Poppy's Paperbacks 2011

[poppyshake]

I though The Turn of the Screw was pointless and I am in no hurry to read anything else of his.

Oh dear :( .. is there anybody on here that loves his work? I so wanted to like him after reading and loving Colm Toibin's 'The Master'

[~Andrea~]

I love his short ghost stories such as The Turn of the Screw and Owen Wingrave

[chesilbeach]

I've only read Washington Square, but I really enjoyed it.

[poppyshake]

Oh I loved The Turn of the Screw, very creepy - but I never really got on with his other stuff (I think I tried Washington Square and it sent me to sleep)

 

I think I've heard good things about The Turn of the Screw before too (probably from Andrea ) and I'd also like to read Daisy Miller, which looks pretty short. My curiosity was piqued by Reading Lolita in Tehran.

 

well that's more encouraging ... Reading Lolita in Tehran put me on to him too .. their enthusiasm, at least for Daisy Miller, made me want to seek him out.

Poppyshake, I noticed on Goodreads that you've read a biography on Evelyn Waugh. I can't remember the name of it now so I hope you've only read one (it has Brideshead Revisited in the title, I think). You rated it 4 stars, so I guess you would recommend it to me? I haven't actually read anything by Waugh yet but he's one of those authors I'm certain I'll like.

Yes you mean 'Mad World ... Evelyn Waugh & the Secrets of Brideshead' ' I read it this year and enjoyed it. He hasn't got the best of reputations, as a man that is, not as a writer obviously. People say he was a great snob and could be spiteful and condescending but you don't get that impression from this book. But then it concentrates mainly on his friendship with the Lygons and his visits to their home at Madresfield Court (and there can be no question, whatever Evelyn might say, that the family and their home were used as the inspiration for Brideshead Revisited ... the parallels are too obvious). I've only read Brideshead but would love to read more because, like Nancy Mitford, he writes in the way I like and about a period in time that I like reading about. He had a sharp eye and tongue but there's a huge amount of wit to temper it.

 

I love his short ghost stories such as The Turn of the Screw and Owen Wingrave

 

I've only read Washington Square, but I really enjoyed it.

He is dividing opinion like Marmite

[Janet]

Oh dear :( .. is there anybody on here that loves his work? I so wanted to like him after reading and loving Colm Toibin's 'The Master'

I've only read The Turn of the Screw, but I enjoyed it. I have Daisy Miller on my Wish List.

[willoyd]

Oh dear :( .. is there anybody on here that loves his work? I so wanted to like him after reading and loving Colm Toibin's 'The Master'

 

Really enjoyed Portrait of a Lady, even if Isabel irritated the hell out of me.

[poppyshake]

Really enjoyed Portrait of a Lady, even if Isabel irritated the hell out of me.

Is it a ... long book? I feel I could only deal with him in small chunks, perhaps though if the small chunks go down well, I could upgrade to larger chunks

[poppyshake]

I've put this on the general chat thread too but thought I would share it here ... there's a lovely bookshop where I live called 'Octavia's', I popped in there tonight because they had a late night opening and took some photo's for all you guys to see. It's a childrens bookshop mainly but does have a small adult section and she really knows her stuff. I was quite tempted by the Haruki Murakami's ... and 'the Night Circus' .. gorgeous looking books. It's a magical place to take children especially and I know they have a lot of children's authors and illustrators book signing on a regular basis. She hasn't got a cafe but there is a gorgeous one next door ... other than that it's my idea of perfection in a bookshop.

[Brian.]

That shop looks like a real gem of a store, its a shame that the independent bookshops are becoming more and more scarce.

[poppyshake]

That shop looks like a real gem of a store, its a shame that the independent bookshops are becoming more and more scarce.

It's quite rare so see now sadly. I think she's doing quite well .. she certainly put's a lot of effort into it and fingers crossed it'll continue to be a success. It must be difficult competing with the on-line bookstores and big chains etc, and there's a big Waterstones around the corner, but she offers something that little bit more specialised and it's such a magnet for children because it's fun and inviting. I've made up my mind to spend some of my Christmas pennies there because it's a gem as you say and well worth supporting.

[vodkafan]

It looks great poppy. I bet they would beat a person severely if they said the word "kindle" in there.

[poppyshake]

It looks great poppy. I bet they would beat a person severely if they said the word "kindle" in there.

Ha ha .. probably ... and then feed them to the dogs

[willoyd]

It's quite rare so see now sadly.

 

I was a bit shaken yesterday to find that the Bluebell Bookshop in Penrith had closed - this was a favourite haunt of mine for years, although I haven't been to the town for some time. Made me even more grateful that our own local independent, The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, appears to be thriving. I've certainly taken to buying there more regularly, helped by the fact that the nearest rival, Waterstones in Leeds, doesn't have any discounting advantages any more. I've tried to continue buying regularly from a local bookstore even with the attractions of Amazon, particularly paperbacks where the differences aren't so great.

Edited November 27, 2011 by willoyd

[Weave]

I've put this on the general chat thread too but thought I would share it here ... there's a lovely bookshop where I live called 'Octavia's', I popped in there tonight because they had a late night opening and took some photo's for all you guys to see. It's a childrens bookshop mainly but does have a small adult section and she really knows her stuff. I was quite tempted by the Haruki Murakami's ... and 'the Night Circus' .. gorgeous looking books. It's a magical place to take children especially and I know they have a lot of children's authors and illustrators book signing on a regular basis. She hasn't got a cafe but there is a gorgeous one next door ... other than that it's my idea of perfection in a bookshop.

 

Oh poppyshake, its so pretty, thanks for sharing

[poppyshake]

Oh poppyshake, its so pretty, thanks for sharing

You're welcome. I know you don't visit England very often Paula but if you ever come this way it's well worth a visit (and I'll be happy to buy you tea and a bun in the teashop next door )

[poppyshake]

 

Far To Go - Alison Pick

 

Waterstones Synopsis: 'Far to Go' is a powerful and profoundly moving story about one family's epic journey to flee the Nazi occupation of their homeland in 1939, and above all to save the life of a six-year-old boy. Pavel and Anneliese Bauer are affluent, secular Jews, whose lives are turned upside down by the arrival of the German forces in Czechoslovakia. Inspired by Alison Pick's own grandparents who fled their native Czechoslovakia for Canada during the Second World War, 'Far to Go' is a deeply personal and emotionally harrowing novel.

 

Review: This is a very touching story about six year old Pepik, a young boy living in Sudetenland Czechoslovakia, with his parents and beloved nanny Marta. The family are prosperous and living in some style but they are Jewish and this is not a good time to be a Jew in Czechoslovakia. They're not practicing Jews though and they mistakenly believe that this fact alone will guarantee their safety under the new Nazi regime. In particular Pavel, Pepik's father, see's no cause for initial panic. His mother Annaliese on the other hand becomes increasingly anxious and begins to look for ways to ensure Pepik's safety including having him baptised as a catholic. They flee to Prague but their movements are already being scrutinised. It's all too little too late, too late that is for Pavel and Annaliese but there may be a chance still for Pepik. A place is found for him, on the Kindertransport bound for Great Britain. This is something that never fails to move me, all those parents who selflessly put their children on trains knowing that they would almost certainly never see them again is heartbreaking. It must have taken a great deal of courage and selflessness because your natural instinct would be to cleave to loved one's at times of great distress like this. Obviously we see it as some sort of salvation for the children lucky enough to get a place, but it wasn't necessarily so. These displaced children were frightened, lonely and heartsick. They travelled to a country alien to them and in some cases were treated little better than servants upon arrival. Very few were ever reunited with their parents. There are plenty of success stories though, children who adapted well and went on to prosper and live happy lives and for them alone, let alone the sacrifice of the parents who chose to relinquish those last few precious weeks/days/hours with their children, it has to be seen as a triumph.

 

This story has two narratives, one is an up to date account of an unknown woman searching for a lost sibling, the other is written from the viewpoint of Pepik's nanny Marta and she's someone that you warm to and empathise with from the start. She's not Jewish, but unlike the anti-semitic cook Sophie who seems to relish in the German invasion, Marta loves the family and feels great loyalty towards them. Her feelings are entangled though. When the story begins Marta is romantically involved .. or at least sexually involved ... with a colleague of Pavel's who is now a Nazi soldier. As the invasion takes hold, life gets complicated for her. Pavel and Annaliese, in their panic, become very secretive, and she's not always kept informed of their plans and intentions. She feels confused, ill used and abandoned and this leads her into an act of betrayal which puts the whole family at risk. Although harrowing, as every tale told about the holocaust is, I didn't feel it did true justice to the absolute horror of it all. The tension should have been unbearable but wasn't, there was something just a little lacking. For all it's simplicity The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas conveyed the horror and futility far better, that's not to say that it wasn't affecting .. it was just not quite gripping enough. Perhaps it was the intrusion of the contemporary narration that detracted from the main storyline, I did find that it broke my concentration in an unhelpful way. I would have just as soon done without it however the ending, very movingly, went some way to justifying it's inclusion.

 

8/10

Edited January 3, 2012 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

I was a bit shaken yesterday to find that the Bluebell Bookshop in Penrith had closed - this was a favourite haunt of mine for years, although I haven't been to the town for some time. Made me even more grateful that our own local independent, The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, appears to be thriving. I've certainly taken to buying there more regularly, helped by the fact that the nearest rival, Waterstones in Leeds, doesn't have any discounting advantages any more. I've tried to continue buying regularly from a local bookstore even with the attractions of Amazon, particularly paperbacks where the differences aren't so great.

Let's hear it for the independents I haven't had a lot of money this year so not spent as much on books as I normally do but I try and spread the little I do spend between Waterstones, Amazon and Octavias ... along with the charity shops. Waterstones are doing some sort of loyalty scheme now which eventually leads to a free book (but I think you have to spend over £10 10 times to qualify which doesn't really make it much of a discount.) I do miss the 3 for 2's but have to admit that I have a fair few books unread on the shelves that I bought because I wanted to take advantage of the offer. The last 3 for 2 offer they did though was fabulous but I was too broke to take advantage of it (The Sisters Brothers, When God Was a Rabbit, Pigeon English, Jamrach's Menagerie ... all books I wanted to read.) They're still pretty competetive with some of their offers though .. selling The Sisters Brothers paperback for £7.79 as compared to £6.49 at Amazon .. as it's only a short walk from me that makes it worthwhile but if you added petrol prices to it then it wouldn't be. WH Smith is also offering it for £6.49 which is a bargain. Smiths is somewhere that constantly disappoints me these days though. I used to love it but you can't even buy music in ours anymore .. the only place you can actually buy music in Cirencester is the supermarkets .. I'm worried that that's the way books will go too because you get Hobson's choice there

[chesilbeach]

You're welcome. I know you don't visit England very often Paula but if you ever come this way it's well worth a visit (and I'll be happy to buy you tea and a bun in the teashop next door )

I'd been so entranced by the photos, I'd missed your mention of the cafe next door - that settles it, definitely scheduling in a day trip to Cirencester soon!

[lauraloves]

Far To Go - Alison Pick sounds very good will have to keep a look out for it, great review by the way

[poppyshake]

I'd been so entranced by the photos, I'd missed your mention of the cafe next door - that settles it, definitely scheduling in a day trip to Cirencester soon!

well if you do Claire we must meet up for a coffee and a chat about books (if you would like to that is ... but come anyway ... don't let me frighten you away )

 

Far To Go - Alison Pick sounds very good will have to keep a look out for it, great review by the way

Thanks Laura, Fictionally speaking, I seem to have been stuck in one war or the other lately. I've just read My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You (a book about WW1) and am currently reading Follow Me Home (about the war in Afghanistan). I reckon I'm going to read something calm next that doesn't involve any sort of warfare or body bits flying about .. my nerves are frayed.

[lauraloves]

 

 

 

Thanks Laura, Fictionally speaking, I seem to have been stuck in one war or the other lately. I've just read My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You (a book about WW1) and am currently reading Follow Me Home (about the war in Afghanistan). I reckon I'm going to read something calm next that doesn't involve any sort of warfare or body bits flying about .. my nerves are frayed.

 

I go through stages of reading wartime books too. You'll have to let me know what you think to Follow Me Home, really enjoy books set in the war in Afganistan.

[Janet]

I was a bit shaken yesterday to find that the Bluebell Bookshop in Penrith had closed - this was a favourite haunt of mine for years, although I haven't been to the town for some time.

No way.

 

Oh, I'm so sad to hear this. It was such a wonderful shop. I have family near Penrith and it's a wonderful little town, but we didn't get up there this summer so I had no idea. Such a shame.

 

(Sorry to hijack your thread!).

 

Your independent shop, Octavias, looks gorgeous. I shall have to see if I can take some surreptitious pictures of the independents in Bath!

[poppyshake]

I go through stages of reading wartime books too. You'll have to let me know what you think to Follow Me Home, really enjoy books set in the war in Afganistan.

I enjoyed it, it wasn't really stand-out but it was very readable. I wasn't sure about the ending though but then I hardly ever am I think I had hopes that it might end in a different way. I did feel it was a book more suited to male readers but that's probably because of the setting and the lack of female characters .. there was one but she didn't really have dialogue. She was the character that I was most intrigued by though and I was hoping that the story would see her character develop but sadly it didn't really.

 

I shall have to see if I can take some surreptitious pictures of the independents in Bath!

Please do .. I love looking at bookshops I want to go back to Hay but it will have to be next year now.

[poppyshake]

Some people are getting organised and preparing their 2012 reading lists ... I'm just trying to catch up with my reviews. I know what my resolution should be, but it's pointless to make it.

 

 

The Tigers Wife - Téa Obreht

 

Synopsis: 'Having sifted through everything I have heard about the tiger and his wife, I can tell you that this much is fact: in April of 1941, without declaration or warning, the German bombs started falling over the city and did not stop for three days. The tiger did not know that they were bombs...' A tiger escapes from the local zoo, padding through the ruined streets and onwards, to a ridge above the Balkan village of Galina. His nocturnal visits hold the villagers in a terrified thrall. But for one boy, the tiger is a thing of magic - Shere Khan awoken from the pages of The Jungle Book. Natalia is the granddaughter of that boy. Now a doctor, she is visiting orphanages after another war has devastated the Balkans. On this journey, she receives word of her beloved grandfather's death, far from their home, in circumstances shrouded in mystery. From fragments of stories her grandfather told her as a child, Natalia realises he may have died searching for 'the deathless man', a vagabond who was said to be immortal. Struggling to understand why a man of science would undertake such a quest, she stumbles upon a clue that will lead her to a tattered copy of The Jungle Book, and then to the extraordinary story of the tiger's wife.

 

Review: I'm not quite sure why I found this book hard to pick up but for the first third at least I struggled .. there was never a question of abandoning it but there was often a reluctance to continue with it which I had to overcome. Yet that's no reflection on the writing which is beautiful and very imaginative. It's probably patronising to say that I wasn't expecting such exquisite use of language from one so young but I wasn't, she really is a towering talent and it's exciting to think of the stories that might yet come from her. But anyhow, to begin with, it didn't stick but as I got into the story I began to enjoy it more and more and by the end I was hooked.

 

It's all very mystical with a lot of magical realism woven in amongst the real and mundane. It's a story of family life (Natalia needs to find answers as to why her seriously ill grandfather chose to leave home to die in an isolated spot) and Balkan history but not told in the usual way, told with symbolism, myth and folklore. The part of the story I loved the most was the part about the 'deathless man'. This is a story told by Natalia's grandfather about an immortal man that he repeatedly encounters .. it never failed to give me the chills. Unfortunately, I found Natalia's current day story only partially interesting, I didn't warm to her particularly but I really enjoyed reading about the weird and wonderful characters of myth and legend .. like the tiger, the tigers wife and Dariša the bear hunter.

 

There is a touch of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez's about it, including the flashes of dark humour but it's not as absurd and in any case it doesn't feel copied or hackneyed. I didn't feel it succeeded on all levels, sometimes the writing appeared a little too clever and ambitious but only occasionally because for the most part I loved her use of language and imagery. She doesn't tie up all ends, perhaps to do so would have been wrong with a story so steeped in myth and legend. You are left to try and figure things for yourself .. a task that I'm not particularly good at but that's ok, those sort of endings always give you more food for thought. Worth persevering with, she's a great storyteller.

 

9/10

Edited January 3, 2012 by poppyshake

[lauraloves]

I enjoyed it, it wasn't really stand-out but it was very readable. I wasn't sure about the ending though but then I hardly ever am I think I had hopes that it might end in a different way. I did feel it was a book more suited to male readers but that's probably because of the setting and the lack of female characters .. there was one but she didn't really have dialogue. She was the character that I was most intrigued by though and I was hoping that the story would see her character develop but sadly it didn't really.

 

 

I think that I'll have to keep a look out for it now then as you enjoyed it