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Andrea's 2010 reads


~Andrea~

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Started Mister God This is Anna last night. I think I'm going to love it :)

 

From Amazon

 

Anna was four years old when Fynn, then only 16 himself, found her wandering round London's Docklands one foggy night in the 1930s. Badly neglected and abandoned by her parents, he took her home to be cared for by his own family. The impact of this extraordinary child on Fynn, his friends and the people in their neighbourhood was to be immense. Nobody who met Anna could remain the same: this intelligent, lively, precocious chatterbox had an outlook on life which completely undercut adult pretensions and illusions. Anna's influence continues today. Anyone dipping into her thought-processes falls under the spell of her luminous innocence, wisdom and intimate relationship with 'Mister God'.
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I finished Mister God this is Anna today. I did quite like it, but I didn't love it like I thought I would. Anna was obviously a very intelligent and gifted child, and quite a little character, (as was Fynn in many ways) so much of the book was very interesting, as too was the relationship between her and Fynn. However, I found bits of it dragging, lots of the descriptions of Anna's experiments and thought processes were perhaps not as fascinating to me as they were to Fynn. However I am glad I read this book, and Anna's image of God did strike a chord. And the book did become more interesting and readable in the second half, and brought a few tears at the end. Perhaps I was expecting too much. It would have been better maybe if I'd known nothing about the book and read it as a blank canvas.

 

I've made very slow progress this year with reading and I'm a bit disappointed with that. However, Quantum was a fairly challenging read, and E-Ffrindiau is slow going, not because it's boring, far from it, but because it's in a language I'm learning. Hopefully once I've finished that I'll pick up the pace a bit.

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I started reading Tennyson's The Two Voices last night. It started well, with lovely language, but I don't know if it was just me getting more tired the later it got but I really started to lose the plot of what he was going on about. I guess you can't really read poetry like a novel lol.

 

I also started John Harwood's The Seance as my welsh book is sometimes just too much like work at the end of a long day.

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I finished The Two Voices, and liked it, however, i'm not used to reading poetry and found the text inevitably rather dense compared with prose. I'll probably have to read some of these poems over and over before I 'get' them.

 

I've got stuck into The Seance and all I can say is :D:D:D

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I finished The Seance today. It was brilliant. Spooky, suspenseful and full of twists and turns. It's a very well written book. I look forward to his next offering, but considering there was quite a gap between this one and his last, The Ghost Writer, I guess I'm in for a bit of a wait. :)

 

Next I'll possibly go for some non-fiction. Maybe "Plot and Structure", or one of my British history books.

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I started reading Tony Parson's Man and Boy earlier this week. I'm not sure what I think of it yet. It's kind of readable and well written, and yet somehow there's something lacking in for me. Perhaps the situation, or the characters have failed to grab my interest. We'll see.

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Put Man and Boy to one side (probably never to pick up again if I'm honest) and picked up Robin Hobb's The Assassin's apprentice.

 

Why did you put it down?

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See above

 

I started reading Tony Parson's Man and Boy earlier this week. I'm not sure what I think of it yet. It's kind of readable and well written, and yet somehow there's something lacking in for me. Perhaps the situation, or the characters have failed to grab my interest. We'll see.
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Finished E-ffrindiau last night. it was very good and I am quite keen to read more welsh books now. The difficulty is finding ones pitched at the right level. I have some in mind though.

 

I also started Plot and Structure yesterday. So I now have 3 books and one poem on the go:

Assassin's Apprentice

Plot and Structure

The Quantum Universe

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

:motz:

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I finished The Seance today. It was brilliant. Spooky, suspenseful and full of twists and turns. It's a very well written book. I look forward to his next offering, but considering there was quite a gap between this one and his last, The Ghost Writer, I guess I'm in for a bit of a wait. :motz:

 

I'm delighted to hear you enjoyed that, it's been a while since I bought it and just haven't been able to pick it up. This has motivated me to!

 

What's The Quantum Universe about/like?

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Hope you enjoy The Seance Noll! As you can see I loved it :D

 

The Quantum Universe is a non fiction book on quantum mechanics. I bought it years ago, started to read it and then gave up - but inspired by Quantum I thought I'd give it another bash. It reads much more like a text book than Quantum, but it's still pitched at a fairly easy readable level. I've only just started though - it may get harder. It has lots of diagrams and pretty photos though so if it gets too mind-bending I may end up just looking at the pictures :D

 

Have you started Quantum yet?

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Definitely one for the wishlist so! :D

 

No, I haven't started Quantum, my mojo has been a bit dodgy lately so I've stuck to easier reads to get me back into it. I also had a few books to finish including a review book so I wanted to get through them first. I'll hopefully start it the week after next :D

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I'm nearly through Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell and have found it very useful. I think I will try some of these ideas for my next novel which I am ready to begin planning. He gives a lot of examples from his own work (as well as many from other works) and his fiction doesn't come across as the best written in the world, however he obviously sells books, and I think the ideas on plotting are interesting and useful.

 

I've made a slow start with the Assassin's apprentice, partly because I was focusing on Plot and Structure. I wasn't sure I was going to like it, however, 70 pages in I am getting quite engrossed so I hope to make good progress.

 

The Quantum Universe and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are definitely on the back burner. I bit off a bit more than I could chew there :lol:

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Finished Plot and Structure last night. I found it a very useful read and will be trying some of the tips in my next project.

 

I'm only about a quarter into Assassin's Apprentice. I found it a slow start but am now really enjoying it.

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I'm enjoying Pet Sematary although I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be feeling about

 

Church the cat. Am I supposed to feel scared or repulsed by him? I actually feel very sorry for him at the moment. Maybe that will change as the book goes on.

 

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I finished Pet Sematary last night. Wow! What a read. It's been sat on my shelf for ages and somehow never really jumped out at me, the title didn't really appeal to me as I couldn't imagine a story with that name could really be that interesting. Was i ever wrong. The story was not what I expected at all and what a ride it was. And as ever I am blown away by Kings writing. Fantastic stuff.

 

I shall be starting Alice in Wonderland tonight ;)

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Assassin's Apprentice sounds appealing, just from the title alone I confess that I am intrigued. Hope you're enjoying your reading this year, I've had a slow start but hopefully it'll pick up during the summer.

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Oh I heartily recommend it Ben. It's fantasy but its not too OTT fantasy if you know what I mean. It's well written with good characters and a good story. (What more can one ask ;))

My reading has been pretty enjoyable this year on the whole thanks. Hope yours picks up soon :D

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