poppyshake

Day 02 – A book that you’ve read more than 3 times The book I've read the most is Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' .. I try to read it every year and probably have read it eight times, maybe more. Other multiple reads are all the Jane Austens, Harry Potters and Nancy Mitfords 'The Pursuit of Love' which is my favourite comfort read when I'm feeling a bit

Day 01 – Best book you read last year And straight away I'm conflicted I'm going to say 'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides, I just loved the writing, and the story was original and both funny and sad with great characters. I must also put a good word in for 'Neverwhere' by Neil Gaiman, he's just the master when it comes to inventive, fantastical, storytelling and for my money this is his best book .. so far.

Thanks to Frankie for posting this list .. I lists!! I'll try and answer one a day. Day 01 – Best book you read last year Day 02 – A book that you’ve read more than 3 times Day 03 – Your favourite series Day 04 – Favourite book of your favourite series Day 05 – A book that makes you happy Day 06 – A book that makes you sad Day 07 – Most underrated book Day 08 – Most overrated book Day 09 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving Day 10 – Favourite classic book Day 11 – A book you hated Day 12 – A book you used to love but don’t anymore Day 13 – Your favourite writer Day 14 – Favourite book of your favourite writer Day 15 – Favourite male character Day 16 – Favourite female character Day 17 – Favourite quote from your favourite book Day 18 – A book that disappointed you Day 19 – Favourite book turned into a movie Day 20 – Favourite romance book Day 21 – Favourite book from your childhood Day 22 – Favourite book you own Day 23 – A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t Day 24 – A book that you wish more people would’ve read Day 25 – A character who you can relate to the most Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something Day 27 – The most surprising plot twist or ending Day 28 – Favourite title Day 29 – A book everyone hated but you liked Day 30 – Your favourite book of all time

I love that list Frankie, thanks for posting it, I'll borrow it from you if I may. Like everyone else I'm looking forward to your answers I liked 'The Book of Lost Things' a lot, it was a bit predictable in places (no, that's not the right word ... it was just that at times I couldn't help second guessing the plot .. not always successfully though) but it had some nice twisted fairytale re-tellings. I liked it enough to buy another John Connolly book ... 'Nocturnes' but I haven't read it yet. I am reading the book my neighbour lent me and enjoying it which is a relief .. it's called 'Burnt Shadows' by Kamila Shamsie and I've since seen (on one of my interminable booklists) that it was shortlisted for the Orange prize in 2009. It has a big melting pot plotline which so far has encompassed the Nagasaki atomic bomb, Partition in India and I'm pretty sure it's heading towards 9/11 and the Afghanistan war. The writing is good though and it hasn't turned out to be a monster after all .. it's just that it's one of those dreaded large format paperbacks. I borrowed 'Flaubert's Parrot' from the library but he may as well of been writing in Greek for all I understood it. I like Julian's books normally so it was a bit of a surprise to me that I found it unreadable. I think it's pretty well documented that I didn't get on with 'Madame Bovary' and maybe that made it even more of a puzzle, perhaps you have to love Flaubert to get the most out of it. I may try it again in the future ... I might listen to it being read which has long been my cure for impossible books. I could not get on with either 'Wuthering Heights' or 'Northanger Abbey' until I heard them being read then voilà I was able to go back and read and enjoy them. I've never been in the least bit tempted to try this cure on 'Madame Bovary' though .. I've a feeling I might do myself a mischief if forced to share brainspace with it one more time How are you getting on with 'On the Road'?, hope you're enjoying it.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville Waterstones Synopsis: When Ishmael sets sail on the whaling ship Pequod one cold Christmas Day, he has no idea of the horrors awaiting him out on the vast and merciless ocean. The ship's strange captain, Ahab, is in the grip of an obsession to hunt down the famous white whale, Moby Dick, and will stop at nothing on his quest to annihilate his nemesis. Review: I'm not an avid seafarer, I've been known to go a bit green around the gills on the Isle of Wight ferry but I do love reading books about the sea and I think you have to be a bit of an enthusiast to get the most out of this story, perhaps not quite as fanatical as Captain Ahab but definitely interested in all things nautical and whaling in particular because the book goes into such minute descriptions that anyone not interested will just find it boring, wordy and hard work. It's true that the actual story could be told in half the amount of pages maybe less but I enjoyed all the detail and relished the lulls as well as the peaks. Sometimes it felt more like a reference book but just as you're getting bogged down with all the facts and figures you are pulled back into the pitch and toss of the story once more. The chapters, on the whole, are extremely short (sometimes less than a page long) and this helps you to feel you're progressing. It's a large book but absolutely compelling, there are long chapters on cetology and descriptions of the crew and ship (so detailed that you feel he has included every plank and nail,) but I didn't find myself wandering at any point, I was genuinely interested in all the minutiae. It's not an easy read though and is probably not for those who like their adventure stories to rattle along, you probably could skip all the chapters about whaling lore and read a sort of potted version. Occasionally the writing leaps into madness and you just hang on for dear life, Ahab himself spouts all sorts of maniacal rhetoric and the thoughts and remarks of the crew are given in one long continuous stream. As most people know (from it's famous first line) this is a story told from the perspective of Ishmael, but strangely Ishmael is the character that we get to know the least .. probably because he is observing others and relating all to us. There are fascinating descriptions of the others though, in particular Queequeg (the cannibal harpooneer and 'infernal head peddler') with his yellow purplish skin tattoed with blackish squares, his small scalp-knot twisted upon his forehead, his legs which were marked as if 'a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms' and his tomahawk clenched between his teeth and Ahab with his whalebone leg, broad form seemingly made of solid bronze and facial scar that disappears into his clothing which 'resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts it down, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, living the tree still greenly alive, but branded.' Ishmael, seeking adventure and needing some money thinks he will 'sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hat's off - then, I account it high time to get to sea.' This time he has a notion to go whaling and so betakes himself to Nantucket to sign up as a member of the crew for the whaling ship the Pequod. What he doesn't realise at this point is that the captain of the Pequod is a man who has been driven to madness and beyond by his desire for revenge on the white whale Moby Dick. I was especially excited to read the climax and abolish once and for all awful images of Gregory Peck clonking about on deck, waging war on a huge piece of fibreglass An added benefit of this beautiful Vintage edition is the inclusion of an extract from Owen Chase's 'Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex', a true account which, if anything, I found even more fascinating than that of Moby Dick. I loved it, I felt like I was drenched with salt and greasy with spermaceti by the time I'd finished and knew enough to be able to pass muster as a harpooneer if ever I could be prevailed upon to do anything as barbaric as hunt whales (which I never could .. first there's the seasickness and then there's the squeamishness .. I can't even despatch a flower munching garden slug ) Actually, the whales were the ones that had my deepest sympathies, in that respect Moby Dick is a bit of a hero ... he is not going to have any truck with these murderous seamen and he's definitely the one calling the shots and wearing the trousers. I found it really enthralling but it's a book that should come with a warning, if you're easily bored or like stories with a lot of pace and action, this probably isn't for you. It wasn't successful in its day and that's probably because it's considered by some to be long winded (but as you can tell by this review ... long winded isn't a problem for me ) It's not a relaxing read but I found the effort well worth it, I read some of the best passages I've ever read. I think I would have given him 9 out of 10 just for writing a line such as ... 'whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul' .. bliss (and now someone will tell me that Shakespeare first wrote that ) 9/10

I like the thought of us telling Goethe his book was crap hopefully we won't have to but if we do, he's only got himself to blame. It might make a pretty vexing task, though. Who knows what's happened to his soul after he died. If he's gone to heaven, we'll have to wait til we get there (and I'm not probably going anyways), if he's reincarnated how do we know who he is at the moment, etc! Ooh I dare say we'd better enjoy the book! True, I've read 'The Moomins' .. so I'm definitely not going to heaven (or has that theory been disproved now?) having said that I'm not sure Goethe is there anyways .. he might be roasting elsewhere .. and if we all meet up down there .. . well, there's nothing like being barbecued to make you forget the last crap book you read Perhaps the book may give us an insight into what or who he may have been re-incarnated as .. but it'd be a nightmare task, I mean he may have lived a further two lives .. more if he's been careless. As you say, we have no option but to enjoy it for all it's miserableness. Which leads me to the trip I had yesterday: BF and I walked to the center of the town, a good 6 kilometers, and we decided to pop in the Red Cross charityshop, which I'd already been to, a week ago. I was certain the selection hadn't changed at all in a week but holy heck, I spotted a copy of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver! Woooo! I also found a Tom Clancy for BF for his Birthday and a biography of Einstein. And I also got me a book by a Finnish linguist and a traveller, it's actually his letters from 1845-1889. I've never even heard of him before but apparently he had loads to do with stuff. Isn't that a vague description Just mine, though. Well done, that's a result. I loved 'The Poisonwood Bible' .. bit of a tome but well worth it .. though why I should be worrying about the size of books I don't know, it's a terrible reason to buy or not buy/read or not read a book .. Alan says that sometimes I read books as if I have to rid the world of their evil and get them read and done with as soon as possible ergo .. thin books are more desirable .. and the competetive freak in me has to acknowledge that he's right but I do try and fight against it and have read three monsters recently (Moby Dick, A House for Mr Biswas and currently Crime & Punishment.) Also Alan is reading 'The Book of Lost Things' by John Connolly but he does like to be read to (men!! .. they like everything done for them!) so, despite having read it recentlyish, I've read at least half of it to him as well. I am eying the bookshelf now with trepidation and am definitely going to pick a thinnish book next .. bother!! I've just remembered a neighbour has lent me a book and I feel like I have to read it asap .. I looked at it and my first thought was (weighed down by having being aboard the Pequod for a while and worrying about whether Mr Biswas was ever going to be able to have his own house) .. it's a lot bigger than I would like .. still it's not the sort of thing that I would normally read and that makes it intriguing. I bet the biography about Einstein will be fascinating, such a genius and I like the sound of the Finnish linguist who had 'loads to do with stuff' ... much better to read his letters than to read the letters of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with stuff. I love letters anyway and would read practically anyone's. I used to think that it gave you a real insight into someone's mind if you read their letters but then I read Virginia Woolf say that when you write letters you are acting a part and 'spraying an atmosphere around one' which is obviously true .. we seldom write the exact truth in letters we flower it up a bit, but I still love letters anyway, there's always bits of truth that leak out and, unless the person is a complete dolt, they're always engrossing. I'm jealous because you've crossed another one off of the 1001 but yay for you I'm jealous because you have already read so many books from the list! Certainly more than I have. This is another sign of how horribly competetive I can be .. I won't be happy until I've read the 1001 and then of course I shall die and be sent to some awful place where the only access to a library is across a river of burning sulphur (actually in this respect thank God for Julian Barnes's 'Flaubert's Parrot' which I have tried to read and abandoned (wasn't a happy subject for me anyways) .. as long as this remains on the 1001 I think I'm safe.

Great review Frankie, it's going on my wishlist. It sounds similar to 'The Old Man & the Sea' which was very lean also, at the time I couldn't believe how much I was enjoying a story about an old man trying to catch a fish! I'm jealous because you've crossed another one off of the 1001 but yay for you Btw your definition of 'bodice ripper' was spot on but to be fair to 'The Thorn Birds', now I think about it, it was more steamy than anything .. there was a lot of repressed sexual tension with people trying not to get neeeeked although they very much wanted to I like the thought of us telling Goethe his book was crap hopefully we won't have to but if we do, he's only got himself to blame. I've long thought that at least three quarters of the books in charity/secondhand bookshops are books that are a bit throwaway, really good books are hard to find there because of course no-one wants to part with them. When I go in my local one's I am guaranteed to see legions of books by Kinsella, Holden, Binchy, Collins, Cooper, Steel, Fforde (alas Katie not Jasper) and Keyes with all their girly pink twinkly spines looking at me (and there's nothing wrong with them .. I indulge often in a bit of Binchy/Keyes therapy) but a real gem is hard to find.

My Love - Corinne Bailey Rae (Paul McCartney cover)

~Jack Kerouac: On the Road (1001, RG and my Cult Fiction list. Unfortunately this book is in Finnish which bugs me quite a lot but I thought I'd support the library with the euro, and maybe I'll read it and if I like it, I'll order an English copy later and can then pass this copy on) - I wanted to like this more than I did, most of it went over my head. It's a must read though. Uh-oh, now I'm even more worried I might not like it. Maybe all this talk will hopefully lower my expectations and I'll enjoy it immensely. It's really weird how we want to really enjoy certain books, and want to hate certain books, and then again we have no idea how we'll really react to them when we read them. You'll probably be fine, it's a bit of a marmite book I think .. though I didn't hate it, I just felt .. what's the fuss about. ~Elie Wiesel: Twilight - You've intrigued me about this author already .. I must read 'Night' soon. I recommend you read it soon I was really pleased to find a Wiesel novel, I think he is one of those authors whose books I'll buy when I have a chance, and I've only so far read one! He makes quite an impression. That's a sign then that once I've read 'Night' I'm going to want to read everything else he's written .. that's ok, I love collecting authors. ~Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises (1001, RG) - I want to read more by Hemingway, what little I have read I've loved .. and I love the Vintage covers .. except I don't think they've done one yet for this book .. come on Vintage pull your finger out. I'm so jealous of the Vintage cover and how you guys have a good chance of finding them wherever. Over here the variety is much more limited. I'm a bit on the fence with Hemingway, I've only read his Garden of Eden which I didn't particularly like, but then again I hear it's not one of his best novels. I don't know whether I like his writing or not, I've only read 'The Old Man and the Sea' and I loved it, but I do love novels about the sea. I guess I need to read another two of his and see if he passes the best of three test. I saw a lovely Vintage 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' today .. and I just thought .. what a waste of a good cover ~Dave Eggers: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genious (RG. I was particularly happy about finding this one!) I'm putting this on my wishlist. Do you know anything about the book, did you look it up just now? I mean, I didn't say much about the novel Yes I did quickly look it up, I love writers memoirs and I like what I've read already by him so it's a must for the wishlist. ~R. L. Stevenson: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories (I've already read DJ&MH and loved it, this will go on my permanent collection. This copy also includes the story Olalla, which I am really thrilled about, Tristan gave it a great review on his reading blog) - Another one I need to read, such a classic story. Oh you definitely need to read this one, it's so great! And Treasure Island, if you haven't read it already! I haven't read it ... but I'm getting into the classics much more lately so it's on the list. ~J. W. von Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther (1001, 501. This is the book I'm most pleased about, I've been wanting to find a copy for ages. The copy I found was surprisingly cheap and it's absolutely beautiful!!) - Yay from the 1001 .. again I want to read this so very jealous. It is so rare that someone is jealous of some book I've bought because of the limited variety of the books in Finland, but maybe this time it's due to it not being an English novel but a German one. I remember my German teacher telling us about this German classic, she once tried reading it and said it was so miserable and it felt like pulling teeth I think I'll like it though, I tried reading it once and liked it fine but didn't finish it for some reason. It will be quite a melancholic novel but I think in a good way. I don't mind wallowing in a bit of misery, it can be quite cathartic as in .. 'life's not so bad after all'. I'm intrigued by this book, it may well make me want to self destruct but then I managed Anna Karenina without wanting to throw myself in front of a train (it was a close call with Madame Bovary though ) ~John Wyndham: The Day of the Triffids (1001, 501. Along with Eggers and Goethe, I'm so pleased about finding this one, and in English as well!) - Another must read ... will help me bump up my scif-fi tally which badly needs it. I feel you, I should also get reading some serious sci-fi. I'm so jealouse of Kylie's ease with the genre, I usually fear the whole genre is too complicated for me, which bums me out because I'm sure they would make great reads otherwise. That's me as well, I quiver at the thought of sci-fi and am hopeless with all the really modern complicated stuff (my mind doesn't so much wander off as go for a five mile hike in the opposite direction ) I seem to be ok with the old classics though. ~Colleen McCullough: The Thorn Birds - I'm sure I read this in the dim and distant but I have no recollection other than the cover, it's said to be great though. I'll take it to mean you didn't seriously hate it then, because you'd remember that I've seen the book so many times in the library and secondhand bookshops, but I've never really given it a conscious thought. I think it's supposed to be great though, yes. I think I liked it, it's a bit of a bodice ripper isn't it? .. I read it somewhen in the 90's .. and the 90's are a blur to me now ~Henri Troyat: Dostojevski (also very happy to have found an interesting biography about this great author) - I am luxuriating in the gorgeous prose of 'Crime and Punishment' at the moment. I love his writing so would like to find out more about him. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Jealous! I've been too intimidated to start reading C&P so far, it's one of those books I'd like to like/love and yet feel I might not. Do you enjoy other Russian authors? I've just discovered Daniil Harms (his English name is Daniil Charms, I have no idea why the spelling of the Russian names vary so much from one language to another!), his book Incidences was full of absurd yet hilarious little stories. They didn't make much sense but they were really funny, and I think that if one really puts their mind to it, they'll open up and will expose Harm's critique on the society and such. I'm finding it pretty easy going, I mean it is dark and brooding and everything you would expect from a Russian novel but utterly compelling. I have only read a tiny bit of Tolstoy (if you can call Anna Karenina tiny) and I enjoyed it but I'm enjoying Dostoevsky more. I want to read some Gogol and Nabakov too and will definitely look into Harms/Charms/Kharms also. I love books that are slightly absurd and the Russian novelists seem to excel at it. Dostoevsky in particular writes similarly, and every bit as well, as Dickens but without the overt sentimentality that Dickens is prone to. That's not to say that I hate Dickens, when he gets it right, he's sublime. Translations can be a problem though (and I guess you know all about this.) I've got two versions of 'Crime and Punishment' and they differ enormously. I've gone with the Vintage ... something that looks that good couldn't lead me astray.

I can't help laughing at the thought of you popping into people's threads to say bugger off ... the book was crap :lol:

~Jack Kerouac: On the Road (1001, RG and my Cult Fiction list. Unfortunately this book is in Finnish which bugs me quite a lot but I thought I'd support the library with the euro, and maybe I'll read it and if I like it, I'll order an English copy later and can then pass this copy on) - I wanted to like this more than I did, most of it went over my head. It's a must read though. ~Elie Wiesel: Twilight - You've intrigued me about this author already .. I must read 'Night' soon. ~Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises (1001, RG) - I want to read more by Hemingway, what little I have read I've loved .. and I love the Vintage covers .. except I don't think they've done one yet for this book .. come on Vintage pull your finger out. ~Dave Eggers: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genious (RG. I was particularly happy about finding this one!) I'm putting this on my wishlist. ~R. L. Stevenson: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories (I've already read DJ&MH and loved it, this will go on my permanent collection. This copy also includes the story Olalla, which I am really thrilled about, Tristan gave it a great review on his reading blog) - Another one I need to read, such a classic story. ~J. W. von Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther (1001, 501. This is the book I'm most pleased about, I've been wanting to find a copy for ages. The copy I found was surprisingly cheap and it's absolutely beautiful!!) - Yay from the 1001 .. again I want to read this so very jealous. ~John Wyndham: The Day of the Triffids (1001, 501. Along with Eggers and Goethe, I'm so pleased about finding this one, and in English as well!) - Another must read ... will help me bump up my scif-fi tally which badly needs it. ~Colleen McCullough: The Thorn Birds - I'm sure I read this in the dim and distant but I have no recollection other than the cover, it's said to be great though. ~Henri Troyat: Dostojevski (also very happy to have found an interesting biography about this great author) - I am luxuriating in the gorgeous prose of 'Crime and Punishment' at the moment. I love his writing so would like to find out more about him. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. All the books ranged from 0,50e to 2,50e, averaging maybe 1,50e per book. I was really lucky to find so many books on my lists! I think we can call that a successful day's shopping

A good cover makes all the difference, I feel more well disposed towards a book if it's got a nice cover. I do read ugly books of course, but I don't feel quite as fond of them. Oh dear ... I feel a pressure headache coming on. Hope you like the books when you get around to reading them Frankie ... luckily you've got a list as long as your arm so by the time you get around to reading these you'll have forgotten it was me that recommended them (oh no .. I've just remembered you keep a note of who recommended what don't you? ) Thanks for the compliments Frankie .. I'm honoured.

Yes we do, we definitely do (and I know you didn't say this at 2.27pm on 14 April 2011 Frankie, but I got lost and found myself in a Kylie/Frankie sandwich ) I get so excited by the Vintage covers (bet you didn't know that ) ... when I was in Hay on Wye, I saw some interesting artwork in a cafe, that someone had made using book covers (with the books still intact I'm glad to say) ... and it would work wonderfully well with some of the Vintage covers .. though not a great idea if you want to re-read them and I think they'd have to be more or less the same size (as in depth) so that might limit me too much, because I have fatties and skinnies amongst my favourites I heard an adaptation of Gogol's 'The Nose' on the radio the other day and it was bizarre but hilarious. Must look out for his stories. Whatever books you take with you Kylie, hope you enjoy them and that they're good, mojo enhancing, well behaved books.

Thanks Kylie, I hope you like them too I'm struggling a bit with my reading at the moment and I don't know why exactly other than I've got too much else to do. I should have read a lot more by now, but April is looking as dismal .. if not more dismal ... than March. How's the Walter Moers going?

Your welcome Kylie , yes I did feel sad for Sonia, she had a bit of a difficult start in life too (broken home and catholic convent upbringing) and went through a truly horrifying experience as a teenager watching three of her friends drown (and actually having to push the last one away to avoid being dragged under herself.) She never really recovered from it emotionally and had drowning and suffocating dreams

The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald Waterstones Synopsis: Penelope Fitzgerald's wonderful Booker-nominated novel. This, Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel, was her first to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It is set in a small East Anglian coastal town, where Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. 'She had a kind heart, but that is not much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation.' Hardborough becomes a battleground, as small towns so easily do. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. This is a story for anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice. Review: Strangely I didn't find this an easy read and I'm not entirely sure why except to say that Penelope Fitzgerald has her own style of writing which is not necessarily immediately accessible. You do get the feeling that her words have been chosen carefully and as such there are meanings behind meanings and your brain can spend a bit of a time splashing about in the sentences .. perhaps I just wasn't concentrating hard enough .. I kept having to do the re-reading sentences thing as the prose is quite spare. She's a writer of great skill and precision though, not one word is wasted. The concept is a great one .. who could fail to be interested by Florence and the bookshop she has opened amid local opposition .. I just saw the word 'bookshop' and I was there with bells on. I've read similar stories before, small minded people in small towns who are able, through their lofty connections, to put rather large spanners in the works of decent, hard working, honest folk but here it's dealt with in a different more subtle way and as such the ideas seem fresh and original. 'She had a kind heart, though that is not of much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation. For more than eight years of half a lifetime she had lived at Hardborough on the very small amount of money her late husband had left her and had recently come to wonder whether she hadn't a duty to make it clear to herself, and possibly to others, that she existed in her own right. Survival was often considered all that could be asked in the cold and clear East Anglian air. Kill or cure, the inhabitants thought - either a long old age, or immediate consignment to the salty turf of the churchyard. It's not at all the book I was expecting, I was hoping for something a bit more Maeve Binchy probably with chatty gossipy customers and lots of book talk (a sit-com version of my weekly visits to Waterstones most likely ) but all the characters were rather mysterious and impenetrable. At first, as I say, I found it difficult and it didn't grab me but before I was halfway through I was hooked and enjoying it. The pressure put on Florence to relinquish her plans is not so much heavy as relentless. You couldn't call her feisty but she's not a woman to be easily swayed or diverted from her path so a rather strong battle of wills ensues. There's a mystical element weaving through it too, as the bookshop has a live in poltergeist or a 'rapper' as it's known locally (or 'unusual period atmosphere' as the house agent would have it) and it's also a humorous book, not lol but plenty of out loud smiling. One of the characters I really enjoyed reading about was ten and a half year old Christine who helped out at the bookshop after school, a real gift of a character, sparky but vulnerable. It's only short and I found I was really getting into it when it finished, I wanted to know more about some of the characters which is always a good sign. It's a book to be re-read often, I'm sure I'll gain more from it each time. 7/10

Mrs Woolf & the Servants - Alison Light Amazons Synopsis: Virginia Woolf was a feminist and a bohemian but without her servants – cooking, cleaning and keeping house - she might never have managed to write. Mrs Woolf and The Servants explores the hidden history of service. Through Virginia Woolf’s extensive diaries and letters and brilliant detective work, Alison Light chronicles the lives of those forgotten women who worked behind the scenes in Bloomsbury, and their fraught relations with one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. Review: Brilliantly researched and packed full of information, this was just an eye opener from start to finish. The book is mainly about Virginia Woolf and her rather tempestuous relationships with the servants, in particular her cook Nellie Boxall, but it's also a fairly thorough history of domestic service in Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries. Virginia's attempts to 'manage' her servants are laughable even farcical .. she has absolutely no idea. Ideally she and Leonard would have liked to be servantless (and they actually claimed to be later in life though they conveniently forgot that they employed a gardener and a maid .. though to be fair what they really wanted was to be without 'live-in' servants and this was achieved.) Virginia hated the thought of a live-in domestic and found their presence intrusive. Also, not to be too indelicate, she had a horror of the body and it's functions and hand in hand with this came a horror of the poor creatures that were often called upon to deal with the results of these functions .. even when Leonard and Virginia began to earn more money and could have afforded to improve their living conditions (such as install electricity and flushing toilets) they were slow to do it, perhaps they would have been quicker if it had been their job to slop out the chamber pots. Virginia's diary entries and letters often showed how exasperated and astounded she was by the servants, she could be extremely biting and cruel ...'This is written to while away one of those stupendous moments - one of those painful, ridiculous, agitating moments which make one half sick & yet I don't know - I'm excited too; & feel free & then sordid; & unsettled; & so on - I've told Nelly (she had never learnt to spell her name correctly) to go; after a series of scenes which I won't bore myself to describe. And in the midst of the usual anger, I looked into her little shifting greedy eyes & saw nothing but malice & spite there, & felt that that had come to be the reality now: she doesn't care for me, or for anything: has been eaten up by her poor timid servants fears & cares & respectabilities.' There were rows and recriminations galore between them with Nellie often getting the better of it, she would sulk and cry, list her grievances and threaten to leave. Virginia was perpetually vexed by her and never quite got over being ordered out of Nellie's room once during an argument. Nellie gave her notice in repeatedly only to retract it later much to Virginia's annoyance and a secret plan had to be hatched to get rid of her (although over the years Virginia was often the one to relent after an argument and to feel that it was better the devil you know.) Eventually and reluctantly Nellie left and found a more convivial situation as cook to Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton. But that's not to say that Nellie & Virginia, despite all the turmoil, didn't have a soft spot for each other because in their own dislocated way they did. Virginia just could not comprehend the lower classes, she felt she could never successfully include them in her fiction as she simply couldn't fathom them and feared they would just seem like cardboard cut-outs, they did often inspire stories and characters though. Although both Virginia and Leonard were active members of the Labour party and believed in socialist causes, Virginia often found her public sympathy for the lives of the poor was at odds with her private recoil. She veered between admiring and sympathising with them and being repulsed and bewildered by them, seeing them as little more than dumb animals for the most part (in fact I'm not so sure that she didn't value animals more highly than the working classes.) It's as always humbling to read about these women and how hard their lot was, terrible living conditions (usually either freezing down in the bowels of the house or stifling up in the attic), the hardest of hard work and the longest of hours without receiving much in the way of either gratitude or wages. There was a stigma too about being a domestic servant, it often meant you couldn't marry well (or at all) so when situations and education improved by the late 19th century young girls were keen to look into factory, shop and office work as a means of escaping a life of drudgery. As a result less and less young women went into service and the domestic staff got older and older. Fascinating .. both funny and jaw droppingly awful in equal measures. There are some great photo's too, some taken by Virginia's sister Vanessa Bell, which give you a flavour of the life and times. 8/10

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien 2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman 5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling 6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee 7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne 8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell 9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis 10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë 11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller 12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë 14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier 15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger 16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame 17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens 18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott 21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell 22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling 23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling 24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling 25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien 26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy 27. Middlemarch, George Eliot 28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving 30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll 32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez 34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens 38. Persuasion, Jane Austen 40. Emma, Jane Austen 45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh 46. Animal Farm, George Orwell 47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens 48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy 54. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer 76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt 79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens 82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith 85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy 88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons 90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac 97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez only 42 so far .. not even halfway .. bother! out of the rest the one's I have on my TBR are ... 13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks 19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres (on shelf) 20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy 29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck 35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl 36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson 37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute 41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery 42. Watership Down, Richard Adams (on shelf) 43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald (on shelf) 44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas 51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett 52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck 57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome (on shelf) 60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (on shelf) 61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman 62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden (on shelf) 63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (on shelf) 65. Mort, Terry Pratchett 68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman 69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett 70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding 73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett 74. Matilda, Roald Dahl 77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins (on shelf) 78. Ulysses, James Joyce 81. The Twits, Roald Dahl 84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake 93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett so that would make 71 and I might read the following ... 49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian 71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind 72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell 100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie Don't you just love lists

Thanks Weave I love the way he writes. I once tried to read 'The Van' on a beach and kept getting strange looks because I was literally laughing out loud ... I never usually lol at books (a wide grin is probably the nearest I get) but it was just hilarious.

It stands a pretty poor chance tbh Frankie .. you know what it's like .. all books have to fight for their chance to be next on the list and this one has been skulking around looking fat, daunting and unappealing for a while now. It's not gone to the charity shop though .. and sooner or later I'll run out of choices. I feel a bit sorry for it though because, despite what my friend said, I already think it's going to be a disappointment. It's got 'abandoned book' written all over it.

The Girl from the Fiction Department : A Portrait of Sonia Orwell Waterstones Synopsis: 'Should be compulsory reading' - "The Times". George Orwell's second wife was portrayed by many of her husband's biographers as a manipulative gold-digger who would stop at nothing to keep control of his legacy. But the truth about Sonia Orwell - the model for Julia in nineteen eighty-four - was altogether different. Beautiful, intelligent and fiercely idealistic, she lived at the heart of London's literary and artistic scene before her marriage to Orwell changed her life for ever. Burdened with the almost impossible task of protecting Orwell's estate, Sonia's loyalty to her late husband brought her nothing but poverty and despair. Review: A good book but not the one I was expecting. It didn't give me the slightest insight into George or life with George because his time with Sonia was relatively short. George was already gravely ill in hospital with tuberculosis when they married and he died shortly afterwards. There was no big romance, Sonia had known George for a couple of years previous to their marriage because of her work as assistant editor for the literary magazine 'Horizon'. In failing health, and with a young adopted son to bring up (his first wife had died.) George had apparently asked several women to marry him. Sonia often babysat for his son and also slept with him (George) on occasion (it's almost certain that she is the model for Julia in Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four - bold, bossy and uncompromising.) Apparently George claimed he would get better if Sonia married him so of course, what could she do. His proposal went something like 'well, you'd better learn to make dumplings.' When George died, his young son was left in the care of an aunt, but Sonia became his heir and was left in sole charge of his copyrights (with proviso's that would cause her much anguish and soul searching over the years) and it's this legacy that launched the tide of venom directed at her by many of George's subsequent biographers. In this book though she's portrayed as a very beautiful, clever, independent woman, hardworking and intuitive. She's certainly someone who didn't suffer fools and there's no doubt that she could be difficult and changeable. She loved art and literature and was very influential as a literary reviewer and assistant editor (it's said that some of the literary discoveries claimed by Horizon's editor Cyril Connolly were actually Sonia's.) She was a fiercely loyal and supportive friend and counted the artists Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud among them as well as philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. She loved life in Paris and spent as much time as she could there being far more happy, and at home, on that side of the channel. Hilary Spurling, who writes this book, was a close friend of Sonia's during the last ten years of her life and sets out here to set the record straight. The vitriol that was directed towards Sonia just after her death both shocked and enraged her friends. So here we have a more balanced view, it doesn't shrink from showing her at her most imperious but it does show that she was anything but a gold digger in respect to George. Sadly, life doesn't end happily for Sonia, she isn't, despite her best efforts, able to protect George's literature from being exploited, and this hits her extremely hard .. much more so than her increasingly penniless state. Although very shrewd in many ways she placed far too much trust in accountant Jack Harrison (who had been engaged by George shortly before he died to sort out tax problems and was among the three team members put together by Sonia to help run the Orwell estate.) She is careless about signing papers and lax about money details (not enquiring about the finances at all and asking for money only reluctantly)... she eventually finds out that over the years, according to Jack Harrison, she has signed away a huge percentage of voting rights and a quarter of the shares. She becomes reclusive and unapproachable, writing to tell a friend that books are her sole companions now ... 'But when I put them down, or when I wake up, it's all there again, this terrible endless tunnel into which I've drifted which, naturally, I feel is somehow all my fault but from which I'll never emerge again, but worse [i feel] that I've damaged George'. She dies shortly afterwards of cancer, practically penniless and homeless (with Francis Bacon paying her outstanding bills) but thankfully, having just won a lawsuit brought against Jack Harrison and George Orwell Productions, she was able to regain control of George's estate and pass it on entirely to his adopted son. A sad little book really, shortly before George died he said that he had two novels inside him waiting to be written .. his increasingly debilitating illness meant that it was impossible for him to get them down on paper, I wonder what they would have been like? 8/10

I'm interested to hear what you make of it, it's a book that I've heard a lot of stuff about .. all of it good so far. Well done for tackling and conquering War and Peace ... I've got to do the same with Crime and Punishment and though I think I'll enjoy it (have heard an abridged version before) the size of it daunts me. You're right Audrey did play Natasha .. and very adorable she was too but I never could quite take to Henry Fonda as Pierre. Audrey's real life husband (at the time) Mel Ferrer played Prince Andrei.

Oh my, oh my .. where do I begin? They are just gorgeous Kylie .. I'm dazzled by their beauty. I'm particularly loving 'Gullivers Travels', 'Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde', 'The Leopard', 'The Collector' and all of Richard Yates's. I know I place far too much importance on book covers but don't they just make you want to pick them up and start leafing through? Btw have you seen those prints that Jane Mount does of people's 'Ideal Bookshelf'? Of course then it's the spine that's important and the Vintage books would not really do at all. I'm thinking of showing Alan them and getting him to paint me something similar because he's pretty handy with a paintbrush. But then I know I'd be wanting to put the prettiest spines in the pic and they wouldn't necessarily belong to my favourite books

I've read the same but whilst I was reading 'The Secret History' .. I told a friend how much I was enjoying it and she e.mailed me the following .... I have also read 'The Secret History' and really liked it - I liked her second book better (I think it's called The Little Friend). They are not at all similar, I think she wrote the second one ten years later. I trust her opinion and so .. despite the multitude of terrible reviews .. it's kept it's place on my bookshelf and I will dive into it eventually. I loved Liz Jensen's 'Ark Baby' but hated 'The Rapture' with a vengeance ... it topped my hated reads list last year easily. It hasn't stopped me buying more of her books though, I'm hoping they will be more like the former than the latter.

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe Waterstones Synopsis: Robinson Crusoe runs away from home to join the navy. After a series of adventures at sea, he is shipwrecked in a devastating storm, and finds himself alone on a remote desert island. He remains there many years, building a life for himself in solitude, until the day he discovers another man's footprint in the sand. Review: Such is it's reputation that I don't think you can approach this story without having some pre-conceived ideas about the plot. I can remember reading some sort of abridged version as a child as well as hearing snippets on the radio. Images of Robert Hoffman, Tom Hanks and, bizarrely, Oliver Reed were also in my head whenever I thought about shipwrecked castaway's so it was nice to actually take the time to read the original tale (and to find out that apart from knowing that a man is shipwrecked on a desert island I didn't really know much about it at all.) Robinson goes against his family's wishes and heads off for a life at sea. His first journey alone should have been enough to put him off, he was only sailing around the British coast from Hull to Yarmouth when the ship he was on foundered in a storm (I was thinking at this point, surely this isn't where he's castaway .. if so then calling it a tropical island is pushing things a bit.) Having got safely to shore he embarks on another ship bound for the coast of Africa, though he's terribly seasick, the journey is successful and Robinson profits by it. When he tries the trip again however the ship is raided by pirates and Robinson is taken as a slave for two years. You would think that it would dawn on him that life on the ocean waves is perhaps not for him, maybe a job in a lawyers office might be preferable after all, but obstinancy seems to be one of his chief failings and more to the point he doesn't want to admit defeat and prove his father right. So he continues with his sea voyages, becoming quite rich in the process (as the joint owner of a plantation) until he is again shipwrecked near an island somewhere in the Carribean. I loved the writing, it's written in an old English archaic style with interesting words such as murther (for murder) and shew'd (for showed,) it's fascinating but not complicated. I also loved how descriptive it is, it's hard to make a story interesting when it's basically just a tale about a man wandering around a desert island with no company, and no savage animals, for the best part of twenty eight years but Defoe manages it easily. Animal lovers will need to look away on more than one occasion ... Robinson needs to find food to survive and animals are despatched with alacrity (some of them proving to be inedible) but of course, the caveman instincts will out when you need to survive. He starts viewing all wildlife as sustenance. The local cats (a sort of mixture between feral cats and survivors from the ship) are also, how shall I put it, kept to a minimum. Surprisingly he doesn't seem to eat a lot of fish (I think he missed a trick there.) It has to be said that he got lucky, he was the sole survivor of the wreck (if you don't count a couple of cats and a dog) and although he was shipwrecked with little more than the clothes he stood up in, the ship didn't sink and he was able to return and basically carry off everything that was useful. The island proved to have a large herd of goats living on it, so with one fell swoop, meat, milk, butter and cheese became available. He also managed, accidententally (by shaking out some empty bags before he filled them with gunpowder) to sow good rice and corn crops which greatly improved his diet. Everything took a long time to achieve but of course he had all the time in the world .. so he fashions pots out of clay, makes canoe's out of tree trunks and bread out of his corn (all failures to begin with but mastered over time.) His rum seems to last him for ages which I thought was admirable because I would have drunk it on that first night whilst up a tree listening anxiously for howls. He explores the island and sets up little homesteads in other places which allow him to rest and recuperate on long explorative or hunting trips and he gets so used to life there that, apart from the lack of company, he's fairly contented with his lot. Until that is one day, when he see's some footprints in the sand. Instantly he feels fear, he now spends his days looking over his shoulder and making sure his 'houses' are more secure (and this is where technology would have been useful for him because some really decent CCTV would have put his mind at rest and saved him from back breaking work.) As he investigates the possible meaning behind these alien footprints he makes a horrifying discovery. Tribes from other islands are coming to his island in their canoe's and bringing with them prisoners which they then eat (in full cannibalistic dancing around the cooking pot style.) Surely it can't be long before they discover him and sample what he tastes like when simmered for a few hours. Said to be the first proper English novel and of course viewed really as a childrens book (children must have had a greater attention span back then than they do now because it couldn't be called an easy read.) I was expecting to be a little bit bored by it but I wasn't and enjoyed it more than I was expecting. It does ramble on a bit at times especially when Robinson get's into long debates with God about his misfortune, fluctuating between despair and thankfulness. Also the minute detail Defoe goes into concerning Robinson's fight for survival does make it feel more biographical than fictional. Robinson isn't particularly likeable but that doesn't matter, you still want him to succeed. I felt a bit cross with him for constantly referring to Friday as 'savage' ... and for choosing the word 'master' to be Friday's first learnt English word but the affection between them did seem genuine and I guess you have to take into account when it was written (rather like Huckleberry Finn) .. that's how things were and as unpalatable as it is, we can't rewrite the script or we're done for. This is, and will probably remain for some time, the oldest novel I've read. 9/10