Nienna

Spent last night translating parts of - and generally figuring out - TS Eliot's The Wasteland. D:

Not really a "book" as such, but are you sure you didn't borrow a Funfax Spy File? It looked like this and was like a small A3-sized ringbinder, but you could buy lots of little booklets with puzzles/ciphers and little tools to help you crack them to file in it, and one of these might have been what you borrowed. The booklets looked like this. Some of the booklets also had the alternative-route story things you're talking about. Hope it's what you're looking for... I used to have one when I was about 10 and they were great fun! Even collecting the booklets was fun.

Never read any Hinton before! I saw in the intro that she wrote this one when she was only 17 - impressive. What else has she written?

Managed to pick up a copy of The Outsiders today for

I picked up The Handmaid's Tale not long ago, it's on my TBR pile. A friend recommended it to me - he was gushing about it! I'm looking forward to it.

Yep, as above! Cheap and cheerful. Also I quite like it when books have a history. This mostly applies to very old books. I have a couple from the early 1900's for example, and I can just imagine some lady in layered skirts and floral hat sitting in the park reading the same book as I am.

Personally I think Pratchett gets better and better as he continues writing. I can really see the difference in both style and storylines between for example The Colour of Magic and his most recent books. I thought it was fantastic! Along with Night Watch, the Lipwig books and Nation (non-DW) it's one of my favourite of his works!

1) One Book that made you read it More Than Once: Ulysses by James Joyce 2) One book you would want on a desert island: Northern Lights by Philip Pullman 3) One book that made you laugh: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett 4) One book that made you cry: Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie 5) One book that made you wish you had written: Villette by Charlotte Bronte 6) One book that made you wish had never been written: Doors Open by Ian Rankin 7) One book you are currently reading: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte 8) One book you have been meaning to read: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 9) One book that changed your life: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

A lot of the time I'm actually able to figure out the meaning of words (and I'm sure I'm not the only one on here of us bibliophiles ) from their latin roots. Like, assuming I didn't know what "pyromania" meant, I might know that "pyro" relates to fire and "mania" is an obsession with something. If I do come across a word that I don't know though I will generally go for the old lexicon.

Read a bit more Wolf Hall (I will finish it one day!) and a couple more chapters of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is picking up nicely!

Finished A Game of Thrones (review posted ) and moved on to The Tennant of Wildfell Hall. Not loving this one as much as the other Bronte sister's stuff, but I'm only 50 pages or so in, so I'll give it time. Feels a bit more rigid, I think.

A Game of Thrones George RR Martin Plot: After 15 years of apparent peace since Robert Baratheon took the throne of the Seven kingdoms from Aerys Targaryen (The Mad King), the new king's hand has been murdered. Meanwhile, across the narrow sea, Aerys' surviving son and daughter live in poverty, but with plans to return to the Kingdoms and win back the throne. Turmoil, slaughter and treachery wreath the setting of the first installment of Martin's saga, A Song of Ice and Fire. Review: Not knowing what to expect from A Game of Thrones, I took it for a traditional elves and dragons fantasy. Whilst I got half of this, I was left surprised, too - not at the setting (your average medieval-esque fantasy Europe), but at the strength and uniqueness of the characters. Martin attempts to tear down all our notions of idyllic fantasy, where, in the end, good triumphs over evil and peace resumes. His purpose (or what I perceived it to be) is to play out what might really happen, given mans inherent shortcomings, in the war for a throne. Some of the scenes seem to be written with the purpose of making us cringe or gasp - to remind us of the capabilities of a man or woman after power. There are plenty of twists, and the book never relents in its excitement. Martin keeps throwing our expectations back in our faces. There is Nothing is to be taken for granted in this book. For sheer swear-worthy drama and the noble intention of portraying man and woman as he/she really would be with the snake dangling the apple in front of his or her face, I rate this novel: 4/5 The 1 point was deducted for his reliance on characters to distract from a basically copy-cat fantasy world, and the fact that the book can't really be read as a stand-alone in the series.

Let us know what you think of VF, nin0uch! I have it on my bookshelf but haven't got around to it yet. Would be interesting to know what you think. I know you've already decided, but if you wanted a really engaging Victorian novel I would suggest Wuthering Heights. It's exciting and passionate so it will keep you reading, but the social themes are relevant, too.

No-one really encouraged me, but my Dad is really the one who set the wheels in motion. He was never a hugely avid reader but he did have a bookshelf and when I was about 10 he read The Hobbit to me at bedtime. When I was older he gave me his expensive boxed versions of LOTR and The Hobbit, which I just decided to pick up one day on a whim, and that was that. It's strange because I never really thought of myself as being a book lover. I'm still the only person in my family that reads but during my teens, even though English Lit was my favourite class, I only read slowly and for enjoyment when I was bored. It was only when I was about 19 or 20 that I really started exploring the depths of books and realising what literature was really all about, and from then I loved it all the more.

I've been lucky enough to only have read a few book that I really couldn't stick with 'til the very end. Usually I will give a book I am really not enjoying until about at least 1/4 of the way through until I toss it aside. I always just keep hoping they will pick up soon - some do, some don't. Usually what I look for is truth of feeling, skill with language, an engaging story or characters, and a little something that I can take away, even if it's just seeing something from another person's perspective. Not necessarily all at the same time, but if I get 2 or 3 of these I know I'm on to a winner.

Haha, thank you! They're all books I've been meaning to pick up for ages, but I'm too much of a miser and haven't been able to find them cheap enough 'til now. (Yeah, seriously!) It only came to

I'm quite a pretentious reader sometimes in that I actively look for the message of a book and if I can't find one I'll get all annoyed and call it a 'pointless' story. However, I have enough faith in writers to guess that most (respectable ones, anyway) probably write with a point or purpose in mind, so usually if you look out for a point you will find it. Not that I always agree with it! There are, of course, times when I miss a message, usually if I don't know anything about the subject in question, like certain periods of history or political situations, but I'll usually go and read up about them if I don't understand. For well-known and classic books I always read the intro and appendices which generally will explain stuff like that to me, so I don't have to research, which I guess is why I like a good intro! Most of what I know about history and politics, in fact, has come either directly from, or as a result of some novel or other.

Got a book voucher from my (ex-) colleagues upon leaving work! With it I bought: American Gods - Neil Gaiman Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde The last one was because I heard so many people on here giving him kudos, so I guess this website does influence my reading! Also about 150 pages to go 'til I finish A Game of Thrones. Taken forever but now that I have more time on my hands my reading should pick up.

It's strange because the standard "romantic" acts like buying flowers, dinner and candlelight, don't really sit with me. Like Cookie said, I find them kind of embarrassing, and sometimes even pointless. When I was about 18 I started seeing a boy. He told me he wanted to ask me to be his girlfriend, but that he was going to wait because us and some friends of ours were going on this university organised black tie boat trip down the Thames (he wanted to ask me then to make it "romantic"). He waited until we were right beneath London Bridge and took me out on deck to make it official. It was so formal and silly that I basically spent the whole time cringing and trying to put on a smile without laughing. I tried very hard not to be cruel! Perhaps I'm strange, but it didn't feel romantic to me at all, just far too contrived. It's the little things that matter to me. The things that show genuine caring. But one nice gesture did stick with me: when we started going out I mentioned to my current other half that I was interested in reading Wolf Hall. I'd only known him about a week but a few days later it turned up at my door in the post from an "anonymous stranger", with a little joke on the message slip. It wasn't even because of the book that it was so nice, but because we'd only known each other a week or so and he shouldn't have been buying stuff for me! I guess it was nice to know he liked me, maybe.

We tackled 2 books a year in English Literature GCSE - one Shakespeare play and one classic novel - and then the rest of our classes revolved around grammar, vocab and creative writing. This way we got 2 GCSE's from effectively one class - Literature and Language. The two works I studied were Macbeth and To Kill a Mockingbird - still two of my favourite books, and I really started appreciating literature around the time I was reading them. I loved my English teacher, so I think this helped too. For A-Level, we took on 4 or 5 works - another Shakespeare, one classic play, one piece of Irish literature and the works of a specific poet, combined with other similar pieces of random poetry for comparison. For Shakespeare we had King Lear - I don't remember much of it now, so I guess it wasn't one of his best (imo). For the play we did Oedipus Rex by Sophocles - books like this are a good basis for literature because so many other works reference them, so I'm glad we got to study it. For the Irish lit. we did a play by Brian Friel called Philadelphia, Here I Come which was about Ireland becoming British territory, the land being taken over and the feeling of being unwelcome. Our poet was WB Yeats - again, a lot of Irish political themes. I guess the NI syllabus is pretty heavy on bringing the Irish history thing into literature classes, but then it is a big influence on a lot of Irish writers. I was never very good at English back then, but I wish I had a second chance!

About 3/4 through A Game of Thrones. Taking me a lifetime to read this book, but I'm loving it all the same. Also put a personal ban on buying new books as of today.

How do people do this?! Does the book not get all wet? You'd have to hold your hands up really rigidly the whole time!

Usually on the way to and from work, about 25 minutes each way. Then if I'm not doing anything during the night I'll read in my room for about half an hour (or on and off for an hour). Every now and then before I go to bed. Not a lot really!

Thanks poppy! He is called Beartato - a cross between a bear and a potato. See: http://www.nedroid.com

I pick spots and blackheads. My own, but... also other people's. It's gross I know but I can't help it! I feel that little bump and won't rest til I get rid of it!