bobblybear

Hi Lizzi, welcome to the forum! What sort of work do you do in the library? Sounds like a dream job!

Hello and welcome to the forum!

Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Maria Semple Bernadette Fox and her husband Elgin are an affluent and somewhat geeky couple, with a teenage daughter who attends private school. Elgin works for Microsoft, Bee is a straight A (or rather straight 'S' - for 'Surpasses Excellence') student, and at the beginning, we're not entirely sure who Bernadette is, aside from the clear indication that she is a bit different. Bernadette has shut herself off from the outside world, avoiding contact with all people where possible. Instead she organises everything through Manjula, a virtual assistant from India who charges a whopping $0.75 per hour (these emails are very funny, indeed!). When the family decide to go to Antarctica due to Bee's academic achievements, Bernadette is slowly forced to deal with her reality instead of hiding from it all the time. The book is told in many different formats - letters, emails, handwritten notes and phone transcripts. There is an occasional narrative from Bee to fill in any gaps and move the story along when it's required. Bernadette is quite unconventional and her story is sympathetically told with just the right amount of humour. Although a few serious issues are mentioned, it is all told with a certain levity so that it is all very funny and you find yourself laughing with Bernadette, rather than at her. It reminded me a bit of Microserfs by Douglas Coupland, because of the geekiness of it and also the unique style (with the various formats). It took me just over a day to read it, and I enjoyed every word. It slowed down a tiny bit in the last third, but that's only a very minor criticism (not a criticism even, just my opinion). It was part mystery, and part comedy with many different perspectives, all uniquely told. There are many twists and turns that keep you hooked and desperate to know what happens next. It's one of the best books I've read all year and I've given it my highest score of the year, so far. 5.5/6

It depends how interesting the background noise is. If it's a TV show or music that I'm not interested in then I can easily tune it out. However, if it's something that keeps catching my attention, then I really need to focus on one or the other.

I had no idea Die Hard was based on a book. I don't agree with The Hunger Games movie being better than the book. I whizzed through the book, but I found the movie a bit of a struggle.

Nothing yet, but working up my appetite for some chicken in a bucket.

Hi VF! She seems to be hit-or-miss with a lot of people. I'm glad I borrowed the book, rather than spend money on it.

Good review of On Chesil Beach. I really enjoyed Atonement, and thought Saturday was ok, but I've never been that interested in On Chesil Beach, though I have picked it up (and put it back) many a time at my local library. I think it's the subject matter that puts me off. Just seems an odd topic for a whole book.

Found that Tex by SE Hinton is available on Kindle, so I've bought that and am reading it. It was one of my staple reads in my early teenage years and it's quite nice to revisit it.

A very crunchy apple.

Thanks Athena. It's a re-read for me, but it has been many years since I read it, so it is just like reading it for the first time. Gone With The Wind is amazingly good.

Changed my mind. Can't get into it, so I've moved onto The Tommyknockers by Stephen King.

Trailer looks good, but I hope Death features in it as prominently as he does in the book.

Yeah, 1/6 is a bit harsh, but I really didn't like it. The World's Greatest Ideas is full of all these 'woolly' ideas, such as The Self (that's the chapter that made me give up), Epic Poetry, Honour, Hope, Qi, plus countless others. Not what I was expecting at all.

Finished The Snow Child. I'm a bit disappointed by the ending. I'm going to start Origins by Randolph Lalonde. I think it may be one of the first books I bought for my Kindle all the way back in February 2011. It's only taken me 2.5 years to get around to it. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Yeah, it was quite good! Better than I thought, but I will need to re-read the book to see whether it is very different. A few things happened that I don't recall happening in the book but that just may be my memory.

I'm going to watch that tonight. Hope it's good! Did you enjoy it?

No idea what the average is for me. Possibly around the 400 page mark? I've read books with 1,000+ pages and it's no bother if the story is good. Similarly, I have read 200 page books but struggled through each page because it wasn't to my liking. I guess it's probably more to do with whether the book is the kind you would enjoy, rather than how many pages it has.

Glad you enjoyed it. I'm about 65% through The Snow Child, which I am enjoying a lot. Can't see how it will end though.

I really enjoyed The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, but that's the only one of hers I have read. Goodo! Puppies are exhausting, aren't they?

For UK King fans, Under The Dome is starting over here tomorrow night (19/08) at 10pm on Channel 5. If you miss it, you can catch it at 9pm on Tuesday (20/08) on 5 USA.

I think I'm going to have to give up on The World's Greatest Idea. I tried to get back into it, but the author's idea of 'greatest ideas' just doesn't appeal to me. My next non-fiction will be either Walden on Wheels: On The Open Road From Debt To Freedom or The Etymologicon: A Circular Scroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language.

Megacatastrophes! Nine Strange Ways The World Could End - David Darling and Dirk Schulze-Makuch This was an engaging and light-hearted look at the various ways in which the world could end. It was different and interesting enough to keep me entertained, and each topic was given a rating out of ten on the author's 'Catastrophometer' as to the likeliness of the event and how worried we should be. Some bits were a little hard to follow due to the complexity of the topic, but because it was described in a somewhat jovial manner it never felt like a struggle to read. Topics covered were: - nanotechnology - alien invasion - super-volcano - machines taking over - LHC going wrong - Infectious disease - ice ages - asteroids - nearby starts dying/going supernova 3/6

NW - Zadie Smith This book started promisingly, and I really enjoyed White Teeth so was hoping this would be something similar. The book follows the path of 4 young Londoners who grew up in the same area, and have each taken different paths towards adulthood. As each character has their story told, the style of the novel changes, I guess to reflect their particular voice. Some are told in disjointed point form, under sub-headings, others in a vague sort of stream of consciousness that frankly rambled about everything and nothing. By the time we get to learn about one character in any depth we have moved on to the next one and that is a large part of why none of the characters interested or appealed to me. Also I’m not familiar with NW London (or any areas of London) so I don’t know if that is another reason why I didn’t connect with it, as quite a few places are referred to. Anyway, I ended up skim reading the last third of it, so that gives you an idea about how I felt about the book. I noticed that Zadie Smith tends to receive very mixed views for her books, with readers either loving them or hating them. For me it was the latter. Well, maybe hate is too strong a word..... I would say I was intensely indifferent towards it. 1/6

Ok then, The Snow Child it is! I'm easily swayed.