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Abby I was wondering if you EVER slept actually. You are always here no matter what time of day I log on.

I saw the film in blockbusters and have now watched that too. Quite faithful to the book I thought. Can see why it was done in animation style, the scramblesuit would blow a film sfx budget. Hey are we the only 3 who read this book?

Thanks Frankie and Brida -think I might hold out and look for the full novel then.

Read a pleasant chunk of P&P&Z this morning, have temporarily mislaid that somewhere and started reading If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell. Also have sent for a few books from Amazon, two of which are intended as presents for friends.

Ah- so for you the end did not justify the means! Fair enough. That's good when a book leaves you with a question (especially a moral question) to answer at the end.

Kell, please shut this down if it considered sacriligious? I am just about to start reading this (I have had a sneak peek) and it looks to be a bit of a phenomenon., with a film coming up too. Wondered what diehard Austen fans thought about it, outraged or happy?

aargh everything changes peacefield doesn't it? But you had the best of it...

She was one our greatest writers for lots of reasons. I am certainly not ashamed to say I like her stuff. If she were alive today the BBC would have to pay her millions.

Yeah Abby that sounds one hell of a cool place. When I lived back in Daventry 200 years ago (or so it seems) there was a great old ramshackle pub that was like that, well probably not exactly but the same atmosphere, all little rooms one after another all of a different character. And different sorts of people would inhabit each room, the old men with their pipes and dominos in the top room (it had a real open fire) and students discussing the world in the other end past the bar and games room .....if you went out passed the tiny toilets there was a corridor leading to yet another room ..that had a tiny dance floor and a minstrels gallery above it and another separate bar. Reminiscing now....spent a lot of time courting my first wife in that pub

[quote name=Brida;379733/ And it wasn't in English' date=' not sure whether that would be a problem [/quote] YEP! it would...

They have probably had you under surveillance Nellie now they want to induct you into their secret society. If you survive the grisly initiation that is.

Kernow I can't believe people would start a flame war and argue over books!! I guess I got the best forum first try.

If you still have it and don't want it, do you want to swop it for something?

OOh that's a bit deep for a saturday night Brida @ned: you might have to plea bargain with Death about a re-read

OK Mrs M, if you had to recommend me just ONE Zadie Smith book please which would it be of the two you have read?

Thanks Brida. I have a reader! I didn't think anybody still read my reading log so I didn't bother put spoiler hiders in my review- I sincerely hope I haven't wrecked the story for you. About Trainspotting, the copy I have is a very slim screenplay from the film version (which I haven't seen)- so basically just the dialogue. Is it a proper book then? Yeah I bet there is a lot of swearing.

I use one that came with a book from an Amazon seller advertising his website.

Haha Lol welcome to both of you. Those kind of stalkers are the best....

It is the best insurance policy ever. You cannot die if you still have books to read. Some of the members here will probably be immortal Start to worry if you have only one book left in your pile.

So true Brida, so true.

One other thing I thought was strange. Near the end is the part where Charles Freck tries to commit suicide with pills but instead has a bad trip and is read his sins for eternity. Yet, when Fred is playing back the surveillance tape it is Ernie Luckman (one of Arctors housemates) who is swigging the red pills. I wondered then if Charles Freck actually exists or is he a mental split off of Luckman ?(because of Substance D) I wondered if the author put that in to catch us out. I intended to read back and check if Luckman and Freck are ever seen together by other characters, but haven't done so yet.

6: How do you think the title reflects on the book? What is its meaning It is mentioned a couple of times, as Ooshie said it refers to a bible quote (which I was not familiar with.) I think he is getting at the fact that people take drugs to see truth but none of us druggie or straight actually see the world clearly. 7: What did you make of the unreliability of Arctor/Fred as a "narrator" (in the sense of, how did you view his experience as being worthwhile It added to the story. At the beginning he seemed to be functioning fairly well. All the background information about the Corpus Callosum and the split brain experiments was true, I have read up on that before. Weaving that into a story was brilliant in my opinion. 8: Do you feel that the ending was at all redemptive, or did you see it as unremittingly bleak? And, either way, why is that? I feel that for Fred/Arctor there was no way back, but the redemption came from the fact that you knew that the liitle blue flower would find its way back through the agent to Donna and the department as evidence. So that was good, he had succeeded. 9: How does the book relate to your experience with drugs/druggies? I don't have any experience with drugs or druggies so can't answer this one.

OK my turn.... 1: Who is your favourite character, and why? Donna Hawthorne. She is a complex character who is doing an awful job and has sacrificed Arctor. That was part of the plan all along to get him inside. She feels herself tainted but hopes in the end the price will be worth it. 2: Was there a particular part you enjoyed more? When Fred/Arctor had to start surveillance on himself. That really started to pull the story inside out. Pretty genius I think. 3: Was this the first book by the author, and in the genre, that you've read, and does it encourage you to read more? Always loved scifi but sci fi is not classifiable as just one thing. Read a couple of others by Dick but enjoyed this the most. 4: Did you struggle with any of it? Like Ooshie I didn't bother trying to translate the little bits of German. But it didn't affect the flow for me. 5: Was it overall enjoyable Yes. I will come back to the other questions.

I enjoyed the book (I reviewed it in my reading log) but I looked at a synopsis of the film on imdb and it looks to have been "Hollywoodised" . I probably will see it at some point on DVD with my wife.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold Lots of people have reviewed this book already here so I won't say too much just my subjective thoughts on how it affected me. The first chapter is both horribly gripping and disturbing; you have a weird sense that, just like poor Suzie you must go through the ordeal with her to get to the other side. To stop reading is to abandon her. That's how powerful the attachment is to the character. I am glad it was not too graphic. The idea of everybody's personal heaven is very well thought out and realised. The idea of her soul rushing out and touching Ruth (who would have turned out to be a normal, if introverted kid) who then becomes a spooky loner who can see where women have died is the thread of the story that interested me most. The book is at it's most powerful in the first few chapters and how the characters deal with Suzie being gone. Towards the end it lost some of its power for me but the book was still interesting right till the end. Hope Mr Harvey laid in extreme pain for a long time in the ravine and died slowly.