Vox got on my nerves just one too many times. I like sidebars, Vox doesn´t, especially not widgets. It´s not possible to export from Vox to wordpress (and I´m not in the mood to do this manually) so I´m basically starting new or just continuing on wordpress. My German blog is also on there and it´s much easier to have both blogs on wordpress.
A lot of you guys have already left vox and moved (all to wordpress I think) so I´m being a sheep and following you :)
I´ll try to link to new posts on Vox and hope you´ll continue to follow my book blog over here:
I´ve heard a lot of peole talking about their Christmas reading lists and thought about sharing mine. Then I realized I don´t actually have any Christmas related reading list, or books I reread every Christmas. I don´t even read Dickens´ A Christmas Carol (I think I´ve never actually read this). But then I remembered The Herdmans, that is The Worst.Best Christmas Pageant Ever. While it´s been one of my favorite books since I learned how to read, it´s also Christmas related!
For my previous post about this and a summary go here.
The Herdmans are the worst kids ever but what they add to the otherwise routine pageant is both hilarious and profound. I can´t recommend this enough! I´m going to reread this next week to get into the (admittedly unorthodox) Christmas mood.
Here´s the German cover to give an idea about the Herdman kids:
Christmas break! I´m allowed to read and blog as much as I want to :)
I´ve also signed up for S.Krishna´s South Asian Author Challenge and am trying to read 7 books for it. I love South Asian litarure, especially when it deals with clash of cultures. My favorite author in this genre is Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, highly recommend The Mistress of Spices.
I haven´t made a list for this challenge either but there will definitely be some of her books on it! Apart from that I´m thinking White Tiger, Unaccustomed Earth, some Rushdie.
Sign ups are open till the end of the month!
Link to all the challenges I´m participating in.
Yes, another challenge. I´m blaming Michelle for first getting me interested and making it sound so fun! :)
Lesley of A Life in Books is hosting the 2010 Bibliophillic Books Challenge. Goal is to read books about reading or literature (fiction and non-fiction) and you have the whole of 2010 to complete it. These are the levels to choose from:
Bookworm -3 books
Litlover- 6 books
Bibliomaniac- 12 books
Go sign up here (till January 31st)!
I´ve signed up for the Litlover level, reading about reading is everyone bookworm´s dream anyway so I don´t think it will be difficult to complete the challenge. I´m not quite sure about my list for this challenge, any suggestions? I recently bought Sara Nelson´s So Many Books So Little Time which fits the challenge perfectly, and I´ll probably reread one of the Thursday Next books.
Go sign up everyone: Jennifer at Mrs.Q:Book Addict is hosting her first challenge, The Canadian Authors Challenge 2010. I thought I´d sign up for level 3 because I´m also doing a South Asian Challenge and have to leave room for spontaneous decisions. Now I´ve decided to go for 5 books, it´s still not actually a lot, but very possible to achieve and much better for my list:
The third novel on my list is Nancy Huston´s Fault Lines (Lignes de Faille), which I´ve wanted to read before to improve my practically non-existent French. This time I´ll just go ahead and read the English translation, it´s embarrassing but still better than not reading it at all.
Alan Bradley´s The Weed that Strings the Hangman´s Bag is the second Flavia DeLuce book and comes out in March. I highly recommend reading at least the first book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (read my review here).
Last on my list is Alice Munroe´s new work Too Much Happiness, a short story collection. Somehow I have never read anything by her, not even for uni, and I´m curious whether she really is as great as everyone claims.
I think a lot of you are putting The Little Girl Who Was too Fond Matches on their list (at least I´m hoping you wil), I´m excited to discuss some aspects of this!
"The day was different from the night.
The night belonged to me and my droogs and all the rest of the nadsats, and the starry bourgeois lurked indoors drinking in the gloopy worldcasts, but the day was for the starry one, and there always seemed to be more rozzes or millicents about during the day, too."
(Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange. 36)
Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should Be Reading and this is how it works:
- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
On a vast and neglected estate, the I narrator, together with brother, father, and The Fair Punishment, lives isolated from the rest of the world. The story opens with the death of the siblings´ authoritarian father, and for the first time in their lives, they have to make decisions on their own. One such decision takes the narrator to the nearby village, entering the outside world and bringing outsiders back into the siblings´ own small world.
Since the narrator has never ventured beyong the estate all the knowledge of the world comes from the state libary. The language is perfectly understandable, however, there are many instances where the choice of word made me pause. Like the story itself, something seems to be not quite right. The strange phrasing, and the word play seem to have been very well-translated and emphasize the closed-off world of the siblings. Still, if your French is up to it, I would recommend reading the original.
The book is very short and easy to read, but will probably leave you quite disturbed long after the last page. This is one of those reads where you know that something dark lies beneath, an impression that is only heightened by the calm slow way the story unfolds itself. The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches is both beautiful and horrifying in a timeless sort of way.
I enjoyed this book as much as you can "enjoy" this type of story, and I seem to have a soft spot for slow, disturbing novels. I would perhaps go as far as to say that if you enjoyed Shirley Jackson´s We Have Always Lived in the Castle or Poppy Adams´ The Behaviour of Moths or even Poe, then you are likely to relish Soucy´s novel.
And once you have read The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches, let me know what you thought of the depiction of gender roles!
I read:
A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Mohammed Hanif)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
The Little Girl who was too Fond of Matches (Gaétan Soucy)
Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro)
I acquired:
Agatha Christie- An Autobiography (Agatha Christie)
Fingersmith (Sarah Waters)
The Little Girl who was too Fond of Matches (Gaétan Soucy)
Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Brida (Paolo Coelho)
Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates)
(All birthday presents except for the autobiography :) )
"Mrs Sucksby was a devil with her dander up.
She looked at Flora and tapped her slippered foot upon the rug, all the time rocking in her chair- that was a great creaking wooden chair, that no-one sat in save her- and beating her thick, hard hand upon my shaking back."
(Sarah Waters: Fingersmiths. 4)
Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should Be Reading and this is how it works:
- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
This mystery centers around the woman in white whom Walter Hartright meets one night on a deserted street in London. This encounter sends his life into a new and dangerous direction.
What fascinated me most about this book were, next to the mystery, Collins´ characters. What a group! Apart from nice and boring Hartright and the fair and feeble Laura Fairlie were Marian Halcombe and the Count. Throughout the book the main characters, the couple in the center, were Hartright and Laura. But to me it felt like Collins gave them to the readers of his time, as what was expected and had to be delivered.
The real heroes of this novel are Marian Halcombe and the Count. They are described as ugly or at least strange looking, the Count as a very large man who plays with his tiny menagerie comes across as ridiculous. Marian is likewise depicted as ugly and repeatedly attributed male characteristics. She can only be very intelligent and pragmatic while being ugly and therefore unsuitable as a love interest and "real" woman. Her intelligence is like a man´s, her hands are as large as a man´s, and she often downplays her abilities and actions because she is only a woman. As such she can only fully be appreciated by the Count, the antihero. And because he is the bad guy she can only be disgusted by his admiration.
In the end Hartright keeps both woman, Laura as his wife and Marian because, really, they need someone to organize their lives and for stimulating conversation.
How did you regard the characters? Did you read them differently?
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Rory's Book Club Updated: Dec 10, 2009
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Recent Comments
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Vishy said:
Your new blog is great! The one thing I will miss though is Groucho Marx gazing at me :) read more
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Bina said:
Thank you for continuing to read my blog over at wordpress. Hope you enjoy :) read more
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Vishy said:
That is sad - because Vox has lost one more wonderful book blogger. But welcome to Wordpress :) Hope you... read more
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Bina said:
Didn´t even know that was possible. Now I know what I´ll be doing instead of writing papers ;) read more
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I´ll see what I can do about that! :D read more
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