Kell

They can usually be found in the graphic novel section of book shops or they can be ordered online. I discovered Brom by sheer chance in the local library - THe Plucker was face-out on the graphic novel shelf and it looked so beautiful I couldn't resist taking it out - and I don't usually go for graphic novels!

Watched the special the other night - the watery Mars one - and were plased to find we finally had a good episode! Looking forward to the Xmas one now - desperate to see The Master again!

Perhaps he'd like an illustrated novel such as those by Brom? The Plucker, The Devil's Rose and The Child Thief are all available and are beautiful - very artisitc - as well as being very well written (I've read the first too and have the third one on my Xmas wish list). The art in them is very dark and forboding, but absolutely exquisite.

Teeheehee - no problem.

LOL - I only just recently tested that I could still do all my bendy tricks - while I was pregnant, my expanding belly mande it all impossible and then afterwards it was very clear I wouldn't be able to bend around all the extra baby weight.

Strangely, this is something I planned to start doing this year - LOL! Another 5 about me: 1. I'm very bendy - if I wanted to I could easily suck my own toes (not that I want to, but I could!). I can bend over backwards and grab my own ankles, and easily touch my toes with my legs straight and together - in fact, I can put my hands flat on the ground and bend my arms a little! 2. After almost 14 months of breast feeding, I quit this week. I'm kind of going to miss those close moments with Xander, but the time is right for both of us now so my boobs are now my own once more! 3. I'm slightly infatuated ith Eddie Izzard. I thin kit's mostly because he makes me augh so hard I almost pee my pants, but I think he's kind of gorgeous too. Perhaps it's his humour shining through, but I totally dig him! 4. I had a lump (don't worry - it was just a fatty lump - everyone in my family seems to get them - ick!) removed from my back last week that was the size of a

Our Waterstones (used to be Ottakers) has a cafe in it and I often used to sit with a book from their shelves and leaf through it when I was having a coffee. However, I'm always very careful with books - even my own -when reading and nobody would ever have known they had been opened. If I had accidentally cracked a spine, I would have felt obliged to buy the book myself. PS I've moved this thread into the General Book Discussions area of the forum (and amended the thread title a little) as you're not actually offering books for sale or swap.

Please do!

He might just be learning to walk, but Xander's already got a mean left foot! http://yfrog.us/7d55446757z If for some reason this link doesn't work, those who are connected to me on Face book can watch the vid HERE.

I have to say, I'm very firmly on Team Jacob - that boy is TOTALLY HOT! How can anyone possibly prefer pale, insipid Edward to tanned, toned Jacob??? Actually, Jaconb reminds me a whole lot of a guy I once had a brief dalliance with in college - ah, the fond memories!

So sad about EW - he'll be much missed.

My name is Kell and I am NOT a Twi-holic, but I preferred the film Twilight to the book and I'm hoping that New Moon will similarly be better than the very average book.

Why on earth was a convicted murderer out on a shopping trip? Surely she should have been locked up and serving her sentence, not getting excorted round the shops? Disgusting!

We're going to my in-laws' for Sunday lunch - my MIL does a fab Sunday dinner!

I'm afraid I'm struggling somewhat with the seeming randomness of everything. Nothing seems remotely connected and therefore I'm not seeing any point to it all right now. Therefore, I'm afraid I'm going to put it down for the time being, but I thin kit'll be one I come back to at a later date as the intrigue of whether or not everything comes together coherantly at some point will probably nag at me ill I do!

I second the Women of the Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong -they're excellent!

I've got a couple of books I got instead of Easter eggs in 206 that I haven't read yet.

My hubby used to do that but now he's realising that if he wants a logical response, he'll wait till I'm done. And e now apologises if he interupts my reading time.

Books chosen for 2010 are: JANUARY (Theme - Books/Writing/Reading) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (nominated by libri vermis): Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books. The classic novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 is part of the Voyager Classic series. It stands alongside Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization's enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity. Bradbury's powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to creat a novel which, forty years on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock. FEBRUARY (Theme - Plays) Macbeth by William Shakespeare (nominated by Kell): Promised a golden future as ruler of Scotland by three sinister witches, Macbeth murders the king to ensure his ambitions come true. But he soon learns the meaning of terror - killing once, he must kill again and again, and the dead return to haunt him. A story of war, witchcraft and bloodshed, Macbeth also depicts the relationship between husbands and wives, and the risks they are prepared to take to achieve their desires. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU GET THE FULL PLAY VERSION RATHER THAN AN ABRIDGED OR "RETOLD AS A STORY" ONE. MARCH (Theme - Women in Arab Cultures) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini: Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry the troubled and bitter Rasheed, who is thirty years her senior. Nearly two decades later, in a climate of growing unrest, tragedy strikes fifteen-year-old Laila, who must leave her home and join Mariam's unhappy household. Laila and Mariam are to find consolation in each other, their friendship to grow as deep as the bond between sisters, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter. With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move a person to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction. A Thousand Splendid Suns is an unforgettable portrait of a wounded country and a deeply moving story of family and friendship. It is a beautiful, heart-wrenching story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond and an indestructible love. APRIL (Theme - Ideas Fiction) A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick (nominated by Andy): Mind- and reality-bending drugs factor again and again in Philip K. Dick's hugely influential SF stories. A Scanner Darkly cuts closest to the bone, drawing on Dick's own experience with illicit chemicals and on his many friends who died from drug abuse. Nevertheless, it's blackly farcical, full of comic-surreal conversations between people whose synapses are partly fried, sudden flights of paranoid logic, and bad trips like the one whose victim spends a subjective eternity having all his sins read to him, in shifts, by compound-eyed aliens. (It takes 11,000 years of this to reach the time when as a boy he discovered masturbation.) The antihero Bob Arctor is forced by his double life into warring double personalities: as futuristic narcotics agent "Fred," face blurred by a high-tech scrambler, he must spy on and entrap suspected drug dealer Bob Arctor. His disintegration under the influence of the insidious Substance D is genuine tragicomedy. For Arctor there's no way off the addict's downward escalator, but what awaits at the bottom is a kind of redemption--there are more wheels within wheels than we suspected, and his life is not entirely wasted. MAY (Theme - Asia) Q&A / Slumdog Millionaire A young tiffinboy from Mumbai, Ram Mohammed Thomas, has just got twelve questions correct on a TV quiz-show to win a cool one billion rupees. He is brutally slung in a prison cell on suspicion of cheating. Because how can a kid from the slums know who Shakespeare was, unless he has been pulling a fast one? In the order of the questions on the show, Ram tells us which jaw-dropping event in his street-kid’s life taught him the answer. From orphanages to brothels, gangsters to beggar-masters, and into the homes of Bollywood’s rich and famous, Slumdog Millionaire is brimming with the chaotic comedy, heart-stopping tragedy, and tear-inducing joyfulness of modern India. JUNE Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg One snowy day in Copenhagen, six-year-old Isaiah falls to his death from a city rooftop. The police pronounce it an accident. But Isaiah's neighbour, Smilla, suspects murder. She embarks on a dangerous quest to find the truth, following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. JULY Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Bored on a hot afternoon, Alice follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit-hole � without giving a thought about how she might get out. And so she tumbles into Wonderland: where animals answer back, a baby turns into a pig, time stands still at a disorderly tea party, croquet is played with hedgehogs and flamingos, and the Mock Turtle and Gryphon dance the Lobster Quadrille. In a land in which nothing is as it seems and cakes, potions and mushrooms can make her shrink to ten inches or grow to the size of a house, will Alice be able to find her way home again? AUGUST SEPTEMBER We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods- until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiosity and hostility of the villagers. Their days pass in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears. Only Merricat can see the danger, and she must act swiftly to keep Constance from his grasp. OCTOBER Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackaray No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles - military and domestic - are fought, fortunes made and lost. The one steadfast and honourable figure in this corrupt world is Dobbin with his devotion to Amelia, bringing pathos and depth to Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure. NOVEMBER Les Misérables - Victor Hugo Les Miserablés tells the story of the peasant Jean Valjean - unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert. As Valjean struggles to redeem his past, we are thrust into the teeming underworld of Paris with all its poverty, ignorance, and suffering. Just as cruel tyranny threatens to extinguish the last vestiges of hope, rebellion sweeps over the land like wildfire, igniting a vast struggle for the democratic ideal in France. DECEMBER The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis Introducing the second book of the newly designed Narnia classics. Perfect for those seeking a contemporary take on The Chronicles of Narnia. The most loved of all the Chronicles, this wonderful tale can be enjoyed again and again. Lucy steps into the Professor's wardrobe but steps out again into a snowy forest. She's stumbled upon the magical world of Narnia, land of unicorns, centaurs, fauns! and the wicked White Witch, who terrorises all. Lucy soon realises that Narnia, and in particular Aslan, the great Lion, needs her help if the country's creatures are ever going to be free again.

As the hosted reading circles seem to be working quite well, we're going to continue with them into the new year. Each month the Reading Circle will be “hosted” by a different member of the team. That team member is responsible for asking for nominations from the forum members, whether on a specific theme or just a general free for all), setting up the poll, gathering information on the chosen book and author, and keeping the discussion flowing over the course of the month. The team members are Kell, Chimera, Andy, Maureen, Kylie and Lexiepiper and I hope you’ll all give the team your support by making nominations, voting, and joining us in reading and discussing the books that are chosen each month. I’m sure each member will have their own style, so this will quite likely shake things up a fair bit, but I hope you’ll find the change a positive one! Around 6 weeks before the start date, the host will ask for nominations in a thread - these may or may not be on a specific them, depending on what that month's host is doing. After about a week of nominations, the poll will be set up (running for approximately a week), giving four weeks to get hold of the book and start reading it for that month's reading circle. The hosts for the 2010 Reading Circles will be: January - Kell February - Chimera March - Maureen April - Andy May - Lexiepiper June - Kylie July - Kell August - Andy September - Chimera October - Kylie November - Maureen December - Lexiepiper I hope you'll all give your support to the team and join in the fun - I'm sure there'll be a whole lot of interesting discussions!