Sugar

Since last visiting here, I have been added to the reviewing panel for Children's Books UK alongside Kell. I have today submitted my first 2 reviews for the site. It's all very exciting. As they were both picture books, I haven't listed them on my Reading List (if I included Picture Books it would go on forever!), but I will flag up my reviews once they have been added to the site. I am now reading a novel for CBUK - Andrew Fusek Peters and Polly Peters new one - Roar, Bull, Roar! I'm just over halfway through so far. I lvoe the Czech references (and use of Czech words) in it, not least as I have a Czech colleague who tomorrow I will great with Ahoj (pronounced Ahoy!) which is Czech for hello! Despite these good things, I am not enjoying it quite as much as I did Crash, their earlier novel told in Poetry format or their collection of Poetry - Poems with Attitude. Maybe it is better than Andrew's graphic novel though.....

Well it's been a manically busy couple of weeks, and my reading has suffered some for it! However, I have read Stuart: A Life Backwards for my book club - if you don't know it, it is the biography of a homeless man, told by looking back over his life. The author tries to track down what factors triggered Stuart to end up on the streets of Campbridge. Interesting, and worth a look if you like biographies or people! After that, I thought I would read the first Temperance Brennan book by Kathy Riechs, that has been on my TBR a while. A colleague recommended it. I like reading Crime as I can usually rip through it in a couple of days, but as this has taken me a week to complete I was clearly not so impressed! By page 350, I felt like the plot had only progressed far enough for 200 pages. Some serious editing might have helped! I finished it earlier today, and indeed have started to forget things already! Who dunnit?

I adore Alex Rider. I haven't yet made it to the cinema to see Stormbreaker, although I do hope to soon (very soon, before it goes off...)! I found the Horowitz books incredibly fast paced, and read the first five at a rate of one per evening, over the course of a week. They are well thought out, with twists and turns, and Alex is a wonderful, if reluctant at first, hero! I have read the first of the Charlie Higson books (Silverfin), and although I own Bloodfever I haven't yet got around to reading it. I managed to aquire a very pre-publication copy of the third one at a conference this weekend though (it is due out in January, title to be confirmed) so I think I will read Bloodfever and get onto it in the next month or so. What I thought Higson did best was he planted all the seeds for the adult James Bond as written by Ian Fleming (the love of cars - particularly the Aston Martin! - the school history). Alex and James are very different teenage spies. But they come from very different times and places (Alex is set now, James in the 1940's - possibly earlier?). Both authors have to acknowledge the limits of the technologies available to them to keep it believable but there has to be enough to grip today's playstation generation readers! They both do what they aim to, and they do it very well!

I've found recently that I haven't fancied chocolate as much - it could be because of the summer? You can't beat a proper 99 with Cadbury Flake from the Icecream man though! Oh - and Marks and Sparks do some fantastic belgian chocolate coated dried fruit things....

" 'I got out at last, in spite of you and Jane' said I, 'and I pulled off all the wallpaper so you can't put me back' " from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore

I think they might have been the Magic School Bus books - there was one where they went into the Human Body as well that I can remember really clearly!

Well, I managed to reach the end of The Ecstasy Club - very strange book with a very bizarre conspiracy theory theme. Odd, very odd! For a bit of light-relief, but still a bit odd, I am reading the second book in Ian Sansom's Mobile Library series, Mr Dixon Disappears. So far I have had more laugh out loud moments that with the first one. Israel Armstrong (the Mobile Librarian) really seems to have developed in character since the first book.

My friend thinks it is the best of the lot.

1. I am a librarian, but... 2. I wanted to be a holiday rep! 3. I play the flute in a concert band 4. I am an awful gardener 5. I have lived in 6 different houses in very different parts of England in my 25 years alive

Reading The Worst Witch books every year in the car as we travelled to a family friend's farm down in the west country. I remember the first time, I read one each way, the second time I read all 3 of them on the way down. Had to buy something new to come back with. Then for the next 4 years or so I would read the three of them on the journey! I also remember being read Danny, the Champion of the World in class and being terrified of Danny being caught!

My trick for solving this problem is to get the 5 or so that I know I want to read most but can't decide, and then show them to someone else (usually my boyf, but sometimes a friend) and get them to say which one they think I shoulod read first and second. Then I do it! It helps make your mind up, and can sometimes be really interesting if they can offer an opinion on some of them.

Another interesting list there! I don't include the picture books that I read (as a children's librarian, doing storytimes a couple of times a week, I would have a massive list!), but include anything that I read in "my" time. I see there is quite a lot of "classic children's" stuff there too, and a few I don't know. I guess they must be American? Brooks: Freddy the Detective, Freedy goes to Florida, Freddy and the Ignoramus Abel's Island: Steig The White Mountains Trilogy Carl Sandburg: Rootabega Stories

Oh, and I have updated my first post again to show what I have read up to the end of August.

Now reading The Ecstacy Club by Douglas Rushkoff. It was recommended to someone on another forum by a random bloke in the library, so I thought that seemed as good a reason to read it as any! I borrowed it from the lib, and have now renewed it 5 times (the limit) so want to read it and return it. It's a bit strange, all about the rave culture in the 90's, something that I was never involved in and would never want to be involved in. Some of the characters are well drawn though, so I'm going to stick it out and see what happens.

Got through the Meg Rosoff - mostly in the car. My other half decided that he wanted to drive with the radio on (for the first time ever) though, so I couldn't concentrate quite as well as I usually can. Then read Vampire Kisses by Ellen Schreiber for work. It's a teen vampire novel, but more of a teen romance with an obsession with Vampires in it! It was ok, not really my cup of tea (or blood!), but nothing special. Annoyingly though, they printed the first chapter of it's sequel Kissing Coffins at the end - I hate it when they do that. even though it wasn't great I want to read on and find out what happend to the characters, particularly Raven the main character.

I've read 2 Marian Keyes books - I read The Other Side of the Story as a holiday read in 2003 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I lent it to a couple of people and one of them has since worked her way through all of Keyes back list! I recently read Anybody Out There? and got in to trouble with forementioned friend - as she felt I wouldn't be able to read Rachel's Holiday, Watermelon or Angels now as AOT gives away the endings. That said in a couple of months I will have forgotten the detail, so I'll quite happily be able to have them as holiday reads again!

I read one on holiday a couple of years back. It had a yellow cover. I thought it was ok, bit too gory for holiday reading. I knew I wouldn't reread it though, so I bookcrossing'ed it. Have a copy of Two Women that my grandpa gave me some vouchers for (it was free with The Sun I think). It's on my TBR shelf, but one of the lower priority ones!

I read the second in the days series - Grim Tuesday I think it is called. It was ok, but it took me to about half way through before I worked out what I had missed by not read the Monday one! I thought I would love Sabriel so when I saw it in a 3 for 2 a few years ago I grabbed it. I read it all the way through, and while I thought it was good, it didn't grab me either. I did buy Lirael (I needed another 3 for my 2), but when I started it read about 25 pages and then put it to one side. That would have been at lease 2 years ago and I have never gone back to it. Maybe one day....

I'm sure I will - I've never been to that sort of event before, I'm worrying about what I should wear already! Chose one of the review books, and it was really easy to read so I've finished it. It was Tilly and the Badgers by Joan Lingard. Going to read Just In Case by Meg Rosoff now. We will be travelling lots over the bank holiday so not going to be online, but plenty of time for reading. Will fill you in next week!

Fantastic Fiction gives the order they wre published in - that might be a good place to start! http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/d/sir-arthur-conan-doyle/

Finished Tamar, that I thought I ought to read as it won the Carnegie, and then today I got an invite from his publishers to go to the launch of Peet's new book Penalty that will be published in October. That seemed so timely and very exciting! Thoroughly enjoyed Tamar, but hasn't had quite the impact that I thought it might. Found the twist at the end was a little predicatable. Not sure what to read next - I have 2 books to review for work, and 3 books that are due back at the library (yesterday!), but I picked up the new Meg Rosoff today, and I really want to read that too...... HELP!!!

There was a story in one of the newspapers today (although I can't remember which one) that said that Celebrity Biographies are the books that readers are most likely to put aside without finishing them. I thought that was quite interesting!

Just out of interest - any chance of a post with the poetry collections you have dipped into and the children's stuff you have read?

I read Ingo last year, and wasn't so enthralled with it as you, Tiger. However at a meeting today, there was a lot of discussion about The Tide Knot and everyone thought it much better than Ingo. they have swayed me, so it is now on the list (that's the list of things to add to the pile one day!).

This took me a lot longer to read than I expected - there was so much detail in the description that I was forever reading back the last page again to make sure that I hadn't missed anything! While I found bits of it fascinating, I think I am going to find it quite forgettable. I agree that Orchid was quite modern in her outlook. I wonder how accurate some of this is (I know that it is based on the story of the last empress of China). I would have thought that she would have a number of advisors who would have decoded the paperwork and then told her what she needed to do and say! On a completely different note: