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Frankie Reads 2010


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Do you know how easy it is to chop up a baseball bat with an axe? You should've had Shel Silverstein as your weapon of choice!

 

wibbly.gif Now you tell me!

 

 

You bought an absolute truckload of books recently so I can't see you needing to buy any books for at least ... two weeks :lol:

 

I bet she can't last 2 weeks without buying a book.

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:merry:Frankie. The very best of luck with your reading in 2011 .. can't wait to see your list. You bought an absolute truckload of books recently so I can't see you needing to buy any books for at least ... two weeks :lol:

 

Thank you poppyshake! I know that I'll be looking more closely at your own reading blog next year, having recently realised that you read awesome stuff, give great reviews and find similar kind of lit interesting :smile2: I know, I've bought a fair amount of books this year, and I shouldn't really, having too many books on my bookshelves already. I need to either get a new bookcase, or stop buying books for a while, while I read the ones that I already own. I know which one of those choices would be more economic.... :blush:

 

(and I didn't even list the books that came to me this week in a package from Australia.... :giggle:)

 

wibbly.gif Now you tell me!

 

I told you many a times when I was there :lol:

 

 

 

I bet she can't last 2 weeks without buying a book.

 

Hey!! I thought we were friends, not talking bad stuff about us behind each other's backs!!! :giggle2: I tell you, I'm really, absolutely, so broke that I cannot buy another book this year. The only books I'll be getting this year are the one that my BF bought me and the ones that I might find interesting at his uni, where there is a free 'leave one, take one' book case. And they're all in English, the bookcase being in the Language Learning center. I'm bringing 6 of mine, to see if I can change them to more interesting ones.

 

And yes, I'll be telling you tomorrow which book my BF gave me for a Bday pressie! :)

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Thank you poppyshake! I know that I'll be looking more closely at your own reading blog next year, having recently realised that you read awesome stuff, give great reviews and find similar kind of lit interesting :smile2:

Bless you, thanks :)

 

And yes, I'll be telling you tomorrow which book my BF gave me for a Bday pressie! :)

Happy Birthday Frankie .. c'mon spill :D

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I think swapping books counts as 'buying'. I really should have said 'acquiring' instead of 'buying'. wink.gif

 

Ooh, I can't wait to here what you get your BF gives you!

 

It ain't buying if I'm not spending any money!! :D

 

You two will have to wait til it's 7 PM here in Finland, that's when I get to BF's if the train isn't late and if everything goes smoothly. Sowwy :)

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Okay, it took a bit longer but here it is!

 

BF was right, I would never have guessed the book he'd bought me. It was rather a surprising one. It was Apollinaire's The Eleven Thousand Rods and The Exploits of a Young Don Juan. Apparently when I was in Australia, an esteemed Finnish daily newspaper had reviewed the book that contains both of the short novels, both of which have been very controversial in their days. After that, everybody started buying those books and the current edition was soon sold out. A link to the book circulated on IRC, a chat forum BF and I use daily, and he got the idea from there to buy the book. He had to actually bid on it on a Finnish equivalent of ebay. Interesting stuff! Although it might be a bit too pornographic for my usual taste... :rolleyes:

 

I also got Donna Leon's Death at la Fenice from BF's Mum, she recommended the book to me a while ago and now I got it from her :)

 

I also went to BF's uni where there is a 'take one, leave one' bookcase full of books in foreign languages, it's at the language center. Hence the multilingualism. I left there my already read books Barmy in Wonderland and Bad Dog's Diary, and tree thrillers which I didn't feel like reading anymore: A Harlan Coben, a Joseph Finder and a Mark Billingham novel. In exchange I got me these:

The Pact by Jodi Picoult

Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally

Glue by Irvine Welsh (I already own a hardback copy but this was a nice paperback, saving me some space)

Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez (I already had a copy but took it with me Australia to read but had to leave it there to save space for more precious books)

 

I also found a Haruki Murakami novel, Norwegian Wood, but I already have that and it was in Spanish I think :giggle:

 

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It only saves you space Frankie if you get rid of one of them!

 

Don't worry VD, that's what I intend to do when I get back home :)

 

Finished Augusten Burroughs's Possible Side Effect today, and started and finished Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien. I only have three more books to read to reach my target of 120 read books this year, should be easy enough.

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Finished Augusten Burroughs's Possible Side Effect today, and started and finished Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien. I only have three more books to read to reach my target of 120 read books this year, should be easy enough.

 

120!! Wow impressed....

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Thanks VD, I'm pretty pleased myself, I'm up to 119 books this year and should make 120 books easily. I only need to read The Exploits of a Young Don Juan which is a short quick read me thinks. Then I've succeeded in my goal and will be happy to chill and read whatever I want.

 

The thing is, I have no idea what to read next. I want to read something that I know I'll enjoy a LOT. Something I've been wanting to read for ages. But there are too many choices. Any opinions? Kylie? Help? And nothing too serious, I want it to be fairly easy, it's Christmas after all. I was thinking Lord of the Rings but for that I wouldn't come out of my room for a couple of days and I think my parents would object to that so I'll leave it til I'm home again.

 

TBR is on the front page, I'm welcoming all your suggestions :) You have 12 hours to vote. The lines are open.

 

Edit: Almost forgot, silly me: Merry Christmas everyone!!! :JC_cookies::merry::snowsign::guess: See you next year at the latest if we don't run into each other before that :)

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Yay Frankie! Congratulations on reading a huge amount of books this year! clapping.gif

 

Oh gosh, I don't know where to start with suggesting what to read next. You have so many great books on your TBR pile! Maybe you could read a Jasper Fforde? They're nice and light and very entertaining. Or maybe something by Stephen Fry - you have a few of his books and I bet they're all great. :) Or maybe one of your Jeffery Deavers? I hope that helps a little. smile2.gif

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Yay Frankie! Congratulations on reading a huge amount of books this year! clapping.gif

 

Oh gosh, I don't know where to start with suggesting what to read next. You have so many great books on your TBR pile! Maybe you could read a Jasper Fforde? They're nice and light and very entertaining. Or maybe something by Stephen Fry - you have a few of his books and I bet they're all great. :) Or maybe one of your Jeffery Deavers? I hope that helps a little. smile2.gif

 

I vote for Black Like Me. Once you start reading you won't be able to stop.

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Hehe, I read the other Apollinaire last night so I'm up to 120 already and can begin my Xmas holidays with whatever I choose! :cool:

 

Yay Frankie! Congratulations on reading a huge amount of books this year! clapping.gif

 

Oh gosh, I don't know where to start with suggesting what to read next. You have so many great books on your TBR pile! Maybe you could read a Jasper Fforde? They're nice and light and very entertaining. Or maybe something by Stephen Fry - you have a few of his books and I bet they're all great. :) Or maybe one of your Jeffery Deavers? I hope that helps a little. :smile2:

 

Thank you Kylie! Excellent suggestions. I need to leave Jasper Fforde for next year because I want to re-read Jane Eyre before that. And I want to re-read the two Jeffery Deavers that I've already read in order to go into the next ones. Although I might have the first book in Finnish, so it might be good to take it with me and read it and then give it to Mum, she might really enjoy it. I could then buy an English copy for myself, because all my other Deavers are in Finnish. Wow, thanks for that, I'm taking it with me!

 

Stephen Fry is actually something that I'd been thinking about myself. Maybe it's time to read Hippopotamus, the book that BF has read and has been harassing me to read for at least a year :giggle2:

 

 

I vote for Black Like Me. Once you start reading you won't be able to stop.

 

Good suggesting, but I'm sorry VD, I've already read it :cool: A good read it was, it was really interesting to see how it all changed for John. Can't go into lenghts with that though, must now pack mah books! :smile2:

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Just a couple of reminder posts for myself:

 

I found this mini interview from the First Tuesday Book Club website :

 

"

 

Celebrity Readers

 

Jason Steger

 

1. What are you reading now?

 

"Everyman" by Philip Roth; "Open Secret" by Stella Rimington; "Emil and Karl" by Yankev Glatshteyn.

 

2. What is your favourite book?

 

"Staying On" by Paul Scott; "Le Grand Meaulnes" by Alain-Fournier; "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens, and "The Book of Fame" by Lloyd Jones.

 

32222. What is your earliest memory of books?

 

Getting a Janet and John book when I was about six.

 

4. What is the book that changed your life?

 

"Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy; "Sons and Lovers" by DH Lawrence; "News from Nowhere" by William Morris.

 

5. Most over rated book?

 

"Da Vinci Code".

 

6. Best and worst film adaptations?

 

Best: "Third Man" (Graham Greene); "Black Stallion" (Walter Farley); "Brokeback Mountain" (Annie Proulx); "Grapes of Wrath" (Steinbeck); "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Lee); "Long Goodbye" (Robert Altman version of Chandler’s novel);

Worst: "Honorary Consul" (Greene).

 

7. How do you choose what book to read next?

 

Mainly dictated by work. I love to read crime novels on planes.

 

8. Where do you read?

 

Bed, sofa, tram, plane, beach. Never in a car - I would be sick.

 

9. Which fictional character would you most like to be?

 

Tintin or Philip Marlowe.

 

"

 

 

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A remainder for the reading blog 2011:

 

First Tuesday Book Club challenge:

 

2006:

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan

The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

The Mission Song by John le Carre

The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Longitude by Dava Sobel

The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

 

2007:

The Children by Charlotte Wood

Not in the Flesh by Ruth Rendell

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

East of Time by Jacob G. Rosenberg

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple

The Dancer Upstairs by Nicholas Shakespeare

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain Fournier

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Secret River by Kate Grenville

In The Company of The Courtesan by Sarah Dunant

The Solid Mandala by Patrick White

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

 

2008:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi

The Outsider by Albert Camus

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore

Pandora in the Congo by Albert Sánchez Piñol

Disquiet by Julia Leigh

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Miracles of Life by J.G. Ballard

Breath by Tim Winton

Demons at Dusk by Peter Stewart

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis

Naked by David Sedaris

The Memory Room by Christopher Koch

 

2009:

Summer Reads by

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

This Is How by MJ Hyland

Ask the Dust by John Fante

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

The Collector by John Fowles

The Housekeeper + the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Ransom by David Malouf

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Darwin and the Barnacle by Rebecca Stott

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

The Private Patient by PD James

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

 

2010:

Dead Man's Chest by Kerry Greenwood

Parrot & Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Indelible Ink by Fiona McGregor

Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

One Day by David Nichols

Reading By Moonlight by Brenda Walker

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Strange case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Solar by Ian McEwan

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

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I'm so far behind with my reviews... yet again :blush: But I really want to write something, no matter how little, about all the books I've read this year, before I start my new 2011 reading blog. So here goes:

 

98. The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

 

I really enjoy reading Ira Levin's thriller novels. They're always quite short, but somehow Levin manages to create such scary situation by only so many words. I look forward to reading more of his novels. 3/5

 

99. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr

 

A novel about a Jewish family during WWI(I?). Liked the story and loved reading about war from a little girl's point-of-view. The title (Hitler and the article-less Pink Rabbit) was something that really stood out for me so had to read it, and somebody had recommended this book somewhere, quite possibly on this forum. 4/5

 

100. Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs

 

I love Augusten Burroughs. I was a bit nervous about reading this fictional novel by him, always having only read true stories written by him about his own life, but I was happily surprised to see how talented he is even with a fictional story. He always makes me laugh. 5/5

 

101. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (RG-b)

 

A Rory read. I thought this would be a serious and a really difficult read about different policitical issues and wasn't particularly looking forward to it. I was mesmerized by the story and the characters, however. A really pleasant surprise. 4/5

 

102. Property by Valerie Martin (RG-b)

 

A Rory read. I didn't make much of the story but I would say that it's 90% my own fault. When the story didn't grab me right from the start, I should've left it til a more convenient time. Instead, I forced myself through it and therefor didn't enjoy it to the fullest. Not the book's fault. 2/5

 

103. The True And Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elizabeth Brown

 

A Rory read. There's one good scene in the book (clothes change room scene at the department store), otherwise it was pretty rubbish. I felt like I was expecting something to happen and nothing ever did. 1/5

 

104. Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs

 

Have I already told you that I love Augusten Burroughs? 5/5

 

105. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

 

An eye-opening read. It's good to read actual non-fiction stuff about what went down then and there, and not just to see TV series about it, making it all seem less real. 3/5

 

106. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

 

For some reason I'd thought that this was a fantasy novel :blush: I enjoyed the novel anyways. 4/5

 

107. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

 

A Rory read. Have you ever thought about what happens to cadavers, other than the usual burial/cremation? Well, even if you haven't, you should read this book. It was extremely funny and incredibly enlightening. I guess I'm a bit whack but I really really enjoyed all the facts and stories in this book. Not for those who are easily disturbed! 5/5

 

108. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

 

I read this basically because of all the high praise it's gotten here on the forum. I liked it fine but it was nothing special. 2/5

 

109. The Long Hard Road out of Hell by Marilyn Manson with Neil Strauss

 

I've always been fascinated about Marilyn Manson so I was really thrilled to find this autobiography. There were some interesting stories, especially the stuff that happened in his life before his career in music, but I have to say that I was kind of disappointed in Manson, I thought he was a recluse genious. To me it seems that he's just bitter and wants to attract attention with all the horrid stunts he pulls. He claimed to act out as a protest against "all that is wrong in America", but I didn't see the reasoning behind it all anywhere. I think he should've gone into detail about his logic and thought process. However, it made an interesting read and therefore 4/5

 

110. The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck

 

An incredibly enjoyable read! Fantastically made out characters. A book I will re-read and re-read. 4/5

111. The Bad Dog's Diary by Martin Howard

 

Boring! 1/5

 

112. Mesimarjani, pulmuni, pääskyni by Hilkka Ravilo

 

A Finnish novel for a change. It dealt with pretty horrid themes but was interesting anyways. 4/5

113. Manillaköysi by Veijo Meri

 

A Finnish classic I've been meaning to read for ages. Mostly included war stories. 3/5

 

114. Love Story by Erich Segal (RG-b)

 

A Rory read. Short, simple, but beautiful. I don't even know why I loved it so much. 5/5

 

115. Barmy in Wonderland by P. G. Wodehouse

 

A fun read! Should read more Wodehouse. 4/5

 

116. Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs

 

Another 291 pages of reasons why to love Augusten Burroughs. 5/5

 

117. Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien

 

So and so. 3/5

118. Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett

 

Alright. 3/5

 

119. The Eleven Thousand Rods by Apollinaire

 

Pure sodom and gomorrah stuff. 2/5

 

120. The Exploits of a Young Don Juan by Apollinaire

 

After The Eleven Thousand Rods this reads like a romantic love story. 2/5

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