The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy by Fiona Neill turned out to be rather different from what I expected (though I’d be hard put to pinpoint what I expected, so don’t ask), but very engaging, quite charming in it’s way and a bit of a pageturner, really. Not really laugh-out-loud funny, it has its moments, the style is approprately light without being too fluffy, it’s free from cringe-inducing lingustical fudging and I was even quite happy with the plotline and most importantly: How the story ended. A pretty good read, all in all.
Kategori: Aardwolf – one hit wonders
Den lille stygge sjokoladeboka – Simen Sætre
Jeg var litt tvilende til om jeg turte lese denne boka, faktisk. Ignorance is bliss og så videre. Vel, det viste seg at den forsåvidt ikke inneholdt så mye nytt. Jeg følte faktisk at de negative sidene ved sjokoladeproduksjon kunne vært utdypet og illustrert enda bedre. Flere sitater og historier fra kakaoplantasjearbeiderne – både de som er de facto slaver og de som har valgt jobben «frivillig». Fokus på sukkerproduksjon og all utbyttingen og utnyttingen som foregår der kunne kanskje også vært nevnt – det meste av sjokolade som selges i Norge inneholder tross alt en ganske stor andel sukker.
Allikevel, har du ikke lest side opp og side ned om slavearbeid og grunnene til at du bør handle Fair Trade om du kan bør du nok lese denne boka. Har du allerede lest side opp og side ned kan du godt lese boka allikevel, for den er såpass kort at det ikke er allverdens investering av tid, og noe nytt lærer du nok (det gjorde jeg, tross alt). Og den var vel med på å dytte meg over i et standpunkt jeg allikevel var i ferd med å ta, at sjokoladeinnkjøpene heretter bør være Fair Trade i enda større grad de også (kaffe, sukker, ris og bananer er nesten utelukkende det allerede, og vi jobber med andre produkter). Men jeg kommer nok til å kjøpe Freia melkesjokolade også i fremtiden, bare kanskje ikke så ofte. Problemet er nemlig at der Fair Trade kaffen, for eksempel, smaker like bra eller bedre enn alternativene er det ingen annen sjokolade som smaker som Freia melkesjokolade og dermed er det lite poeng i å proppe i seg lassevis med Fair Trade sjokolade i et forsøk på å tilfredstille behovet når det melder seg.
Hvis noen har funnet Fair Trade melkesjokolade som faktisk smaker godt tar jeg gjerne mot tips (når det gjelder mørk sjokolade er vi nemlig også nesten utelukkende på Fair Trade, men jeg sliter med melkesjokoladen).
April, May and much of June
I swear I meant to write proper posts on some of these. However:
Police at the Funeral – Margery Allingham
Showed up in my mailbox as a sort of birthday present – bookcrossing style. A quirky and charming read and definitely an author to look out for later. I still haven’t quite decided who next to «inflict» this on, I think it takes a certain kind of reader… Hm.
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
A little dreary, but good in its way – I think its supposed to be a little dreary, to be honest. Recognisable and not so recognisable themes of guilt and shame, religion and upbringing.
The Chronicles of Prydain – Lloyd Alexander
A reread occasioned by finding the first three books in Norwegian second-hand by chance.
Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
Also a bookcrossing copy, my suspicions that I’d like Murakami in novel-form was confirmed. A perfectly beautiful – though quite sinister – book, and very hard to put down once you’ve started.
Under the Duvet, Angels and The Other Side of the Story – Marian Keyes
A three for one sale on Marian Keyes paperbacks, and these are the ones I came away with. Under the Duvet was entertaining, but possibly a little too light-hearted for my taste (even the pieces dealing with serious issues such as alchoholism somehow felt light-hearted, something Rachel’s Holiday – the novel dealing with the same issue – doesn’t). I realised, shortly after having started it, that I’ve read Angels before. Nevermind, I didn’t remember how it would all end and it was worth a reread (even if I still don’t really like the ending. Bah). The Other Side of the Story was, uhm, not quite up to Keys’ usual standard, I don’t think. I think partly it was the narrative form I didn’t like, it was slightly too disjointed to suit the overall style of the novel (or me, possibly).
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox – Maggie O’Farrell
Received from Tonbel, who grabbed the chance to get rid of some books while I was there. Most of them ended up bookcrossed, but this one she suggested I read, and I’m glad she did. The main problem with this book was that it was at least 400 pages too short. I wanted to know more, much more, and it left me (internally, I was on the bus) shouting «But what happened next?» Not that the story is unfinished as such, just that the characters were compelling enough to make me want to read more. I think I will have to put the books O’Farrell mentions as helpful when researching on my tbr list.
I’ve probably forgotten something here, oh well.
Since the middle of February
The Tale of Desperaux – Di Collofello
Very sweet. Not exceptionally good, though, and with an underlying sort of morality which bothered me. Since I rather like rats I objected to the description of them being so nasty to look at and touch (especially in comparison with mice, which are, apparently, not nasty at all), but I can understand how it might be necessary for the story. However, I can’t quite excuse the idea that a rat is a rat and can never change his nature, it smacks – to me – a little of the I’m-trying-to-be-politically-correct-but-I’m-a-racist-really premise that all, say, negroes are lazy, but it’s in their nature and they can’t really help it. Balderdash.
Small Wars Permitting – Christina Lamb
Very interesting, highly readable. My father just finished this when I was trying to get through Sorting Out Billy (see below) and there was no competition, really, I jumped at the chance to read something else. Lamb manages to be both informative, profound and thought-provoking and at the same time laugh-out-loud funny in places. The book contains both newly written context material and quite a few of Lambs articles from various papers and both are equally readable and absorbing. Highly recommended.
Then, a bit of a Durrell reread going on – in between all the other stuff – if I find the time and energy I might write a more detailed post on Durrell, but for now, here’s a list:
The Bafut Beagles – Gerald Durrell
Fillets of Plaice – Gerald Durrell
The Stationary Ark – Gerald Durrell
A Zoo in my Luggage – Gerald Durrell
Catch me a Colobus – Gerald Durrell
The Dunken Forest – Gerald Durrell
Himself and Other Animals – David Hughes (biography)
Sorting Out Billy – Jo Brand
I read only the first half, or thereabouts and then gave it up in disgust. Abysmally bad, actually.
The Book of Lost Things – John Connolly
Entertaining, slightly scary in parts. Well worth the time.
Anybody Out There? – Marian Keyes
Excellent. I was a little worried, not being a great fan of spiritualism and trying to speak to the dead, however, Keyes managed the issue beautifully, I think, and I didn’t cringe even once.
Slam – Nick Hornby
Hornby’s first «young adult» novel, which probably should be compulsory reading for most British teenagers as a sort of literary contraception. Not Hornby’s best book – by far – from an adult point of view, but then that’s hardly the right point of view for judging it.
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
Superb.
A Ramble Round the Globe – Thomas Dewar
Disappointingly unoccupied with whisky or with advertising, the two main reasons I am interested in Tommy Dewar, but a rather interesting read nonetheless.
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid – Bill Bryson
Just what you’d expect from Bill Bryson: Very good.
The Undomestic Godess – Sophie Kinsella
Yet another bookcrossing copy – can you tell I’m trying to work my way through mt tbr? I read this last night – though that’s not entirely true: I read the first and last hundred pages or so, I skipped the middle part once I realised where the story was going – and I guess I was reminded why I concluded a while back that I’ve grown out of chicklit. Parts of the book are certainly very funny, I had enough lol-moments to make the husband accuse me of being drunk, especially concerning **spoiler warning** the media hoo-ha towards the end. However, I didn’t quite believe in the basic premise and felt the conclusion was a bit strained. Still, I’m sure I can find a new reader for this.
In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
In a Glass Darkly is on the 1001 books list, so I joined a bookring, and finally got around to reading it (sorry for hogging it so long, guys). Uhm. Yes. I suppose it helps if you like ghost stories. I don’t, and this really didn’t do it for me, and I ended up skimming about half before giving up completely. Besides not being a genre I enjoy at the best of times, I found the stories I did read somewhat lacking, leaving the reader too much in the dark (no pun intended). That a lot of the plot twists seem like cliches is hardly Le Fanu’s fault, however.
Still: Not my cup of tea (green or otherwise…)
Stiff – Shane Maloney
«Huh», I thought, upon finding this on the OBCZ-shelf, «I’ve never read an Australian crime novel before. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever read an Australian novel before.» I think I might be wrong on that second count, though. Nevil Shute, possibly? Anyhow, I brought the book home and it happened to be handily available shortly after when I’d finished Perdita.
Stiff is entertaining enough and the basic plot is sound, and fairly original. However, there’s not much local colour to be getting on with, to my mind the story might as well have been set in Britain or the States. Also, and worse, the subplots and characterisations are pretty much what you’d get if there was such a thing as an «off the peg crime story character shop». Especially the near-divorce, down-at-heel characteristics of the hero made me feel that I’ve read it all before, which is a pity.
So I won’t go out of my way to find another Murray Whelan mystery. But I won’t run in the opposite direction if I see one, either, so it’s not all bad.
Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson – Paula Byrne
What? An entry with a single book? Since when is that something I do?
Oh, right, I used to do that all the time. Well. Enjoy it while it lasts…
Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson by Paula Byrne arrived in my mailbox a while back as a rabck. The previous journallers for this copy suggest that I should probably get around to reading Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman which is hanging around on my shelves somewhere, and I will, I will, but I thought – also from the comments – that I might as well read Perdita first, leaving the better book for desert, so to say.
In fact, I might as well not write much about Perdita, the first journaller says it all:
Mary Robinson was, without doubt, an extremely interesting and colourful figure, but this book fails to do justice to her story. The author flags up forthcoming information, continually repeats herself and includes so many quotes that the reader loses the plot altogether.
Well. I didn’t mind the quotations so much, but I got rather fed up with the incessant «more of that later»s and the endless repetitions. The most jarring repetitions were the tidbits of biography concerning peripheral characters. Whether you should even need to point out that the Duke of York is the Prince of Wales’ brother is a moot point (honestly, would you read a biography like this and not know that?), but when the information is repeated a few pages later – though now also mentioning the younger two – I simply feel condescended to. * As for the «more of that later»s the most annoying manifestation is I’m sure Byrne said she’d be telling us how Mary met Coleridge at some point, but she never did (or did I blink and miss it?). Not majorly important, and I may have dreamed that single foretelling, but still, it vexed me.
What actually really bothers me, though, is the book’s title. Let me quote a passage from Byrne herself:
The book’s [Mary Robinson’s Memoirs] frequent bouts of self-exculpation, together with its overwrought sentimental style and the unfortunate fact that it breaks off long before she began her career as a serious author, have damaged Robinson’s reputation, encouraging romantic novelists of later years to portray her as ‘Perdita’ the royal mistress rather than ‘Mrs Robinson’ the distinguished writer. As late as 1994, the Memoirs was republished under the title Perdita. (p 383)
Uhm. Yeah. Ok. I know. The publishers insisted, and even biographers must make a living somehow. In that case, perhaps a judicious edit or two – or a comment on your own choice of title would have been appropriate?
A flawed book, then. But on the whole, also an enjoyable book. I knew next to nothing about Mary Robinson, despite the abundance of women’s lit. courses I’ve suffered though, and I enjoyed getting to know her. I will certainly make sure I read one of her novels, at the very least. I suspect I have one or other of them, bundled into a Penguin classic with Maria Edgeworth or someone of the kind. I might even read Byrne’s Jane Austen and the Theatre (listed under «Also by Paula Byrne» at the beginning of the book) at some point, just because I tend to read books about Jane Austen (mind you, it’s been a while, too many books, too little time). But I won’t be in a hurry on that last one.
__________
* (A footnote! Don’t you just love footnotes?)
I was going to use John Taylor as another example of the repetition of biographical tidbits, as I’m sure Byrne manages to mention him being an oculist-gone-publisher at least ten times throughout the book. However, being lazy, and not remembering the first name, I thought I’d simply search wikipedia for «Taylor oculist». Ahem. Not that wikipedia is the be-all-and-end-all of knowledge, but there seems to be something fishy going on here and I’m going to have to look into it further (as that’s the kind of getting-totally-stuck-on-pretty-unimportant-details kind of person I am). Anyway. Wikipedia has John Taylor (oculist) listed as dying in 1772, when Mary was 15 (or thereabouts, see postscript in Byrne), and Byrne has John Taylor being one of Mary’s closest friends in 1794. Obviously not the same John Taylor. Wikipedia has another John Taylor who is billed as a British publisher, but he would have been 13 in 1794, a tad too young to be a confidante for a Mary in her late thirties. I will investigate further and get back to you.
None of this changes the tediousness of the repetition, of course.
November to January, so far
The Tea Rose – Jennifer Donnelly
The plot must consist of pretty much every cliché in the book except the classic evil twin. At the last two «twists in the tale» I actually laughed out loud – that’s how madly «buy one plot-device, get three free» infested it all was. However, despite this, Donnelly had me caught well and good and I had serious problems in putting the book away and not sneak a few pages in under the desk at work. Not a Nobel candidate, then, but very well worth reading.
Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage and Renegade’s Magic – Robin Hobb
Ok, so this deals partly with those lost months… I had to labour a bit through the first two volumes (I never thought I’d say this about a Robin Hobb book), and got completely stuck at the beginning of the third. I don’t know if I could put my finger on it, but this trilogy just didn’t do it for me. I kept reading because I was just interested enough to want to know what would happen in the end, but not interested enough to want to spend 2000-odd pages getting there. It doesn’t help, of course, that the volumes are really too big to read comfortably (I might need to consider weightlifting if I’m to keep reading this size of book in hardback), and certainly too big to be tempting for bringing on the bus etc. I suppose I felt that Hobb might have been better off writing this as one book rather than a trilogy. It seemed somewhat unnaturally extended to me. It may be that she was caught in the probable contract with her publisher to produce trilogies, or it may be that she really felt this story needed three times 700 pages. I didn’t. I will still look foreward to Hobb’s next, but not with such bated breath as before.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl
Very gripping and full of intriguing twists. Found it hard to put it down towards the end, and wanted it to go on once it finished. Still, not the sort of book one rereads – the twist is not quite surprising enough to make me want to go back and reread to see what I’ve missed and knowing how it ends will ruin the rest of the story too much at a second perusal. Bookcrossing candidate if ever I saw one.
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
A very engaging book, though I became mightily annoyed with the narrator. Partly the fact that «he» is death (which just didn’t work for me, don’t ask me why), partly the endless foreshadowing (or, rather, foretelling – «more of that later» hints – a bit of vague foreshadowing I can deal with) and partly the bulletin-style interruptions which, yeah, ok, I could make a convincing interpretation of if I had to write an essay on this book for an exam, but, hey, I finished school and I prefer to do my reading at my own pace, and, frankly, until I learned to «ignore» them I wanted to hurl the book across the room every time. Still, engaging. (Sent as a rabck.)
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
A bookring on bookcrossing and one of those 1001 books. This reminded me why I don’t like short stories (just when I start getting interested, they end), but I like Mr. Murakami’s way with words, so I will try him in novel-form when I get the chance.
Frost on My Moustache – Tim Moore
Funny.
The Careful Use of Compliments – Alexander McCall Smith
Isn’t it a lovely title? And isn’t it a lovely book?
Boksamlere forteller
An interesting anthology I found at an «antiques» fair. And by interesting I mean that the existence of such a collection intrigued me, especially printed in 1945. The book itself was unfortunately mostly dull. I normally love reading people’s descriptions of their collections, so I’m not sure why it should be so, but there it is.
Oops. It’s been a while…
Ah well.
After American Pastorale, I reread the Aubrey/Maturin series for the umpteenth time, so that accounts for about two months…
Since then I have no excuse, except it’s hard to keep both a baby and a laptop on your knee at the same time. Anyhoo, I’ve been reading:
Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus – not a high point. It’s engaging, but seems rather pointless and left me feeling that it lacked any sort of conclusion.
Nattelangs av Gro Jørstad Nilsen var noe meningsløs. Ingen god reklame for norsk litteratur denne heller. Er det bare jeg som er uheldig eller står det så dårlig til?
Matilda, litt av en robot av Philip Newth. Ny Matilda-bok! Litt skuffende, riktignok. Historien hang litt dårlig sammen, synes jeg, særlig har jeg vanskelig for å godta at robotene skulle kunne ønske seg følelser dersom de ikke har en slags følelser allerede (kan man ønske seg noe hvis man ikke kan føle?). Vanskelig å si om Newth er blitt dårligere eller jeg eldre… Det finner jeg vel ut om noen år når det er på tide å begynne å lese Matilda-bøkene for ungen.
The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich – a reread, as it was one of the few books I could find on my shelves with a botanical word in the title and therefore useful for Alvhyttan’s May Flowers / Botanical Challenge 2007. Hence this is going to be bookcrossed shortly, but I wanted to reread it first. As usual with Louise Erdrich this story was magical and down to earth at the same time. Definitely an author to note on your TBR-list if she’s not already there.
Uncle Dynamite by P.G. Wodehouse – Wodehouse being Wodehouse, this was funny and clever.
I’m sure there’s more… In which case I’ll add them later.