Janet
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Posts posted by Janet
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I don't 'do' horror, although I did read The Entity many years ago, and a few James Herbert books.
I definitely don't do gore. I'm so squeamish that I've had trouble reading a couple of books due to their descriptions. One was the non-fiction A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer and another was A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon. Just one tiny scene in that particular book which I'm sure those of you who've read it will recognise immediately!
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It's not my genre, but I think I could do it with a book easier than I could with a film. If we're watching a remotely scary film and Peter says he's going to bed I have to go up too, even though it means missing the end! My friend had to read Susan Hill's The Woman in Black out in the garden in the sunshine - she couldn't even cope with being indoors!
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I did that test, Athena. I got...
You could read the entire Game of Thrones collection in 265 days. (159 days faster than the average person!)
Your reading speed is 339 words per minute.
But I consider myself a really slow reader, so I find this rather doubtful!
ETA: Just how long is GoT?!
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Today I've finished this week's instalment of our group read of Nicholas Nickleby.
I'm also reading The Moon's a Balloon by David Niven. I need to start A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood soon too as it's our next Book Club book. -
1966 for me:
</snip>
Sarah Waters was born. C. S. Forester and Evelyn Waugh died.
All the best people were born in 1966!
My list is pathetic!
READ
Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
This is listed on Wikipedia under 'Non-fiction’ too!Roald Dahl – The Magic Finger
WANT TO READ
Fiction
Daniel Keyes – Flowers for Algernon
Paul Scott – The Jewel in the Crown
Non-fiction
Hunter S. Thompson – Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs
The only births/deaths I’ve heard of are the ones Steve quoted plus…
June 30 – Margery Allingham, English crime novelist, 62
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I typed this out earlier today but forgot to hit 'add reply'.
Gosh, I'm enjoying this book so much! In a way I wish I didn't have to wait to read it because it's a bit frustrating!
However I do like the idea of us reading together so I shall carry on. I didn't read much on holiday (in fact, this book was all I did read) but I had read up to the end of Chapter 17 by the time I was on the train home on Monday! The writing is just sublime. I thought I'd highlighted a bit on my Kindle but I can't have done it correctly (I bought a Paperwhite for my holiday and the highlighting is different) which is annoying as I wanted to quote it.
The characterisation is great, isn't it. How horrible are the Squeers?! Like Alex, I hope it's not the last we've seen of them.
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I've skipped over Willoyd's review because I haven't finished the book yet - reading it as I am with Claire and Alex in weekly instalments, but I'm just a bit confused over the County Durham issue. I thought that it was chosen because Dotheboys Hall is in County Durham, but that isn't the case because it's in Yorkshire. Does the County Durham element happen later in the book (without giving away any spoilers - yes or no will do!)?
Not that it matters really. The book is shaping up to be fantastic - I'm just curious.
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A great selection of ideas in your challenge. Good luck. Do you have a timescale for completion?
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That copy of "It" a few pages back is HORRIBLE.
. I hate clowns. 
I have just finished chapter 15 of Nicholas Nickleby whilst waiting for the Eurostar. I'm loving it so far!
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I read up to the end of Chapter 8 too!
I got it wrong last week as well. Hopefully I'll get it right from now on! We're off on holiday on Thursday so I'm going to try to read this week's section today or tomorrow, although I have Book Club tomorrow night and I haven't finished that book yet. Ooops! 
I'm really enjoying this too.
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I've just finished chapter VII. I, like you, wonder what the stories have to do with the rest of the tale? (I suspect nothing, but may be proved wrong in due course!). The future certainly doesn't seem as though it's going to be rosy for Nicholas, does it?
I feel very sorry for those boys. It must be awful to be so far from your family at such a young age. I suppose at least some of them have families who thought they were doing good by sending their boys to Dotheboys Hall!
Claire - I hope you don't mind, but I've edited the first post to show the dates we're aiming to read each section, although of course these are subject to change.
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Lol, no... but I've heard he has a wicked sense of humour too!
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When I put "someone" I was thinking of a couple of people.
One of them might have been you...!!
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Oh! OH!!
Helmet!! Yes I was good
Well I was tempted with one title, because it's one that I've never seen anywhere. An old true crime book. But didn't buy anything Imma good girl, me I must admit to a childish snigger!
Well done for not buying the book. Mind you, if it's one you haven't seen before maybe you should have bought it.
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I'm just waiting for someone to make a comment about that!This is what the library card looks like:
Yay for joining the library. I take it you were good and not tempted by the books in the shop?
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Apologies if this is old news, but the Complete Mary Poppins is currently 99p on Kindle.
(Do check before clicking buy in case it goes back up to £19.99!)
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Oh! To Be in England by H E Bates
The ‘blurb’
Here’s Pop clinching a deal for two suits of armour, a butter churn, three Regency chamber pots (with pink roses on them) and a load of other junk; and here are all the younger Larkins being taken into the bosom of the church at a mass baptism (with marquee and private fairground); and here’s the Rev. Candy locking a half-nelson on an unwelcome visitor.
When Mariette and Charlie decide to get their son Christened the vicar, Rev’d Candy, calls at the house to discuss arrangements and is stunned to discover than none of Ma and Pa’s children have been baptized themselves. Soon arrangements are in hand for all of the children to get ‘done’ at the same time. As arrangements for the party start to come together, Pop buys a funfair, but not before there is a nasty altercation with “two youths in winkle pickers”. With Primrose mooning after Rev’d Candy and the threat of a disturbance on the horizon, will the Christening go off without a hitch?
This is the penultimate book in the Larkin Chronicles. It’s a pleasant read, but none of them have come close to the first in the series, which was Kent’s book for the Counties Challenge. It is fair to say that they are all, predictably, rather dated now but I will read the last one just to finish the set – they’re certainly an easy read so it won’t take too much time!
The paperback edition is 143 pages long and is published by Penguin. It was first published in 1963. The ISBN is 9780141029665.
3/5 (It was okay)
(Finished 20 August 2014)
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Hmmm, that's odd.
One is The Young Ardizzone by the illustrator Edward Ardizzone (he illustrated books including 100s of children's books) and the second is A Little of What You Fancy by H E Bates.
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Catch-up time! The Sunrise by Victoria Hislop was sent to me, and I decided to take a look at the beginning to see what I thought. It was a fairly slow story, but it completely hooked me. It's set in Cyprus in the early 1970s, and Victoria has based it around Varosha, Famagusta, an area which remains deserted since 1974. I was impressed by the way she writes her characters, and the gentle way in which they become real, and I would read more of her books in the future.
My Mum likes her books but they haven't really appealed to me. However I've seen Famagusta from a distance and I'm absolutely fascinated by the place (a long time ago I found a website online where people have sneaked in to take photos). We were on a boat trip at the time, but as soon as we got to a certain point the Turkish coastguard, complete with guns, started sailing towards us and ordered us to turn round, which we did, sharpish!
I will go and read up about the book.
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My latest acquisitions:
This is the last of the five books in the series. I've been collecting the Beryl Cook covers and I found this in Oxfam in Bath whilst I was waiting for my daughter to enrol at college.
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Longbourn by Jo Baker
The ‘blurb’
If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah thought, she would be more careful not to trudge through muddy fields.
It is wash-day for the housemaids at Longbourn House, and Sarah's hands are chapped and raw. Domestic life below stairs, ruled with a tender heart and an iron will by Mrs Hill the housekeeper, is about to be disturbed by the arrival of a new footman, bearing secrets and the scent of the sea.
I think this is the first ‘sequel-written-by-a-different-author’ that I’ve ever read, so I started with a bit of trepidation, especially as I really love Pride and Prejudice upon which it is based. I have to say it was a letdown -
What I really hated was what the author did to Mr Bennet! I know he wasn’t the perfect father, but I really didn’t believe the whole ‘love-child-with-Mrs-Hill’ storyline. Even if, and it’s a big if, Mr Bennet did father a child with Mrs Hill I think it is a huge stretch of the imagination that she would have stayed working for him. In reality she’d probably have been sent away to have the baby (as indeed happened in the book and then packed off with a reference to work somewhere else.
I didn’t hate it. I enjoyed the part where it flashed back to 1808 when one of the characters went off to sea. I also liked the below stairs characters and their interaction with each other. However I'd have much preferred it if it had been a stand-alone novel, rather than one backing off the huge popularity of P&P. If it had been called Fennymore, or The Larches or Cragmore House… i.e not anything to do with Pride and Prejudice then I think the story would still have worked, although maybe it would have been harder to get it picked up by a publisher without the link to something so popular?
The paperback edition is 443 pages long and is published by Black Swan. It was first published in 2013. The ISBN is 9780552779517.
2/5 (Disappointing)
(Finished 18 August 2014)
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I'm glad the move went okay. Yay for the huge book case! I hope you get your internet sorted soon!
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Oh dear, am I that predictable?
(No surprise then that I'm now enjoying Far From the Madding Crowd?!)
No, not really. I mean, I know a few of the the types of books you're fond of (classics (so no, no surprise you enjoyed it), non-lightweight travel books etc) but not exactly what you like, but I was pretty certain The Dinner wouldn't be your cup of tea.
I've read two Hardys so far and I loved them both, so I'm looking forward to FFtMC.
I've added Offshore to my wish list too.
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The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris
The ‘blurb’
19 year-old Chani lives in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community of North West London. She has never had physical contact with a man, but is bound to marry a stranger. The rabbi's wife teaches her what it means to be a Jewish wife, but Rivka has her own questions to answer. Soon buried secrets, fear and sexual desire bubble to the surface in a story of liberation and choice; not to mention what happens on the wedding night...
A friend recommended this to me at Book Club and a few days later it popped up as a 99p ‘Deal of the Day’ on Kindle so I thought I’d take a punt.
Firstly I will start by saying that at no time do I mean any offence with my thoughts about this book. I know that religion is a very emotive, personal subject, and it is difficult to review this book because I do not know a great deal about Judaism (although I would absolutely love to visit a Synagogue), and especially not the specific Haredi Jews which I believe are meant to be portrayed by the characters in this book.
I have read lots of comments from Orthodox Jews since finishing it who are disappointed by the way the have been represented by Eve Harris. She is of Jewish descent but is not a practising Jew herself. She apparently worked for a year in a school for Jewish girls and wrote the novel after that - so the criticism from some quarters that it is not at all realistic is probably justified because you really can’t learn about an entire culture in twelve months.
The Times of Israel’s correspondent Miriam Shaviv says this about the novel: “After teaching in a UK haredi girls school, secular Jewish author Eve Harris writes a sympathetic 400-page novel about that world’s biggest problems”, and the Jewish Book Council’s website do not slate it, but merely label it as a “novel written by, and for, outsiders.
There is no doubt that this novel has divided opinions.
Anyway, to the story.
20-year-old Baruch Levy spies Chani Kaufman, who is a year younger, in the Synagogue they both attend and he manages to engineer a meeting with her. Chani’s family are under pressure to find a husband for her and so they agree to the meeting. Baruch’s parents, and particularly his mother, are not so sure about the match. The book mainly follows the young couple’s journey through courtship to marriage – a journey which isn’t always easy as various cultural obstacles are placed in their way. Chani, who is rather naïve about what will happen on her wedding night, receives instruction from Rivka, who is a Rebbetzin – a Rabbi’s wife.
The story also follows Rivka. She was a secular Jew who met her husband whilst they were studying abroad. As he becomes more Orthodox she must make the decision whether to marry him and conform to the expected standards of a Rabbi’s wife, or to go her own way and live a life with more freedom. She chooses marriage, but it is a path that she doesn’t find easy.
As a story I really enjoyed it. There were a few negative points for me. For one, there are literally dozens and dozens of Jewish terms used throughout the book. Some were obvious by the context of what else was happening but the vast majority of them I didn’t understand. There is a glossary but it’s at the back of the book and being on Kindle I didn’t discover it until I’d finished the story! I think having definitions at the bottom of each page can be a bit messy, so I can understand why the glossary is at the back (and in the book too) but it’s difficult to read something when you keep having to flip to the back of a book.
I also don’t think it portrays the people of this religion in a particularly good light, or even very accurately. However I do believe that most readers will be sufficiently intelligent to work out that they are “caricatures”, designed to exhibit stereotypes rather than be an accurate reflection of the people of this faith.
I am a bit surprised that this was nominated for a Booker prize as it doesn’t seem to have enough depth for that. I can only think it’s because of the parts of the story that deal with Rivka and her husband Chaim.
However, despite the few niggles I had with it I thought it was a really good story and I would definitely like to read more fiction about Judaism.
The paperback edition is 350 pages long and is published by Sandstone Press Limited. It was first published in 2013. The ISBN is 978 1908737434.
4/5 (I really enjoyed it)
(Finished 11 August 2014)
Those who don't like horror...
in Horror / Fantasy / SF
Posted
The first one is a harrowing read, and due to its very nature it couldn't be anything but. The 'gore' in A Spot of Bother only takes a few seconds to read so don't let my comment put you off - it's the briefest of mentions.