bobblybear

I still haven't finished Three Men in a Boat. I feel like I'm coming down with a cold, so haven't read much the last two days. I tried to read last night but fell asleep around 8pm. Last I recall, they have set off on their boat, so the adventure begins!

I use the highlight feature in the Kindle. I've only actually started using it on the last book I read, as it makes it easier to remember things when writing reviews. I never used to write in paperbooks as I hate to deface them even if I own them. It's odd, but I can't even bear to scribble in my textbooks.

I didn't realise Montmorency was a dog until just now when I read about him pushing his wet nose into people's hands and killing lemons like they were rats. I had to re-read it to make sure I read it right. It's funny because when I started the book I noticed there were four characters, and I was bit puzzled because I was thinking there should only be three. My edition - which is the free Kindle one - doesn't have (To Say Nothing Of The Dog) in the title. Is this the book Field of Dreams is based on? Love that film.

I'm not too far into it but I'm enjoying it so far. They've just finished packing for their trip which was hilarious.

Have put Homicide to one side (again) and am reading Three Men In a Boat. It was a Kindle freebie, a classic apparently.

That's the same cover as mine, except I don't know where my copy is. I just checked my bookshelf and it is nowhere to be found. Anyway I do remember the cover because it's quite eye-catching.

Thanks itsmeagain.

I've just been watching Homeland. I'm only up to episode 3 of the first season but I'm loving it so far.

Thanks Chaliepud and Lilywhite. We do measure out his food so he doesn't get too porky. He's a very greedy pup though, and has once managed to snatch bacon out of my hand just as I was about to put it in the frying pan!

Decaff coffee.

Roast chicken dinner tonight. I'm also going to boil up some gammon for sandwiches.

Thanks, Athena. He is very cute and sweet. Thanks - I like the look of the Silkie ones. A co-worker has a lot of chickens and she's always mentioning different breeds and showing pictures, and I'd never seen the Silkies before. I shall ask her about them on Monday...she will probably end up buying some if she can find them. Will do, Frankie. He loves his cuddles.

Love those pics Athena! I had to google the two dog breeds as I had never heard of them either. What kind of chickens do you have? The ones in the third picture almost look like they have fur rather than feathers! My Reuben is 1 year old today!!! Where has the time gone? Attached is a pic taken a couple of weeks ago. I think he still has a lot of puppy in his face. What do you think?

I liked Florence and Giles. Very dark story with an ambiguous ending.

PopCo - Scarlett Thomas Alice Butler is a twenty-something girl working in the Ideation and Design department at PopCo, a large toy manufacturer. She considers herself a bit of a loner at PopCo, an “outsider despite being firmly on the inside” and shies away from any form of popularity. PopCo staff are sent to Hare Hall in Dartmoor for a conference and Alice (among others) is selected by PopCo management to join a select group of staff to create a product which will enable them to get a foothold in the elusive market of teenage girls. At Hare Hall Alice begins receiving anonymous notes written in code, and she begins to attempt to decipher who they are from. The story alternates between current Alice and young-Alice who went to live with her grandparents from the age of ten. You get a pretty good background of her life story and there is detail both on her grandparents obsession with code-breaking, and also Alice's attempts to fit in with her peers at school. PopCo started off promisingly and I took to it immediately. I loved the code and crypto puzzles and it was explained thoroughly – all the different tools cryptoanalysts use, the most commonly used letters, the importance of prime numbers, etc. There were some really fascinating things here. But then it began to go off on a bit of a tangent. It started with Alice using homoeopathy to combat a flu and the onerously detailed descriptions which seemed to go on forever began to feel like an agenda. It was almost as though the story was put on hold to revel in the benefits of homoeopathy (maybe she should read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre ). There were also constant hints about veganism. Never mind, the story was still good so I paid no heed and carried on. Then towards the end (about 80% through), the story took a completely different tone and one of the characters began a huge diatribe about the evils of large-corporations, how we should all go vegan, and an education in how cows produce milk that was so obviously agenda-pushing that I would have given up on the book if I hadn't been so far into it. As a way of getting back at the evil corporations, this character is promoting graffiti, shoplifting and vandalism – wow, great ways to make a point! How knocking over cartons of eggs in a small corner shop gets back at the large-corporation is beyond me. Or when Alice vandalises the packaging on a PopCo product in a small independent toyshop, and walks away feeling smug like she has done her part against PopCo, I just can't believe the lack of thinking behind this. No Alice, you've done your part against the small independent businesses you are trying to protect (you stupid cow!). The author also alleges via a character that “If someone worked out how to predict primes, the Internet would crumble in a day.” and “I know for a fact that big banks and credit-card companies employ people specifically to watch what is going on in the mathematical community” and that if you were on the verge of a breakthrough of prime-number research, you’d probably end up with a bullet in your head. Yawn. I like conspiracy theories, but give me a break. She has the juvenile attitude that it would be fantastic to ‘shut the world down’, transferring millions into housing projects in poverty-stricken towns, making huge donations to worker’s pension funds and paying them out immediately, workers deleting company’s files and losing passwords, shredding documents and closing down public transport. The sentiment is nice but the idea that this will achieve what she wants is utterly stupid. On the positive side though she did mention two books which have piqued my interest: Obedience to Authority – Stanley Milgram Woman on the Edge of Time – Marge Piercy I own Woman On The Edge of Time (had it for years), but one of those I’ve never got around to reading. I think if Scarlett Thomas had stuck to the code-breaking and left the politics out of it, this would have been a 4/6 book, but I just can't get past the amateurish No Logo rip-off (with half the intelligence and thought of Naomi Klein). I can see why she shoehorned this agenda of hers into a novel, because in a stand-alone book it would be a poor, ignorant effort. (Writing this has made me quite irritable, can you tell?! ) 2/6

I hope they're great, as I'm determined to get through a lot of them this year instead of buying new ones. I've just had to look up those two books on Happiness as I didn't realise I even owned them, but clearly I do. I don't normally read self-help, but The Happiness Trap seems to have many positive reviews that there must be something in it! The Happiness Equation sounds very interesting as well! I must have picked that up as a Daily Deal maybe. Sooooo many books, it's very daunting!

I'm about to make myself a hot chocolate.

Kindle keyboard here and I love it.

I usually prefer the profiler and psychological point of view as well in true crime. I think all of the true crime books I have read have been generally about serial killers, purely because of the psychological aspect of it. But even though Homicide isn't focused on that side of the crimes I'm still enjoying it as much as any other true crime.

Yes, it's true crime but it's more from a police procedural point of view, rather than a profiler point of view. It's very good reading, but is also heavy going. It's very detailed and quite dark (which is why I had to put it down for a while). It was made into a very well known TV series (which I have never seen but heard a lot about) and the author also did The Wire (another TV show). It concentrates on the detectives as much as it does the victims, so you get a balanced view. Basically the author followed the detectives of the Baltimore Homicide Unit around for a whole year (1st Jan - 31st December, sometime in the 1980's) and documented all their cases plus a bit of background on each detective. He keeps himself out of the picture as well so you never hear his opinion or thoughts, rather he just documents what he sees. It's nearly 700 pages long, so not a quick read. It started off which some quick open-and-shut cases, I think to give the reader a feel for what the environment is like, and then a bit further on he focuses on a few 'red-ball' cases (high priority cases, where the victim is truly innocent - ie. not a drug deal gone wrong, etc.) and how they have progressed. So far I've refrained from googling them as I want to see if they got solved in the end or not. They also name the streets, etc. and I have gone on to Google Street View to have a gander and the places are so bleak, but it does help visualise it a bit better. I'd recommend it for sure.

I've had A Prayer for Owen Meany on my shelf for about 15 years and have picked it up a few times but always end up putting it back on the shelf after a few pages. I've read The Secret History twice and highly recommend it. It's the kind of book that should hopefully grab you from the first page, so it might just be a case of cracking it open and the rest will take care of itself. I've had this on my shelf for 10+ years. I loved She's Come Undone, but the sheer size of this one scares me. This one was a great read, but the paperback was the size of a brick (maybe two!) so I can imagine how big the hardcover is! It's not exactly the kind of book you want to haul around with you everywhere you go. I ended up buying another copy for my Kindle when it was on sale because it's a book I plan to revisit at some point. Loved The Blind Assassin. Not sure if you have read any Atwood before, but it's a good one of hers to start with. Unfortunately I didn't take to Brick Lane at all and had to give up on it. I seem to be in the minority though and I really did think it was my kind of book but it didn't grab me. My list of ones I've been putting off reading: A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb Black House - Peter Straub and Stephen King London - Edward Rutherford Sarum - Edward Rutherford Dune - Frank Herbert Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco Sophie's Choice - Jostein Gaardner There are quite a few more but these ones stand out as having been on my shelf for probably 10+ years.

Yes, it seems to be the general consensus that The End of Mr. Y is a bit better than PopCo. I just hope The End of Mr Y isn't as preachy as PopCo. That's what irritated me. I thought the story was brilliant and then it seemed to go off on this 'You must be a vegan, homoeopathy remedy using person, that hates large corporations and here are all the reasons why' rant that just spoiled it for me. Anyway, I'm now back onto Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. I think I'll finish that one before starting anything else, unless it gets to be too heavy again.

After I finished the book I was left pondering the title trying to work out where it came from or what it actually means. I have to say, I still don't have any idea as wolves are quite peripheral to the story. In the book we see quite a bit of the nastiness that can be part of human nature, and maybe compared to that the wolves are seen as tender beings? The wolves never seem to hurt anyone/thing unless it is necessary for their own survival but the people in the story seem to be quite willing to hurt one another just to get what they want (material gain, rather than out of necessity) or to exercise control over them. I love the title, it's very original. There were a few hints dropped in the story, but the main one for me was when Line kissed Francis on the mouth and he looked at her disgustedly. She thinks to herself that 'One or two things have just become clear to her'. I did have to read that part a few times and I did wonder then if Francis was gay. Even though I had read the book before, I completely forgot Francis was gay, unless maybe subconsciously I remembered and the hints were just reminding me!!

Yes, it was me. I still have The End of Mr. Y on my wishlist but I'd be lying if I said PopCo hadn't put me off a bit. I enjoyed PopCo until the end when it felt more like an amateurish lecture. But a few reviews on Amazon have mentioned that the two books are different, so I won't rule it out. I also have Bright Young Things which I got for £0.20 so I'm not quite ready to give up on Scarlett Thomas; I'm just a bit more wary now!

I definitely do this but I never realised how much until I tallied up my stats last year. I bought 124 books and read 51, and most of those I'd read were from a prior year purchase. A lot of this buying has to do with a Kindle. It's so easy to see a book for £0.99 and just click the mouse and it's yours without feeling like you're spending money. I love looking for books and reading reviews and comments about books. But this year I'm really going to try to cut down on buying and increase my reading.