Bina’s blog

The Fourth Bear

Jasper Fforde

I have been a fan of Jasper Fforde´s works since I bought The Eyre Affaire a couple of years ago because of the dodo on the cover. However I was quite sceptical when it comes to his Nursery crime series and haven´t read The Big Over Easy so far but then I found The Fourth Bear at the book bazaar for 50 cents and thought that was a good reason to start :)

I like fairy tales by the Grimms and Andersen and detective novels (mostly Agatha Christie because everything else pales in comparison) and intertextuality so I should like it- and so far I do! It´s not as fantastic as the Thursday Next series but plenty of fun in its own way.
The themes are absurd as usual, plenty of fictional characters and an interesting whodunnit. Oh, and beware of the cucumbers!

Here´s a description:

Like The Big Over Easy (2005), Fforde's first Nursery Crime novel, this sequel offers literary allusions, confusions and gentle satire, though, again like its predecessor, it lacks the snap of the author's Thursday Next series (The Eyre Affair, etc.). Jack Spratt, DCI of the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department, is also a PDR (Person of Dubious Reality), as are most of the characters Jack deals with, including the Gingerbreadman, a notorious killer, and Punch and Judy, a violence prone couple who are also marriage counselors. An alien policeman named Ashley, talking bears, a devoted group of cucumber-growing enthusiasts and an immensely powerful company, Quang Tech, add spice. All are grist for Fforde, whose word play runs the gamut from puns to shaggy dog stories. The Gingerbreadman's on the loose, Goldilocks is missing and Jack's once again persona non grata at headquarters. As Jack and his associates "bring justice to the nursery world," they also cast a Swiftian eye on corporate hubris, race relations, the drug trade and myriad other targets. (Publishers weekly)

Complete reviews

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That´s the pile of books I got at the book bazaar that the library back home has about four times a year. I got 15 books for only 10 euros so even though I´m usually broke l could indulge!

Here´s the complete list:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The complete short fiction of Oscar Wilde
Oracle night by Paul Auster
Speak, memory by Vladimir Nabokov
My uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead by Tom Stoppard
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Gulliver´s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Everything in the garden/ All over by Edward Albee
Animal farm by George Orwell
The fourth hand by John Irving
The fourth bear by Jasper Fforde
Watching the English by Katie Fox
Slaughterhouse five by Kurt Vonnegut
Albertine Disparue by Marcel Proust

I love Wednesdays! It´s the one day I have only one class and have enough time to catch up with all the stuff I have to do for my busy Thursday (classes all day 9-6pm!). And it´s my library day. I have lots of books checked out:

On Chesil Beach

Ian Mcewan

The Mysterious Benedict Society

Trenton Lee Stewart

Angels on Toast

Dawn Powell

Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

So I only got films for movie night /The Royal Tennenbaums and Trafic) and a small French dictionary for Monsieur Ibrahim in case I don´t understand the key word of a sentence.

The last two weeks were really busy, I had to do four presentations and an advanced translation test. But I did manage to finish The Plato Papers in time. It´s a book I had to read for my utopian novels class and it´s great, very funny while still thought- provoking. Also, it´s not a typical utopian/ dystopian novel but shows the orator Plato´s view on our time which was supposedly ages before his.

The Plato Papers

Peter Ackroyd

Carmen tagged me:

The rules:

1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they’ve been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story.

My random 8:

1. I go home every weekend to have time with my family and friends at home and also with my friends in Düsseldorf during the week.

2. I have four library cards: Uni library, the one back home, international library in Düsseldorf and the public library in Düsseldorf.

3. My hair is brown even though people think its black.

4. I hate the colour green but my appartment door is pea green.

5. I mostly wear curduroy pants, they are the better jeans! ;)

6. I feel like I´m still not an adult because I don´t like coffee, cigarettes or alcohol.

7. I always sleep with the window open even if its freezing outside.

8. I suffer from migraines but I don´t need strong drugs, aspirin does the trick.

Okay, I´m weird :D

Is there anyone I know still not tagged?

Kristie

Lucia

Nathalie

Paige

Maria

Stephanie

Nicole

Jennifer

I know I shouldn´t judge a book by its cover but I have to confess that I do. There are some books I only picked up because of the cover, like The Eyre Affaire. My edition is really colourful with a dodo and I thought it looked like a fun book, that made me take a closer look and so I got hooked on the Thursday Next series.
If I like a book very much I want the cover to tell everyone "hey that´s one amazing book"!

The Folio Society specializes in making books beautiful. Check out their website to see all their books.
The only downside is that you have to join and buy books, but if one has a steady income this might not be such a problem.

White Oleander

Janet Fitch

I started White Oleander by Janet Fitch yesterday.
In the beginning I thought it was just okay but then Astrid is placed with her first foster family and the story just took off. It was so interesting to see her development throught he years, her faults but also her strenght and especially her correspondence with her mother Ingrid.
I couldn´t stop and finished this book last night!

But what´s with the Oprah sticker? They are so annoying!

Karneval-rhein

Karneval started yesterday and so I thought that I´d get a couple of days off since Düsseldorf is one of the most enthusiastic places but of course I have only monday off because that´s basically a must. My friends back home have no uni till wednesday :(

Anyway next week is the last week of this semester! I´ve done all my BNs ( for every course we have to do sth like write minutes, give a presentation, do a test or short paper or we won´t get the credit points we need) except for morpho- syntax and literary theories for which I need to study over the weekend. Fun.

Of course I don´t really have vacation since I have two long papers to write during that time but I´ll do that from home.
My topics for the papers are Conversion in English literature for my word- formation class and for How to teach language and literature (that´s the best translation I can come up with) I have to do something more hands- on, like looking up what courses universities are offering for scientific writing, get interviews and test and materials and analyse which method is best and why etc.

I just finished cleaning up my place a bit and then I´m going home for the weekend.

This new year will be for you and me

I´m currently obsessed with the band Lacrosse. I went to a concert in a small club here last December and they were even better live!

As with most great new bands they are from Sweden. What is it with this country? There has to be something in the water!

Take the time to look them up on their myspace page.