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Your Book Activity - June 2016


frankie

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I've finished England, England, A Very Special Year and The Movie Doctors over the last couple of days.  I've picked up both Mystery & Mayhem which is a children's anthology of short stories, and Coastlines by Patrick Barkham from the Wainwright Prize longlist and hoping to read them this weekend.

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I just finished The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. It was okay, interesting concept but wasn't mad about how it was, er, executed.

 

Borrowed a book off a friend called To Be Or Not To Be: A Chooseable Path Adventure. Basically Hamlet, but you choose the path the story takes, playing as Hamlet, his father, or Ophelia. Not sure how to incorporate this book into my reading, as it'll be difficult to track when I've read all the pages - so I think I'll just 'play' through it a few times and consider it broadly done.

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I just finished The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. It was okay, interesting concept but wasn't mad about how it was, er, executed

Ah! I hope it didn't disappoint you! I'll head over to your thread in a bit for a spoiler :)

 

My mom and I are going to read The Scarlet Letter together, we plan on starting on Tuesday. In an attempt to support my local bookstore (there are only two here), I decided to get two copies from them and perhaps the Lydia Davis collection. Neither of them had any! :o. I mean, no Scarlet Letter?? Ridiculous! What the heck are they selling?

 

I eventually bought them from Amazon, the cover is really cool, but come on!

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The second half of a summer term in a primary school is manic! Reading is getting squeezed into odd moments, usually late at night. Yesterday, was the day of our big show: 7.00am start rigging lighting and sound systems in local theatre, morning technical rehearsals, afternoon final dress rehearsal, evening performance, then finished derigging and loading vans around 11pm....phew!! Worth every moment - the children were brilliant, and it's a fab team to work with (we had a good post-show do afterwards at a colleague's, finishing around 2 this morning!).

x

I'm glad you had a great time :)

x

My mom and I are going to read The Scarlet Letter together, we plan on starting on Tuesday. In an attempt to support my local bookstore (there are only two here), I decided to get two copies from them and perhaps the Lydia Davis collection. Neither of them had any! :o. I mean, no Scarlet Letter?? Ridiculous! What the heck are they selling?

 

I eventually bought them from Amazon, the cover is really cool, but come on!

x

I don't know how big the book shop was, but I guess they can only stock so much, they have to make choices. It's a shame they didn't have those books though :(.

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Finished On The Black Hill, a beautifully written book where the setting is central to the novel.  It's more Welsh than Herefordian, even if the Herefordshire book for the English Counties Challenge, but there's enough of the latter to fully warrant its occupation of that role (the farm at the heart of the book is positioned so that the English/Welsh border splits the house in two, or so the owners claim!).  Anyway, I'd bend over backwards if necessary to include a book of that quality,

 

On to David Miller's The Racer.

Edited by willoyd
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I finished The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge, which I did enjoy, but it was a lot flatter than the other two books I've read by her.

 

Started The Man From Primrose Lane by James Renner, and I'm really enjoying it so far. One of the early chapters tells a story about a robot which, in itself, is a better short story than many I've read in short story collections :roll:

 

I'm also teetering on the edge of A Little Life and considering taking the plunge. :o

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I'm nearly halfway through Columbine by Dave Cullen. Very insightful and detailed account of what happened. :o

 

Seems like you're enjoying it? :smile2: I have to say, though, that when I was reading reviews of the Sue Klebold  book, I noticed a lot of reviewers mentioning the Cullen book and saying that it had a lot of details wrong and some important things it failed to mention altogether. :unsure: 

 

I finished The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty last night (finally! :thud:) and started The Vintage Springtime Club Beatrice Meier (again. I've started it before but got stuck in some other book for some reason. Hoping to enjoy TVSC a lot more this time!) 

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I'm also teetering on the edge of A Little Life and considering taking the plunge. :o

 

Go on, take the plunge!! :D

 

Seems like you're enjoying it? :smile2: I have to say, though, that when I was reading reviews of the Sue Klebold  book, I noticed a lot of reviewers mentioning the Cullen book and saying that it had a lot of details wrong and some important things it failed to mention altogether. :unsure:

 

Oh no, really? :o What sort of things are they saying are wrong? The Cullen book has mentioned a lot of things that I wasn't aware of - ie. that the killers had nothing to do with the Trenchcoat Mafia, and that they weren't bullied, they didn't single out jocks as their victims. Those are things that I have always heard about, and this book is saying that wasn't the case. There is a lot more information about the Klebold family, and the author has said a few times that the Harris family have always kept schtum about the whole incident, never speaking to the press etc, even now. :dunno:

 

I'm about 60% through and really enjoying it (if that's the right word to use). :blush2:

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Go on, take the plunge!! :D

 

 

Oh no, really? :o What sort of things are they saying are wrong? The Cullen book has mentioned a lot of things that I wasn't aware of - ie. that the killers had nothing to do with the Trenchcoat Mafia, and that they weren't bullied, they didn't single out jocks as their victims. Those are things that I have always heard about, and this book is saying that wasn't the case. There is a lot more information about the Klebold family, and the author has said a few times that the Harris family have always kept schtum about the whole incident, never speaking to the press etc, even now. :dunno:

 

I'm about 60% through and really enjoying it (if that's the right word to use). :blush2:

 

Here's one review that was very detailed. Although of course, I don't know where this woman got her facts from. It's like, which person to believe. Unless you have access to some official documents and stuff. I can't find any of the other reviews I browsed through before :( Sorry! 

Edit: I mean I thought there were loads of reviews for the A Mother's Reckoning book, saying they'd read the Cullen book first and how that had contained a lot of errors, but now when I'm checking the reviews out, I can't find any of them. I don't know why! Maybe there are so many new reviews that I have to scroll further down.. I don't know. 

Edit: Nope, that doesn't seem to be the case. Sorry, I'm a bit off my game, just woken up from a nap. 

Edited by frankie
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I've started Max Gate by Damien Wilkins.  It's a bit of an odd one, but hopefully it'll pick up.  I'm also listening to Don't Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford on audio book, but the weather turned so I wasn't able to walk to work on Friday or today (boo) so I don't know when I'll get to listen to some more.  I'm only on disc 2 of... it has 8 discs, I think.

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Getting a late start on The Nightingale, stayed up til 2:00 reading and woke at 11:30 to finish the last 200 pages by tomorrow, as my mom and I will start The Scarlet Letter tomorrow- an actual *gasp* tree book! Lol. Last actual book I read was World War Z!

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Here's one review that was very detailed. Although of course, I don't know where this woman got her facts from. It's like, which person to believe. Unless you have access to some official documents and stuff. I can't find any of the other reviews I browsed through before :(

 

Thanks for the link. I also read the low-rating reviews on Amazon, and they say very similar things. I don't know as I haven't read any of the witness testimonies etc., that are available online, but he can't have just completely made it up. :dunno: I was surprised that he wrote about Eric getting loads of girls and being quite the charmer as that's the first of the sort I have heard. He does quote very heavily from Eric's journal, so I think those parts (from his journal) must be true. He is also very clear in where he got his information from. If it was a direct quote, he put it in quotes. If he was unsure of the exact wording used, then he used italics. I really don't know what to think. :thud: I'll keep an open mind, but I might do some more online reading to see what others say. :dunno:

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Thanks for the link. I also read the low-rating reviews on Amazon, and they say very similar things. I don't know as I haven't read any of the witness testimonies etc., that are available online, but he can't have just completely made it up. :dunno: I was surprised that he wrote about Eric getting loads of girls and being quite the charmer as that's the first of the sort I have heard. He does quote very heavily from Eric's journal, so I think those parts (from his journal) must be true. He is also very clear in where he got his information from. If it was a direct quote, he put it in quotes. If he was unsure of the exact wording used, then he used italics. I really don't know what to think. :thud: I'll keep an open mind, but I might do some more online reading to see what others say. :dunno:

 

I totally know what you mean, it's really difficult when you're enjoying a non-fiction book and then hear some have discredited it, but then it would take a whole lot of time and research to see what truth is the real truth. There's so much to read on the case, that the idea of reading any of it online (the documents) seems daunting. One had wished there'd be a book that's totally accurate, 100%, exactly for that reason that one doesn't have to dig everything up oneself, and one can just 'enjoy' a 'good read'. I'm sorry if I ruined the book for you :(

 

Edit: Of course there must be a lot of things that Cullen has right etc, too. But I think, based on what I've read, the boys were bullied, and they didn't have any luck with girls. Further edit: And I got the idea that the school was a rather horrible one and a lot of kids got bullied. So I don't know if Dylan and Eric were particularly targeted, or just two of the many others. 

Edited by frankie
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I've just remembered one thing that Cullen was stressing was how unreliable witness testimonies can be. He gave the example of one of the teachers, who was in an interview when his assistant burst into the office saying there were shots fired. He had no recollection of that. He swore blind that he finished the interview, walked the candidate to her car and was sat in his office alone when his assistant came in with news about the shooting. But his assistant and the interviewee both had the same story (that he was in the middle of the interview when the shooting started). He just had no memory of it. :dunno: There were a couple of other examples as well, but I can't recall them at the moment!

 

Don't worry, you haven't ruined the book for me. :smile: I think in cases like this, there are so many different 'opinions' and 'versions' that it's impossible to know what really happened. I too think they were bullied....some people have that look about them and you kind of know that they would have been picked on in class for not being 'cool' enough, and all the other crap that comes with high school.

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That's very true, about different opinions and point-of-views. Memory is never 100% accurate, especially in cases like these where you have to remember something very extreme. I'm really glad that I didn't ruin the book for you! 

 

Btw, I now remembered where I found the bad comments about Cullen's book. They were not in the Sue Klebold's book's review section, but Brooks Brown's book's review section. Here you go. I'm really tempted to get this one! 

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Finished the last 150 pages of Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale, beautiful book for a beautiful day :)

 

Up next: The Scarlet Letter- wooohoo!!

Edited by Anna Begins
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I am going to put The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August aside as I just cannot get into it at the moment. The writing is great but very descriptive (with some big words!  :blush2: ) and also quite repetitive, not necessarily in a bad way but I am too busy at the moment to be able to focus my mind on it. Will try something less demanding, I have plenty to choose from!  :D

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I have got quite a few books on the go at the moment

 

Road to Little Dribbling - Bill Bryson - Reading a town or a place at a time, as I am finding this funny don't want to get fed up with it.

The Reader on the 6.27 - Jean Paul Didierlaurent - I read this while I was away last week.

A reunion of Ghosts - Judith Claire Mitchell

Shopping for a Billionnaire - Julia Kent - I also read this last week

Suddenly last Summer - Sarah Morgan - I have read these out of sequence but still enjoying the story.

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