Bobblybear's Book List - 2013

[bobblybear]

I'm going to set myself a loose goal of 52 books this year. I really need to get through my TBR pile. I purchased upwards of 80 books (I think, I'm actually too scared to count them) in 2012 but of those I probably haven't even read a quarter (again, too scared to count, but I know it's dismal )

 

I suppose I could set myself a limit of books to purchase in 2013, but not quite sure what is reasonable. One a month? Two a month? Or (god forbid) none until I get through my current haul? Nah, that's just cruel and unachievable. I'll settle for 2 a month, so a yearly limit of 24.

 

I found rating out of 10 quite difficult, so I'm going to somewhat simplify it and score out of 6. (I've pinched that idea from someone on here - sorry, can't remember exactly who, Willoyd maybe?)

 

My score of 1 - 5 will be based on the Goodreads system (thanks Frankie - pinched the idea from your blog), and the 6/6 will be for those rarities that are flawless:

 

1/6: I didn't like it

2/6: It was okay

3/6: I liked it

4/6: I really liked it

5/6: It was amazing

6/6: Simply outstanding - on my 'best of all time' list

 

I think in the past I've been too generous with my scoring, and I'm sure I rated too many books 10/10. I'm going to attempt to be a bit more critical this year.

 

Onwards and upwards!!!

Edited December 26, 2012 by bobblybear

[bobblybear]

Books Read This Year

January

PopCo - Scarlett Thomas
Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets - David Simon
The Drowning Pool - Syd Moore
Six Seconds - Rick Mofina

 

February

 

Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

Off With Their Heads: All the Cool Bits in British History - Martin Oliver

More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea - Tom Reynolds

Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano

We Bought A Zoo - Benjamin Mee

Small Steps - Louis Sachar

The Golden Acorn - Catherine Cooper

The Woman In Black - Susan Hill

 

March

 

Zombie Fallout - Mark Tufo

Dangerous Liasions - Pierre Choderlos (unfinished)

Playing it Safe: Crazy Stories from the World of Britain's Health and Safety Regulations - Alan Pearce

Instructions for a Heatwave - Maggie O'Farrell

Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

 

April

 

The Rats - James Herbert

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel (unfinished)

Human Remains - Elizabeth Haynes

The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste - Rose George

 

May

 

The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber

A 1950's Childhood: From Tin Baths to Bread and Dripping - Paul Feeney

 

June

 

Pure - Julianna Baggott

Worm - Mark Bowden (unfinished)

The Devil Wears Prada - Laura Weisberger

Now Then Lad: Tales of A Country Bobby - Mike Pannett

World War Z - Max Brooks

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend

Safe House - Chris Ewan

 

July

 

Hyperion - Dan Simmons

Summer - Edith Wharton

Plague - Lisa C Hinsley

The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt

 

August

 

While We're Far Apart - Lynn Austin

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

Case Histories - Kate Atkinson

NW- Zadie Smith (unfinished)

Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Maria Semple

Megacatastrophes! - David Darling & Dirk Schulze-Makuch

The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey

Tex - S.E. Hinton

The Tommyknockers - Stephen King

 

September

 

The Crime of Julian Wells - Thomas H Cook

Under The Dome - Stephen King

 

October

 

Walden on Wheels: On The Open Road From Debt To Freedom - Ken Ilgunas

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby

The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham

Divergent - Veronica Roth

Chicken, Mules, and Two Old Fools - Victoria Twead

Just Henry - Michelle Magorian

The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling

 

November

 

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

The Enemy - Charlie Higson

Want To Play? - PJ Tracy

 

December

 

The Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal - Mary Roach

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

Inferno - Dan Brown

Edited December 29, 2013 by bobblybear

[bobblybear]

Books Purchased This Year

The Happiness Trap: Stop Struggling, Start Living - Russ Harris
The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F. Hamilton
First and Only - Peter Flannery
The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste - Rose George
Incoming! Or Why We Should Stop Worrying and learn to Love the Meteorite - Ted Nield
Sworn Secret - Amanda Jennings
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea - Barbara Demick
The Lost Daughter - Diane Chamberlain
1493: How the Ecological Collision of Europe and the Americas Gave Rise to the Modern World - Charles C. Mann
Capital - John Lanchester
White Fang - Jack London
Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right Is Wrong - David Bradley
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Great Apes - Will Self

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason - Helen Fielding

Boneshaker - Cherie Priest

Dangerous Liasions - Pierre Choderlos (unfinished)

Playing it Safe: Crazy Stories from the World of Britain's Health and Safety Regulations - Alan Pearce

The Phoenix Conspiracy - Richard Sanders

The Woman In Black - Susan Hill

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides

Human Remains - Elizabeth Haynes

Instructions for a Heatwave - Maggie O'Farrell

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters - Richard Rumelt

World War Z - Max Brooks

Extinction Point - Paul Antony Jones

You Are Not So Smart: Why Your Memory is Mostly Fiction, Why You Have Too Many Friends On Facebook, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself - David McRaney

Z 2134 - Sean Platt and David W. Wright

The Distant Hours - Kate Morton

On Books and the Housing of Them - W E Gladstone

The Martian - Andy Weir

Born Liars: Why We Can't Live Without Deceit - Ian Leslie

The Korean War - Max Hastings

The Beach - Alex Garland

Flowertown - S G Redling

Kiss River - Diane Chamberlain

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

The Dog Stars - Peter Heller

The End of Your Life Book Club - Will Schwalbe

Au Revoir, Europe: What If Britain Left The EU? - David Charter

Summer - Edith Wharton

The Shining - Stephen King

Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Maria Semple

Walden on Wheels: On The Open Road From Debt To Freedom - Ken Ilgunas

The Uninvited - Liz Jensen

After Tomorrow - Gillian Cross

Bang! The Complete History of the Universe - Patrick Moore, Brian May, Chris Lintott

The Emergence of Judy Taylor - Angela Jackson

Divergent - Veronica Roth

The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford

And Still I Rise - Doreen Lawrence

Tex - S.E. Hinton

Under The Dome - Stephen King

The Great Tax Robbery: How Britain Became a Tax Haven for Fat Cats and Big Business - Richard Brooks

The Millionaire Next Door - Thomas J Stanley (unfinished)

Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut

Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd

The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham

The Crow Road - Iain Banks

Wild: A Journey From Lost To Found - Cheryl Strayed

QI The Book of the Dead - John Mitchinson, John Lloyd

Carrion Comfort - Dan Simmons

We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tells Us About The Universe - Marcus Chown

Misery - Stephen King

Pet Semetary - Stephen King

How Do We Fix This Mess? - Robert Peston

The Complete Soldier Son Trilogy - Robin Hobb

The Glass Guardian - Linda Gillard

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal - Mary Roach

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

Homeland: Carrie's Run - Andrew Kaplan

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness

Inferno - Dan Brown

Dark Eden - Chris Beckett

Stuffed and Starved: From Farm to Fork - Raj Patel

All Hell Let Loose: The World at War: 1939 - 1945 - Max Hastings

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Them: Adventures with Extremists - Jon Ronson

Edited December 29, 2013 by bobblybear

[bobblybear]

As I mentioned in my opening post, I've bought far too many books in 2012 and read far too few of them. Soooo....as I read my way through them, I'm going to highlight them red, and hopefully by the end of 2013 I will have worked my way through most of them.

Edit: I figure I may as well add books purchased prior to 2012 (mainly Kindle) and add those I haven't read yet. I'm sure there are many.


Books Purchased Last Year

Supersense - Bruce Hood
What's Wrong With Eating People - Peter Cave
The Little Friend - Donna Tartt
Written In Stone - Brian Switek
QI: The Book of General Ignorance - The Noticeably Stouter Edition - John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum - Mark Stevens
Off With Their Heads: All the Cool Bits in British History - Martin Oliver
Quantum - Manjit Kumar
The Golden Acorn: The Adventures of Jack Brenin - Catherine Cooper
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
Cursed: A Jack Nightingale Short Story - Stephen Leather
Fire and Ice (Liam Campbell #1) - Dana Stabenow
Compromised - Derek Keyte
QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance - John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
Small Steps - Louis Sachar
Mirage Men - Mark Pilkington
The Secret River - Kate Grenville
The Book of Human Skin - Michelle Lovric
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change - Stephen Covey
The Complete Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Worm: The Story of the First Digital War - Mark Bowden
The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition - Richard Dawkins
The Elephant Whisperer - Graham Spence and Anthony Lawrence
The Girl On The Wall - Jean Baggott
How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through puppyhood and beyond - Cesar Millan
The Key To Rebecca - Ken Follett
Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000 Miles Around Britain in a Vauxhall Astra - Ben Hatch
The Misremembered Man - Christina McKenna
Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers : And other odd events on the way to scientific discovery - Stephanie Pain
Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? - William Poundstone
The Making of Modern Britain - Andrew Marr
As The Crow Flies - Jeffrey Archer
The Happiness Equation: The Surprising Economics of Our Most Valuable Asset - Nick Powdthavee
Golden Lies - Barbara Freethy
Around the World in 80 Days Junior Edition - Jules Verne
Megacatastrophes! - David Darling & Dirk Schulze-Makuch
Mr. China - Tim Clissold
An Atlas of Impossible Longing - Anuradha Roy
We Bought a Zoo - Benjamin Mee
Daddy-Long-Legs - Jean Webster
The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan
Inflight Science: A Guide to the World from your Airplane Window - Brian Clegg
Requiem - Ken McClure
Night Waking - Sarah Moss
The World's Greatest Idea - John Farndon
The Etymologicon: A Circular Scroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language - Mark Forsyth
One Million Tiny Plays About Britain - Craig Taylor
Almost French: A New Life In Paris - Sarah Turnbull
A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness
The Eleventh Commandment - Jeffrey Archer
Revenge of the Tide - Elizabeth Haynes
Only Time Will Tell - Jeffrey Archer
Zombie Fallout - Mark Tufo
The First Time: The True Tales of Virginity Lost and Found - Kate Monro
Ash - James Herbert
Sarah Thornhill - Kate Grenville
VIII - H M Castor
The Joy of Sin: The Psychology of the Seven Deadly Sins - Simon Laham
The Heat of the Sun - David Rain
The Dummy Line - Bobby Cole
The Hills is Lonely - Lillian Beckwith
The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals - Wendy Jones
The Lewis Man - Peter May
Winter of the World - Ken Follet
Yesterday's Gone: Season Two - Sean Platt and David Wright
Death and the Devil - Frank Schatzing
Pure - Julianna Baggott
The Rats - James Herbert
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend
Times Echo - Pamela Hartshorne
Trojan Horse - Mark Russinovich
How Not To Worry: The Remarkable Truth of How a Small Change Can Help You Stress Less and Enjoy Life More - Paul McGee
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
The Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson
The Dead Women of Juarez - Sam Hawken
Want to Play - P J Tracy
1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off - John Lloyd, John Mitchinson
Safe House - Chris Ewen
Plague - Lisa C Hinsley
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Final Winter: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel - Iain Rob Wright
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Devil Wears Prada - Laura Weisberger
The Grass Is Singing - Doris Lessing
Picture Perfect - Jodi Picoult
The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through The Lost Words of the English Language - Mark Forsyth
The History of the World In Bite-Sized Chunks - Emma Marriott
The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
Company of Liars - Karen Maitland
The English Monster - Lloyd Shepherd
Dark Lord: The Teenage Years - Jamie Thomson
Reamde - Neal Stephenson
The Millenium Trilogy - Stieg Larsson
The Invisible Ones - Stef Penney
A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
A History of 20th Century Britain - Andrew Marr
A 1950's Childhood: From Tin Baths to Bread and Dripping - Paul Feeney
Bridget Jones's Diary: A Novel - Helen Fielding
The Mess We're In: Why Politicians Can't Fix Financial Crises - Guy Fraser-Sampson
Yesterday's Country Customs: A History of English Folk Traditions - Hentry Buckton
The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt
Bright Young Things - Scarlett Thomas
The Enemy - Charlie Higson
The Crime of Julian Wells - Thomas H Cook
A 1960's Childhood: From Thunderbirds to Beatlemania - Paul Feeney
Viva La Revolution!: The Story of People Power in 30 Revolutions - Derry Nairn



Books Purchased Pre-2012

PopCo - Scarlett Thomas
The Observations - Jane Harris
The Fire Gospel (Myths) - Michel Faber
Dracula: A Mystery Story - Bram Stoker
Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson
CK - 12 Biology 1 - Honors
CK - 12 Earth Science Honors for Middle School
More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea - Tom Reynolds
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving
Grimm's Fairy Stories - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets - David Simon
Wojtek the Bear: Polish War Hero - Aileen Orr
Killing the Messenger - Christopher Wallace
Now then Lad: Tales of a Country Bobby - Mike Pannett
A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road - Christopher Aslan Alexander
Guiness World Records: 2012
The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance - Nessa Carey
Introducing Neurolinguistic Programming - Neil Shah
Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? - New Scientist
Just Henry - Michelle Magorian
Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna
Sapper Martin - Richard van Emden
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
While We're Far Apart - Lynn Austin
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
The Drowning Pool - Syd Moore
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Pets in a Pickle - Malcolm Westerman
Six Seconds - Rick Mofina
The Last Man - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly
50 Facts That Should Change The World - Jessica Williams
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - Charles Mackay
Sinema: The Northumberland Massacre - Rod Glenn
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Reluctant Traveler - Bill Lumley
The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
Chicken, Mules, and Two Old Fools - Victoria Twead
Diary of a Nobody - George Grossmith
Origin - Randolph Lalonde

Edited December 18, 2013 by bobblybear

[willoyd]

I found rating out of 10 quite difficult, so I'm going to somewhat simplify it and score out of 6. (I've pinched that idea from someone on here - sorry, can't remember exactly who, Willoyd maybe?)

 

Yes, me! I'll be interested to see how you get on with it. Here's to some great reading in 2013!

[Nollaig]

There are a good few books on there I've either read or have to read (I have Quantum by Manjit Kumar on my TBR, too!)

 

I've read PopCo by Scarlett Thomas - I wasn't very keen on it, but I loved another one of her books, The End Of Mr. Y. I'd definitely recommend it if you haven't read it already.

 

Happy reading in 2013!

[bobblybear]

Yes, me! I'll be interested to see how you get on with it. Here's to some great reading in 2013!

 

Thanks, and to you. I thought it was you as you were the only one I could find who scored out of 6. But I couldn't find the recent post you did where you explained the reasoning behind it, so I wasn't sure.

 

There are a good few books on there I've either read or have to read (I have Quantum by Manjit Kumar on my TBR, too!)

 

I've read PopCo by Scarlett Thomas - I wasn't very keen on it, but I loved another one of her books, The End Of Mr. Y. I'd definitely recommend it if you haven't read it already.

 

Happy reading in 2013!

 

Thanks Nollaig. Unfortunately for the majority of books on my TBR list, I can't specifically remember anything about them except that I must have either been recommended them, or really liked the blurb about them. I think that's going to make it very hard deciding which ones to read first. Thanks for the recommendation of The End of Mr. Y. I've added it to my wishlist.

 

Happy reading to you to!

[willoyd]

There are a good few books on there I've either read or have to read (I have Quantum by Manjit Kumar on my TBR, too!)

 

Me too! (Agree about the TBR list too!).

[~Andrea~]

 

The Little Friend - Donna Tartt

Quantum - Manjit Kumar

Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome

 

I loved all of these. I'll be interested to read your thoughts on them.

[Devi]

Oooooh so many books I would like to read in your lists!

 

Happy reading in 2013! I'll be following your reading journey!

 

 

The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan - This title alone has me intrigued.

Edited December 31, 2012 by Devi

[chesilbeach]

I've read a few on your TBR, but nice to see you have both of these to read:

 

 

The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan

The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals - Wendy Jones

 

I loved both of them, and interesting that they have a similar setting and feel to them. I lent them both to one of my friends and she adored them too, and has since been giving them away as Christmas presents to her friends. Hope you enjoy them too.

 

Happy reading in 2013!

[Nollaig]

The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan

The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals - Wendy Jones

 

I loved both of them, and interesting that they have a similar setting and feel to them.

 

Ooh, really? I love the sound of the Strachan one, though I haven't read it yet. I'll have to look up that other one.

[Brian.]

Of the books on your TBR 2 things jumped out at me, The Millennium Trilogy and The Dead Women of Juarez. I found The Millennium Trilogy a great series of books and it's a huge shame that no others will be coming. The Dead Women of Juarez was ok if not spectacular.

 

Best of luck for 2013.

[chaliepud]

How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through puppyhood and beyond - Cesar Millan

 

I'm not a fan of many of Cesar's methods, try You Tubing him and Alan Titchmarsh for a taster of what I mean... Would highly recommend Sheila Booth's Purely Positive Training if you are able to get hold of a copy, I've had mine about 10 years and it is one of my favourite dog training books, along with The Perfect Puppy by Gwen Bailey but I think you're past that stage with Reuben now..

 

A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness

 

Oh yes!!!

 

The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey

 

Fantastic!

 

The Invisible Ones - Stef Penney

 

I must move this to the top of my wish list, I hope it's as good as A Tenderness of Wolves..

 

Have a fantastic 2013 BB!

[bobblybear]

Of the books on your TBR 2 things jumped out at me, The Millennium Trilogy and The Dead Women of Juarez. I found The Millennium Trilogy a great series of books and it's a huge shame that no others will be coming. The Dead Women of Juarez was ok if not spectacular.

 

I read the first two books of the Millenium Trilogy but wasn't overly impressed. However as they were so cheap I thought I should get them. I plan on re-reading them at some point to see if I was missing something. I do remember finding the plot from the first one very detailed and well planned, but Lisbeth Salander didn't strike me as a believable character. She was more of a caricature rather than someone I could relate to.

 

The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan - This title alone has me intrigued.

 

Happy reading to you this year, too! If I recall correctly, it was a Kindle Daily Deal. I thought it sounded interesting, but I haven't actually gone back and read the blurb since I bought it so I have no idea what it's about.

 

The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan

The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals - Wendy Jones

 

I loved both of them, and interesting that they have a similar setting and feel to them. I lent them both to one of my friends and she adored them too, and has since been giving them away as Christmas presents to her friends. Hope you enjoy them too.

 

Happy reading in 2013!

 

Thanks chesilbeach! Thanks for the endorsement of these books - perhaps I shall bump them up my TBR list. They certainly have interesting titles, and I've head high praise for the Wendy Jones one.

 

All the best for your reading in 2013.

 

How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through puppyhood and beyond - Cesar Millan

 

I'm not a fan of many of Cesar's methods, try You Tubing him and Alan Titchmarsh for a taster of what I mean... Would highly recommend Sheila Booth's Purely Positive Training if you are able to get hold of a copy, I've had mine about 10 years and it is one of my favourite dog training books, along with The Perfect Puppy by Gwen Bailey but I think you're past that stage with Reuben now..

 

I don't mind Cesar Millan; I know he gets a lot of flak and people deem some of his methods questionable, but I do think other parts of his training (from what I've seen on TV) are quite effective. I think you almost have to take different parts of various authors and use a bit of your own judgement as well. I read one of Ian Dunbar's books about raising a puppy - my goodness, it was so depressing. At one point, he said something along the lines of your puppy will end up in a coffin if he isn't raised correctly!! It was unnecessarily harsh! I've got The Perfect Puppy - that's the main one we used when training Reuben, and it's so good I've lent it out to a few people who have been able to use it for training their grown dogs.

 

A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness

 

Oh yes!!!

 

The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey

 

Fantastic!

 

The Invisible Ones - Stef Penney

 

I must move this to the top of my wish list, I hope it's as good as A Tenderness of Wolves..

 

Have a fantastic 2013 BB!

 

I'm really looking forward to these three. I've read great things about the first two, and I'm keen on The Invisible Ones because I loved The Tenderness of Wolves so much. Her books tend to divide opinion quite strongly, but that can only be a good thing, eh?

 

Hope you have a great 2013, Chaliepud!

[bobblybear]

Me too! (Agree about the TBR list too!).

I loved all of these. I'll be interested to read your thoughts on them.

 

Re: Quantum by Manjit Kumar, it looks like it is very highly rated, which hopefully means it's accessible for the average person. I do like reading science books, but sometimes they can be so difficult to understand it takes any enjoyment out of it!

[willoyd]

Re: Quantum by Manjit Kumar, it looks like it is very highly rated, which hopefully means it's accessible for the average person. I do like reading science books, but sometimes they can be so difficult to understand it takes any enjoyment out of it!

Currently in the Twelve Days of Kindle sale - around £1.

[bobblybear]

^ Yeah, it was in last years 12 Day of Kindle sale as well. In fact I've noticed a couple that have been repeated like that.

[frankie]

Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum - Mark Stevens

 

I'm jealous you have this, I really need to go and order a copy! I hope you enjoy

 

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend

The Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby

Bridget Jones's Diary: A Novel - Helen Fielding

Dracula: A Mystery Story - Bram Stoker

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

 

These are all great novel, although in very different ways. I hope you have a really great reading year in 2013, bobblybear!

[Nollaig]

Re: Quantum by Manjit Kumar, it looks like it is very highly rated, which hopefully means it's accessible for the average person. I do like reading science books, but sometimes they can be so difficult to understand it takes any enjoyment out of it!

 

I started reading it last year and had to stop because I just wasn't in the right frame of mind. It's quite dense (at the beginning, anyway) in the sense that it's name-dropping important names, events, discoveries and relations all over the shop and you do need to concentrate to really absorb the information - but it's definitely not difficult to understand, just a bit dense. I don't know about the rest of the book, though

 

 

I'm jealous you have this, I really need to go and order a copy! I hope you enjoy

 

I have that on my laptop Kindle, pretty sure I got it for free last year. I started reading it but never finished it (through no fault of the book's). I wonder would the file load on my Kobo...

[Kylie]

Ooh, you have loads of great books there, Bobblybear! Well, I have many of them on my wishlist/TBR pile, so I assume they will be great. I recently added The Happiness Trap to my own wishlist.

 

The Happiness Equation sounds pretty interesting, and I would like to read Kate Grenville's books, particularly because they're set during a period of Australia's history that I love reading about, and they're set quite close to where I live (well, the first one is; I'm not sure about the others).

[bobblybear]

I hope they're great, as I'm determined to get through a lot of them this year instead of buying new ones.

 

I've just had to look up those two books on Happiness as I didn't realise I even owned them, but clearly I do. I don't normally read self-help, but The Happiness Trap seems to have many positive reviews that there must be something in it! The Happiness Equation sounds very interesting as well! I must have picked that up as a Daily Deal maybe. Sooooo many books, it's very daunting!

[bobblybear]

PopCo - Scarlett Thomas

 

Alice Butler is a twenty-something girl working in the Ideation and Design department at PopCo, a large toy manufacturer. She considers herself a bit of a loner at PopCo, an “outsider despite being firmly on the inside” and shies away from any form of popularity. PopCo staff are sent to Hare Hall in Dartmoor for a conference and Alice (among others) is selected by PopCo management to join a select group of staff to create a product which will enable them to get a foothold in the elusive market of teenage girls. At Hare Hall Alice begins receiving anonymous notes written in code, and she begins to attempt to decipher who they are from.

 

The story alternates between current Alice and young-Alice who went to live with her grandparents from the age of ten. You get a pretty good background of her life story and there is detail both on her grandparents obsession with code-breaking, and also Alice's attempts to fit in with her peers at school.

 

PopCo started off promisingly and I took to it immediately. I loved the code and crypto puzzles and it was explained thoroughly – all the different tools cryptoanalysts use, the most commonly used letters, the importance of prime numbers, etc. There were some really fascinating things here.

 

But then it began to go off on a bit of a tangent. It started with Alice using homoeopathy to combat a flu and the onerously detailed descriptions which seemed to go on forever began to feel like an agenda. It was almost as though the story was put on hold to revel in the benefits of homoeopathy (maybe she should read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre ). There were also constant hints about veganism. Never mind, the story was still good so I paid no heed and carried on.

 

Then towards the end (about 80% through), the story took a completely different tone and one of the characters began a huge diatribe about the evils of large-corporations, how we should all go vegan, and an education in how cows produce milk that was so obviously agenda-pushing that I would have given up on the book if I hadn't been so far into it.

 

As a way of getting back at the evil corporations, this character is promoting graffiti, shoplifting and vandalism – wow, great ways to make a point! How knocking over cartons of eggs in a small corner shop gets back at the large-corporation is beyond me. Or when Alice vandalises the packaging on a PopCo product in a small independent toyshop, and walks away feeling smug like she has done her part against PopCo, I just can't believe the lack of thinking behind this. No Alice, you've done your part against the small independent businesses you are trying to protect (you stupid cow!).

 

The author also alleges via a character that “If someone worked out how to predict primes, the Internet would crumble in a day.” and “I know for a fact that big banks and credit-card companies employ people specifically to watch what is going on in the mathematical community” and that if you were on the verge of a breakthrough of prime-number research, you’d probably end up with a bullet in your head. Yawn. I like conspiracy theories, but give me a break.

 

She has the juvenile attitude that it would be fantastic to ‘shut the world down’, transferring millions into housing projects in poverty-stricken towns, making huge donations to worker’s pension funds and paying them out immediately, workers deleting company’s files and losing passwords, shredding documents and closing down public transport. The sentiment is nice but the idea that this will achieve what she wants is utterly stupid.

 

On the positive side though she did mention two books which have piqued my interest:

 

Obedience to Authority – Stanley Milgram

Woman on the Edge of Time – Marge Piercy

 

I own Woman On The Edge of Time (had it for years), but one of those I’ve never got around to reading.

 

I think if Scarlett Thomas had stuck to the code-breaking and left the politics out of it, this would have been a 4/6 book, but I just can't get past the amateurish No Logo rip-off (with half the intelligence and thought of Naomi Klein). I can see why she shoehorned this agenda of hers into a novel, because in a stand-alone book it would be a poor, ignorant effort.

 

(Writing this has made me quite irritable, can you tell?! )

 

2/6

Edited January 13, 2013 by bobblybear

[bobblybear]

Finished my second book of the year: Three Men In A Boat.

 

Both of them, and the one I'm currently reading are from pre-2012 purchases, so I'm pleased to start reducing that list down finally.

[bobblybear]

Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K. Jerome

 

It starts with the author having a moment of hypochondria in which he diagnoses himself with every illness from cholera to typhoid fever (except housemaid’s knee). He and his two buddies, Harris and George decide that their illnesses are brought upon by overwork and so decide to take a boat trip along the Thames.

 

The opening chapters were the best, with some very funny moments such as packing for their trip, or the author’s recollection of transporting some smelly cheese. It slowed down a bit on the journey, where the author mentioned many historical details about the various places they visited. Apparently it was initially intended to be written as a serious travel guide. The book was more like a series of connected anecdotes, rather than a linear tale, and I found it a bit disjointed. The historical trivia about various points at their journey did have me nodding off a bit, as I didn’t have any interest in those places or hadn’t heard of most of them. I probably would have viewed these sections differently if I were planning to do a trip along the Thames. Having said that, there were still extremely funny parts along their journey, such as the Plaster-Of-Paris trout and the frustration of opening a tin of pineapples with no tin-opener.

 

I rather stupidly didn’t realise the story was autobiographical, and I kept wondering if we would ever get to know the narrators first name. He was referred to occasionally as J., and I puzzled over it not putting together that he was Jerome K. Jerome until reading the Wikipedia page. Talk about facepalm.

 

This was a Kindle freebie, and there were some formatting errors throughout. It was clearly based on an illustrated version, but though the illustrations were missing the description of them remained. So the beginning of some paragraphs have a little description, before starting the text, such as: “Man reading book I remember going to the British Museum one day….” It threw me to begin with, but after a while it stopped bothering me, though I think the illustrations would be quite nice.

 

There is an illustrated version for the Kindle, which costs £1.32.

 

It was written in 1889 and surprisingly the book comes across as quite current and undated. There are a few references which are obviously of that time, and not relevant now, but these are far and few between.

 

3/6