Lucybird
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Posts posted by Lucybird
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Yes, that was pretty much the only thing working for it...
I finished Black Swan Green and started reading Coffee at Luke's.
Is Coffee at Luke's Gilmore Girl relaed, or is it just a coincidence?
Started Life after Life today, seems good so far.
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2,227 QI Facts to Knock Your Socks Off
Synopsis (from amazon)
QI is the smartest comedy show on British television, but few people know that we're also a major legal hit in Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Africa and an illegal one on BitTorrent. We also write books and newspaper columns; run a thriving website, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed; and produce an iPhone App and a sister Radio 4 programme. At the core of what we do is the astonishing fact - painstakingly researched and distilled to a brilliant and shocking clarity. In Einstein's words: 'Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.'
Did you know that: cows moo in regional accents; the entire internet weighs less than a grain of sand; the dialling code from Britain to Russia is 007; potatoes have more chromosomes than human beings; the London Underground has made more money from its famous map than it has from running trains; Tintin is called Tantan in Japanese because TinTin is pronounced 'Chin chin' and means penis; the water in the mouth of a blue whale weighs more than its body; Scotland has twice as many pandas as Conservative MPs; Saddam's bunker was designed by the grandson of the woman who built Hitler's bunker; Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, it is explicitly illegal in Britain to use a machinegun to kill a hedgehog.
1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off will make you look at the universe (and your socks) in an alarming new way.
Review
This is going to be quite a quick review because I don't really have much to say.
Aswith the other QI books I have read this book is full of interesting facts. It's immensely quotable and I did tweet quite a few facts whilst I was reading it. Unfortunately some of the facts repeated what had been on the TV show, and I think the majority of QI readers are probably also QI watchers.
I read this on kindle but I think it's probably better as a paper book, simply because it's easier to dip in and out of a paper book. On a kindle you really have to read cover to cover which didn't work well for a book which is basically a long list of facts.
3.5/5 -
I loved both the book and the film of Life of Pi, the film is actually pretty faithful to the book, although it had been several years since I read the book when I saw the film.
As for the island
When I first read Life of Pi I thought the island showed that actually the first story was true, just unbelieveable. Now I think maybe it's there for hope. It makes it easier to believe the 'nice' story
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Personally, I think we're all doing very well to stimulate the economy through the selfless act of book buying
I have started Chocolat by Joanne Harris today, because it needs to go back to the library, and because I'm still in the "needing something light" phase following Dangerous Liaisons.
I love Chocolat, only problem is the descriptions of chocolate make me want it!
I've finally finished a book! i finished Life of Pi yesterday and have finally started Dangerous Liasons
What did you think of Life of Pi?
and which ending do you think is 'true'?
I finished The Snow Child today. I enjoyed it but it was a bit slow to start then ended too soon! I'm hoping to start Kate Atkinson's new one, Life After Life, next which I have an advance kindle copy of.
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Thanks for the welcome! Everybody seems rather spiffing!
Yes...I just figured that the other version wouldn't really be appropriate for a username lol.
Yep, tumblr is my go to! Though, I spend far too much time on there than I really should!
<3333 Heathcliff, and have done since my first reading of WH
Benedict* lol
On tumblr there is a scale of attractiveness for Benedict Cumberbatch ranging from not attractive...attractive in sherlock, and then at the other end 'so attractive you get angry looking at him', and I am at that end of the spectrum hahaha. I just find him wildly attractive, and unf! The new Star Trek film is going to have me weeping at his beauty. Oh man, I'm such a Cumberbabe.
Lol not sure where I got Bernard from!
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Oh you've got some good things on your lst. Life of Pi, Midnight's Children, The Hobbit.
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Star, first time I almost gave up on book 1, it took too long to get going. Now I've read it so many times I've lost count- but I still skip the first few chapters, it's probably my least favourite (although OOTP is rather dragged out, by then I just devoured any Potter book). The later ones are I think generally darker and more adult, although I think Chamber of Secrets is pretty dark myself.
My favourites are Chamber of Secrets and Half-Blood Prince, if you do read the rest you might be able to work out why.Without spoiling, that's always the danger with that kind of plot. Fortunately I've only read it the once, and am unlikely to ever re-read it, so it's still my fave
use the spoiler tags! -
Hia. I love Bernard Cumberbatch in Sherlock, but strangeky don't find him as attractive elsewhere
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I get a voucher towards my glasses, but they still cost me over £200 last time, I have a very high prescription.
Not much happening here really, went to get myself waxed today...ouch!
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I'm focussing on my dissertation this month, so I'm expecting to read Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy a couple of times *yay*
Actually, I really do adore these books.
I read them when I was in college, really great books. I would re-visit them but my TBR pile is growing faster than I can read!
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Hmm this sounds interesting but you didn't think the book was brilliant, I might buy one of his other novels, first. Any particular one you recommend? Nicely written review, btw
.I've read High Fidelity and About a Boy. I prefered High Fidelity, but About a Boy is a bt 'meatier'. The first Hornby I read though was a non-fiction, The Complete Polysyllabic (sp?) Spree, which added so much to my wishlist!
I read A Long Way Down with my reading group a couple of years ago, and I felt pretty much the same as you did, Lucybird. Although I remember the book generally, I can only actually remember details of one of the characters, so it obviously didn't make that much of an impression on me!
I'm just hoping that the film Hornby's aren't the only good ones. I have heard very mixed reviews of Juliet, Naked but not much about his others.
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One I want to get Lucy 'Peaches' and 'Snow' waiting on my shelf TBR.
Hope you enjoy Jean Brodie...have you seen the film with Maggie Smith...v.g.
Well I should have read 3 books in February as I was on a roll with my reading as it were, but reading Mockingjay and finding it a bit of a slog. Should I have been able to whizz through it? I will finish it I guess, eventually.
I thought you might be one interested in Peaches, Janet. I think you'd like The Snow Child too, it's very atmospheric.
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Usually the one I'm reading is in the kitchen (unless I'm reading it of course!). I have 2 white Billy bookcases in my room just for my books (one is full and the other is getting there!). Have a few spotted around the house too. We have 2 bookcases in the living room, 2 in the dining room, 2 and some shelves in my sister's room, one in my parent's room, and one on the landing. The landing one if the other main one where I keep my books.
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Finally finished The Specimen on Thursday, have been reading it since December, seeing as I usually get through a couple of books a week that's pretty bad! Finished the QI Facts book on Friday too which was rather interesting, but I'm always a little disppointed on how many facts from the show are repreated in the QI books.
Started Peaches for Monsieur le Cure on paper on Friday and The Snow Child on kindle. Not read much of the first yet but enjoying the second after a slow start.
I'm new here ., i hope you can help me if i have some question. Thanks
Welcome Amee. I'm sure we'll do our best. What are you reading at the moment?
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Birthday cake. My sister was home this weekend and it was her birthday last weekend so my Mum made cake
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A Long Way Down- Nick Hornby
Synopsis (from Amazon)
'Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block?'
For disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp the answer's pretty simple: he has, in his own words, 'pissed his life away'. And on New Year's Eve he's going to end it all . . . but not, as it happens, alone. Because first single-mum Maureen, then eighteen-year-old Jess and lastly American rock-god JJ turn up and crash Martin's private party. They've stolen his idea - but brought their own reasons.
Yet it's hard to jump when you've got an audience queuing impatiently behind you. A few heated words and some slices if cold pizza later and these four strangers are suddenly allies. But is their unlikely friendship a good enough reason to carry on living?
Review.
Previous novels which I've read by Nick Hornby have both been books where I'vd seen the films previously, I'm not entirely sure what effect this has had on my reading of them, I enjoyed both so I certainly wouldn't say it had a negative impact but it did give me some expectations.
I've been meaning to read some other of his novels for some time but was unsure where to go. A Long Way Down probably wouldn't have been my first choice except that it was in the 12 days of kindle deals after Christmas so it seemed sensible.
Why wouldn't I have gone with A Long Way Down? Well, my experience with funny suicide novels is not the best. I didn't get on well with A Spot of Bother, and I wasn't that enamoured with The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim either, but I did enjoy A Matter of Death and Life. I did know though that it's Nick Hornby's forte to manage to write light novels about serious subjects.
Well as far as funny suicide novels go it was pretty good. It did make me laugh, sometimes to the point that I felt a little bad about laughing, it was absurd but maybe believable. However I did feel it skimped a bit on the emotion. I never felt particularly attached to the characters, or especially emphatic- although my empathy did grow a little as I got to know them better.
There was only one character that I really felt had a halfway decent reason to want to commit suicide, but strangely she was also the one who I wanted to succeed the least.
3/5 -
Some of the best books I read last year were by an indie author (Scott Stabile) on kindle. They are short stories about food an relationships. Each 'book' contains 2 stories and they're only 77p each
Truffle Fries and A Little Taste of Chocolate
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Three of the books I ordered were cancelled - as they're having trouble importing them.
So, I'll have to wait a while before I read Dangerous Liaisons, The Lions of Al-Rassan and Kafka on The Shore.
Kafka on the Shore is my favourite Murakami, I hope you enjoy it.
I finished 1227 QI facts as I got it for 20p from amazon and enjoyed that.
I started this today, interesting so far but I think it's more of a book to dip in to.
I never read this book despite reading the first two. I heard it was depressing.
It's a good book, but I liked the first best. It sort of has a depressing side but mainly I wouldn't call it depressing. No more so than dystopian fiction normally is anyway.
Today I finished Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down. It was good but not as good as I expect from Hornby. Haven't written my review yet, hopefully tomorrow.
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Irv's Odyssey: Seeking the Way Home
Disclaimer: I received this book free of charge from the author in return for an honest review.
Irv’s Odyssey: Seeking the Way Home is the third of the Irv’s Odyssey trilogy. Read my reviews of the previous books on my blog
Synopsis (from amazon)
Food service and Irving Podolsky are NOT friends. Still, Irv rises to the level of waiter in the Fairmont Hotel. What about his budding film career, making the world a better place and finding a nice Jewish chick? Well, instead, Irv meets an exotic older girl from Germany. Could she be the one, Irv’s forever, but not-Jewish-at-all soul mate? Ben suggests she is. Ben is a drawling spirit voice channeled through a Puerto Rican pothead. And Ben knows all about Irv’s recent nocturnal fly-outs: those uncontrollable out-of-body trips that bring him to the Other Side where he encounters creepy crawlers in attack mode and goes back and forth in time and into his own future. These bizarre events are not dreams or fantasies. They are real. For as Irv finds out, magic and miracles do exist. And so does true love, if he can just convince his parents that it’s okay to marry a shiksa.
Review
This book was somewhat different from the first two and initially I wasn’t really sure about that. It started off with a much stronger spiritual element than the previous two (which had a spiritual element, but where it wasn’t the main bulk of the story). At this point I doubted somewhat if I would enjoy this book. Then Irv met Marianne and it suddenly switched over, rather than Irv’s spiritual life being the focus it became his, not personal life, exactly but his life in reality I suppose. When it was mainly spiritual there was still and element of day-to-day life, and when the focus was on his personal life there was still an element of spirituality but there was never really an equal balance.
Marianne didn’t like elements of Irv’s spiritual life and he agreed to give those elements up. When reading I found this a little contradictory to the plot of a spiritual journey. It was almost as if he had been trying to discover himself then just given up on the whole idea. However after thinking about it I think that actually his giving up elements of his spirituality was a part of finding it. His spirituality had been part of what had led him to where he was, and once he got there he needed to think about how to balance his spiritual and personal lives.
One thing about this book was that Marianne’s habit of not finishing her sentences really grated on me, especially when I wasn’t yet used to it. I did like her as a character but I really thought at one point that I might have to give up just because of it.
I do think this is probably my favourite of the series, but it was the hardest to read.
3/5
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I've just been offered a job at a care home - 38.5 hours a week,
£6.35 per hour - so I probably won't manage to read as quickly as I have
been doing! Though I've not actually been given a start date yet.
Congratulations! I hope you enjoy your new job.
Not much happening here really had a bit of a rubbish driving lesson yesterday. Was really annoyed at myself because I know I can do better and I've just rebooked my test so I have a date to be aimming for now.
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Found out over the weekend that I get to be a World Book Night giver. Super excited, I've never done it before. I'm giving away The Eyre Affair.
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I'm listening to radio based on The Arctic Monkeys on Spotify. At the moment it's Franz Ferdinand- The Dark of the Matinée
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The Specimen is taking weeks and weeks to read. Oh my goodness I may never finish! I am not ready to give up on it though, am so close to the end and do want to know what will happen (even if I think I can guess).
Started an easy read on the kindle, Seeking the Way Home- Irving H. Podolsky. It's a review request and the third in the series so I know it won't be too much next to The Specimen.
In a move that is bound to please Kylie, I've been book shopping again.
The haul this week is:
The Stag and Hen Weekend, by Mike Gayle
Doctor Who: Shada, by Gareth Roberts (from a story by Douglas Adams)
The Hunger Games Trilogy, by Suzanne Collins (only £4.50 in HMV!) and
Garden Bird Confidential, by Dominic Couzens (£4.99 in The Works, bought as an art reference).
Now I just need to read some of the buggers . . .
Ooh The Hunger Games. I resisted that for so long but when I started reading it I could not stop!
Less than 100 pages to go in The Siege by Helen Dunmore, this is the second of her books that i've read & really enjoyed. In fact i liked them so much that i couldn't resist buying 4 more of her books today
Counting the Stars
A Spell of Winter
House of Orphans
Mourning Ruby
Did you Know that there's a sequel to The Siege? It's called The Betrayal. It's been on my wishlist for some time, but I don't tend to buy things from my wishlist, I always get distracted by other books in the shop!
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The Woodcutter- Kate Danley
Synopsis (from amazon)
Deep within the Wood, a young woman lies dead. Not a mark on her body. No trace of her murderer. Only her chipped glass slippers hint at her identity.
The Woodcutter, keeper of the peace between the Twelve Kingdoms of Man and the Realm of the Faerie, must find the maiden’s killer before others share her fate. Guided by the wind and aided by three charmed axes won from the River God, the Woodcutter begins his hunt, searching for clues in the whispering dominions of the enchanted unknown.
But quickly he finds that one murdered maiden is not the only nefarious mystery afoot: one of Odin’s hellhounds has escaped, a sinister mansion appears where it shouldn’t, a pixie dust drug trade runs rampant, and more young girls go missing. Looming in the shadows is the malevolent, power-hungry queen, and she will stop at nothing to destroy the Twelve Kingdoms and annihilate the Royal Fae…unless the Woodcutter can outmaneuver her and save the gentle souls of the Wood.
Blending magic, heart-pounding suspense, and a dash of folklore, The Woodcutter is an extraordinary retelling of the realm of fairy tales.
Review
Well first off what the hell was this doing in the graphic novel section? Graphic novels do need t have pictures right?!
So the story itself. It was a pretty good premise. A blending of different fairytales gone wrong with the woodcutter (you know, the one who saved Red Riding Hood, because Princes aren’t always all that) having the job of fixing everything.
I’m not sure I can really say that the premise met up to its promises however. The beginning was rather good and got me interested but the
further I read through the story the more it seemed like Danley was trying too hard to fit in as many fairytale characters and creatures as she could and sometimes it didn’t really benefit the plot.I did like the woodcutter however, and especially the idea that he was more than he seemed, rather a guardian of the worlds which intersected in his wood than actually a simple woodcutter.
It was an easy read, and fairly entertaining, but I didn’t really think it was anything special.
3/5
What's Up in March?
in General Chat
Posted
Bree do let us know how the little one gets on in pre-school. It can be hard being away from Mummy for the first time but even the most upset kids calm down fairly quickly most of the time in my experience (I work in a nursery).
Not much happening here really. Had a week of late shifts and long shifts which was tiring. Shopping yeaterday for a jacket for a wedding I'm going to next weekend. Mother's Day today of course so me and Dad cooked dinner.