  I forget that the other books have even been written before a new one comes out.

So here’s what I want to know – how do other people handle this?  Do you avoid reading serieses altogether?  Do you give up, as I did on Laurell K Hamilton and Kim Harrison, when the character does a 180 and turns into some sort of OOC-sex fiend?  (This happens more often than I can say).  Do you have spreadsheets, tracking what the latest installment is called and its release date just so you don’t end up staring at Amazon in confusion while trying to remember which ones you’ve read and in what order?  What advice can you give me to help my series addiction?  Is it time for me to go back to reading one-shot novels by literary authors?

*apparently it’s a plural and there’s no singular form.  Which is boring.  Henceforth, I intend to use serieses.  I don’t care if it’s wrong!

**It is important to note that I have not been wasting work time on this post.  Pinky promise.  *holds out little finger*

The Strain

The Strain by Guillermo del Toro with Chuck Hogan

A plane lands at JFK airport, where it stops dead on the runway.  Very dead.  No lights, no signs of life.  Ephraim Goodweather, local contact for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is called to examine the situation, the occupants seemingly as dead as the plane – until 4 of them wake up, unexpectedly.  Eph is concerned with trying to contain the disease, as he sees it, when he is sought out by Abraham Setrakian, who saw this before, while interned at Treblinka: it is a creature known as Sardu, who drinks the blood of its victims and turns them into mindless drones.

People who know me IRL will know that I’m not especially good with scary movies.  When I saw Drag Me To Hell, there were two things that kept me in my seat until the end: 1) I’d gone with two boys, neither of whom were my boyfriend, and I didn’t think I could stand the mocking; 2) perhaps the more influential of the reasons, the boys were sitting between me and the aisle, so I physically couldn’t leave.  It’s a great film, yes, but there’s no earthly force that could make me sit down and watch it again.  When I watched Scream 3, I had to turn the DVD off and make someone give me a blow-by-blow account of what happened in the rest of the film, so my imagination knew the scary thing was dead and didn’t taunt me with it while I was trying to sleep (as happens if I spend too long thinking about the Ring movies *shivers*).  I’m a big scaredy-cat and I know it.  However, my scaredyness is usually exclusive to the screen – not books.  This one is an exception.

This book took me ages to read, mostly because I’m a bedtime reader and it scared the bejeesus out of me so I didn’t particularly want to pick it up within about an hour of trying to sleep.  Worse still, it had been lent to me by a good friend who kinda wanted it back, so I had to keep reassuring him that I was reading it, I was just… only reading when it was sunny outside.  And, thanks to that sunny spell a couple of weeks ago, I finally got it finished!  *does a little happy dance*

Seriously, Guillermo del Toro had the most incredible, vivid and fantastical imagination.  Pan’s Labyrinth is up there as one of my all-time favourite films, even though it has one of the creepiest monster-things ever in it:

scary bananas

Plus, Chuck Hogan manages to work del Toro’s ideas into something very, very readable, between them rooting this take on the vampire myth in modern day Americana, both in setting and language.   The attack is coordinated from New York, encompassing Ground Zero at several key points in the story, and taking in almost every strata of society – from the uptight housewife to her Central American housekeeper, from the gangs on the streets to the rat-catchers underneath them.

If I had one criticism to make (apart from the fact that it scared me silly, which I think it was supposed to do), it’s that it read a little bit too much like a film, with a third act “twist” designed to keep the action open for the sequel.  A sequel, I hasten to add, which partly motivated del Toro’s decision to quit The Hobbit.  Boooooo sequels!  And whilst this was always planned as a trilogy of novels, I thought the set up for the next book was a little obvious and inelegantly done.  I’ll be interested to see how the plot moves forwards from the end point of this first part, whether it really has legs to sustain another two installments or not, as this one could very easily have finished at its end.

That said, I’m sure I’ll read it – if I can convince my friend to ever lend me another book again, after the length of time I’ve had this one!

PS. Apologies for the length of time between posts, I’ve continued to be ill (more booooooo!) and have been entertaining my (s)in-laws* for the last week.

*After 4+ years together, I need a moniker for them.  And thank you to Ellen for coming up with that one, which makes me giggle every time I use it!

Morning Star Trilogy

The Morning Star Trilogy by Nick Bantock

In Which The Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin and Sabine is Illuminated.

I first came across Griffin and Sabine while I was working at a bookstore in 2001, because it’s apparently a book that only comes into print every 5 years and the older staff were going crazy over the chance to buy it.  Once I read a friend’s copy, I could understand why: the books are beautiful.  Truly, truly beautiful.  The books are made up of a series of postcards and letters between Griffin, an artist living in London, and Sabine, an illustrator of postage stamps living in the (fictional) Sicmon Islands in the South Pacific.

And of course I didn’t buy it when I had the opportunity (because I’m a moron, y’see) and of course it has been out of print pretty much ever since.  So this review is not for the original Griffin and Sabine trilogy, but its sequel, The Morning Star trilogy, which comes in a rather pretty box set.  I’ve been holding off reading it because I hadn’t read the original books since 2001 and couldn’t quite remember what happened, but as I’ve been off sick from work *coughs pathetically* I decided to treat myself.

The first in the trilogy, The Gryphon, picks up several years after the end of The Golden Mean and begins with a cryptic postcard from Sabine to Matthew Sedon, an archaeologist working in Egypt.  She asks him to pick up a bundle of letters – the entire Griffin-Sabine correspondence from the previous books – which he shares with his girlfriend Isabella, living in Paris.  Both are perplexed by what it contains and suspect a hoax, until Griffin starts sending postcards to Isabella that show more knowledge of her waking visions than she has ever shared with anyone.  Soon, they are both caught up in the enigmatic world of Griffin, Sabine and their arch-enemy Frolatti.

To be honest, describing the plot much more than that makes it sound a bit silly and trite.  There’s all sorts of mysticism and references to legends that go over my head slightly, possibly because I’m still pretty sick* or because Nick Bantock is vastly cleverer than me, or because the references are silly and trite.  Let me know which you think it is once you have read it?  The plot might be a bit slight, but the format is just incredible.  The postcards, envelopes and stamps are all different and all beautiful, whilst the simple pleasure of pulling out a sheet of paper from an envelope and getting to read a handwritten (well, sorta) letter is incomparable.  This is basically The Jolly Postman for adults and if there was one book (or series of books) I wish I had written, it’s this one.  Just flat out gorgeous.  OK, maybe writing the Harry Potter series would have been pretty awesome too – think of the money! – but still, I’d pick the Griffin and Sabine books as my why didn’t I think of that winner.  I read this in bed whilst feeling completely awful and then fell asleep hugging it, because it’s so pretty.  *strokes the pretty*

*It’s just a cold, true, but one that’s seriously knocked me for six!

Back!

Hands up, who missed me?

I missed you deeply, dear internet audience *hugs*

So… good month off?  Me too.  I’ve been doing plenty of writing and not so much reading, so I’m probably not going to be posting so many reviews in the near future.  I do have a couple yet to type up and I will also be posting some short stories as well as some random things that made me laugh, but not to any kind of schedule from here on in.

You will be getting reviews for Tuesdays with Morrie, Change of Heart and Troll’s Eye View in the near future, as well as a couple of the cleaner drabbles, but for today you can have a trailer for my new favourite movie:

Seriously. Awesome.

Another time, I’ll tell you the rules for the drinking game we played while watching it.

And if you’re one of the literally tens of people who have been looking at my blog during my month off, here is that recipe for Pineapple Upside Down cake you’ve inexplicably been looking for: linky.  (seriously, why have I been getting more hits for that in the last month, than I ever got when I was updating 2-3 times a week?!)

Because everything in life is better when you can look at pictures of cake

Enjoy!

Apologies

I’m taking a break from the blog for a while due to unforeseen personal issues.  There are no posts planned for at least the next month, sorry!  I may post some original fiction in that time but if not and you want to read what I’ve been writing then drop me an email, so please do check back – but no reviews and no random rants for the next 30 days, minimum.  I will return, I promise!  Bear with me while I sort out some stuff.

Love and hugs

Jen xxxx

Sorry!

No review today, sorry!  I spent this morning writing an emotionally draining short story and don’t have the energy to sort out a review as well.  You’ll have to wait until next week.  I know, I know, you’re disappointed.

Keep yourself entertained with this in the meantime:

It’s a single serving site that shows Michael Buble being stalked by a velociraptor.  What’s not to love?  (clicky picture for link)