Abcinthia

I am here, mainly just lurking and editing my reading list. I've been a bit busy and had various internet/laptop problems. I liked The Man Who was Thursday. I read it very quickly because it was gripping although the ending threw me a bit and I had to re-read it.

I've just finished book 63. I've not been updating as I've been having internet problems and it's been crashing loads (but it's sorted now). I'll do some reviews in the next couple of days hopefully. 53. The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K. Chesterton 54. The Devotion Of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino 55. Into The Darkest Corner - Elizabeth Haynes 56. Shiver - Maggie Stiefvater 57. Wizard And Glass - Stephen King 58. Forbidden Fruit - From The Letters Of Abelard And Heloise 59. Half Of The Human Race - Anthony Quinn 60. Pure - Andrew Miller 61. The Eaten Heart: Unlikely Tales Of Love - Giovanni Boccaccio 62. Of Mistresses, Tigresses And Other Conquests - Giacomo Casanova 63. The Road - Cormac McCarthy I really enjoyed The Road. I had only the vaguest idea of what it would be about (I haven't seen the film and the book didn't have a blurb, just reviews) but I was hooked on the plot and wanting to know what would become of The Man and The Boy. I was so worried for them and their struggle. The ending was unexpected.

52. Doomed Love - Virgil Doomed Love, Penguin Great Loves book no. 1, is the first 4 books of Virgil's Aeneid. It tells the story of the fall of Troy from Aeneas and of the tragedy of Dido. I really enjoyed it and hope to one day read the Aeneid.

Currently I have about 60-70 books. Hopefully I'll cut that down soon.

I started it earlier today and so far, I'm loving it. The riddle battle is such a good idea. I've been trying to work out the answer before reading on to what Blaine answers I also started Doomed Love by Virgil this afternoon, which is the first 4 chapters of the Aeneid. It's part of the Great Loves Collection by Penguin; there are 20 books which are short novels, short story collections, parts of essays or selected bits of an author's work all relating to different types of love. It's RRP is £90 but I managed to find the entire set (brand new) for £9.99 so I am very pleased!

50. The Waste Lands - Stephen King Oh this book was brilliant. Definitely my favourite of the Dark Tower series so far. I've been on the edge of my seat for most of the book and now I'm itching to start reading Wizard and Glass because The Waste Lands finishes with such a nail-biting cliffhanger. 5/5 51. The Hound Of Death - Agatha Christie This was a collection of short stories by Agatha Christie and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Nearly all of them ended in a way I did not expect and were all delightful. I'm fast becoming a massive Christie fan. My only problem is that a couple of them felt a tiny bit rushed towards the end or the ending was very abrupt. 4/5

I've not read Still Missing. I really wanted to like Never Knowing because it was an interesting idea for a plot but in my opinion, it would have been better without her daughter in it. She is so rude and spoilt and it got to the point that everytime she was there, she was just throwing tantrums and the main character thinking "I wonder if being a serial killer is genetic. My daughter has bad behaviour so she could be a serial killer?" The other characters aren't great but I could live with their flaws. It was written as sessions from a psychiatrist's office who the main character is seeing so all you know about the other characters is what she tells the psychiatrist.

48. Never Knowing - Chevy Stevens (abandoned) I could not bear to finish this book. I got 2/3rds of the way in and had to give up. All the characters are so pathetic, boring and obnoxious and ruined what might have been an interesting plot (adoptive woman descovers her mother is the only victim of a serial killer to get away. Her father is the serial killer). The main character's daughter is the main reason for giving up though. She is 6 years old and is the most obnoxious, rude and downright unpleasant child I have ever come across (in literature, tv, films and real life). All the scenes with her in them play out like this: Daughter gets really really angry because she cannot have waffles for dinner or has to pick one present to buy some kid for their birthday. Daughter throws a MASSIVE tantrum. Daughter then kicks things or throws books at dogs. Mother cries and vaguely tells daughter off then gives into her every desire. But I suppose if the author had given the mother the ability to say "No" and to discipline her child, she wouldn't have been able to write umpteen pages on serial killer's genetics. 0/5

Oooo this sounds really interesting!! I've read: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells

I love Anne of Green Gables. That and Heidi were two of the most read books of my childhood. I've started The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Waste Lands by Stephen King.

I finished 2 books this afternoon: 44. The Drawing Of Three - Stephen King This is the second book in The Dark Tower book and continues in Roland's quest to The Dark Tower. In this book he was to draw 3 people who will help him on his quest. To do so, he has to enter through doorways into America (Roland lives in another world but not too disimiliar to our own). I really enjoyed reading it; it was a page turner and I cannot wait to start the next book. 4/5 45. I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb This book is about identitcal twin boys. One of whom has paranoid schizophrenia and the other who is just trying to fight for the brother he loves but also find himself. At times I felt that there was too much repetition and long-winded dialogue. I can see why the author did this but at over 900 pages long, I just felt it would have been just as powerful if parts of it were condensed slightly. 4/5

I haven't yet seen the film! Last time I saw it was on TV it was on really late at night and I just couldn't stay awake late enough. Hehehe yes. Hopefully I'll manage to last a while before I buy anything else!

I'm working my way through This Much I Know Is True. I'm about 1/3 of the way through. I'm about 2/3 of the way through Dark Tower number 2, The Drawing Of Three.

I've only ever read The Boys From Brazil but I've wanted to read The Stepford Wives and Rosemary's Baby for ages. And thanks everyone! I was pretty impressed that I got them all so cheap. I'm not going to buy any new books for a while though!!!!

Ordered some books today! A Kiss Before Dying - Ira Levin The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin Shakespeare's Champion - Charlaine Harris Shakespeare's Landlord - Charlaine Harris Shakespeare's Counselor - Charlaine Harris Shakespeare's Trophy - Charlaine Harris Shakespeare's Christmas - Charlaine Harris Bodily Secrets - William Trevor The Women Who Got Away - John Updike Eros Unbound - Anais Nin Magnetism - F.Scott Fitzgerald The Seducer's Diary - Soren Kierkegaard Cures for Love - Stendhal Forbidden Fruit - From the Letters of Abelard & Heloise A Mere Interlude - Thomas Hardy Mary - Vladmir Nabokov Deviant Love - Sigmund Freud Doomed Love - Virgil First Love - Ivan Turgenev The Virgin and the Gypsy - D.H. Lawrence The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy Of Mistresses, Tigresses & Other Conquests - Giacomo Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan The Eaten Heart - Unlikely Tales of Love - Giovanni Boccaccio Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin A Russian Affair - Anton Chekhov Something Childish but Very Natural - Katherine Mansfield The Last Day Of A Condemned Man - Victor Hugo Peter Schlemihl - Adelbert Von Chamisso The Haunted House - Charles Dickens Notes From The Undergound - Fyodor Dostoevsky The Good Soldier - Ford Maddox Ford The Devil's Elixirs - E.T.A Hoffmann A Strange Manuscript Found In A Copper Cylinder - James De Mille The Sorrows Of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Monk And The Hangman's Daughter - Ambrose Bierce The Black Spider - Jeremias Gotthelf All of them cost me £30! And then I discovered I have won Lucky Break by Esther Freud! I'm going to have a busy time getting through all these book

I ordered 38 books for £30 today. And then discocvered I had won another book! So 39 books arriving next week to join the tons of books I already have to read!

I just finsiehd The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse. It wasn't a very long book. About to start I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb.

Finished Destination Unknown and Perdita today. Started The Winter Ghosts.

1. Did you grow up in a book-loving household, and did your parents read to you? Pick a favourite book from your childhood, and tell us about it. Both my parents read but my mum read A LOT more than my dad. My mum has hundreds of books and reads at a really fast speed (which I've inherited as well). I'm going to pick The Stone Cage. It is a re-telling of the story of Rapunzel through the eyes of the witch's familliars. It is an out of print book but my mum had a copy and I adored reading it. My boyfriend managed to find me a copy a few years back and I hope one day my daughter will enjoy it too. 2. What was one of the first 'grown-up' books that you really enjoyed? Carrie by Stephen King. I read it when I was about 12 and I loved it. I read it in one afternoon because I was so hooked and couldn't put it down. 3. Pick a favourite book that you read in early adulthood - especially if it's one which helped set you off in a certain direction in life. Probably The Bell Jar. I love that book. I don't know if it's set me off in a certain direction in life. 4. What's one of your favourite books that you've found in the last five years, and has belonging to the Book Club Forum changed your reading habits? There's been so many. Maybe Rebecca. BCF has encouraged me to give reviews of books. Though I do not review every book I read, I try to give reviews for most. 5. Finally - a guilty pleasure, or a favourite that might surprise people! Mog The Forgetful Cat. Loved it since I was a child. I even named one of my cats Mog.

Hello and welcome!

Of course you can jump in on my thread I'll look for them the next time I'm in the library.

Just about to start The Drawing Of The Three by Stephen King.

39. The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief. Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world. When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance–their magnum opus–whether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what’s ultimately more important: their family or their art. I didn't like this book but I didn't dislike the book either. I think the best review I can give it is that I wanted to love this book but just could not. I could not love the quirky family (the type that only really seems to exist in books and on TV, never in real life). I could not love the plot, which at times felt almost forced. I didn't find it "funny, smart, ingenious, moving, all together great" (Nick Hornby from the book cover). It's so forgettable. I thought about it whilst reading it but in the weeks and months from now I probably wouldn't be able to recall any of the characters or the plot. 1.5/5

38. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie My first Agatha Christie novel but hopefully not my last! I thoroughly enjoyed The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The plot was great (I never saw the ending coming then had to go back and re-read some paragraphs. If someone had told me when I was about halfway through the book who had killed Roger Ackroyd, I would never have believed them) and the characters were so vivid and realistic. I loved everything about it. 5/5