What's with today, today?

It's been a good year in reading, even though I haven't been doing so much blogging. As always, this is the list of books I've read all the way through for the first time this year. I don't include rereads, but then again I don't think there have been many... Links to books I've mentioned on the blog, * for my top picks, and a summary post coming later for those of you who don't like reading through lists. There are a lot I haven't mentioned on the blog, but for many of those I've added some short notes. Some themes from the year's reading: War - from WWI ( A Very Long Engagement ) to child soldiers in Nigeria ( Song for Night ) and the experience of everyday life in war-torn Iran ( Persepolis ), war dogged my reading this year. While it was diverse, reading this year (and planning for next year's reading) has really brought home how big the influence of the world wars has been on Western literature. Oh, and I dislike war more than...

Another end of year post as promised! Albeit a little late. I am officially declaring my reading round the world challenge done! Although I did end up cheating a bit... Reviews of earlier books here . Here's what I read (with brief reviews of books I haven't mentioned earlier): Africa :  Song for Night  by Chris Abani (Nigeria). I thought this was cheating, so added The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif (Egypt) (also kind of cheating, since it is set in Egypt but written in English). I'm counting The Map of Love  because I felt like I ended up learning a lot about Egypt by the end. The book is split between the turn of the century and the present day (when the book was written in the late 90's), following two parallel love stories which bridge the East/West divide and are linked by family history. It also deals with Egyptian politics and identity, and the relationship between Egypt and the West. The first love story was a bit idealised, but I still found it compelling...

Ah, December. The month of end-of-year lists, wrap ups and frantic Christmas shopping. And of course looking forward to next year. So in the end-of-year spirit I am looking to post several year wrap-ups, including a final post on my reading round the world challenge and my yearly booklist post. But to start off, plans for next year! Which is perhaps a back-to-front way of doing things... This year my blog has been sorely languishing, and while I can't guarantee that I will be more diligent in posting next year, I do have some plans to pep it up a bit. Over the holidays I am hoping to do a bit of a template re-jig, weed out some of my older posts and just generally make things a bit more presentable. So changes ahoy! My other plan for next year is to take part in Simon at Stuck-in-a-Books A Century of Books  challenge.                                    The original challenge calls for ...

Since I wrote my blog post about first lines, I seem to notice people talking about them everywhere. So have some links that celebrate the first line! Firstly: The Guardian's short editorial piece in praise of first lines  and its slightly longer discussion of favourite first lines . Secondly, Kit Whitfield's blog (thanks for the link, Ronni! ) has a series deconstructing the first lines of novels, and what they say about the novel as a whole. Really good for some longer discussion of opening lines. So, another first line: from the book I just finished reading, The Pastor's Wife  by Elizabeth von Arnim "On that April afternoon all the wallflowers of the world seemed to her released body to have been piled up at the top of Regent Stree so that she should walk in fragrance."

I'm doing this meme again, along with Stuck-in-a-Book . A quick reading round up... The book I'm currently reading... Night Waking by Sarah Moss Erm, so I saw a review of this on Stuck-in-a-Book as well, and it intrigued me so I picked this up from the library. A historian is staying on the small Hebridean island her husband owns with her husband and two small children for the summer, when she finds the bones of a child buried on the property. Incorporates children's/19th C. history along with musings on good parenting and relationships. I enjoyed it (I just finished it... but it still counts, right?), speculating on the narrators state of mind and following her attempts to uncover local history. It did wrap up perhaps a bit too smoothly though. The last book I finished... Besides Night Waking that is! Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter I've been keen on Angela Carter since my friend Georgia lent me The Bloody Chamber , so I was interested to...

After much anticipation, I finally read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead earlier this year. I've been doing companion reviews of Gilead and Home with Sam (you can read his review of Gilead here ), so before starting to write my review I reread his post. It's amazing what different reactions we had to this book! But while I read through his post thinking "I guess I'll just chalk it up to different tastes", I was struck by one comment which I wanted to dispute, which seems to say that the character of John Ames, the main character of the novel, is lost in the writing, with the reader instead looking through the eyes of his son. Which is interesting, because for me this novel is so grounded in the character of the narrator, his voice comes through so clearly and we get to know him so well throughout the course of the book, that I found it hard to understand this point of view. So maybe we can argue about this point in the comments? But I am getting ahead of myse...

'The Night Circus' by Erin Morgenstern has been reviewed all over the place, and a lot of those reviews have said very similar things- basically that the plot and characters were not stunning, but the setting was amazing. I love an amazing setting, so I went out and read it straight away. The basic premise is not particularly new: two ageless magicians set up a contest between their protege's, the rules are not defined and the participants have no choice in the matter (or knowledge of the other's identity). The setting, which becomes the contest itself, is a circus which involves not just the duelling magicians but a host of other performers, including a contortionist, living statues, acrobats, a fortune teller, and lion tamers.  The circus is indeed enchanting, but I think the critics are a little harsh on the plot- for the first half at least it unfolds in a similar way to the circus itself, following different tracks without revealing its secrets. It reminded me a...

I've always liked the story of the twelve dancing princesses. It's such a pretty story, with dances and dancing slippers and gold and silver trees, and it also has a sense of mystery to it. The story raises a lot of unresolved questions, like where is this place the princesses are dancing? Who are the princes and is there a romantic interest there? How do the princesses live half in one world and half in another where they dance every night? How do they feel about the resolution to the story and their separation from the princes? What happens to the youngest sister who comes closest to noticing the soldier but doesn't marry him in the end? So I was happy to hear of Wildwood Dancing , which is based on the story, and intrigued to see what answers Juliet Marillier would bring. In some ways, Juilet Marillier does not answer my questions. Wildwood Dancing is not an exact retelling of the fairy tale (and is the better for it I think), so there are only five sisters and the pl...

As I wrote back in January , one of my challenges to myself this year was to read a book from every continent ( author's nationality + setting of book + language originally published in must all be from the same country in that continent, although I will read them in English) . Since we're now almost halfway through the year, it seems like a good time to report on my progress. I'm actually quite pleased with my progress, but not quite finished with this challenge yet. Here's what I've read so far: Africa : Song for Night by Chris Abani (Nigeria). On the recommendation of my friend Duncan . While all the reviews for this say it's set in 'an unknown country in Africa', the tribes mentioned in the book are both from around Nigeria, as is the author... so I'm calling this Nigeria. Not entirely happy with this one as a representation of Africa though. I do feel this is perhaps written for Western audiences... which wasn't really the point of this...

I finished up the semester of uni a couple of weeks ago, and, as is often the way, completely lost motivation for everything else. I was getting so excited about reading books that are harder going when uni's on, I borrowed two non-fiction books from the library (one on Old English literature and society, and one on fairytales) and I haven't opened them. Instead I have been reading fashion  blogs, considering starting a fashion blog, my last blog post was about food, I even painted a picture the other night, despite my lack of anything resembling artistic talent. By contrast, while uni was on and I was getting more and more stressed and feeling so short on time, I read like crazy, found myself enjoying books more than I have for a while- you know, when you read late into the night and don't want to put the book down. Don't ask me why this is, all I can think is that it's a break, a time for something different. Speaking of fashion blogs, here are a couple that are...

Seeing as it's a long weekend, it seems like an appropriate time to talk about brunch. Brunch would have to be one of my favourite meals, because it goes very well with a sleep in and basically you can eat whatever you feel like at the time. Today I ate a croissant and muesli at 2pm. Why not? Alternately, you could have a burger at 11. It's brunch after all, and anything goes. The one downside is the prevalence of eggs in brunch foods, I just don't like 'em, and some menus have little else. But many do, and here are some of my favourite brunching places in Sydney... Vargabar, Newtown This is my regular, and it's great for having a wide range of options (vegetarian, meat, breakfasty, lunchy, eggs or not). It also does good coffee. Of all the things they have here my favourite is the pumpkin chili hotcakes. They're a savoury twist on pancakes and just delicious. I love the way the dishes here keep changing, nothing seems to be presented the same way twice, b...

A full bottle of wine next to the public phone - Pitt St Bree and Adam Locked 2gether in hatred as it's the closest to love- we're forever - sad toilet graffiti at The Annandale "When the dog that you tattoo on your arse turns into a shark" - Overheard on a train Though contrived, this little story might as well exemplify the mischief that involves us all who take on the job of turning real life into words. Always the essential thing gets lost. That's one rule holds true of every inspiration. - 'The Moon', Jorge Luis Borges "His dad's a novelist" "What, writes books and stuff?" - Overheard Graffiti on a train seen on the morning commute: "Be not a man of success, but a man of value"- Einstein "I just want to go live in Europe... I want to do everything and I want to do it now." (other person says something) "But when? What's the plan? How will it all fit in?" - Overheard o...

I wanted to write this post ages ago, in responses to the post over on Stuck-in-a-book   post , but blogger has been playing up and uni assignments have been calling... so some of these books are out of date, and some have been changed, but here we go... The book I'm currently reading... I loved Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles  SO MUCH when I was younger, but I haven't read anything else by her (or even the whole set of the Chronicles, for that matter). This is living up to my expectations, it's a regency/fantasy book and it's so much fun! The main character is a street urchin in London who dresses as a boy to stay out of trouble and takes a job breaking into Mairelon the magician's caravan and is then taken on as an assistant. Adventures ensue. The last book I finished... I am reading quite a bit of fantasy at the moment I feel, and this is also set in a quasi-regency period, but with the added complication of an alternate hist...