The Good Citizen

Libertines - I get along

Next up 6 In Search of Lost Time - Proust And while I'm making my way through that... 7 The Atrocity Exhibition - JG Ballard

February (Ordered another copy of Voyage off ebay so I'll finish it eventually ) 5 The Lambs of London Peter Ackroyd - 8.5 This was a short (240 pages in an isis large print edition is pretty short!) but really enjoyable novel set in 19C London around the discovey of a range of lost shakesperian artifacts and the public commotion it quickly causes. Based on genuine historical figures, Charles and Mary Lamb, it suprised me, with a little help help from Wikipedia, how much fact was woven into the fiction. Admittedly a better grounding in Shakespeare would have been useful to appreciate some of the prose and quotes from his plays and how it related to the story line. Alas, the bard's work goes completely over my head and I probably would have finished this quicker if I didn't spend half the time rereading the extracts from his plays trying to work out what they actually meant! It didn't detract from a well crafted story however and Ackroyd crams plenty of life into his characters. For all the strained social conventions of Victorian England, it still drew me in and I genuinely cared about their fates. It was impessive what can be accomplished in so few words.

You know the 'next gen' kindle will smell just like a musty 50 year old penguine classic, complete with mottled water damage

17. Creates magic down under (4) - The Wizard of Oz No easy newspaper this (2) - Hard Times (I got this off Yahoo though )

Ah well.. googling for it passed the time.

Found these on Yahoo answers but they don't have all the answers (so don't expect me to know! ) still I thought they would be worth trying to get. Think it will be obvious if an answer is correct! I've put the first one in... 1. Does she live in an eco friendly house? (4) - Anne of Green Gables 2. An atmospheric phenomenon (2) 3. Tigers, elephants, monkeys etc in case (5) 4. Fishy measure by this river crossing (1) 5. Ramblers enjoy taking one of these (5) 6. Ssh, the Spanish gent is gliding by (5) 7. Big bird’s dropped it (4) 8. Reflective battles (4) 9. All about an overgrown garden (3) 10 .Potatoes (1) 11. Patriotic material (2) 12. Beaming brightly (2) 13. He’s planting cuttings with an unsuccessful royal donor (7) 14. Criminal bird (2) 15. No easy newspaper this (2) 16. Un homme stranded here? (2) 17. Creates magic down under (4) 18. Not the best quality for one of those round the table, we hear (4) 19. He’s my pal as well (3) 20. A cruel flock of birds (4)

This sounds similar?..The Rebel, Jack Dann ... "In The Rebel, Jack Dann asks: What if James Dean hadn't died in that car crash? What would his life have been like? How would he have affected others? How would he have changed history? It doesn't seem, at face value, a particularly prepossessing premise for a novel. At least it didn't for me when I first picked it up to read. I had little knowledge of, or interest in, any of the central characters: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Colonel Parker, Bobby Kennedy, et al. But Dann is a consummate writer. Have faith in his abilities, and more often than not you’ll be rewarded. And that's certainly the case with The Rebel. At first, the James Dean that Dann shows us in The Rebel is the James Dean we are familiar with — rebellious and insouciant: He flicked his half-finished cigarette in a high arc across the room and wondered if it would start a fire. If it did, he would sit right where he was like a fudgeing Buddha and die without moving a muscle. If it didn't, he would race on Monday. But then, of course, he has his accident and survives. During the accident, he has a vision of his dead mother, who tells him to “do something wonderful and important” with his life. And it seems, for a while, like he's trying to do just that, like he's trying to become a better person. But people don't change overnight, accident or no, and it quickly becomes clear that he's still just the same self-centred, drug-addled SOB he was before the accident. Of course, he does change, eventually, over the course of the novel. He grows older, becomes more mature, more thoughtful, more responsible — but these are changes rendered by the passage of time and the accumulation of experience, not by his accident."

They wrote so many great songs but In keeping with this being a book forum, Cemetry Gates by the Smiths. A dreaded sunny day So I meet you at the cemetery gates Keats and Yeats are on your side A dreaded sunny day So I meet you at the cemetery gates Keats and Yeats are on your side While Wilde is on mine So we go inside and we gravely read the stones All those people all those lives Where are they now? With the loves and hates And passions just like mine They were born And then they lived and then they died Seems so unfair And I want to cry You say: "ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn" And you claim these words as your own But I've read well, and I've heard them said A hundred times, maybe less, maybe more If you must write prose and poems The words you use should be your own Don't plagiarise or take "on loans" There's always someone, somewhere With a big nose, who knows And who trips you up and laughs When you fall Who'll trip you up and laugh When you fall You say: "ere long done do does did" Words which could only be your own And then you then produce the text From whence was ripped some dizzy wh0re, 1804 A dreaded sunny day So let's go where we're happy And I meet you at the cemetery gates Oh Keats and Yeats are on your side A dreaded sunny day So let's go where we're wanted And I meet you at the cemetery gates Keats and Yeats are on your side But you lose because Wilde is on mine

From top left to bottom right of my book shelves, History top, followed by A-Z by author of fiction, followed by a nice little astrophysics and Astronomy section I'm building up bottom right, then some biographies and lastly a few books people have leant me (that I will probably never read!) I used to have a huge CD and DVD collection but after the 'download revolution', they all got ebay'd off and now its all on a hard drive. I miss the connection you have with an album though, I enjoyed reading the inlays and the art work, the tactile experience of possessing it. I'm toying with buying back my favourite albums on vinyl (except the price has gone through the roof). Anyway I'm not going down the kindle route with books that was my point

A Clockwork Orange is a great novel although it takes a few pages to get to grips with the language, the film is a classic as well! After many years of suffering CBeebies I find it good aversion therapy to having more kids!

Anything with a picture of a distressed child on the front entitled something like 'Daddy Please No' or "Betrayal". I do understand why people want to tell their story but after a 'child called it' (I think) there was just a deluge of them hitting the best seller list in ASDA. My Mum has read a loads of them, maybe one or two but I don't understand why you would continually choose to read something so upsetting! Thats not meant to offend btw, thats just a personal view, I think its the way they are marketed with the obligatory little child on the front holding a teddy bear, there is something I just find unsettling about it.

I've left my copy of Voyage on the bus this morning, what a numpty I'd got about 200 pages in and really getting into it, they'd just left Earth's gravitational orbit too. Duh, I'll have to buy another copy...

I wouldn't say its fantasy as such, its just narated in the third person by Death/grim reaper but the story itself that 'Death' tells is set very much in reality. Its a great book, but is most defintiely very moving!

I read Super-Cannes recently which is sort of a companion to Cocaine Nights which is quite acclaimed. It was a good fast paced thriller, if a little amoral so not for the faint hearted! So I'll read Cocaine Nights at some point too, (again always reading books in the wrong order!). So I'm just discovering him too at the moment Kylie, I know he is very highly rated and the band Joy Division (who I really like) wrote a song called atrocity exhibition after the lead singer read the book so thats a good enough recommendation for me!