sirinrob

lade.....

ok - i slipped up try lad at least the ar- combo is gone

Neither of my parents are readers, but my mother taught me to read at 4 and I never looked back. As a youngster my reading age was always at least 5 years above my real age, and my real passion was to read. My mother can still relate the one and only time I visted a 'schoolfriend' -15 minutes play then I settled in a corner and read a book!! So I'm a born reader, might bore some people with my enthusiasm ho hum..... Interestingly enough my brother hates reading; he'd rather watch TV, which I don't have and loathe.

wards....

lard......

next word cart

BookJumper has expressed how I feel beautifully. All I can add is reading alerts me on how not to express myself as well, cliches to avoid, clumsy sentence structure etc

Finished 'A Winter Book' by Tove Jansson (of Moomkin fame)- excellent. Now back to 'Cutting for Stone' by Abraham Verghese which is beginning to pick up at last.

This is a selection of prose written by Tove Jansson for adults. The earlier stories centre round a young girl and her view of the world around her, and occupy almost half the book. The young girl is independent, strong minded and prone to getting indignant. These are followed by one story when she is an adolescent, the remaining stories as a fully grown woman. The same independence of spirit, strength of mind and irascibility as in the earlier stories is present. The very last piece in the book is an extract from 'Taking Leave' and concerns Tove and her husband's leave taking of an island in the Gulf of Finland, that they have lived for many summers, but now due to old age can no longer cope with. Each of the stories is written in a lean, precise style which conveys a whole range of emotion. Many of the stories involving the young girl are full of humour. I feel I obtained an insight into Tove as a person, as there is a semi-autobiographical feel to many of the pieces. If you have not read Tove Jansson before or only read some of the Moomkin books, then this is an excellent introduction to her work for adults. The novel , 'The True Deceiver', is available and is on my soon to be bought list.

Read Shakespeare in school many years ago. The combination of 'sanitized' editions and lacklustre teaching put me off. I'm now starting reading Shakespeare anew and discovering that I really enjoy the use of language and insight contained in his works.

glad to have been of service the three novels in order of publication are 'The Pendragon Legend'. 'Journey by Moonlight' and 'Oliver VII'. The 'Queen's Necklace', which sometimes ends up being listed as fiction in fact is non-fiction.

This is the third novel by Hungarian novelist Antal Szerb. It was completed in 1942, 2 years before his brutal death in a Nazi concentration camp. given the circumstances under which it was written it is surprisingly sunny intone. On the surface it is a madcap romp involving a king who is fed-up with being a king, plots his own coup, goes into exile, ends up in a gang of con-men, ends up impersonating himself and goes back to being king. The supporting characters are an eccentric bunch and the author has great fun with them. Under all the froth there are serious points made about self awareness, deception, the human condition. I really enjoyed this. It is written with a deft touch and finesse. I'm on the look out for the previous 2 novels, especially as one of them is set in Wales!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible - 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen- 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy- 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens- 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov- 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac- 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker- 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76 The Inferno - Dante- 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal - Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - 80 Possession - AS Byatt - 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Total 27 read

This novel chronicles the topsy turvy life led by the Dean family. Martin and Terry live with their parents in the 'Least Desirable place to live in New South Wales'. Part of the novel relates the various mishaps, outrageous antics, unintentional damage and general mayhem they both get into. Martin has a son, Jasper, who doesn't exactly lead a normal childhood, due to Martin's odd view of the world. Various eccentric characters are added to the mix. The result is an exuberant romp, with plenty of twists and turns along the way. This is a very funny book, with plenty of incisive observation and one liners. Underneath the humour some serious points are made, either by quotes from writers like Spinoza or character narrative. This is an impressive debut novel and look forward to the author's next offering!!

Books read 'A Fraction of the Whole' Steve Toltz 'The Book Thief' Marcus Zusak 'The Secret River' Kate Grenville 'Tiare' Cel

Going for the Fair Dinkum level for this challenge; 8 books by at least 5 Australian authors. Each book will be reviewed and the review posted in this thread.

Halfway through 'Oliver VII' by Antal Szerb, proving to be an interesting read:)

I've decided to drop San Marino and Vatican City from the list, as they are proving impossible

This based on a set of interviews made by the author in Serbia. There are 14 portraits. these cover all shades of the social spectrum, ranging from die hard Titoists, Serbian Orthodox priests, supporters of Misolevic through to dissidents. Each portrait is written in a straightforward style and is as objective as it can be . The insights into the Serbian character is fascinating. I came away with the distinct impression it is going to take some time for the Serbians to move forward. As the author says at the end of the introduction the title is apt. I enjoyed this

Decided this year to leave my Classics challenge as a background activity as I'm reading more books that do not fit into the pre-First World War category

I read this a s part of my 'Round the World' reading challenge. The author was born and raised in Dominican Republic. The novel concerns the life of a family in the DR and how they coped under the Teijillo regime and in Paterson in New Jersey. Oscar Wao is a nerd, totally lost in a world of Role playing games, Marvel comics and Science Fiction. The rest of the family are more down to earth, but have troubles of their own. Oscar's story is not compelling, partly because how he is portrayed, partly because it's not that credible. The insight into how life in the Dominican Republic was under Teijillo regime was interesting. Overall I did not enjoy this. The heavy use of swearing/vulgar language became tedious. The amount of Spanish used was reasonable, but tended to get in the way. As a debut novel I was unimpressed. The writing was choppy. There was to much stylistic gloss and the author put himself in the novel as if to say 'I'm wonderful, look what I had to deal with.'

I read this as part of my 'Round the World' reading challenge. The novel is set in Ireland, and concerns the search for knowledge by a young woman, Brida. She obtains guidance from a two teachers, but has to find out much for herself. The plot has some interesting twists and is well written. The author tells the story in his consummate manner. Their are many spiritual concepts in the novel, many of which I had come across before. Some were presented in a form that was quite revealing and thought provoking. I enjoyed this very much

This novel chronicles the topsy turvy life led by the Dean family. Martin and Terry live with their parents in the 'Least Desirable place to live in New South Wales'. Part of the novel relates the various mishaps, outrageous antics, unintentional damage and general mayhem they both get into. Martin has a son, Jasper, who doesn't exactly lead a normal childhood, due to Martin's odd view of the world. Various eccentric characters are added to the mix. The result is an exuberant romp, with plenty of twists and turns along the way. This is a very funny book, with plenty of incisive observation and one liners. Underneath the humour some serious points are made, either by quotes from writers like Spinoza or character narrative. This is an impressive debut novel and look forward to the author's next offering!!

Thomas Kinsella solved that problem by setting up Pepincaster publishing. Admittedly (tut tut I used an adverb) it was to promote his own poetry, but at least it is new poetry ( still writing). The tut-tut re adverbs is an allusion to the fact that virtually all US ,and some UK copyeditors hate adverbs for no sound reason.

It seems that Bradbury invoked Benjamin Franklin as the first fireman for the reasons you've unearthed. Irony is playing a part too, since BF was a writer and so wrote books to be read and kept, not banned and burnt.