poppyshake

Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales Amazon Synopsis: Once upon a time fairy tales weren't meant just for children, and neither is Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales. This stunning collection contains lyrical tales, bloody tales and hilariously funny and ripely bawdy stories from countries all around the world- from the Arctic to Asia - and no dippy princesses or soppy fairies. Instead, we have pretty maids and old crones; crafty women and bad girls; enchantresses and midwives; rascal aunts and odd sisters. This fabulous celebration of strong minds, low cunning, black arts and dirty tricks could only have been collected by the unique and much- missed Angela Carter. Review: An exquisite collection of fairy tales for adults. This book brings together two collections of fairy tales that were edited by Angela, 'The Virago Book of Fairy Tales' and 'The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales'. Sadly Angela died just before the second collection was ready though she worked on it right up to the end, collecting the stories and grouping them under her chosen headings. She wasn't able to write the new introduction though or finish the notes. Her chosen headings are .. 1. Brave, Bold and Wilful 2. Clever Women, Resourceful Girls and Desperate Stratagems 3. Sillies 4. Good Girls and Where it Gets Them 5. Witches 6. Unhappy Families 7. Moral Tales 8. Strong Minds and Low Cunning 9. Up to Something - Black Arts and Dirty Tricks 10. Beautiful People 11. Mothers and Daughters 12. Married Women 13. Useful Stories ... and there is a collection of stories under each heading totalling 103 in all. There are a lot of tales which are familiar although with slightly different characters, origins and outcomes. Different takes on the stories of 'Cinderella', 'Snow White/Rose Red', 'Red Riding Hood' etc (though 'Red Riding Hood' is one of the few stories printed here that is recognisable as the version we know), stories that have seeded themselves all around the world. They come from Europe, Scandinavia, the Carribean, USA, the Arctic, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Make no mistake these are not tales to be told to children, these are grimmer than grimm, and also fairly graphic and crude. Angela says in her introduction (from the first original Virago fairy tales book) that the removal of coarse expressions was a common nineteenth century pastime, and she believes this denaturised the tales. The tales, almost without exception, feature women as the main protagonists. 'The stories in this book, with scarcely an exception, have their roots in the pre-industrialised past, and unreconstructed theories of human nature. In this world, milk comes from the cow, water from the well, and only the intervention of the supernatural can change the relations of women to men and, above all, of women to their own fertility. I don't offer these stories in a spirit of nostalgia; that past was hard, cruel and especially inimical to women, whatever desperate stratagems we employed to get a little bit of our own way. But I do offer them in a valedictory spirit, as a reminder of how wise, clever, perceptive, occasionally lyrical, eccentric, sometimes downright crazy our great grandmothers were, and their great grandmothers; and of the contributions to literature of Mother Goose and her goslings.' Some of my favourites were 'Kate Crackernuts', a Scottish tale about a King and his two daughters, Kate and Anne. Kate was the Queen's daughter, she was less beautiful than Anne (the Queen's step-daughter) and the Queen, being rather jealous and resentful (aren't they always), tried her best to destroy this beauty. Kate on the other hand loved her sister, and did everything she could to thwart her mothers plans, rather successfully as it turned out. 'The Three Sillies' is a tale about a farmer, his wife, his daughter and a travelling gentleman who is courting the daughter. The gentleman (and they give him good cause) has reason to believe that these are the silliest three people he has ever met. He want's to continue on his journey but makes them a promise that if he can find three sillier people than them on his travels, he'll come back and marry the daughter. Luckily for the girl, the gentlemen soon stumbles across a whole raft of people that would make Mr Bean look sensible and he soon returns to ask for her hand. And despite it being the most bizarre thing I've ever read, I couldn't help smiling at 'Blubber Boy' an Inuit tale about a girl whose boyfriend had drowned in the sea. She was inconsolable but then carved his likeness out of blubber and rubbed it on her genitals whereby it came to life (don't try this at home!). Unfortunately a side effect of being made out of blubber is that, on very sunny days, you have a tendency to melt. Blubber boy does this and the girl is upset again but luckily blubber is plentiful where she comes from. The stories are illustrated beautifully in black and white lino cut style by Angela's friend, illustrator, Corinna Sargood. 8/10

Good luck with it Amy

Ah, sorry to hear that Janet, hope your reading mojo comes back soon. By co-incidence I'm just about to start Tatty. Hope you enjoy The Elephant Keeper I really liked that one

I don't drink caffeine either, but love decaf tea, am an absolute tea-aholic, would have a drip put in if it were possible. Other than that a nice chilled glass of white wine, or maybe cider (though I tend to get killer heads with cider).

The Color Purple - Alice Walker Amazon Synopsis: Set in the deep American south between the wars, this is the classic tale of Celie, a young poor black girl. Raped repeatedly by her father, she loses two children and then is married off to a man who treats her no better than a slave. She is separated from her sister Nettie and dreams of becoming like the glamorous Shug Avery, a singer and rebellious black woman who has taken charge of her own destiny. Gradually Celie discovers the support of women that enables her to leave the past behind and begin a new life. Review: The story begins with Celie's first letter to God .. 'You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy' .. she's fourteen years old, her mama's has just given birth to her baby sister and she's not recovering well. She leaves Celie and the other children to travel to Macon to see the doctor. This is the day that Celie is raped by her father for the first time. She asks God 'Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me'. Celie twice becomes pregnant and gives birth. Her mama is really sick now, dying. She want's to know who the father is of Celie's children. Celie doesn't say. Her father takes the babies into the wood, Celie presumes he kills them. The person Celie is closest to in the world is her younger sister Nettie, Celie lives in dread that their father will begin abusing Nettie, she want's to save her if she can. Nettie is pretty and smart, Mr _____ ,a widower with three children, has seen her in church and is now calling at the house. Celie urges her sister to keep studying, she want's more for her than to be a housemaid bringing up somebody else's children. But then she see's the way her father looks at Nettie and she tell's her to marry Mr _____. But their pa says Nettie's too young to marry, he want's her to have more schooling and anyway what about Shug Avery. Mr _____ carries a picture around of Shug which he has accidentally dropped, she's the most beautiful woman Celie has even seen, she stares at her picture and dreams about her. Mr _____ comes again to ask for Nettie's hand, but their father is adamant the answer is no, he offers Celie as a replacement. 'She the oldest anyway. She ought to marry first. She ain't fresh tho, but I specs you know that. She spoiled. Twice. She ugly. But she ain't no stranger to hard work. And she clean. And God done fixed her. You can do everything just like you want to and she ain't gonna make you feed it or clothe it. Fact is, I got to get rid of her. She a bad influence on my other girl's. She ugly. Don't even look like she kin to Nettie. She ain't smart either. But she can work like a man. She near twenty. And another thing ... She tell lies' Celie marries Mr _____, his children hate her and throw rocks at her and Mr _____ beats her. Nettie runs away from home to live with them but Mr _____ doesn't want her living there so she stays only a short time. Celie gives her the name of a local Reverend and his wife who she hopes will take her in. She doesn't hear from Nettie for a long time and thinks she must be dead. Mr _____ is still obsessed with Shug Avery, she's a singer and a former lover of his (they have three children together who are being raised by Shug's parents), and when she comes back into town he takes himself along to see her and stays away all weekend. Celie doesn't mind this at all, she just wishes she could see Shug for herself, some folk in the town call Shug names 'strumpet, hussy, heifer, streetcleaner' this doesn't matter to Celie, she feels protective towards her. When Shug becomes sick, Mr _____ goes off to fetch her and bring her home. After a tentative beginning Celie and Shug become friends, well a lot more than friends. It seems to Celie that nobody, bar Nettie, has ever really loved her, ever really taken the time to know her. Shug awakens in Celie both emotional and sexual love and she starts to blossom. With Shug's help, Celie finally learns the truth about what has happened to Nettie and her two long lost children and she begins to break free from a lifetime of oppression. The book is considered to be a feminist novel, the woman characters are strong and for the most part right thinking and the men are mostly despicable, weak, bullies. It's true that some men in the book (one in particular) are horrific but some of the others do get the chance to redeem themselves. The language is pretty ripe and there is a fair bit of adult content, but it's not there to shock, just to add authenticity. The title refers to the following word's spoken by Shug and Celie, when they are discussing God, or Shug's perception of God. 'God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God loves admiration'. 'You saying God vain?' I ask 'Naw' she say. 'Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it p*sses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it' At times it's a harrowing and uncomfortable read but ultimately it's inspiring and hopeful. 8/10

I recently read Brooklyn and though I liked it, it didn't set my bookcase alight. I liked his style of writing though and definitely want to read The Master.

That is so true

Motor Boat Snowboarding or Skateboarding?

But it's a well known fact that the UK could put their best singer/songwriter ever into the competetion and we would still come last .. or near it. The voting is so political, you can always predict who is going to vote for who. We should pull out of it and stop funding it. Still keep it on the TV but not participate. No decent UK singer or group would ever want to be associated with it, they know it's a poisoned chalice. It's really a refuge now for the hopeful or desperate (as far as the UK entries are concerned) .. and in any case the sort of songs that win or do well are just not the sort of songs that we do well here, or not anymore anyway, the nearest we ever have been to it is glam rock in the 70's. Radiohead once said they wanted to do it but they didn't want to go through the auditioning processes that you now need to go through. That would've been the biggest laugh of them all, to see a world famous band get nil points. Our entry this year was poor, but it didn't matter, James Morrison could have been on there singing 'Broken Strings' or 'Wonderful World' and he would've got the same result. It's not a level playing field.

Another one that I'll have to wait for the DVD to see Claire Foy is excellent so looking forward to seeing her in it. I wasn't mad keen on the other two though ... 'The Hogfather' and 'The Colour of Magic' especially the latter one. I hated Sean Astin as Twoflower and didn't think David Jason was right for Rincewind either. They didn't do justice to the books imo, though that would be difficult.

Same here, there are a couple of tracks I've liked ... like 'Closest Thing to Crazy' but I hated 'Nine Million Bicycles' and loathed 'If You Were a Sailboat' .. that would probably take the prize for me for the worst lyrics ever. The Mike Batt connection put me off too, and she seemed to be just a vehicle for his songwriting 'talents' but I hear she's writing her own stuff now so that's a good thing.

Ah that's a shame chesil, it's disappointing when a book doesn't live up to it's reputation (won the Booker and was Orange longlisted). I've got it on my shelves somewhere, but I think it was a charity shop buy so no real harm done. I'll probably give it a go because I do love reading books set in Dublin, but your review, plus it's terrible Amazon rating, has shoved it down to the bottom of my list .. and that's ok, I've got too many books clamouring for attention .. some of them are going to have to take a back seat. Hope you have better luck with your current book, two unenjoyable books in a row is torture.

I love audiobooks and use Audible a lot. Recent favourites were 'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett, 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' by Susanna Clarke, 'Company of Liars' by Karen Maitland, 'The Book Thief' by Markus Zusak and 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day' by Winifred Watson.

Went to the library today, just to return some books, and purposefully didn't even look in the direction of the shelves. I'm feeling so daunted by the amount of books, yet to be read, at home that I've made myself a promise that I won't bring any more books into the house, until I get the pile down a bit (famous last but I'm going to try and keep to it for at least a month). Read about a quarter of 'The Colour Purple' .. it's excellent, but harrowing.

Fauna Picnics or Barbecues?

Thanks Jessi, I hope you enjoy them If you like historical fiction then I'm sure you will.

Ark Baby - Liz Jensen Amazon Synopsis: Liz Jensen's second novel, Ark Baby, is a dark, randy and riotous romp back to the future featuring twin plot lines as tightly twisted as a double helix. The novel (if not the story) kicks into gear on New Year's Eve 1999 when a sudden, heavy rainfall over Britain signals the end of fertility on the sceptred isle; with the turn of the millennium, every last specimen of British womanhood is rendered mysteriously barren. In the aftermath of this event, child-starved couples start turning to lower primates to satisfy their baby lust; enter veterinarian Bobby Sullivan, the hapless hero of Jensen's quirky meditation on evolution and survival of the fittest. After accidentally killing a client's beloved macaque monkey and being charged with murder, Bobby escapes to a remote northern seaside town called Thunder Spit and eventually gets involved with two slightly hirsute twins whom he manages to impregnate--the first fertile women in England since the millennium. Not content to chronicle Bobby's adventures in Thunder Spit around the dawn of the new millennium, Jensen weaves in the 19th-century adventures of foundling Tobias Phelps as counterpoint. Discovered abandoned in the Thunder Spit church by a childless vicar and his wife, Tobias is raised by the couple as their own, but his unusual appearance (squashed features, odd feet, hairy body) spur him to find his biological parents. As Bobby muddles towards 21st-century parenthood and Tobias gets tangled up in Victorian England's fascination with the theories of Darwin, the two plots begin to converge in a welter of diary entries, exotic recipes, strange artefacts and curious coincidences. By the end of Ark Baby readers might well conclude that far from being "red in tooth and claw", nature has one hell of a sense of humour. Review: The book blurb for 'Ark Baby' has a comment from the New York Times which tells you to think of this book as 'Monty Python's Origin of Species' which is spot on. This is an absolutely bonkers take on Darwin's theory of evolution. Though not long, it's a great stew of a book with lots of ingredients. You don't quite know how they're all going to come together although there are dark hints of what's to come. Firstly comes the prologue, a short dark passage telling a bizarre story of an Ark (not that one, this is the 1800's) full of animals, sailing towards England. On board the captain hears some disconcerting noises coming from below, including growls, snarls and a woman's scream. Not long after a live but frozen woman finds her way to the nuns at a Greenwich workhouse, they attempt to defrost her with a tub of warm water but noticing her condition they call for a midwife, something's amiss with the child though, surely it's the offspring of the Devil. The woman and child are thrown out and make their way to the nearby Travelling Fair of Danger and Delight which shortly leaves Greenwich and travels northwards. The book alternates between the 1800's and 2005, mostly in consecutive chapters but sometimes mid chapter. In the present day (or more accurately 2005) all British women have become infertile. Bobby Sullivan is a vet working in London, he accepts a bribe from a client to put a pink dressed little macaque monkey to sleep (monkey's now being regarded as surrogate children by some British women) but when the client's wife finds out and threatens legal action, Bobby has to leave quick sharp, he changes his name to Buck de Savile and heads for Thunder Spit. Staying in Thunder Spit but back in the 1800's we are introduced to Tobias Phelps, an abandoned child with a hideous lower back wound, found by Parson Phelps in the church. Tobias is an odd child, he's covered in hair for one thing and can only grunt for the first five years of his life, he has odd shaped feet too and an awkward gait (you already know where this is going don't you?). All he knows is that he must not, whatever else he does, ever visit the Travelling Fair of Danger and Delight, but of course the temptation proves too great. Also in 1845 in London, we meet Dr Scrapie, his wife Mrs Charlotte Scrapie or the 'Laudanum Empress' as she is known (a nickname which alludes to the chronic addiction which helps fuel her psychic abilities) and their daughter Violet. Dr Scrapie is chief taxidermist to Queen Victoria (or the Royal Hippopotamus as he calls her) and he is currently working on a ridiculous project stuffing animals from around the globe, removing their genitalia, dressing them in clothes and giving them blue glass eyes, for part of her Animal Kingdom collection. Also newly introduced to the household is Monsieur Cabillaud, a chef who, as luck would have it, has no objection to cooking 'unusual meats', in fact he has a flair for it. The Empress has to be my favourite character, she's hilarious. She's full of proclamations and psychic predictions, which nobody else believes or pays heed to. 'There will be two world wars. As a result, a million skulls will be strewn all over France. But on the more positive side, there will be something known as long-life milk' ... 'There will be heat seeking missiles, and split crotch panties. Not to mention a substance called Play-Doh'' ... 'There will be gambling machines called one-armed bandits. And artists will display their own excrement in galleries'. Somehow all these ingredients are mixed together until their connections become clear. The Empress remains in the story even after she's dead (this time she's addicted to Pepto Bismol!), as a ghost inhabiting her old residence which now belongs to the parent's of Bobby Sullivan's new girlfriends (who are a pair of hirsute twin's with an odd habit of keeping their socks on at all times). After an unexpected encounter involving a strange woman, blackmail and a pickle jar, Parson Phelps abandons Tobias, he abandons religion too and is taken raving to the local sanatorium. Tobias doesn't quite know what to make of it, who was the woman and what is pickled in the jar? Charles Darwin has just published his 'Origin of Species' (indeed both he and Henry Salt get talking parts in this novel) to a general outcry. In 2005 the pregnant twins (but then at least half of the British female population are experiencing phantom pregnancies in what is known as a nine month period of insanity .. there is a 'Euro Fertility Reward' of five million euro's) are busy researching their family tree and Bobby (or Buck as we now call him) is wondering about the stuffed 'Gentleman Monkey' that was in the Scrapie's loft, at first he thinks it might be valuable but after some intensive research he realises it's much more important than that. As the synopsis says this is a bit of a bawdy romp, reminiscent at times of Tristram Shandy etc, but I didn't mind that because Liz Jensen has a deft comic touch and it was totally in keeping with the story. It's dark, humorous, clever and really enjoyable. 9/10

suitcase chocolate orange or chocolate mint?

Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke read by Allan Corduner Audible Synopsis: Life in the Inkworld has been far from easy since the extraordinary events of Inkspell, when the story of Inkheart magically drew Meggie, Mo, and Dustfinger back into its pages. With Dustfinger dead, and the evil Adderhead in control, the story in which they are all caught has taken an unhappy turn. Elinor, left alone in the real world, believes her family to be lost - lost between the covers of a book. But as winter comes there is reason to hope - if only Meggie and Mo can rewrite the wrongs of the past and make a dangerous deal with death.... Here is the fantastic finale to the epic Inkheart Trilogy from best-selling author Cornelia Funke. Review: Although I bought this in paperback I eventually decided to download the audio. The main reason for this was that I found reading 'Inkspell' a trial, I enjoyed it, but because I couldn't commit the time to reading it, I picked it up and put it down far too often and literally got lost in the story, but not in a good way. Anyhow, I'm glad I did because listening to Allan Corduner's reading of Inkdeath was an absolute pleasure. At first it was a bit odd, having read the first two books, I had my own voices for the characters and they weren't for the most part anything like Alan's but after a couple of chapters I forgot about my versions. I was glad to have a copy of the book to use for reference, it has a synopsis of both Inkheart and Inkspell at the start and a comprehensive A-Z list of characters and place names which came in pretty handy especially at the beginning. I'm going to put all of this review in spoiler wrappers because it mentions things that happened in Inkspell which some FM's may not have read yet. Magical, enchanting and enthralling. 9/10

Ooh that's really tough .. I love Elvis but I'm going to say Michael as it was more my era The Tin Man or The Scarecrow?

Saturday Night Fever .. I love a bit of disco

The Harley Pecan or Walnut?

Cheddar Piglet or Eeyore?

Cider Hula Hoops or Quavers?

This is one of my favourite reads ever, I absolutely loved the Radlett family. Hope you enjoy it Ruth