100 Books + a Meme

Well, I reached 100 books for the year. I was kind of hoping to finish 150, but I'm not sure I'll make it, inasmuch as I'm not likely to read much in December when I go home an visit my family. Somehow they take it ill when you've got your ear buds in or your nose in a book when you only see them once a year. Funny that...



Trish put up the Honest Scrap meme on her blog and “tagged” everyone. According to Trish and Lisa, who originally tagged Trish, "The "Honest Scrap" award requires me to tell my readers 10 true things about me and then pass it on to 10 more blogs."

10 Things:

1. I make a pot of tea in the morning at work and it usually lasts me most of the day in summer. It goes cold and I still drink it. In winter I usually manage the first pot hot and then go on to make a second pot which eventually goes cold.

2. I would love to have a really clean house all the time. I used to clean every day so that it would stay clean and I wouldn’t be embarrassed if someone dropped by. I can’t be bothered anymore. I clean at the weekends and maybe do the floors a second time in the middle of the week if the weather has been nasty and the animals brought in more than the usual amount of dirt/hair.

3. I used to iron my bed sheets. It’s a lovely feeling, but somewhere along the line I became too tired to deal with it and haven’t ironed anything in 6 months. I find I can live with this.

5. I can be really quite, but also really obnoxious. I’m surprised my friends put up with either.

6. I don’t actually own a sofa like normal people. I have a single bed with pillows on it. It’s one of my most favourite pleasures at the weekend to lie down and read until I fall asleep, then nap for a couple of hours. This does not help motivate me to actually purchase a real couch.

7. I have the world’s worst body temperature regulation. Actually, I don’t think I have one at all. I’m either too cold, or too hot, but rarely just fine.

8. I keep swearing I will not get more dogs once the current ones are no longer. No one believes me, but I really hope I can stick to it this time. I love my dogs, but between work and walking the dogs, I no longer have a life.

9. Even though I know they are seriously ugly, I wear Crocs 95% of the time because they are comfortable and don’t make my feet hurt. I have tendon problems in my feet so it’s difficult to find shoes I can wear long term.

10. I’ve been on a classics book binge for the last couple of years. I got tired of not understanding casual references to books and decided to remedy it. I have to admit that I would not have made it through many of them had they not been in audio format. Having said that, I’ve also found some great books that I will love forever.

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson

Fabulous book. Fabulous. Loved it. The only negative thing I have to say about it is that it's very intense and intense and probably not a good book to read if you're otherwise stressed. That's not actually a negative though, just an observation.

The book is a continuation of the Mikael Blomkvist's and Lisbeth Salander's relationship/adventures/lives after the Wennerström Affair and their historic investigation into the Vanger family and the disappearance of Herriet Vanger in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Lisbeth, a slightly odd person with possible Asperger's Syndrome and/or other psychological and social difficulties, distances herself from her friend Blomkvist and vanishes into thin air. Blomkvist doesn't give up trying to contact her despite her obvious desire never to see him again. Suddenly, two of Blomkvist's friends and business parters are murder and Salander is implicated and it become more important than ever for Blomkquist to find his anti-social hacker friend.

Larsson does such a good job at making Salander so very likeable despite her obvious dislike of people in general, that you really become quite afraid for her. I found myself quite emotionally involved in this book, rooting for Salander and Blomkvist all the way. There are so many twists and turns in the story that it's impossible to see how things will develop, which keeps you constantly on the edge of your seat. It only took me two or three days to read this, despite being quite a long book. It's one of those where you've just got to know what happens next, so you can't put it down. This one gets 5 out of 5 for plot, likeable characters and readability.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

This book scared me witless and I sort of formed a love-hate relationship with it. I loved it because of the points it made, but hated it because it forced me to contemplate things which are, to me, unthinkable.

Montag is a fireman, but not like the firemen we know. His job is not to stop fires, but to start them. He burns books for a living. The setting is Earth in the future and books have been banned. All books. There are hints that there are technicalities governing the ownership of books, but practically speaking, all books are considered illegal and must be burned. The premise is that books and being well read inspire people to think they are better than others, in turn making those with lesser education feel bad about themselves. Negative feelings of self-worth are no longer tolerated in a society who wants to feel happy, happy, happy all the time. Therefore, anything that contributes to someone else feeling bad, must be done away with.

The scary part about this is that the way Bradbury set it up, and the way that society has developed since he wrote the book, it is actually a conceivable situation. As I was reading, I was constantly trying to reassure myself that neither I, nor my fellow book lovers, would allow such a sacrilege: we would fight to the death to retain our books and the right to read them. The question is, would there be enough of us to stop them from doing it? Are there really enough readers? I know that many, many people love to read, but what about all of those who don’t? There are probably more people out there than we know who haven’t picked up a book since they got out of school.

Comforting is the thought that so many people’s livelihoods are dependant on the publishing industry. To forbid the written word would decimate the economy, even in this day and age. Publishers, book shops, librarians, universities, shipping agents, printing houses, editors, certain web-cites would all be out of business if we were to ban books. That’s a lot of people if you think about it. Financially I think it would be impossible. Despite this being a comfort to those who love books, I can’t help but think there’s still something fundamentally wrong about a society who uses financial viability to validate the importance of the written word. It’s a fact of life, but it still seems quite oxymoronic to me.

Even better than the book was Bradbury’s afterward where he tells of many people’s (publisher’s) attempts to edit his books so that they would be acceptable to everyone, i.e. removing all references of God or minorities so that no one would be upset by the content. I hope he asked them if they had actually READ his book, although even if they did, they obviously didn’t get the point. Bradbury points out that the constant editing and re-editing of books is exactly the sort of thing that would facilitate a society as Bradbury describes in Fahrenheit 451. He points out that “blacks don’t like Twain and whites don’t like Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (paraphrasing there). What’s the answer? Do we get rid of both so everyone is happy, or do we keep both and teach from them so that everyone can learn why someone else would have a different point of view? Would we even be happy if we were always “happy”, i.e. if nothing ever upset us, or would our happiness disappear through lack of contrast?

There’s a lot of material in this book for discussion and I came away feeling like I’d like to make it compulsory reading for all schools. There’s much that can be learned from looking at the consequences, albeit fictional, of well-meaning but ill informed intentions based on short term results.
Loved the books and thus, 5 out of 5.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Once again, there are other books I should be reviewing first, but I just finished this on Sat. and want to get my thoughts down before they disappear.

Plot: The unnamed heroine of the novel is a companion to an older American lady in Monte Carlo when she meets and falls in love with Mr. de Winter. I refuse to say anymore about the plot since I really think it would spoil the book for others. I read it cold and am glad I did. Actually, if you haven’t read it, but plan to, stop after the first three sentences of the next paragraph and go read the book. It’s better that way, trust me.

I loved this book. It’s brilliant. Du Maurier is a genius. I don’t just say that because she writes a great story, which it was, but because she is a master at language. Her writing style is similar to Virginia Woolf, only with much more structure. As I was reading this book, the language, always so soft, floating, diaphanous, made me feel pleasant and happy, even though I knew there was disaster must be coming. It was a bit like being a leaf which is gently blown along the path by a late summer breeze, lazy and content, yet with the knowledge that disaster will and must strike sometime in the future. It could come in the form of an early winter, or linger on until late November before the catastrophe happens, yet all the time you know it will. You’re not quite sure if you should sit back and enjoy the ride and the lovely breeze, or try and prepare yourself for the coming evil.

For me it was the direct contrast between the oh so beautiful language and the not so beautiful actions of some of the characters that heightened the sense of impending doom -throughout the book really, but especially upon the return to Mandalay. Mrs. Danvers, for example, is never overtly evil, yet she is one of the most innately evil characters I’ve ever come across. Du Maurier’s contrast between the language and the actions rather heightens than dampens Mrs. Danvers subtle hostility and vicious menace. The evil is there, weaving its way between the lines as if poisoning the book while the reader is pleasantly carried onwards through the story.

Granted, I did often feel like slapping the heroine and telling her to grow a backbone. However, after having finished the book, I’m not so sure that would have done her any good. More intelligence and less naïveté, on the other hand, would have helped. It was painstakingly obvious that De Winter and his wife needed to have a serious conversation about Rebecca, yet they both, to their own detriment, avoided doing so. However it was this undercurrent of things unsaid and things unknown that kept the book from becoming solely a beautifully written narrative and turned it into a fascinating mystery.

Overall, 5 out of 5 for this one. Loved it and will surely read it again.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

As Trish said in her review, this book isn't easy to write about. Heck, I'm tempted to just say, hey, if you want to know about this book, go read Trish's review, but I'm going to try and stick it out and write about it anyway.

The only reason I read this is frankly because I confused it with Fahrenheit 451, which I wanted to read. Oh, and it was also on sale on Audible and I'm a sucker for a sale. Anyway, I was a little surprised to suddenly find I was reading about WWII and not about book burning, but knowing that this is one of those "must read" books, I stuck with it. The first two or three hours of the book I found quite intriguing. The writing style is simplistic, but the composition is quite clever, so easy to understand on the surface, but confusing and complicated below.

The first difficulty is overcoming the non-linear plot. The story bounces around from place to place and time to time and it can be quite difficult to keep up with it. The shifts are also not always very pronounced, and that adds to the confusion. Once I got to grips with all of the shifting, I realized how clever the book really is. Not only are the circular arguments - all logical enough in bits and pieces, but maddeningly insane as a whole - thought provoking, but the constant time shifts are really well knit together. Heller must have either had a very good plan or was a fantastic strategist, because otherwise the book would have fallen apart. Just when you thought something was over and you’d heard the last of it, the scene pops up again from another perspective, giving you more insight into the situation as a whole. This would be a good book to read two or three times and then discuss in a group. There are so many different facets that it’s difficult to get to grips with them after just one reading.

Now, did I like the book? I’m afraid not. After the first few hours, the repetitiveness of the arguments and constant return to situations already described annoyed me greatly. It seemed to me that Heller beat his themes to death when I was ready to move on to something new. It made me feel like I was going about as insane as some of the characters were and couldn’t wait for the book to finish. The style also reminded me of Catcher in the Rye, which I didn’t care for either. That said, I think that had I read Catch-22 when I was younger, I would have liked it better. The contemplation of such conundrums and analysis of inner turmoil appealed more to me then than it does not. I might just be too old and too lazy for both of these books.

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

This is the first book I’ve ever read by Virginia Woolf, so I was unsure what to expect. To the Lighthouse centres around the Ramsay family and their summer home on an island with a lighthouse just off of it. The lighthouse is a thing of wonder for their son James, who dearly wants to go visit it, but is thwarted by his father’s negative reaction and by the weather. The second focal point of the novel is Mrs. Ramsay who is one of those goodhearted but ethereal women who are loved by all for one reason or the other. All of the other characters seem to vie for her love in one way or the other and the conflict of selfish love rears its head in several instances, especially between father and son.

There isn’t actually much of a plot to the book as its intention was to focus on the inner thoughts of the characters and their reaction to small events in the beginning and larger events later on, all of which are only mentioned in a casual manner and only serve to give direction to the thoughts of Woolf’s characters. Because they are so secondary, they seem to swirl around in the story almost unrealistically instead of being the solid, important events they really are. Even the lighthouse is more of a symbol than of a reality, even though it is an unmistakeable landmark which draws the attention of everyone near it.

It’s easy to think that it would be difficult to continue reading a book with so little plot and so much introspection, but the characters give enough away to keep the story coherent, even though they are focusing on themselves. It’s interesting to see the way their thoughts develop in reaction to the other characters as they interact with each other. Not only do they reveal the beauty of humans, but also their innate selfishness and their bent to protect themselves from becoming weighed down by others, for example when Lilly knows she should be sympathetic to Mr. Ramsay, yet cannot bring herself to show him any kindness at all, but strives to protect herself from being backed into a corner by his overwhelming misery. Woolf shows her mastery of writing by intertwining the romanticism of the age with the realism of human nature without overdoing either side. They seem balanced in this book and it seems natural that they are.

Had I read this book for the first time when I was 20, I would have fallen in love with it and it would have become one of my most favourite works I’m sure. Its introspectiveness and disregard for momentous occasions would have really appealed to me. Being slightly older now, I feel as if I’ve passed through the phase. Still, the language used is undisputedly beautiful and pulls the reader in. It’s a pleasure to read just for the richness of the language even if one isn’t as interested in the particular style or subject of the writing. One thing I should add is that because most of it is so beautiful, several of the points Woolf makes, especially about the treatment and standing of women in society, are all the more poignant for the sudden switch to a slightly harsher tone when Woolfe glosses upon the subject. She uses fewer words and never states anything outright, but the point is made beautifully all the same. For this and for her general mastery of language, To the Lighthouse gets a five out of five. This should be a standard read in school, which is when I wish I had read it.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Shadow, a large man with a good heart, is summoned to the prison warden a few days prior to his release, only to be told that they are letting him out early because his wife died in an accident. On his way home, he is offered a job by a man called Wednesday, which he, at first, refuses. Shadow has sworn never to do anything illegal again in his life and Wednesday’s offer sounds a bit too dodgy. After having buried his wife and realizing that his life is now quite empty, he rethinks his decision and takes the job. Wednesday is an old god; a god brought over to America by previous generations and still exists because a few people still believe in him. He knows a fight between the old gods and the new American gods (of IT, Media, Technology and the like) is coming and so he hires Shadow to drive him around so that he can persuade all of the old Gods to join his fight.

Shadow is lead on a journey which is at times bizarre and unseemly. The lines between reality and what he has hitherto thought of as fiction are blurred quite a lot. His life also gets a whole lot more complicated when a special coin, the wrong coin, is given to him by a worn out leprechaun. Shadow puts the coin on his wife’s grave with rather odd consequences.

After having read Neverwhere and The Graveyard Book, which were both really good reads, I was quite looking forward to reading American Gods and was thrilled when a friend gave it to me for my birthday. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this one as much. It seemed to me to be neither here nor there, neither fantasy nor reality nor horror. It also seemed rather dry, dusty and depressing to me and I was glad to have finally finished the book. That’s not to say that it’s not a good book. After all, I don’t care for a lot of things that other people rave about, but it wasn’t my kind of book and I prefer Gaiman’s more fantastic and fun works. Having said that, there are some quite interesting subjects for discussion in the books, like old vs. new, the New American Way of Life, conspiracies and the perception of spirit worlds. If you like fantasy and American Literature, you might like this one quite a bit more than I did. However, for me, it gets a three out of five.

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens wrote some very good stories in his time, but I have to admit that this particular work isn't going to make it onto my favourites list. The Pickwick Papers is basically a collection of short stories involving the same characters, Gentlemen all belonging to The Pickwick Club, which tell the tale of their humorous travels and trials around England.

Mr. Pickwick is a like-able fellow who starts up a club with his name and then starts off on adventures of his own with a couple of the club members. As the stories continue, characters come and go and come again, which can be slightly confusing with time. The stories themselves are amusing for the most part. Dickens is obviously taking the micky out of life in England at the time. The Law, social customs and courtship all feature heavily and are all made fun of in their turn. As I was reading (or listening as the case was), I couldn't help but think that they would have been hugely entertaining for people living in the day. However, I'm fairly certain there were many little hints a references I missed simply because I don't know enough about the era. Even though this obviously isn't Dickens' fault, it did detract from my enjoyment of the book.

This all makes it rather hard to rate The Pickwick Papers. I think for anyone who has a better grasp of history and the mid to late 19th century, this would be a great read. Alas, since I don't, it only rates a 3 out of 5 for me personally. Worth a read, but it's not something I'll read again any time soon. I prefer the novels with more cohesive, direct stories.

Yay! and Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Hilarie from Never Not Reading has honored me by nominating me for the Kreative Blogger award! Thanks Hilarie!

Rules for accepting the Kreative Blogger Award require me to list seven of my favorite things, and nominate seven other fabulous blogs.

Seven of My Favorite Things
1. Family

2. Friends
3. My Dogs and cats

4. Reading
5. Knitting
6. Sleeping
7. Chocolate

Seven Amazing Blogs I would like to nominate:

1. Mari at Marireads

2. The Yarnerinas

3. Karoline at Karoline Knits

4. Knitandplaywithfire

5. Trish at Trish's Reading Nook

6. Jeane at Dog Ear Diary

7. Holly at ProseKnitic

I read all of these blogs as often as possible and hope you enjoy them as much as I do.


Eat, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

I've probably just violated one of Mrs. Truss' rules (and that apostrophe may be the second violation, but I don't like the look of Truss's and Perdue is telling me Truss' is acceptable) by italicizing the title, but I don't like bolding titles because it looks silly, kind of like you're shouting at someone, ergo the italicization. After all, she does say that we all have our preferences and should use them, so I'm going to. That was the first good thing I got out of this book. My punctuation may not be quite as poor as I thought (although I may be wrong there too...). A lot of my more questionable grammer and punctuation is simply a matter of taste, so yay!

The second good thing is that aside from making me much more aware of punctuation and it's usage, this book cleared up a few things for me, like the usage of semi colons, which have always driven me crazy.

The fact that she's discussing punctuation in a prose form, as opposed to text book form (snore), makes it a lot easier to stick to listening to someone go on a bit about punctuation, the reasons for it and the decline of what is a really useful tool. Her examples make that point. It was quite often fun to study how the meaning of a sentence could be completely altered by adding or removing a comma, as in the book's title.

Although she is a self-professed punctuation stickler, her self-deprecating tone coupled with her admission that some punctuation is down to taste and style and her short histories of punctuation, which demonstrate the changeable nature of languages, prevented the book from reading like a rant from some punctuation stickler with a stick, um, clutched firmly in their hand. I quite enjoyed reading this book and wish more people would, if not because they love punctuation, but simply to increase their awareness of it and how helpful it can be.

Totally unrelated to this, of course, is that I realized work was becoming too demanding for me to concentrate on serious books in my free time, so after finishing Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I "re-read" (audio books) the Twilight series. They're not very well written and there's way too much angsty teenage romance, vampire or no, for my taste, but still somehow a good story (if you don't get it, don't ask, because I can't even explain it to myself, let alone anyone else). It was great not having to concentrate or think for a while. Now I'm back to "the Grind" and am finishing off The Pickwick Papers.

The Spook's Apprentice by Joseph Delany

I can't remember where I happened upon this book. It might have been a recommendation from Amazon when I was looking at something else, but it looked good, sort of Harry Potter genre-ish and I thought I'd give it a try.

As a children's book, it's fantastic. I would have loved this book when I was a child. So much so that I would have had to have the next subito and not whenever. It's the kind of series I would have owned the whole of and read and re-read. I'm not the best judge of age ranges, but I would think somewhere between 10-12 year olds would be the target audience, considering the book is about a 13 year old farm boy who is apprenticed off to a Spook to learn his trade.

Tom is the seventh son of a seventh son and was born to a mysterious mother. She seems to be magical, but nothing is ever said outright. Tom does not necessarily want to become a Spook because of the many downsides to the job. Spooks are men who travel the country helping people get rid of demons, evil witches, boggarts, ghosts, ghasts and all things that go bump in the night. Because of the nature of the work, few people are disposed to speak to Spooks unless the need something from them, so the life is a lonely and hard one. Tom, who grew up in a large family who loved him, is uncertain that he will be able to deal with this life and it isn't long before he decides it's not for him. Unfortunately for Tom, we don't always get what we want in life. His genealogy has decided his fate for him and he must continue whether he wants to or not.

The tale is a good one. Already in the first leg of his journey, Tom learns much. Not only must he study hard, but he must learn on his feet, and quickly too, if he wants to avoid total disaster striking. When a Spook's job goes wrong, it's others who suffer the consequences. Tom learns this rather quickly after choosing to ignore warnings the Spook had given him about the witch trapped in a hold in the garden. Because of Tom, the witch gets free just when the Spook is gone and he has only himself to rely on to save the situation from getting worse.

The book is well written, the story action packed, the characters engaging and the rest of the series promises to be interesting. I plan on finishing it as soon as I can get a hold of the books. All in all, 5 stars if you're under the age of 15 and 4.5 if you're older, but only because it really is a children's book.