What's with today, today?

Now I'm back from my beach holiday, back at work, and 2014 is officially underway, it's finally time to write about some of my favourite books and authors from last year. And I'll try to keep it brief! Authors Graham Greene I read Greene's The End of the Affair in 2012, and I liked it but wasn't sure whether I loved it or not.  But I read Our Man in Havana this year pretty much fell in love with it (thanks for the recommendation litlove! ). This inspired me to read more Greene, so I read The Quiet American next. Despite this being a more serious book, they both have certain similarities- not least that they both touch on espionage, politics, love and Catholicism. Really enjoyed both of them, will look out for more in future! Robin McKinley Having heard recommendations for Robin McKinley (particularly Sunshine and Beauty ) for years, but only got around to reading them last year, after another recommendation for Sunshine. And it was worth it! I really enj...

I NEED to write about Burial Rites by Hannah Kent- it's a book I was very much looking forward to (see my last post), and yet I ended up feeling a bit ambivalent about it, so I have been itching to discuss it with someone since finishing it. It would be ideal for a book group, but unfortunately we didn't read it in book group, so blog it is! Burial Rites has an intriguing set-up- a woman (Agnes Magnusdottir) is condemned to death for murder but, since she is living in Iceland in the 19th century and there are no jails, so until her execution she is lodged in a remote farm with with the family of a local official. During her stay she is able to talk to a priest, who is instructed to prepare her for death. To him, and to us, she relates her story. So interwoven with the story of Agnes life at the farm, living with a family who are apprehensive abot hosting a convicted murder and facing her impending death, is the story of Agnes life up to this point, leading to the answer the ...

At the moment, I seem to be aiming for around one blog post a month on here. Poor sadly neglected blog! I have been reading as many books as ever, but haven't really felt inspired to write about any of them. So instead, here are some books I'm looking forward to reading: A Brief History of Montmaray -  Michelle Cooper A girl and her family living on the small (and crumbling) island of Montmaray find their eccentric way of life interrupted by the onset of WWII. This has been compared to I Capture the Castle , and, while I'm sure it can't live up to that standard, it does sound very appealing! The weather is getting pretty hot right now, and I'm getting pretty tired, so this sounds like just the thing. My hold has just come in at the library, so I get to read it soon! Burial Rites - Hannah Kent Based on the story of the last Icelandic woman  sentenced to death by beheading, this book is set during her last days, staying with a remote Icelandic family. This has ...

I thought I was getting onto a roll with blogging, but then February happened and no blogs got written at all! Worse than that, even, is that I got into a bit of a reading slump, though I had to push through to finish my book club book, which has helped. And I haven't even started my reading challenge yet! So what better way to get back into things than a short round-up of recent reading? Here are the last five books that I read: Image from Goodreads Unspoken - Sarah Rees Brennan I ended up buying this because I couldn't get it from the library- and sadly I didn't get this cover, which I like, but the book itself made up for it. I really enjoy Sarah Rees Brennan's blog (I think I first heard about her from Ronni ) and this book sounded great to me- it's a Gothic mystery YA book with a small English town, an aristocratic family with secrets and a telepathic connection between a high school girl and her 'imaginary friend' who turns out n...

Today I was struck by a post over at a gallimaufry about reading things set in unfamiliar places- and how to visualise them- I wonder whether we can familiarise ourselves with different cultures by reading about them, or will we always miss something when we read about things we don't already know? Like when we figure out the meaning of words from their contexts, but sometimes find out years later that we've gotten them wrong (at least, I have done that). Then I came across this post on facebook, which is a piece of writing memories of childhood in South India, and I was reminded of that idea again. Because in the piece I can recognise the nostalgia, even if I can't recognise the things the writer is nostalgic for. This feeds into a lot of different ideas I guess, like the concept of the other, or maybe the subjectiveness of language and meaning sometimes, but I just thought maybe it was some interesting food for thought.

Finally, and belatedly, my 2012 reading challenge comes to an end, with Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg representing the 1990s. It's a book I've been meaning to read for ages, but have somehow never made it past the first page. But while on my beach holiday, accidentally without a book, I found a copy in a second hand bookshop and it seemed the perfect opportunity to finally read it and to finish off my Century of Books challenge at the same time. In some ways this was an odd book to read on a summer holiday, after all the first sentence reads: It is freezing, an extraordinary -18°C, and it's snowing, and in the language which is no longer mine, the snow is qanik - big, almost weightless crystals falling in stacks and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost. (Note: I lent this book to my sister when I finished it so I had to look this up online and I'm not 100% sure if it's the translation I read) While I was lying around tr...

I've been reading Book Lust by Nancy Pearl recently and loving it- it's a collection of lists of books on different topics and to suit different moods put together by a booklover and librarian, and though it seems like an ideal book to dip in and out of I've pretty much been reading it cover to cover (it's helping with a small lack of reading inspiration as well). In the introduction she says: I love to read. And while I may not absolutely agree with the Anglo-American man of letters Logan Pearsall Smith, who said, "People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading," I come awfully close to subscribing to his sentiment. I was struck by this, and her dedication to her granddaughter "who I hope grows up loving to read, but not too much." It reminds me of the time a friend in high school told me that some day I would have to stop reading and start living. Of course, I immediately dismissed this, because isn't reading part of living (a vital...

I do realise that it's a bit late to be wishing people a happy new year, but I've been away out of reach of internet for the past couple of weeks, enjoying views like this one: Looking out over the lake while eating fish and chips And this one: South Coast beaches are beautiful, this is near Tilba And generally enjoying the beach. I hope everyone had some good holidays as well! Now it's time to face the fact that a new year has started, head back to work and talk about plans for the year. Specifically, reading plans. On my holiday I did manage to read my 1990s book, so I will soon be able to post about that and finish off my 2012 reading challenge (belatedly). For this year, I want to do something a little bit inspired by the Century of Books challenge and read books published before the 20th Century. Mainly because I have quite a few sitting on my shelves that I can't bring myself to start, and I need a little motivation, and also because I sometimes ...

Time for a round up of books read in 2012! As always, rereads are not included and I've linked books I've reviewed/mentioned elsewhere to the blog post in which I talked about them. Favourites are marked with a * . I seem to have read a lot of crime fiction again this year, of all different flavours, and one book of crime non-fiction. Usually I dislike true crime, but this was about the Somerton Man mystery, which I find fascinating, so that is an exception. My blogging was mostly dominated by my Century of Books challenge, which provided one of my favourite books of the year- Swann's Way . My other favourites included some fantasy and Northanger Abbey . Anyway, here is my (annotated) list! The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obreht Domestic Violets - Matthew Norman Kind of male chick-lit? I ended up very much disliking this book, the protagonist was infuriating. Starlight - Stella Gibbons Not quite Cold Comfort Farm . Much more strange. A Room with a View - E.M. Forster...

I'm not always someone who has a clear list in my mind of what books to read next, and that means I don't tend to have piles of books waiting around to be read, like lots of bloggers that I read seem to do. This is great for not having unread-book-guilt, but terrible when I finish one book and have no idea what to read next. The panic! Happily, at the moment I do happen to have a large reading list lined up, and I'm a little bit excited about it. Now I can rush through trying to finish them all and put off having to worry about where my next book's coming from for a little while. So I thought I would share my current TBR list with you: I borrowed a few from my friend (the lovely Georgia ), which I have started on: On Literature by Umberto Eco I just finished this- really enjoyed the change of pace (it's non-fiction essays, I usually read fiction). Had some nice arguments with him about reviewing and symbolism and felt very inspired to read a lot more class...

Gardens at Nijo Castle, Kyoto Clearly I am not very good at blogging while traveling, since I have been back for weeks but have not blogged since before I left. I also didn't read a lot while I was away. I had intended to bring an e-book reader with me but it turned out I couldn't buy any books for it due to being in the wrong country, so I just grabbed A.S. Byatt's Possession from my shelf and hoped for the best. When I got really desperate for reading material, we stopped in a second hand bookshop in York and I bought a copy of Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt. So all I did was reread books by A.S. Byatt while I was away, and I still need to find a 1950s book for my century of books challenge. I did enjoy rereading Possession though, it's particularly nice to read in England, since it does seem quite English. And it's about a quest and about books- what could be better holiday reading than that? Babel Tower was a bit more of a challenge, I'd forgotten abo...

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...

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...

The first word I can remember reading was in a fairy tale, and folk and fairy tales have long had a fascination for me. When I was growing up (or when I was a teenager even) we had a collection of books at home by Ruth Manning Sanders ( A Book of Dragons , A Book of Sorcerers and Spells  etc.) which rekindled that interest after fairy tales had become overly familiar and a little bit boring. These books had a selection of fairy tales from around the world on a specific theme (dragons or sorcerers for instance), which meant that it had a wider range of stories than I was used to and made me aware of the universality of fairy tales. Tales from all over the world were familiar, there are so many variations on Cinderella. And yet, they were not the same stories that I had read. There are dragons from all over the world, but Chinese dragons are very different from European dragons. I am not the first person to be fascinated by fairy tales, of course, or to notice that there...

As January draws to a close, it's really my last chance to blog about New Year's resolutions, so here they are before the time runs out. 1) Blog more. This is one of those things like 'exercise more' or 'eat healthily' that crop up over and over again but rarely eventuate. But all the same I'd like to blog more regularly this year. And leave comments on other blogs, rather than lurking as usual. 2) Read at least one book from every continent (apart from Antarctica). My reading tends to be very dominated by, roughly in order, England, the US and Australia. So in order to mix things up a bit I've set this target, I think it's pretty easily achievable but I don't really have a plan of attack. Any recommendations (particularly for books from Africa and Asia, which I don't come across often) greatly appreciated! It can be difficult to define a book's 'nationality', so I'm using these guidelines- author's nationality + set...