Jump to content

Your book activity in 2012


Kell

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 1.2k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I just re-read Edger Allen Poes The Raven. It's one of my favourites that I often read now and then. Though I don't know if it's really classed as a book.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm just polishing off Scott Simon's Pretty Birds:

 

In the spring of 1992, Irena Zaric is a star on her Sarajevo high school basketball team, a tough, funny teenager who has taught her parrot, Pretty Bird, to do a decent imitation of a ball hitting a hoop. Irena wears her hair short like k. d. lang’s, and she loves Madonna, Michael Jordan, and Johnny Depp. But while Irena rocks out and shoots baskets with her friends, her beloved city has become a battleground. When the violence and terror of “ethnic cleansing” against Muslims begins, Irena and her family, brutalized by Serb soldiers, flee for safety across the river that divides the city.

 

If once Irena knew of war only from movies and history books, now she knows its reality. She steals from the dead to buy food. She scuttles under windows in her own home to dodge bullets. She risks her life to communicate with an old Serb school friend and teammate. Even Pretty Bird has started to mimic the sizzle of mortar fire.

 

In a city starved for work, a former assistant principal offers Irena a vague job, “duties as assigned,” which she accepts. She begins by sweeping floors, but soon, under the tutelage of a cast of rogues and heroes, she learns to be a sniper, biding her time, never returning to the same perch, and searching her targets for the “mist” that marks a successful shot. Ultimately, Irena’s new vocation will lead to complex and cataclysmic consequences for herself and those she loves.

 

It's an excellent read - difficult, obviously, because it's a depiction of people fighting for survival against a brutal enemy, but it's also funny and touching, with characters you become interested in and a good plotline with some surprising turns. Really enjoyable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm just polishing off Scott Simon's Pretty Birds:

 

It's an excellent read - difficult, obviously, because it's a depiction of people fighting for survival against a brutal enemy, but it's also funny and touching, with characters you become interested in and a good plotline with some surprising turns. Really enjoyable.

 

I think I may need to add this boom to my TBR list! Sounds like an interesting read.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Got given a whole load of 2nd-hand books - all of them tie-in books to the TV series "Quantum Leap" if anyone remembers that?

Oh boy! :D

 

I'm reading The Cruise of the Snark by Jack London on my Kindle and Boy by Roald Dahl when in the bath! :giggle2:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I may need to add this boom to my TBR list! Sounds like an interesting read.

 

I'd recommend it, Devi. I don't usually give a book-by-book account of what I'm reading on here these days, but when I come across something I think is outstanding, I'll give it a mention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I bought 4 books from Waterstones at the weekend I know tree books and everything, my excuse was I am not taking the kindle into the bath so I needed something to read, as its the warmest place in my house.

 

So I got a cookbook Moro which is a spanish/Moroccan book as its the type of food I love

 

Dark Matter - Michell Paver (to be honest I was drawn by the book cover, although the synopsis looks good too)

Sweetly - Jackson Pearce ( a re-telling of Hansel and Gretel finished it this moring very good)

The History Keepers (The Storm Begins) - Damian Dibben a childrens book but I never let that put me off

 

so happy reading days for me

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dark Matter - Michell Paver (to be honest I was drawn by the book cover, although the synopsis looks good too)

 

Ooh, one I've read that you haven't yet, pickle - that makes a change! :D

 

I really enjoyed it, hope you do too :smile:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The freezing weather meant I stayed in and read this weekend!

Finished The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Alas, I will forever wonder how it ended!

Continued with Can't Swim, Can't Ride, Can't Run.

Abandoned The Long Firm - too violent for my tastes

Putting Birdsong aside for the moment, but will go back to it.

Started Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I finally finished Carter Beats The Devil - mixed feelings really. Terrific protagonist, and an interesting story, but there was just too much going on. It was as if the author had just chucked in everything he could think of. I would read more by him (just as well really as I have his follow-up on my tbr!) but perhaps not for a while.

 

Started reading a biography of Cary Grant last night.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for your thoughts in Carter Beats the Devil. I think I shall still look forward to reading it. :)

 

I received Coffee at Luke's in the mail today. Thank you so much, Chrissy! I can't wait to read it! (Frankie, where are you, woman? I'm waiting to start! :P)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Carter Beats The Devil has had lots and lots of very favourable reviews, so I'm sure I'm in the minority in that I didn't think it was fantastic - but the main character was terrific, and there was plenty to enjoy about the book. I hope you like it :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The freezing weather meant I stayed in and read this weekend!

Finished The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Alas, I will forever wonder how it ended!

Continued with Can't Swim, Can't Ride, Can't Run.

Abandoned The Long Firm - too violent for my tastes

Putting Birdsong aside for the moment, but will go back to it.

Started Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh.

 

Fruska

Not sure if you know about this or would have any interest,but there is a book written fairly recently (maybe in the past year or 2) titled Drood ,by Dan Simmons, I think .

It is HUGE and I haven't read it, but I think it is a sort -of remake of Dicken's Drood ,or maybe in addition to... not sure exactly what the author's intent was, but it is certainly a whopper of a book and might be worth your time if you enjoyed Drood. Maybe it ties it all up neatly somehow ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I finally finished Carter Beats The Devil - mixed feelings really. Terrific protagonist, and an interesting story, but there was just too much going on. It was as if the author had just chucked in everything he could think of. I would read more by him (just as well really as I have his follow-up on my tbr!) but perhaps not for a while.

 

Started reading a biography of Cary Grant last night.

 

Good to read your thoughts on it Ruth I know I'll get round to reading it at some point. I love watching Cary Grants old movies but have never read anything about him :smile:

 

I finished The Book of Human Skin last night, over all I did enjoy it but was a little disappointed with the ending. I'm still reading Mistress Masham's Repose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Started reading a biography of Cary Grant last night.

I've read one before but it was hard to get anything out of it because he was such an intensely private man than not a lot of actual details were known. I adore him though .. such class.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I received Coffee at Luke's in the mail today. Thank you so much, Chrissy! I can't wait to read it! (Frankie, where are you, woman? I'm waiting to start! :P)

 

You can start whenever you like, dear! I didn't mean we have to read it together, so you don't have to wait for me. I just meant that I wasn't going to start reading it until you'd received your copy, out of sympathy and sisterhood :smile2:

 

I finished The Optimist's Daughter, talk about waste of time! Then I started reading Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (for the Rory challenge), and it's absolutely beautiful! Beautiful and funny.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Finished reading Mockingjay yesterday, really enjoyed the entire trilogy. Not blown away, but enjoyable nonetheless.

 

It was followed by a very stressful hour as I couldn't decide what I wanted to read next, I eventually opted for 'The Running Man' by Stephen King, which I am so far enjoying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...