poppyshake

Jam Manny (Ice Age) or Sully (Monsters Inc)?

British people love a bit of grease for breakfast Perhaps not all the time, we eat cereal, toast and porridge mostly but that's just going through the motions ... when the frying pan comes out, that's when our faces light up, that's 'proper' breakfast.

Yes, blue veined cheese for me too. I couldn't stand it up until recently .. now I love it. Something I tried (well, made recently) were two things that I've had before but never together and that was chocolate cake made with butternut squash ... I thought, that's never going to work in a month of Sunday's .. but it did and it was delicious.

I've only had one 'Steven Erikson Book of the Fallen' experience and it wasn't a good one. My OH bought me 'Gardens of the Moon' and to be honest, I hardly understood one word in ten .. leastways I understood the words but I didn't understand the plotline. I've just got the book down off the shelf .. and I can see from the bookmark that I gave up on Page 137 (and I rarely ever abandon a book). I don't read a lot of fantasy .. Pratchett and Gaiman is about as far as I go but this felt like a whole different ballgame, like everything just got serious. I keep telling my OH to read it (seeing as he bought it), to see if he has any more luck with it than I did. I think I was punching above my weight ... it's definitely for hardcore fantasy fans.

Country Motown or Rock'n'Roll?

I was once in my house alone and washing my hair by leaning over the bath .. and something/someone pushed me in the back really hard. I could never ever come up with a reasonable explanation for it and at the time it frightened me to death .. because it wasn't just a soft tap or anything. A friend told me never to buy an antique mirror or wardrobe .. and though my rational self says what a load of old hogwash, I've not bought one yet despite being tempted.

Thanks Kylie, I keep seeing David Mitchell's new book being advertised and thinking shall I dip my toe back into the water again, it looks really interesting but then my brain says no .. not yet anyway.

Neither did I, I'm going to create a 'Janet-sized' one now just for my own eyes.

I love that Tennyson poem 'Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd lad, Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad Goes by to tower'd Camelot; And sometimes through the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two. She hath no loyal Knight and true, The Lady of Shalott' Love it! It's a poem that you can really visualise. Getting towards the end of Julian Barnes's book 'A History of the World ...' it's a book of short stories really and I've liked some more than others, but on the whole it's good.

I only keep a few on my Amazon wishlist, because my Mum in particular buys me books from it and I don't want to frighten her with a huge amount of titles. Currently on it are .... 1. Mr Vertigo - Paul Auster 2. The Chapel at the Edge of the World - Kirsten McKenzie 3. The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint - Brady Udall 4. The Girl with Glass Feet - Ali Shaw 5. Ruby's Spoon - Anna Lawrence Pietroni 6. Howards End is on the Landing - Susan Hill 7. A Homemade Life - Molly Wizenberg 8. The Very Thought of You - Rosie Alison 9. Light Boxes - Shane Jones 10. The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes

What a fantastic title

Fever Crumb - Philip Reeve Waterstones Synopsis: "Fever Crumb" is a stunning, stand-alone prequel to Philip Reeve's brilliant science fantasy quartet. It is set many generations before the events of Mortal Engines, in whose dazzling world huge, predatory cities chase and devour each other. Now, London is a riot-torn, ruinous town, clinging to a devastated landscape and hiding an explosive secret. Is Fever, adopted daughter of Dr Crumb, the strange key that will unlock its dangerous mysteries? Review: I hadn't read any of the 'Mortal Engine' books so I had no idea what to expect from this prequel. It's a story set in futuristic London, a story about Fever, an orphan, abandoned at birth and brought up by scientist Dr Crumb. She is the youngest member and only female of the Order of Engineers. Fever has had a practical, unemotional upbringing and is very realistic and serious. She has a shaven head, hair is 'just a vestige of our animal past and provides a home for lice and other parasites'. She drinks boiled water, 'it is deeply irrational that dried leaves should be transported halfway around the world aboard ships and land barges simply to flavour water. Besides tea is a stimulant, which leads to nervousness and irrationality' and she cannot see the purpose of jokes. London had once been ruled by The Scriven, who were brilliant, cruel and not entirely human .. they liked to call themselves 'Homo superior'. However, like most mutant strains, they hadn't thrived for long. Largely unsuccessful in breeding and held in contempt by native Londoners they were sought out and slaughtered in an event known as the 'Skinners Riots'. One day Fever is sent on a placement to archaeologist Kit Solent's house, he has specifically requested that she help him study some artefacts. But her odd coloured eyes and shaven head evoke suspicion in some of the native Londoners, and it isn't long before the Skinners get wind of this odd looking traveller and set about trying to track her down. She expects to be taken by Kit to some ancient site, but instead he takes her to a secret passage that runs underneath his house. The passage leads to a chamber in which there is a door, with no handles or hinges .. just a 'lectronic keypad'. It requires a code to break it and for some strange reason, Kit expects Fever to know that code and even stranger than that is that Fever thinks she does remember that code. She starts to find her stay at Kit Solents house unsettling, she begins to have thoughts and feelings that she's never experienced before. She wonders about her past, who were her real parents?. She begins to remember things, memories of other yesterdays which could not possibly have been hers for she has always lived at Godshawk's Head with Dr Crumb. And all the while a huge army makes it's way South, tribes of people from the North who have been set wandering by the plagues and firestorms. Travelling in gigantic wagons and traction castles, huge cities moving ever onwards towards the 'Moatway' gates and London. I thought the writing was fantastic, if Dickens had ever written a futuristic novel for children then it would be very much like this one .. with the Skinners, the Scriven and the Patchskins .. The Mott and Hoople Pub, Pickled Eel Circus, Cripplegate, Stragglemarket and St Kylie. Clearly Philip Reeve is a David Bowie fan as there is graffiti saying 'This ain't genocide, this is rock'n'roll' and there is also a pub called 'Scary Monsters and Super Creeps' (also Fever has mismatched eyes as Bowie has). Central to it all is Fever, and though she is a weird little unemotional thing, you can't help but be interested in her and anxious about her welfare. Apparently, though this is a prequel, it's best if you read it last. I haven't done that but I'm still interested to read the others because they sound even more fantastic. 8/10

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell Waterstones Synopsis: 'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies ...' A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagans California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanitys dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us. Review: Disappointingly I didn't enjoy it. It felt like six short stories that were only wispily linked, some of the stories I liked and some I didn't which meant that I would have preferred more of one and much less of the other. The first story we encounter is 'The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing'. Adam is a rather naive American notary writing his journal on board the Prophetess in 1850 as it makes it's way across the Pacific. It's enjoyable enough in it's way but not rivetting and the story stops abruptly .. literally in mid sentence. The next story is 'Letters from Zedelghem' and this one I enjoyed. It's about an impoverished composer called Robert Frobisher who travels to Belgium, sometime between the two world wars, in order to throw himself at the mercy of a reclusive English composer in order to work as his amenuensis. Robert is a wastrel, immoral and self absorbed but his letters to his friend Sixsmith are at times hilarious ... 'Dover an utter fright staffed by Bolsheviks, versified cliffs as Romantic as my ar*e and a similar hue' We then come to ''Half Lives - The First Luisa Rey Mystery' which is a story set in California in the 1970's. Luisa is a journalist investigating corruption at a nuclear power plant. I wasn't that taken with this story, it was ok but it seemed more like a script for one of those made-for-TV movies destined to be shown on a Tuesday afternoon. Next is 'The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish' about a 'vanity publisher' fleeing from the gangster brothers of his client. Timothy calls upon his brother for help, and heads for what he thinks is a kind of safe house/hotel hoping to lie low until the furore dies down. His ghastly ordeal continues when he finds he is confined in a nursing home from which there is no escape. This was another of the stories that I enjoyed, the tale is wittily told and Timothy is very funny 'I was sent to my room without breakfast. I plotted vengeance, litigation and torture. I inspected my cell. Door, locked from outside, no keyhole. Window that only opened six inches. Heavy duty sheets made of egg carton fibres with plastic undersheet. Armchair, washable seat-cover. Moppable carpet. 'Easywipe' wallpaper.'En Suite' bathroom: soap, shampoo, flannel, ratty towel, no window. Picture of cottage captioned: A House is Made by hands, but a Home is Made by Hearts. prospects for break-out: p*ss poor' Then we arrive at 'An Orison of Somni', a dystopian story set in Korea about a genetically engineered server at Papa Songs diner who is being interviewed, by the archivist, before her execution. This I found a mixture of both interesting and uninteresting but for this first part of her story anyway I was intrigued. A terrifying description of what life is like for a futuristic cloned server in a McDonalds/Burger King type outlet .. bred to work for 20 hours a day, incapable of independant thought, working tirelessly to earn their twelve stars which will enable them to retire to 'Xultation' in Hawaii (though this we find out later is far from the case) ... 'Hour four thirty is yellow-up. Stimulin enters the airflow to rouse us from our cots. We file into hygiener; then we steam-clean. Back in our dooroom we dress in fresh uniform; then gather round the Hub with our Seers and his Aides. Papa Song appears on His Plinth for Matins, and we recite the Six Catechisms together. Our logoman then delivers His Sermon. At a minute before hour five we go to our positions around the Hub'. The central story (and the longest as it was the only one not split into two) was 'Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After', a tale set in post-apocalyptic Hawaii and told by tribesman Zachry in heavy dialect. This tale together with 'An Orison of Somni' reminded me a bit of reading Will Self's 'The Book of Dave' the reading of which I would never willingly want to be reminded of. I stopped and stuttered so much over the two .. especially 'Sloosha's Crossin' that it disrupted the flow of the book entirely .. 'Mis'ry'n'barrassment are hungersome for blame, an' what I blamed for losin' Roses was the dammit Prescient. That mornin' on Moon's Nest I got up an' hollered my goats an' droved 'em to Thumb pasture without even sayin' goodbye to Meronym. She'd got 'nuff Smart to leave me be, mem'ry she'd got a son o'her own back on Prescience I' We then go into rewind .. and continue with the first five tales in reverse. Finding out what happened to each of our narrators/protagonists after the point in which we left them until we finally read what was written in the rest of Adam Ewings journal. This only works if you enjoyed all of the stories, if you didn't you approach them again with a kind of dread or ennui .. thankfully the one I enjoyed least was the central one so it wasn't too bad. I can see it's ambitious, clever and well written .. I can see that lots of people will love it ... but overall I didn't enjoy reading it as much as I was hoping. It gave me knots in my head .. and my reading mojo, which was healthy and eager for challenges, is going to have to be coaxed out of a darkened room .. from whence it retired with a 'Cloud Atlas' induced migraine. 6/10

Thanks Kylie The only real problem I've got is time .. I can't find enough of it to luxuriate in reading as much as I would like. The other problem is library books .. I keep getting piles of books from the library and then am forced to read them before my own books because of their time constraints. It's driving me nuts because I've bought a couple of books (like the Shirley Jackson one) that I'd love to get stuck into but there are seven books to get back to the library by May 5th. When I take them back, I'm bound to see others .. I think I'll just get OH to drop them off for me.

Thanks Ooshie Same here .. it was like a book of short stories, some enjoyable some not but I didn't think it all hung together very well and it just got more and more tedious. It's disappointing when you find yourself not particularly enjoying such a highly acclaimed book.

No I haven't read it and don't intend to. I may be missing out on what could be my favourite read ever .. but it just doesn't appeal in any way. Another dent in it's appeal was that sticker on 'Wuthering Heights' ... 'oojit and whatshisface's favourite book', .. words fail. Also annoying is all the books that have been rushed out to sate the interest in all things vampire. Waterstones has a whole section now in the YA section with 'Dark Romance' or some such title printed above. You see all of those books and you know that a lot of them are going to be pure bandwagon rubbish. It was the same with wizard/magic books after and during HP's success. It's got a lot more difficult looking for good YA books now because of the swathes of sexy werewolf and dark angel stories. I'm not meaning to be snotty .. I'm sure there are some really good stories amongst all this gothic literature but I just haven't got the heart to even attempt reading any of them. Even if I found Giulia's copy on a bus .. I wouldn't take it home.

Yes I'm having the same problem, I bought 'The God of Small Things' from a charity shop today. I hope to read 'Water for Elephants' soon, liked 'On Beauty' and 'The Behaviour of Moths' and loved 'Catch 22'. I must admit to being scared of taking on 'Labyrinth' .. I've no idea why. Am getting close to finishing 'Cloud Atlas', I can't say I'm sorry. Bits I've enjoyed and bits I haven't but all in all a bit of a struggle.

Now I do love a bit of Marian to cheer me up, and if memory serves that's one of her Walsh family books and I love that family. Hope you're enjoying it Joe

Thanks Chesil I'm looking forward to it .. it's got a great reputation.

Bought both new and from charity shops ... The Road - Cormac McCarthy The Rapture - Liz Jensen Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold Gypsy Boy - Mikey Walsh We Have Always Lived in The Castle - Shirley Jackson Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer Brooklyn - Colm Toibin The Resurrectionist - James Bradley The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy The Sea - John Banville Sunset Song - Lewis Grassic Gibbon The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells (re-read) The Diary of A Nobody - George & Weedon Grossmith The Room of Lost Things - Stella Duffy

Yes, I was going to say Michael Morpurgo ... I think 'The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips' is set during WWII and 'War Horse' during WWI.

Map of Your Head - Muse Turn Off the Light - Nelly Furtado Romance is Dead - Paloma Faith Superstition - Stevie Wonder John, I'm Only Dancing - David Bowie Speak Like a Child - Style Council Merry Happy/Little Red - Kate Nash Mary Ann - Regina Spektor Not Fade Away - Rolling Stones Planet Telex - Radiohead

Apparently in the USA the 'Temeraire' book is called 'His Majesty's Dragon'.