Kylie

Huzzah! So glad you're enjoying/did enjoy Middlesex. Ooh, Christmas reading will be starting for me soon too! It's started buzzing around at the back of my mind.

I loved all four episodes and thought they were brilliant. There were always going to be people who wouldn't be happy with the show, no matter what happened. There's too much whingeing in the world. That's not to say it's perfect, but all in all, I loved it. I've already watched all four episodes a second time, and they were even better. Don't let people put you off watching it. Just watch it and make up your own mind. Also, I did what Frankie did: I signed up for a free month of Netflix just to watch the episodes. You can cancel before the month ends and won't be charged. Chesil, those coffee cups are great! I'm not a quilter, but I like the idea of doing something similar for a set of bookmarks or something...

I'm watching the episodes again and picked up on another reference: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (in the spring episode).

Hi Janet! Have you heard about a recently released new edition of A Christmas Carol? It's the 'original manuscript edition'. Here's the synopsis: Every year at the holidays, the historic Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan displays one of the crown jewels of its extraordinary collection: the original manuscript of Charles Dickens’s, with its detailed emendations, deletions, and insertions in Dickens’s own hand. Here, for the first time in a beautiful trade edition, A Christmas Carol: The Original Manuscript Edition presents a facsimile of that invaluable manuscript, along with a typeset version of the story, a fascinating introduction by the Morgan’s chief literary curator on the history of the story, and a new foreword by Colm Tóibín celebrating its timeless appeal. I've added it to my wishlist.

Ooh, thanks Frankie! I didn't pick up on all of these as the show aired, but I'm glad someone was paying closer attention. I'd say around half of these books were referenced in the original series. And according to the spreadsheet I keep, Huck Finn has been referenced more times than any other book.

I still love How to Get Away with Murder. This is on my list of shows to watch 'one day'. I hear you re watching too much telly. This is peak TV season for me—all my faves have recently returned. I can barely keep up!

Yes, I'm enjoying IT! I haven't had much time to read lately, but I hope to get back into it soon. It's a gorgeous book, isn't it?

Ooh..second last month of the year! We're almost on the home stretch now. What's your book activity today? I'm still reading IT by Stephen King. I received a book in the mail today: King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard, and I went out and bought Johanna Basford's new Johanna's Christmas colouring book.

TV shows are still released on DVD. Pay TV subscriptions don't affect that. I'm beyond excited for the new GG episodes next month.

Thanks for clarifying that Woodchip. Unfortunately we sometimes have people join the forum with sneaky intentions. Glad you're not one of them! Happy to have you here to discuss books with us. I love that you and your sister have a tradition of reading P&P every year. That's one of my favourite books, but I haven't read it in way too long. I'm currently reading Stephen King's It.

Yes, that should be how it works, but that's where I think the meddling librarians come into it. Too many people have the ability to edit a book's details. You've probably Googled it by now, but briefly, it's software that you buy and install on your computer. It also comes with a 'cloud' account, so you can upload your collection to their website and therefore access it from anywhere and share it with others. Here's my page. You can sync your books between various devices (computers, tablets, phones, internet). There's no forums or interacting with others--it's solely for book cataloguing. It allows you to enter a huge amount of data for your books, and you can view graphs relating to your collection. Athena uses the software too, and if you look here, you can see some examples of graphs. Importantly for book cataloguing, there's also an awesome barcode scanner app that pairs with the software. You can use your phone or computer's camera to scan the barcodes of your books straight into the software, which will then search for the appropriate book and populate the data for you. It's much, much quicker (and much more fun!) than typing in each ISBN manually. The software is fun to use, but it can become very time-consuming if you have a lot of books and (like me) become a bit anal about wanting to complete as much information in there as possible! I've just seen your recent post and noticed the bit about page numbers. I've noticed that Book Collector doesn't always get this right. I'm not sure if it depends on how recently the book was published (and therefore how much information it can find online for it), but sometimes the page number will come through as '0' (or it will be empty), and you'll have to populate the field yourself.

Autumn, when you search for a book to add, you should see a link to the number of different editions underneath the book's title (click on below image for an example). When you click on it, it will take you to a page (usually multiple pages) with all of the editions. Then you can select your edition from that list. The 'default' book that is shown in the search list is just the one that most members have chosen. However, I've noticed over the years that the book covers of some of my editions have changed. I'm always careful to select the correct edition when adding a book, so it's really frustrating when it then changes. I think it's because Goodreads 'Librarians' can go in and alter any details. I assume they just change the details to match their own edition, which is really frustrating. I'm a Librarian there too, but I certainly can't be bothered going in and changing things back. This is partly why I use paid software (Book Collector) to catalogue my books. I can add my own cover and no one can change it but me. I hope this helps.

Are you in any way affiliated with this book? It's strange that your first and only post here is to promote a book that has only just been published. The Amazon reviews are highly suspect too.

I'm planning to do this too.

Wow, I haven't posted in this thread for a couple of months. My reading has really gone downhill, even though I haven't had much work on lately. I've been spending time cleaning my house, reorganising my library and scanning huge amounts of paperwork so I can get rid of the hard copies. I didn't finish a single book in September, so I've gone from being on track in my Goodreads challenge to being four books behind. I'll try to be better this month. I have several books on the go, so hopefully I'll finish a couple of them soon. In other news, as some of you know, I've been given permission to direct my first play next year. Exciting stuff! I'll be doing Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton.

Yes, it's about Bertha. According to Wikipedia, her full name was Bertha Antoinetta Mason, and in Wide Sargasso Sea she was known as Antoinette. I think Wild Island bases the character a bit on the Wide Sargasso Sea version of the character, so maybe the author has used Anna as a shortened form of Antoinette? I assume there's an explanation in the book.

A new book has just come out by Maria Semple (author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette?) It's called Today Will Be Different. Here's the synopsis (from the Book Depository): Eleanor Flood knows she's a mess. But today will be different. Today she will shower and put on real clothes. She will attend her yoga class after dropping her son, Timby, off at school. She'll see an old friend for lunch. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action - life happens. For today is the day Timby has decided to pretend to be ill to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day surgeon Joe has chosen to tell his receptionist - but not Eleanor - that he's on vacation. And just when it seems that things can't go more awry, a former colleague produces a relic from the past - a graphic memoir with pages telling of family secrets long buried and a sister to whom Eleanor never speaks. From the dazzling pen of Maria Semple, author of bestselling Where'd You Go, Bernadette, comes a hilarious and life-affirming story about a woman who wakes up determined to be her best self. There's also a debut book by an Australian author that sounds quite intriguing. It's called Wild Island by Jennifer Livett. It incorporates a character from Jane Eyre and is set in Australia, and I've read good reviews about it. Synopsis (from Goodreads): 'My name is Harriet Adair, and forty years ago on that ship I was Jane Eyre's companion. That voyage also brought me friendship with another intrepid Jane: Lady Franklin. Her husband, Sir John, the Arctic Lion, was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land during the six turbulent years when Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester had good reason to be closely interested in the island.' Harriet Adair has come to Van Diemen's Land with Mrs Anna Rochester, who is recovering from years of imprisonment in the attic of 'Thornfield Hall'. Sent to the colony by Jane and Rochester, they are searching for the truth about Anna's past, trying to unearth long-buried secrets. Captain Charles O'Hara Booth, Commandant of Port Arthur Penal Settlement, fears some secrets of his own will be discovered when Sir John Franklin replaces Colonel Arthur as Governor. Franklin and his wife Jane arrive in Hobart Town to find the colony is run by a clique of Arthur's former army officers who have no intention of relinquishing their power. This dazzling modern recreation of a nineteenth century novel ingeniously entwines Jane Eyre's iconic love story with Sir John Franklin's great tale of exploration and empire. A brilliant and historically accurate depiction of Van Demonian society in the 1800s, as well as a vivid portrayal of the human cost of colonisation, Wild Island shows us that fiction and history are not so different after all. Each story, whether it be truth or fiction, is shaped by its teller.

These look wonderful! The stamps are embedded with clues that you need to view with UV light or a magnifying glass.

Here 'tis!

Ah yes, I can understand that a bit. I recently started reading The Turkish Gambit by Boris Akunin (fiction) and there's a lot of talk about Russian politics. It all goes completely over my head. Ooh, good news about TBoSNT! Shame you didn't enjoy WWZ. Luckily I knew about the format of the book before I started reading it, and I'm OK with it so far. If I hadn't known, I probably would have been disappointed.

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on this one! I have this on my TBR pile. It sounds promising! Do you know if he wrote this before or after his doping came to light? The next cycling book I want to read is The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton. It's supposed to be quite good. Have you read it? I started reading yet another book last night: World War Z by Max Brooks. And today I received a new book in the mail: And Yet... by Christopher Hitchens.

Yay! I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's one of my faves. Wonderfully creepy, I thought.

Graeme Simsion (who wrote The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect) has a new book coming out in a few weeks called The Best of Adam Sharp.

Even though I'm in the middle of about half a dozen books, I decided I needed something different, so I picked up Meet Mr Mulliner by PG Wodehouse. I read a couple of chapters and was thoroughly enjoying it, but when I logged on to Goodreads to update my status, I noted that apparently I've already read this book. Bloomin' typical. I have 41 unread Wodehouse novels, and I managed to pick up one I've already read. I could've sworn I hadn't read any of the Mulliner books yet! I've decided to keep reading it because I'm enjoying it so much, but it won't be one off the TBR pile.

I loved A Short History of Nearly Everything.