Poppy's Paperbacks 2011

[poppyshake]

Day 02 – A book that you’ve read more than 3 times

 

The book I've read the most is Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' .. I try to read it every year and probably have read it eight times, maybe more.

 

Other multiple reads are all the Jane Austens, Harry Potters and Nancy Mitfords 'The Pursuit of Love' which is my favourite comfort read when I'm feeling a bit

Edited May 2, 2011 by poppyshake

[Kylie]

What's this? I'm gone for over a week and come back to find only 1 review? I don't want to say I'm disappointed, Poppyshake...so I won't say anything.

 

Luckily you've started on the list so I can at least look forward to a lot of posts from you in the next few weeks. And I've already learnt something that interests me: that you really love The Pursuit of Love. I'll have to bump this up my TBR pile.

 

I hope you'll be happy to learn about a few books I found yesterday:

 

Clare Allan: Poppy Shakespeare

Frank Baker: Miss Hargreaves (The Bloomsbury Group)

Hilary Mantel: Giving Up the Ghost

 

All thanks to you!

Edited April 28, 2011 by Kylie

[poppyshake]

What's this? I'm gone for over a week and come back to find only 1 review? I don't want to say I'm disappointed, Poppyshake...so I won't say anything.

 

Luckily you've started on the list so I can at least look forward to a lot of posts from you in the next few weeks. And I've already learnt something that interests me: that you really love The Pursuit of Love. I'll have to bump this up my TBR pile.

 

I hope you'll be happy to learn about a few books I found yesterday:

 

Clare Allan: Poppy Shakespeare

Frank Baker: Miss Hargreaves (The Bloomsbury Group)

Hilary Mantel: Giving Up the Ghost

 

All thanks to you!

Sorry Kylie, I'm behind with my reviews as usual, no excuse really .. I need a firework up my behind (but how do you even begin to review 'Crime and Punishment'? .. I'm not worthy.) Also hubby has been at home for a few weeks and I'm having to do wifey things.

 

I'm delighted with your new books. I'm planning to read 'Miss Hargreaves' in the next few weeks .. as for the others, hope you like them Kylie, it has to be said that Poppy Shakespeare is an acquired taste .. hope you acquire it Not everyone gets on with Nancy's writing either, but I have high hopes that you'll like it as you like Wodehouse and although Nancy's writing is more satirical it's still poking fun at the upper classes. I've probably told you this already but if you get the chance do watch the 2001 BBC drama 'Love in a Cold Climate' (which took both 'The Pursuit of Love' and 'Love in a Cold Climate' and blended them together) .. great cast and just a perfect interpretation of the two books.

'The Pursuit of Love' just has the edge for me over 'Love in a Cold Climate' because it centres on the Radlett family which are themselves loosely based on the Mitfords .. ie .. they're odd

[poppyshake]

Day 03 – Your favourite series

 

This is no secret .. it has to be Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books. They never cease to amaze me.

 

[frankie]

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

 

Yet another fabulous review delivered by poppyshake! Moby Dick is one of those classics I'm really curious about and interested in reading, but I do fear it'll be too much for me. I'm not a fan of sea stories, and I think the meticulous writing might go over my head. It might be worse than Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, god forbid!

I remember my first encounter with the legendary first sentence of Moby Dick. I was watching one of my then favorite TV series, Mad about You, and Paul and Jamie had had their first child and were to go out together, without the baby, for the first time after she was born. They had hired a babysitter who seemed competent but naturally they were very anxious to leave their baby for even a couple of hours, being new to parenting. The babysitter happened to be played by Lili Taylor, whom I absolutely adored in Dogfight, where she was coupled with River Phoenix (!). The babysitter told them everything was going to be fine and that she was going to read a book out loud. When Jaime was eavesdropping on what she was reading she felt a bit better because it was a good book. And I think the babysitter explained that the book is phonetically beautiful (as well as other things). And she read: "Call me Ishmael." I remember it so vividly and I didn't know at that time which book it was (I'm not sure they mentioned the title, or maybe I forgot).

 

Thanks to Frankie for posting this list .. I lists!! I'll try and answer one a day.

You're welcome, it's nice to see you've already started it

 

Day 01 – Best book you read last year

 

And straight away I'm conflicted I'm going to say 'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides, I just loved the writing, and the story was original and both funny and sad with great characters.

I must also put a good word in for 'Neverwhere' by Neil Gaiman, he's just the master when it comes to inventive, fantastical, storytelling and for my money this is his best book .. so far.

 

It's always hard to choose, but IMO you've made a great choice. Middlesex is brilliant. Such an original story, and I loved how the book dealt with the life and the journey of so many different generations.

Edited April 29, 2011 by frankie

[poppyshake]

Yet another fabulous review delivered by poppyshake! Moby Dick is one of those classics I'm really curious about and interested in reading, but I do fear it'll be too much for me. I'm not a fan of sea stories, and I think the meticulous writing might go over my head. It might be worse than Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, god forbid!

I remember my first encounter with the legendary first sentence of Moby Dick. I was watching one of my then favorite TV series, Mad about You, and Paul and Jamie had had their first child and were to go out together, without the baby, for the first time after she was born. They had hired a babysitter who seemed competent but naturally they were very anxious to leave their baby for even a couple of hours, being new to parenting. The babysitter happened to be played by Lili Taylor, whom I absolutely adored in Dogfight, where she was coupled with River Phoenix (!). The babysitter told them everything was going to be fine and that she was going to read a book out loud. When Jaime was eavesdropping on what she was reading she felt a bit better because it was a good book. And I think the babysitter explained that the book is phonetically beautiful (as well as other things). And she read: "Call me Ishmael." I remember it so vividly and I didn't know at that time which book it was (I'm not sure they mentioned the title, or maybe I forgot).

Thanks Frankie, the book might not be for you if you're not a fan of sea stories ... 'The Old Man and the Sea' might be more to your taste because .. it's short and to the point .. Hemingway doesn't waste words. The first page of 'Moby Dick' is probably it's finest (so just read that ) I've never seen 'Dogfight' or 'Mad about You' .. I'll have to look them up (always looking for stuff to stick on LoveFilm )

It's always hard to choose, but IMO you've made a great choice. Middlesex is brilliant. Such an original story, and I loved how the book dealt with the life and the journey of so many different generations.

I must re-read it actually, I've been meaning to but I never seem to clear enough space to re-read books. I'm always reaching for new stories (I mean re-reads won't get the 1001 down .. actually I had a major crisis yesterday concerning the 1001 list .. when I looked up the 2008 list I realised that I've now only read 72 of them as opposed to 88 of the 2006 list .. at this rate I shall have read none of the 2020 list ) .. I am sticking to the 2006 list. I cannot be going backwards

[Kylie]

I'm delighted with your new books. I'm planning to read 'Miss Hargreaves' in the next few weeks .. as for the others, hope you like them Kylie, it has to be said that Poppy Shakespeare is an acquired taste .. hope you acquire it Not everyone gets on with Nancy's writing either, but I have high hopes that you'll like it as you like Wodehouse and although Nancy's writing is more satirical it's still poking fun at the upper classes. I've probably told you this already but if you get the chance do watch the 2001 BBC drama 'Love in a Cold Climate' (which took both 'The Pursuit of Love' and 'Love in a Cold Climate' and blended them together) .. great cast and just a perfect interpretation of the two books.

'The Pursuit of Love' just has the edge for me over 'Love in a Cold Climate' because it centres on the Radlett family which are themselves loosely based on the Mitfords .. ie .. they're odd

 

 

I think I mentioned over in my thread that I'm really intrigued by Poppy Shakespeare and have high hopes that I'll like it, but I'll take your warning into consideration.

 

Comparing Nancy Mitford to my beloved PG Wodehouse has made me all the more interested in reading her books. I have a couple of rather nice matching editions. They remind me a little of the Bloomsbury covers, in terms of the bright colours.

 

Yet another fabulous review delivered by poppyshake! Moby Dick is one of those classics I'm really curious about and interested in reading, but I do fear it'll be too much for me. I'm not a fan of sea stories, and I think the meticulous writing might go over my head. It might be worse than Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, god forbid!

 

*bows head in shame* I was so busy berating Poppyshake for her lack of reviews that I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed the Moby Dick review. Sorry Poppy, and thanks for the great review. I've been feeling much the same way as Frankie about Moby Dick, but you've set my mind at ease somewhat. I'm still worried about those lengthy passages about whaling, but I have hope that I'll get through them now!

[poppyshake]

A House for Mr Biswas - V.S. Naipaul

Waterstone's Synopsis: 'A work of great comic power qualified with firm and unsentimental compassion' - Anthony Burgess. "A House for Mr Biswas" is V.S. Naipaul's unforgettable third novel and the early masterpiece of his brilliant career. Born the 'wrong way' and thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mohun Biswas has spent his forty-six years of life striving for independence. But his determined efforts have met only with calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the domineering Tulsi family, on whom he becomes indignantly dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in an arduous struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. Heartrending and darkly comic, "A House for Mr Biswas" has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels and this triumph of resilience, persistence and dignity masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of post-colonial Trinidad. 'A marvellous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels' - "Newsweek".

Review: This book is one of Susan Hill's recommendations from her book Howards End is on the Landing and it's one of those books that mix comedy with pathos so, although it's very funny in places, there's an underlying sadness running through it.
Though Mr Biswas's parents hail from India, the book is set in rural Trinidad where he is born. Mr Biswas (as he is always referred to, even as a baby) is ill fated from the start. When he is born, the midwife shouts that he is 'six-fingered and born the wrong way' and the pundit declares that 'he will have good teeth but they will be rather wide, and there will be spaces between them. I suppose you know what that means. the boy will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well' .. his family are warned to keep him away from trees and water and his father is forbidden to look at him for twenty one days and even then his first glance of him should be in the reflection of some coconut oil. Bad luck certainly seems to follow him around throughout his childhood and beyond. As a young adult, he goes to work for the Tulsi family at their store and is attracted to their daughter Shama, and writes her a love letter. The next thing he knows the Tulsis have got them married off and he feels he has been tricked into it.

He spends the rest of his life trying to escape from the confines of being a Tulsi family member and all that entails. There are many generations of them living and working together and their lives are steeped in age old devotions, rituals and customs. There's a pecking order too and Mr Biswas, having only lately entered the family, is pretty low down. He'd like to be independent, he'd like a house of his own, he is constantly uprising, but most of his efforts are futile and his large and small rebellions thwarted. The story of his adult life is like one great big groundhog day, he needs a job, he needs transport, he needs somewhere to live. All of these things can and often are provided for him by the family, but he longs to break free and often does only to fail miserably and have to return with his tail between his legs (in spirit that is .. in truth he is anything but daunted and continues relentlessly with his verbal haranguing of the family.) So instead of living in a modicum of comfort he'll sometimes take himself off and attempt to have a house built, only for it to turn out to be the most ramshackle old hut that ever was seen.

The person I felt most sorry for was his wife Shama constantly caught in the crossfire between her family and Mr Biswas with seemingly little affection from any of them. You don't get to know her well, you don't get to know anyone but Mr Biswas well, but you know enough to feel great sympathy for her and the children. There are small victories, Mr Biswas eventually gets a job working as a journalist for the Trinidadian 'Sentinel' (and this part of the book I loved. He writes some seriously outlandish articles and reports) and he is able to acquire a car but it's always two steps forward, two steps back. His ambition is to die in his own house and to liberate his son Anand through education (and much effort is put into this including feeding him on a 'brainfood' diet of milk and prunes.) Although you do root for him, he's not altogether likeable but still you find yourself laughing at his almost childish behaviour and insults. There's a part of you that admires him for refusing to conform but then there's another part of you that just wishes, for the sake of his family, he'd just settle for a quiet life. You want to both shake him and pat him on the back .. he really is a bizarre, frustrating character but an immensely interesting one

It was a longer story than I thought, I have an old penguin copy and the book doesn't look very big but it turned out to have 590 closely written pages and it took me forever to plough my way through it. It didn't help either that the book started crumbling as I read it and I lost big chunks of it each time I picked it up. I enjoyed it though and want to read more by him, I was disappointed that this wasn't on the 1001, some other books by him are and I knew I'd seen it on a list  .. it turned out to be Susan Hill's list of books she couldn't live without

 8/10

Edited December 1, 2013 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

I think I mentioned over in my thread that I'm really intrigued by Poppy Shakespeare and have high hopes that I'll like it, but I'll take your warning into consideration.

I hope you'll like it, it's both terribly funny and terribly sad .. how are you with British slang by the way? (have you seen Little Britain?)

Comparing Nancy Mitford to my beloved PG Wodehouse has made me all the more interested in reading her books. I have a couple of rather nice matching editions. They remind me a little of the Bloomsbury covers, in terms of the bright colours.

She is more biting and satirical than good old Plum (btw .. have you ever read the biography of PGW by Robert McCrum?,) perhaps she's more comparable with Waugh, but it's along similar lines.

I know the covers you mean and they're divine, I adore my old ones though (not that old .. just a few years back) which is just as well or I'd be adding another three books to my already overflowing list of books I must buy again because my original copies have rubbish, or not as nice, covers.

 

 

*bows head in shame* I was so busy berating Poppyshake for her lack of reviews that I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed the Moby Dick review. Sorry Poppy, and thanks for the great review. I've been feeling much the same way as Frankie about Moby Dick, but you've set my mind at ease somewhat. I'm still worried about those lengthy passages about whaling, but I have hope that I'll get through them now!

No worries I'm just glad you read them.

It would be really easy to skip the passages from Moby Dick on whales and whaling if you start finding them boring. It wouldn't really affect the story whatsoever if you scooted past them and it's pretty easy to see where the story itself starts again.

[poppyshake]

Day 04 – Favourite book of your favourite series

 

'Something Rotten' .. It had everything, it made me laugh lots but was the first of the Thursday Next books to move me to tears. I haven't got any further in the series yet and I'm a bit afraid that he's peaked and the books will take a bit of a dip. I will read on though of course, I can't stay away from the Nextian world for long.

Edited May 2, 2011 by poppyshake

[frankie]

Day 04 – Favourite book of your favourite series

 

'Something Rotten' .. It had everything, it made me laugh lots but was the first of the Thursday Next books to move me to tears. I haven't got any further in the series yet and I'm a bit afraid that he's peaked and the books will take a bit of a dip. I will read on though of course, I can't stay away from the Nextian world for long.

 

I've yet to reply to the previous messages but will do that later, now I have to comment on this particular post of yours. It's the 4th novel in the series, right? Okay now, this is only my humble opinion. You probably read all the three books in the series before this, thinking OMG Fforde is a genious. And with the 4th novel he hasn't done anything less but delivered the same amount of excellentness as with the previous novels, and MORE than that because you enjoyed it the most. Now did you think this could be possible? Because quite frankly, when I read The Eyre Affair, I absolutely loved it and I have to say I'm not very comfortable with fantasy. And I thought to myself, Fforde can never have written anything that surpasses THIS amazing novel. And yet, people continue reading the series and keep on loving it no matter how manyeth book they're on to at the moment. So have faith, dear sister! /rant

 

I do understand your worry, but I think you're in good hands with Fforde! (He should totally come to BCF to be a featured author of the month )

[poppyshake]

I've yet to reply to the previous messages but will do that later, now I have to comment on this particular post of yours. It's the 4th novel in the series, right? Okay now, this is only my humble opinion. You probably read all the three books in the series before this, thinking OMG Fforde is a genious. And with the 4th novel he hasn't done anything less but delivered the same amount of excellentness as with the previous novels, and MORE than that because you enjoyed it the most. Now did you think this could be possible? Because quite frankly, when I read The Eyre Affair, I absolutely loved it and I have to say I'm not very comfortable with fantasy. And I thought to myself, Fforde can never have written anything that surpasses THIS amazing novel. And yet, people continue reading the series and keep on loving it no matter how manyeth book they're on to at the moment. So have faith, dear sister! /rant

 

I do understand your worry, but I think you're in good hands with Fforde! (He should totally come to BCF to be a featured author of the month )

Thanks for the reassurance Frankie I am trying to keep the faith truly, and in my experience he gets better with every book .. it's just that I've read one or two niggling little criticisms of the subsequent two books (I'm not including the 'Nursery Crimes' here) which have made me have the tiniest of doubts. Even if they are a fraction as good as the others though I think I'll be happy. 'Something Rotten' may well turn out to be my 'Azkaban' of the Thursday Nexts but thats ok, it didn't stop me enjoying the rest of the Potters and it won't stop me reading anything that Jasper Fforde comes up with next.

He should sooooooo come here and be featured and mobbed

[Kylie]

I hope you'll like it, it's both terribly funny and terribly sad .. how are you with British slang by the way? (have you seen Little Britain?)

 

I'm not too bad with British slang, but I do get a bit lost with the rhyming Cockney slang; that's just a whole other language! I've seen Little Britain, yes.

She is more biting and satirical than good old Plum (btw .. have you ever read the biography of PGW by Robert McCrum?,) perhaps she's more comparable with Waugh, but it's along similar lines.

I know the covers you mean and they're divine, I adore my old ones though (not that old .. just a few years back) which is just as well or I'd be adding another three books to my already overflowing list of books I must buy again because my original copies have rubbish, or not as nice, covers.

I have a biography of Wodehouse by Frances Donaldson (Frankie found it for me at the book fair), but I think I'd also like the one by Robert McCrum. I've read his columns in the Guardian and I have one or two books on the English language by him, so I'm becoming a bit of a fan. Would you recommend his Wodehouse bio?

Ooh, those are lovely. Mine are attached below. I was initially worried that they were a bit too chick-litty but they grew on me and, judging by your similar sort of covers, I guess they're appropriate for the novels (but now I'm thinking they're more in keeping with satire than chick-lit)?

It would be really easy to skip the passages from Moby Dick on whales and whaling if you start finding them boring. It wouldn't really affect the story whatsoever if you scooted past them and it's pretty easy to see where the story itself starts again.

 

I'm sure I'd be very tempted to skip those passages, but then I wouldn't feel as though I had really read the entire book. I tend to slog through entire books, no matter how tough it gets or how long it takes me.

 

[poppyshake]

I'm not too bad with British slang, but I do get a bit lost with the rhyming Cockney slang; that's just a whole other language! I've seen Little Britain, yes.

you'll be fine then

I have a biography of Wodehouse by Frances Donaldson (Frankie found it for me at the book fair), but I think I'd also like the one by Robert McCrum. I've read his columns in the Guardian and I have one or two books on the English language by him, so I'm becoming a bit of a fan. Would you recommend his Wodehouse bio?

I enjoyed it but it's the only one I have so I don't know how it compares, he's someone I admire so much that I don't think I could ever read too much about him or by him.

Ooh, those are lovely. Mine are attached below. I was initially worried that they were a bit too chick-litty but they grew on me and, judging by your similar sort of covers, I guess they're appropriate for the novels (but now I'm thinking they're more in keeping with satire than chick-lit)?

Yours are so pretty .. you need to get the others in the set (not that I'm encouraging you to spend money ) I haven't got .. or read .. 'The Blessing' or 'Wigs on the Green' and they were never issued with covers to match mine so .... I probably will buy the new set .. they look so good together.

I'm sure I'd be very tempted to skip those passages, but then I wouldn't feel as though I had really read the entire book. I tend to slog through entire books, no matter how tough it gets or how long it take me.

I do too, even when it's paining me to read it, I hardly ever abandon but it's like a punishment .. I stare longingly at my bookshelves at all the lovely books there that I'm sure will be great reads and not at all boring if only I could get past this interminably dull lump of a tome (it's like eyeing up somebody else's plate at a restaurant .. it always looks more tasty) .. thankfully, I didn't feel that about 'Moby Dick'.

[Kylie]

My Mitford covers are growing on me more and more. I bought them cheaply from a shop selling remainders and they also had The Pursuit of Love, but I managed to stop myself buying it because I already had a copy. Now I'm kicking myself that I didn't get it. I think I'll go back next week and buy it if it's still there, but there's a pretty slim chance because I think they only had one or two copies.

 

I do too, even when it's paining me to read it, I hardly ever abandon but it's like a punishment .. I stare longingly at my bookshelves at all the lovely books there that I'm sure will be great reads and not at all boring if only I could get past this interminably dull lump of a tome (it's like eyeing up somebody else's plate at a restaurant .. it always looks more tasty) .. thankfully, I didn't feel that about 'Moby Dick'.

 

 

I feel the exact same way.

[poppyshake]

Day 05 – A book that makes you happy

 

The books that cheer me up the most are P.G. Wodehouse's books and in particular his Jeeves and Wooster stories .. how can you not smile at a cast of characters such as Harold 'Stinker' Pinker, 'Gussie' Fink-Nottle, 'Tuppy' Glossop, 'Catsmeat' Potter-Pirbright, 'Stilton' Cheesewright and 'Chuffy' Chuffnell. Bertie is just so lovably dense, he's always getting into scrapes, hiding from his formidable Aunts, falling in and out of love and finding himself engaged - usually against his wishes - to all sorts of unsuitable females and it's left to Jeeves of course to always save the day. My favourite book of his is probably 'Right Ho Jeeves' .. just because I love the ridiculously drippy Madeline Basset (who thinks that the stars are God's daisy-chain) and her equally soppy suitor .. the newt fancier .. Gussie Fink-Nottle.

 

You can't be gloomy when you read Wodehouse it's impossible, he'll cheer you up before the end of the first page.

 

Seeing the books come to life on screen with the sublime Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry was just the icing on the cake .. the first two series in particular were phenomenal.

Edited May 2, 2011 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

Day 06 – A book that makes you sad

 

It's fairly easy for a book to make me cry, I am a hopeless crybaby when it comes to books and films. Recent tear jerkers for me were Markus Zusak's 'The Book Thief' which I just cried buckets over and J.K. Rowlings 'Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows' which had me in floods (the reasons for which I can't go into without plot spoiling.) The book that makes me most sad though is Anne Franks 'The Diary of a Young Girl', just to read all her private thoughts and feelings, all her hopes and aspirations wrapped up with her fears and anxieties and resentments and worst of all is that you know the outcome so when she's chattering on about her hopes for the future, such as how she would love to be a writer, and how she longs to be outside again, a part of you breaks because you know she never will or will never be conscious of it anyway. Her diary lives on but it's a bit like Van Gogh and his paintings, you just wish they could see how much their work is revered now. Of course if Anne had survived her diary would probably never have been published but then I'm sure she would have written because even at a young age there was talent there. She is known to have died shortly before the camp at Bergen-Belsen was liberated and it's also thought that, having witnessed the death of her sister, she believed both her parents to be dead. If she had known her father was still alive perhaps there would have remained a small spark of fight which might have kept her alive for a few more weeks .. we'll never know but that thought just adds to the sadness. She wanted to live on and be remembered and in that she succeeded which is the only shred of hope to be gained from her story .. there must have been thousands of other 'Anne Frank's' who were wiped away as if they'd never existed.

 

"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank

 

Edited May 3, 2011 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

 

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

Waterstones Synopsis: A troubled young man commits the perfect crime - the murder of a vile pawnbroker whom no one will miss. Raskolnikov is desperate for money, but convinces himself that his motive for the murder is to benefit mankind. So begins one of the greatest novels ever written, a journey into the criminal mind, a police thriller, and a philosophical meditation on morality and redemption.

 

Review: I'll start with a quote from Virginia Woolf about Dostoevsky because she puts it better than I ever could ...

“The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled around, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Outside of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.”

If he has written a better book than this then all I can say is wow! that book must be phenomenal because this one is just extraordinary. The book opens with a murder and that you continue, if not to have sympathy, then to have compassion for the murderer is quite an achievement. It's not as if the murder is an act of revenge or honour. It's a cruel and senseless act (which, through mischance, becomes even more so) and we're not told why Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov decides to commit it apart from that he feels in some way pre-destined to do it and also that he feels he could do some good with the wealth that will come from it and become an extraordinary man.

 

Perhaps it's his reaction to what he's done that convinces us his heart is not truly evil. His body sinks into illness and fever and his unquiet mind is a maelstrom of hallucinations and delusions which at times border on insanity. If anyone is going to incriminate him then it is he himself for his behaviour is nothing short of ludicrous. He revisits the scene of the crime and makes preposterous statements which hint at his guilt. He veers from wishing to conceal his crime to wishing to confess it, it's a burden that weighs him down and this burden is intensified one hundred fold when his behaviour attracts the suspicion of police detective Porfiry. I loved the depiction of Porfiry with all his wily sarcasm and veiled hints. His words weigh so heavily on Raskolnikov that they do far more damage than any outright accusation or arrest could ever do. They gnaw away at him and he tortures himself with thoughts of Porfiry and what he may or may not know. But more crushing to him than the crime itself is the fact that he has failed to execute it properly .. he will never be the great man he aspired to be and his pride is wounded.

 

 

Dostoevskys writing is quite reminiscent of Dickens (calling to mind 'Our Mutual Friend' in particular), perhaps even tipping into Dickensian sentimentality at times with his depiction of prostitute (not in the unwashed, syphilis ridden way or yet in the glamorous, good time girl sort of way but in the virtuous, chaste, sacrificing all for the family or they would starve type of way) Sonya, but he doesn't go overboard and get quite as maudlin as Dickens. Raskolnikov is drawn to Sonya and she may well prove to be his saving grace. There's a great mix of characters, the destitute Marmeladovs, the cunning and twisted Svidrigailov, the good humoured and amiable Razumhikin and Rodion's devoted and loyal mother and sister.

 

It is dark, brooding and claustrophobic (for a lot of it you are festering inside Rodion's head), there is hardly any light, but for all that it's still hugely entertaining. There is plenty of absurdity and of course lots of suspense .. you get caught up very quickly in this immense battle of good and evil playing out in the heart of Raskolnikov. But the tension doesn't belong solely to him there is plenty to keep you on the edge of your seat in the scenes between the evil Svidrigailov and Rodion's sister Dunya.

 

I'll end with another famous quote ...

"All I can say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an illness."

-- Robert Louis Stevenson on reading Crime and Punishment

10/10

[Kylie]

I know you thought it would be difficult to review Crime and Punishment but you've done a brilliant job. I really love the Vintage edition of this book and as soon as I saw your review I was reminded that I saw it in a secondhand bookshop recently but didn't buy it for some reason. Now I'm feeling frustrated with myself.

 

I found C&P to be such a difficult read - one of the most difficult books I've ever read - but also one of the most rewarding. I hope to read it again one day.

[poppyshake]

I know you thought it would be difficult to review Crime and Punishment but you've done a brilliant job. I really love the Vintage edition of this book and as soon as I saw your review I was reminded that I saw it in a secondhand bookshop recently but didn't buy it for some reason. Now I'm feeling frustrated with myself.

 

I found C&P to be such a difficult read - one of the most difficult books I've ever read - but also one of the most rewarding. I hope to read it again one day.

 

Thanks Kylie , I have to admit .. and it's something that I forgot to say in my review ... that I listened to an abridged version of the story last year so I had a handle on it already which probably helped.

I love the cover too .. it's one of my favourite Vintage's, maybe you'll see it again soon

 

[poppyshake]

Day 07 – Most underrated book

Probably a lot of people will think it's not underrated but I'm going to pick 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' by Susanna Clarke which I thought was just genius. Apart from here on the forum I never hear about it, if I mention it to people they've never heard of it, it doesn't make any of the lists, you don't see it promoted in shops infact you're lucky to find a copy (and I know I've been looking) and, though I think it did win some awards it was not listed for the Orange prize and only longlisted by the Booker and yet I think it is one of the best books to have been written in the last ten years. It is a bit of a housebrick and that might put people off, it has endless footnotes and it does take a while to get going, you have to invest some time at the beginning but the payoff is that you get to read one of the most inventive, imaginative stories ever.

[poppyshake]

 

Burnt Shadows - Kamila Shamsie

 

Waterstones Synopsis: In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders. August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later. There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound them together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerising in its evocation of time and place, "Burnt Shadows" is an epic narrative of disasters evaded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed.

 

Review: This book was lent to me by a neighbour and from the cover I didn't think it would be my kind of thing (actually after I'd read the book the cover bugged me even more.) The book is extremely ambitious, spanning decades and taking as it's backdrop the Nagasaki atomic bombing, Partition in India, 9/11 and the Afghanistan war and that is one of it's problems it's a little too ambitious and busy. These events are for the most part just backgrounds, they have an impact on the characters emotionally and physically but they are not explored in any great detail. When Hiroko (the main character and the one that remains in the book throughout) moves from Nagasaki after that 'unspeakable day' to Delhi I found myself wanting to stay and see how the country coped in the aftermath of such horror but the purpose of this story is to write about how people cope when faced with tragedy and displacement, how some triumph (or at least find a way of surviving) and how others falter and how all of this that can filter down and affect future generations. If Hiroko was to turn up on your doorstep you might want to move out straight away as disaster seems to follow her around a bit but then, as we all know, man's appetite for war is unquenchable, and there's hardly a place she could go to on earth that hasn't had it's share of bloodshed. So back to the cover, Hiroko's father and fiancé are killed after the Nagasaki bomb falls and she herself is injured .. the kimono she is wearing melts into her back and she is left with burns shaped like birds from the pattern on her kimono ... lots of dead flesh and charred and puckered skin and this is what annoyed me about the winsome front cover .. I know it's only a representation and to realise it properly would have been gruesome but it cheapens her ordeal a bit and what's worse it's got a definite whiff of the Mills & Boon about it!! I've seen some beautiful covers for it since and wish that the story I'd read had been enclosed in one of them (because I'm ridiculously partial to nice covers.)

 

Anyway, back to the book, I won't go into detail as Waterstone's have written such a good synopsis (hurray, at last a 'fairly' short review.) I thought it was well written and interesting, there were parts of the story that bored me slightly and parts that confused but all in all I was gripped and the pages flew by. The ending was unexpected, there's a twist to the story which I didn't see coming (yeah .. I know .. no-one's surprised) one to make you look for more pages in order to resolve it. It's half hinted at in the tiny prologue, there's a man taken to a cell and stripped naked, he suspects he will soon be wearing an orange jumpsuit, he wonders 'how did it come to this' but you don't know who he is or why he's in the cell .. you don't find out until the last few pages.

 

7/10

 

In true Nick Hornby 'books leading to books' style, when I mentioned this story to Frankie, she recommended to me 'A Pale View of Hills' by Kazuo Ishiguro and I'm delighted to say that I've since acquired it so that's one to look forward to. Thanks Frankie

The cover I liked more

[poppyshake]

Day 08 – Most overrated book

 

Oh dear, this will put the cat amongt the pigeons, let me say at the outset I don't really believe in the term overrated (or underrated I guess) .. it's just a question of personal taste. If I don't like a book it doesn't mean it's overrated if a million other people love it, it just means it wasn't for me.

 

So the book that wasn't for me but was for a lot of other people is Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy (which is often classed as one book on the lists) ... that's not to say that I hated all three of them, I just got steadily more disappointed and disillusioned with them. I thought they had some great ideas (loved the depiction of the dæmon's and the armoured polar bears) and I quite enjoyed the first book 'The Golden Compass' .. or 'Northern Lights' as we say this side of the pond. I didn't enjoy the second two much, I don't know what it was, some of the ideas seemed re-hashed and hackneyed. The main problem was that I didn't care enough about Lyra or Will ... I guess, having at the time lately read Harry Potter, I was comparing them to Harry, Ron and Hermione .. you feel you know their characters inside out but Lyra and especially Will felt too one-dimensional to me.

[poppyshake]

Day 09 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

 

'A Catcher in the Rye' by J.D. Salinger. It's got a bit of a gloomy, if not to say sinister, reputation, there's all that stuff about it being the book that motivated Mark Chapman to shoot and kill John Lennon so I was expecting it to be pretty bleak and to have a subtext running through it that encouraged readers to go out on the rampage. It is said to be the book he had asked John to sign earlier in the day but then it could just as well of been 'The House at Pooh Corner' ... it's a bit unfair to blame a book because someone who's clearly unstable has gone out and committed a murder.

Holden, the main character, is a depressive and he hates phonies but in no way is he violent, or an instigator of violence. I was quite touched by his narration, he's a young man trying to figure out the world and trying to come to terms with the death of his younger brother. He's angsty and troubled and doesn't always handle things in the best way but he recognises that eventually and seeks help.

Its a book that makes the lists for 'most overrated book' regularly so obviously it's not for everyone, there's not much light in it and the plot is quite thin, nothing much happens, but I'm ok with those sort of intimate novels where you just spend time in the protagonists head, as long as that head has interesting thoughts. I guess I loved it more because I was expecting to hate it.

[poppyshake]

 

The Good Fairies of New York - Martin Millar

 

Waterstones Synopsis: Morag and Heather, two eighteen-inch fairies with swords, green kilts and badly dyed hair fly through the window of the worst violinist in New York, an overweight and antisocial type named Dinnie, and vomit on his carpet. Who they are, how they came to New York and what this has to do with the lovely Kerry - who lives across the street, and has Crohn's Disease, and is making a flower alphabet - and what this has to do with the other fairies (of all nationalities) of New York, not to mention the poor repressed fairies of Britain, is the subject of this book. It has a war in it, and a most unusual production of Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and Johnny Thunders' New York Dolls guitar solos. What more could anyone desire from a book?

 

Review: If you like your fairies to be demure twinkling little things then you won't like this book, these fairies are whisky swilling, aggressive, potty mouthed and loose (in the moral sense of the world, it's perfectly ok for instance for brother and sister fairies to have 'relations' together .. in that way they're more akin to the animal kingdom than the human one,) and the style takes some getting used to, it's quite erratic, jumping from plotline to plotline, sometimes all on one page, in a jerky rather frenetic style. The fairies in New York are a bit of a mixed bunch, there is Morag and Heather (my personal favourites) a couple of Scottish fairies who are on the run (they are in disgrace after cutting up what they took to be an old sheet to make blankets, only it turned out to be 'The MacLeod Fairy Banner .. and to have the murderous MacLeod's after you is a fate worse than death.) They fall out very soon after arriving (which seems to be the story of their lives .. the MacPherson and MacKintosh clans being natural enemies) and take up residence with two humans .. the beautiful, flower loving, free spirited, Kerry who is suffering from Crohn's Disease and who just wants to be able to play all of the New York Dolls guitar solos and the obese, lazy and uncouth Dinnie who is obsessed by the TV sex channel and who plays the violin badly. Morag and Heather are very funny, making jokes at each others expense, getting into fights and scrapes and generally causing mayhem wherever they go. The book does focus on these two in particular and I'm glad it does because I found them to be the best and funniest characters. Also in New York, dazed and confused after consuming too much whisky, beer and magic mushrooms are five more fairies who have run away from their tyrant leader .. Tala fairy king of Cornwall .. including his rightful heirs Petal and Tulip. Back in Cornwall King Tala is furious and wants them found at all costs (fearing that the rebels he is already fighting will claim them as leaders and usurp him.) Add to that the Italian, Chinese and Ghanaian fairy communities already resident in New York, Magenta the bag lady who believes she is a legendary Greek general (too much sipping on a 'Fitzroy' cocktail .. a concoction consisting of shoe polish, meth's, fruit juice and herbs) and the ghost of Johnny Thunders looking for his beloved stolen Gibson guitar and you have well, at least some of the plot.

 

It's great fun, but you do have to concentrate, it's all over the place and keeping track of all the threads takes effort. Also, whoever proofread it needs shooting because there are loads of mistakes (spelling mostly .. I wouldn't notice a punctuation mistake if it jumped up and bit me,) I gave up counting in the end. I think kids would enjoy it but the language and sexual references mean that it's entirely unsuitable which is a bit of a shame because, in a way, it falls between two stools. The book comes highly recommended by Neil Gaiman which is praise indeed (there's a great introduction from him saying that he didn't dare read it for five years because he was afraid it would be similar to the book he was writing 'The American Gods'.)

 

Entertaining but weird.

7/10