chesilbeach

Didn't manage to read as much as I hoped yesterday (too much sport to keep up with ) but I'm not up to 78% now, so perhaps I might get it finished tonight … or tomorrow lunch break … or tomorrow evening … well, you get the picture

Isn't it funny how we all experience books differently - I find Emma the most difficult to read of all the Austen books, in fact, I've only managed to complete it once. I've started many times, but have given up part way through as I found it so difficult to read, and eventually had to put my determined hat on in order to make myself carry on. I know Austen purposely made Emma a heroine you shouldn't like, but I found most of the characters unlikable, making it difficult to invest in the story as I had no-one to want to know.

I'm still working my way through The Last Camel Died at Noon by Elizabeth Peters, and I'm at about 40% now, but hoping to settle down with it this afternoon and finish. I've updated the first couple of posts in this thread with my books read for the year and my current TBR list this morning, just to make sure I'm up to date. Quite pleased with my TBR, but every time it goes down by four or five books, it creeps by a couple, so it seems like an unending task, but it is gradually diminishing. My target is to reduce it significantly before my next batch of time off from work, so that by then, I can buy a book when I'm ready to read it, so that I don't build up another TBR. I know I did this once before, but it very quickly piled up again, hence why I'm trying to get back down to zero again!

Thanks, Kate. I think I enjoyed Q: A Love Story more than Kay - here's her review for another point of view.

That sounds like a great job, a mix of both being out on the water (albeit extremely hard work) and back in the office (hopefully with a view of the water!). I did an A level in Environmental Science at evening class a while back, and the marine science and fisheries section was the most interesting. I often wish I'd taken more of an interest in all the sciences at school and perhaps I would have gone to university to study some soft of marine biology, but I never felt a particular affinity for any specific subject, so just left school after A levels instead. I'm definitely a water person - I get twitchy if I'm too far from water, whether it's a river, lake or the sea - and I think now, if I was to return to education, I would be most interested in that area of study.

Everyone's welcome to post here, Jones, it's just a thread for everyone to catch up with the day to day stuff. Just curious, what will you do at sea? I've been suckered into watching the Commonwealth Games the last few days, and watched a stunning netball match this morning between England and Australia, with England playing amazing netball throughout the game, and only losing the lead in the dying seconds of the game to lose by one point. Heartbreaking, but a fantastic performance gives me hope for the rest of the tournament. Been a busy morning, as have also done the shopping, visited my Dad and read a chapter of my book. Going to try and do a bit of housework this afternoon, while keeping an eye on the rest of the games at Glasgow.

Don't Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli Synopsis (from amazon.co.uk): Portly art dealer and seasoned epicurean Charlie Mortdecai comes into possession of a stolen Goya, the disappearance of which is causing a diplomatic ruction between Spain and its allies. Not that that matters to Charlie ... until compromising pictures of some British diplomats also come into his possession and start to muddy the waters. All he's trying to do is make a dishonest living, but various governments, secret organisations and an unbelievably nubile young German don't see it that way and pretty soon he's in great need of his thuggish manservant Jock to keep them all at bay ... and the Goya safe. Review: I bought this from an indie bookshop where I usually pick up something quirky, unusual or unique, but I've since found it's being promoted in Waterstone's too, so perhaps this wasn't the find I was hoping it would be. It's a reissued series of books based around Charlie Mortdecai, and was first published in the 1970s. I don't think it's explicitly stated, but I get the feeling the setting is more the 1960s, but it's definitely a post-war setting. I think as a reader, you're supposed to fall in love with Charlie as a loveable roguish anti-hero, but there's a much nastier tone than I felt comfortable with, and I didn't like any of the other characters either. There were very few female characters, and again, I didn't like them or the way they were depicted - they were either one dimensional or merely referred to. There's a quote on the cover from the New Yorker which says, "Like the result of an unholy collaboration between P. G. Wodehouse and Ian Fleming", but having read both those writers, I personally wouldn't put this even close to them, and I didn't even like the Ian Fleming novel I read! Maybe I'm just not the target audience, but I didn't think it had dated well, I didn't appreciate the humour - I could see where it was supposed to be funny, but not my sense of humour - and I found the story far fetched. I'll be very interested to see if anyone else reads it, as I'd like to see another opinion on it from someone I know! EDIT: I forgot to mention, this is also being adapted on film, and Johnny Depp is playing Charlie, and the cast includes Ewan McGregor, Gwyneth Paltrow and Oliver Platt, so I'll be interested to see if they leave it as a period piece or update it, but I think I'd go and see it, and see what they make of it.

Q: A Love Story by Evan Mandery Synopsis (from amazon.co.uk): A picturesque love story begins at the cinema when our hero – an unacclaimed writer, unorthodox professor and unmistakeable New Yorker – first meets Q, his one everlasting love. Over the following weeks, in the rowboats of Central Park, on the miniature golf courses of Lower Manhattan, under a pear tree in Q’s own inner-city Eden, their miraculous romance accelerates and blossoms. Nothing, it seems – not even the hostilities of Q’s father or the impending destruction of Q’s garden – can disturb the lovers, or obstruct their advancing wedding. They are destined to be together. Until one day a man claiming to be our hero’s future self tells him he must leave Q. Review: I read this after Kay reviewed it, and on the whole I enjoyed it. It's an engaging story, it's quite quirky and an interesting take on time travel, in that it's very much a personal story, with the protagonist future self visiting the modern day protagonist, trying to prevent him from fulfilling that protagonists fate … still with me? It's sort of a twist on the adage of if you knew then what you knew now, you'd have done things differently, but the author gets you to question whether that would be the right thing to do. The story rattles along quite nicely, and with each change of direction the modern day protagonists life takes, a new future version of himself comes back to visit to warn him of a change he must make, but ultimately, I found the title itself a spoiler! It tells you that it's a love story about Q, so as the book progresses, you can guess what's going to happen. I noticed that on IMDB there is an entry for Q categorised as being in development, and I think it might make a good film, but again … change the title as it gives away too much information! I've actually debated whether to put some of these comments in spoiler tags, but if you read the book, I genuinely believe the title is a spoiler, and I still think it's the story along the way that's interesting and keeps you wondering how it will get to the conclusion, not what conclusion it'll get to, so I've decided to leave them in text as I'm not the one spoiling the plot, and haven't actually said what happens, just pointed out that it does exactly what it says on the tin.

A *very* pleasing 8/10 this week! http://www.waterstones.com/blog/2014/07/waterstones-week-in-books-quiz-25th-july-2014/

Poor you, bookmonkey! Just been out and about, and it's too hot for me. Sat in front of the fan with the Commonwealth Games on the telly, and just watched England trounce Wales in the Netball, and an amazing ride from Jo Rowsell in the velodrome. Putting the telly on mute now so that I can do a bit of reading.

Came back with a couple of books to add to my TBR yesterday, Perfect by Rachel Joyce and Idiopathy by Sam Byers. Still reading The Last Camel Died at Noon by Elizabeth Peters

Hi Jones, welcome to the forum!

I would have thought so, Anna. The only thing I find with any audiobooks, is that if i haven't already read the book and know the story, I have to concentrate on it, so I can't listen while doing anything that requires brainpower, e.g. driving, but it's fine for walking.

Ah, I see. Thanks Anna, I wasn't aware of that. I've still just got all my hardback copies and the audiobook version read by Stephen Fry, so I've never bothered with the ebook version!

I don't think she has - certainly over here the HP books were some of the ones quotes as being included in the 600,000 books available for subscribers.

I think that's why I've resisted choosing anything too! I'm not sure any of the books that've been mentioned will really make it to "classic" status. I think there's also a country divide. For example, I always got the impression that Ayn Rand books were already classics in the US, yet I rarely see them over here, either in new or second hand book shops, nor in the library, so perhaps future classics will be more country dependent? But then again, perhaps it will be more that authors will become classics rather than individual books, although thinking about it, perhaps that's the case already … Dickens, Austen, Dostoyevsky? Perhaps the Nobel Prize for Literature will point us in one direction … Saramago, Coetzee, Lessing?

But that's covering best selling books of all time. I'm talking about books that are published today becoming future classics. Look at this wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year based on the last years available data for each country. Just looking at the UK alone, as it's figures are based on new books published that year, not including new editions of previously published books, that's almost 150,000 books per year. I can't immediately find any figures for 19th century books, but it won't be anywhere near that sort of figure. My point is, with that many books being published each year (and I'm sure in the last couple of years, the UK number being batted around is now much closer to 200,000), will there be any books that will become classics that will have the mix of quality of writing and are enjoyable, timeless stories that people will want to keep reading, that enough people will be able to find and keep buying and reading in the future, when there are so many books being published each year. At the moment, we're close to 2 million new books per decade - how will any of those find enough of a foothold to be able to make them classics of the future?

I'm going to have a bit of a rant, so feel free to ignore this post! We visited a few bookshops yesterday, some second hand, some new books, and in the new book shops, I got really irritated because they didn't have a children's book I loved. It's one that's been published fairly recently, but for some reason they didn't have a copy in the shop. In one of the bookshops, I then had a look at the display table, where they pick out some books they're trying to promote, and see that quite a number of them are books I read as a child, and made me realise that I've seen quite a lot of this, and it seems as though booksellers are too nostalgic, and trying to sell old children's books to parents who read them when they were little. This is a very short term view of selling, in my opinion. Promote contemporary books to children! They're the readers of the future! If you get them with books and stories from their own time, with characters and situations they can recognise themselves in, their parents can introduce them to the classics later on, but you need to whet their appetite first. I know I'm an old fart, who lots of people say shouldn't be reading children's books, but I'm a sucker for a good story, and most of the contemporary children's authors I've read recently have been excellent at producing them. I can understand that bookshops want to sell as many books as they can, but I worry that if you put too many old children's books in the limelight, then parents buy them because they want to recapture that joy of reading that book, that they experienced when they were little, rather than letting their children buy books they want to read. As much as I love the books I grew up with, I don't think there has been a better time for children's literature, and there are some seriously good books and authors out there who will capture the imagination of this generation of readers, who will become the book buyers of the future. There is a place for classic children's literature, but it shouldn't be front and centre in a bookshop today - don't pander to the nostalgia of parents!!!! That said, I'm sure someone will be able to come back with a rebuttal to my argument that will completely convince me that the opposite is true!

I wonder how many contemporary books today will become classics, just because of the vast numbers of books that are published today? I'm not necessarily talking about here on the forum, but generally, popularity is now judged by sales figures, but is rarely a sign of the quality of the writing. The quality of literature is often (wrongly, I believe) said to be the preserve of literary awards, but again, I wonder how many award winners are enjoyable and timeless reading experiences, which I think is part of the requirement for a book to become a classic? Are we so overwhelmed by numbers that we can't see the wood for the trees?

I love that your family name and dog are immortalised in the book, Sari! To find out by reading the book, and then being able to share it with your family, must have been brilliant. What sort of dog was Tessu?

I can read my Kindle both horizontally and vertically - works just as well if I lie down as if I sit or stand up! Sorry, couldn't resist. Seriously, I have an old keyboard Kindle and I can change the text to horizontal if I want to, but I suspect, like most people, I prefer to read it in the vertical format, as it closely resembles the book format. On my iPad using the Kindle app though, if I turn the iPad through 90 degrees, it automatically changes to the appropriate format, which I imagine is similar to the Kindle Fire.

At the moment, if OH and I both want to read a book, we'll buy the paperback rather than the Kindle version, so I agree that I think everyone in the same household should be able to lend each other books - I'd NEVER lend him my Kindle! I'm sure I read that for the subscription service (I know this is on a different thread, but it ties in with this discussion), independent authors can sign up to get their books included, and they get a certain percentage based on if someone borrows the book and reads more than the first 10 or 100 pages (I can't remember exactly which it was), and since the loaning of books seems limited based on Kate's experience, then I guess that publishers and authors have had to sign up for allowing the loan of their books between Amazon customers too, so I imagine they do get a fee, albeit a small one.

Whereas, I'm the opposite and that's why it's more likely to appeal to me - I very rarely re-read books, and historically with my tree books, as soon as I'd read most of them, they went to the charity shop, and with the Kindle, they just sit there in a collection and I'm unlikely to ever read them again. Borrowing would be ideal for me. My library does lend ebooks, but not Kindle format, so I'd need to get a different e-reader to use that facility, so I've never bothered, but that might be a better alternative for me, as it would be a one-off cost only. I'd then have the dilemma of which ereader to take with me wherever I went, and it would probably be another charger to take on holiday, as they're never a standard connector, are they?!

Dates for your diaries, Great British Bake Off fans ... The new series starts on BBC One at 8pm on Wednesday 6th August. In addition, (from the BBC Press Office) there will be a sister show called An Extra Slice on BBC Two at 9pm on Friday nights. The show will be hosted by Jo Brand, who will be joined by three different celebrity Bake Off fans each week, and will shine a spotlight on the good, the bad and the soggy-bottomed from each week’s episode. There will be chat, unseen footage from the BBC One show and an interview with the week’s eliminated baker. The studio audience will also be challenged to bring in a bake inspired by the week’s baking theme - be that bread, pastry or a cake - and viewers will be invited to share photos of their efforts too.

Books 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the series are only £1.95 each on Kindle at the moment, so I might invest in them soon. I can't believe it's a year since I last read book 3, but I still want to try and reduce my TBR first, so I'm going to hold off for a little while longer.