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Janet

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  1. Finished The Book Thief

     

    I loved it! It was absolutely fantastic - one of those books that you can't stop reading... and yet you don't want it to end either.

     

    I finished it this morning at my Mum's house (I stayed the night). When I turned up I told her about it, she'd cut it out of the paper at the weekend because she wanted to read it, so I was able to leave it behind for her.

     

    I got into it straight away. The story was great and I loved the quirky centred information bits!

     

    Definitely a 10/10 for me.

  2. I bought my copy of The Book Thief in Tesco and it's only branded on the inside cover - the stickers on the front of mine peeled off!

     

    It was only £4, so £3.60 for me!

     

    I loved it! It was absolutely fantastic - one of those books that you can't stop reading... and yet you don't want it to end either.

     

    Definitely a 10/10 for me.

  3. Top Books of 2007

     

    The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd

    The Vanishing Acts of Esme Lennox - Maggie O'Farrell

    The House at Riverton - Kate Morton

    To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

     

    Worst Book of 2007

     

    The Queene's Christmas - Karen Harper

     

    Best New Authors of 2007

     

    Kate Morton (looking forward to her next one!)

  4. The Diary of Anne Frank - I've never managed to read this before, despite trying a few years ago (and giving up because the print was tiny!).

     

    I did feel that it was rather repetitive, but that only mirrors the life that Anne lived. For her age (13-15) the diaries show remarkable language skills and that Anne was a highly intelligent girl.

     

    7½/10

     

    I'm reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusac now. About of a quarter of the way in and I'm loving it!

  5. The Diary of a Young Girl

     

    002-2008-Jan-11-TheDiaryofaYoungGir.jpg

     

    The ‘blurb’

    Since its publication in 1947, Anne Frank’s diary has been read by tens of millions of people. This Definitive Edition restores substantial material omitted from the original edition, giving us a deeper insight into Anne Frank’s world. Her curiosity about her emerging sexuality, the conflicts with her mother, her passion for Peter, a boy whose family hid with hers, and her acute portraits of her fellow prisoners reveal Anne as more human, more vulnerable and more vital than ever

     

    For her 13th birthday in June 1942, Anne Frank is given a diary and she starts recording her day-to-day life in it on a fairly regular basis. It is a time of great unrest in Holland which under a state of German occupation. Jews are forbidden to do many things - they are not allowed to attend non-Jewish schools, they are not allowed to use public transport... They are required to wear a yellow star to show they are Jewish.

     

    The family decide they must take desperate measures - they must go into hiding for the duration of the war. Plans are well afoot when in July of the same year, Anne’s elder sister receives call-up papers from the SS to go to a ‘work camp’ so the family bring forward their plans and go into hiding 10 days earlier than intended.

     

    They go to the offices of Anne’s father - and hide out in the Achterhuis, a Dutch word denoting the rear part of a house, translated as the "Secret Annexe". Together with another family, the Van Pels (Anne refers to them in her diary as the Van Daans), and later joined by Fritz Pfeffer (referred to as Albert Dussel) and they remain incarcerated until they are betrayed in August 1944...

     

    I can’t begin to imagine how it feels to be shut up in a house for two years - and the family didn’t know that it would be two years - it could have been a lot longer for all they knew.

     

    Anne’s diary is full of her observations about the inhabitants’ daily lives - their highs and lows, their squabbles, her first crush and feelings towards Peter, her fellow captive, her feelings towards her mother, to whom she seems cool towards and is even unkind to at times.

     

    I did feel that it was rather repetitive, but that only mirrors the life that Anne lived. For her age (13-15) the diaries show remarkable language skills and that Anne was a highly intelligent girl.

     

    The thing I found most amazing was the story of bravery. Not just that of the 8 people who lived in such appalling conditions with very little (and very poor quality food) for two years without ever setting foot outside, but also of the people on the outside who risked their lives to help these people hide from the terrible atrocities taking place in the outside world.

     

    The occupants died in various concentration camps - with the exception of Otto Frank (Anne's father) who survived Auschwitz .

     

    It is not known to this day who betrayed Anne and the others - I can’t help wondering how this person felt about that betrayal in later years.

     

    The paperback is 339 pages long and is published by Penguin Classics. The ISBN number is 978-0141182759.

     

    7½/10

    (Read January 2008)

  6. In the town I'm in (30,000 population), there's one bookshop which is basically a stationers with five shelves of books!!! :lol:

    How frustrating for you. ;) My friend moved to spain yesterday </off topic!>

     

    When I went to Majorca on holiday I couldn't help noticing how expensive the English books were.

  7. Case in point: I got rid of most of my children's books quite a few years ago and am now regretting it big-time. I would love to read them all again, but now I'm going to have to buy them again! ;)

    Ditto. :D

     

    (O/T, but I wish I'd kept all my 100s of vinyl records too. Now you can buy equipment to transfer them onto computer! Grr! :lol: ).

  8. I get as many of my books as I can from charity shops or The Bookbarn, which is a large second-hand book place.

     

    If I want something new, I tend to get it from Tesco (normally £4 for a chart book and I get staff discount) or WHS (they often have 'new' paperbacks half price) or Waterstones (because like WHS, I save points towards new books).

     

    We don't have an independent bookshop in our town at all (or a chain one for that matter) otherwise I'd try to support them. If I don't get my books secondhand or from Tesco then I have to wait until I can have a trip into Bath.

     

    I don't use the library - I like to keep the majority of the books I read - I only part with ones I'm not keen on! :lol:

  9. Doesn't mean you can't run it on your own and spread it out over the course of the whole year. :friends0:

     

    That's a great idea!

    True, true. :D

     

    I've vowed to read more of the Bard's works so maybe I'll do it on here from June to whenever. :irked:

     

    I find reading the Oxford or Cambridge school's version and listening to the audio version helps. ;)

  10. Thanks for the link. :friends0:

     

    It's a pity (for me, anyway!) that the challenge ends on 30 June. I'm studying The Winter's Tale at the moment, but I can't possibly commit to any more Shakespeare until I've taken my exams - which are also in June.

     

    Good luck with it. I shall look forward to reading your progress. :D

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