Of beasts and beings

A couple of weeks ago I purchased the novel 'Of Beasts and Beings' written by Ian Holding. I was fairly excited to read this as it looked really interesting but I was very close to being disappointed. Up until about the last three chapters I was fully prepared to give this a negative review, I stuck with it because the events were interesting but it was almost boring to read.

Whilst reading this I found the characters incredibly dull and emotionless. The words were there but there was no passion, no connection behind them. The story is told in two different perspectives by two different characters. The first is a slave who tells his story in a very cold and distant way. None of his companions are given names and are just referred to as 'he', 'she' and 'them'. This distant way of narrative is confusing because at one point he speaks of losing emotion along his journey. However the emotion was never truely there in the first place.

The second nararator is a school teacher in the process of packing up his life, selling his house and moving on. The lack of feeling here is appropriate for two reasons. First, the narrative is told in a journal form which is kept mainly for the purpose of recording rather than revealing secrets and true emotions. The second is that with this character he is experiencing a lack of care and overall feeling for his own life. However there are times in which emotion should have been present and wasn't. 

Yet I stuck with it, determined to finish the book and I'm glad that I did. The end revealed an incredibly surprising plot twist which explained the overall style of the novel and why emotion was all but abandoned.  For the serious reader, this book will be a worthwhile read and the ending will be much appreciated as it was for me. Until next time,

Catherine

Reading confessions

Following on from last weeks post I thought that I would write up some more of my reading trivia for you guys.

1. I used to mistreat books horribly as a child. I loved them but I never took very good care of them. Now I can't stand to see dog-eared pages and even lending out my books gives my heart palpitations. 

2. Because I have now become obsessively protective over my books I always have to use a bookmark. However sometimes I don't always have one near me. I will use anything as a bookmark so long as it's not the page itself. I'll use dust covers, spare bits of paper, receipts even clean, folded tissues. 

3. I buy books about three times faster than I read them. And occasionally I will buy a book that I know I will never read properly just because it looks interesting or is cheap.

4. I have a lot of trouble getting rid of books that I don't like. I have several books that I hated to read but every time I go to give them away I somehow talk myself out of it, I convince myself that maybe I will go back to them.

5. I hate borrowing library books. I tend to borrow a lot each time and I never have time to get through them all. In addition I hate time limits when it comes to my books and I'm always changing my mind about what I want to read.

6. I don't think I will ever buy a kindle. I will read the occasional online novel however it is only out of complete desperation. I still hate reading on a screen and I do think that if I were to buy one it would spend far to much time sitting unused.

Until next time,

Catherine

7 deadly sins of reading

Hello everyone, I thought I'd try to think outside the box this week and do something other than a book review. I know this tag circulated ages ago but I love watching and reading tag responses so I thought it would be fun to do. So without further ado here are my seven deadly sins of reading.

Greed. What are the most expensive and most inexpensive books in your collection?

The most expensive book in my collection is probably 'The Element Encyclopedia of Vampires' by Theresa Cheung. These element encyclopedias usually retail for about $50 in store but they are well worth it, they are stocked with information! As for my most inexpensive I actually have a collection. A couple of years ago my schools library decided to downsize (horrible I know) and they tried to sell as many books to students as they could. Toward the end they were selling them at 5c each. I still remember walking the 20 minutes home trying to carry up to 40 books in various bags.

Wrath. What author do you have a love/hate realtionship with?

For me this is Cornelia Funke the author of the Inkheart series. I really adore this series and her writing however she is one of those authors that messed up an important detail within her own story and this annoys me endlessly.

Gluttony. What book have you devoured over and over again without remorse? 

For me this is not one book but a series. I tend to reread series more than single books because I am the type of person who cannot just read the newley released book in a series, I have to go back and reread everything that happened up until the new book. So for this question I will choose 'The Rangers Apprentice' series. This is huge, with about 11 books to the whole series and I've reread it so many times between books that I think it must be the most read in my collection.

Sloth. What book have you neglected reading due to laziness? 

A couple of months ago I was reading Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and at the time I wasn't reading very often. It may sound bizarre but I got so frustrated that I was reading it slowly and I didn't want anyone to comment on how slowly I was reading it that I stopped and moved on to another book. I haven't gotten back to it yet.

Pride. What book do you talk about in order to make yourself sound like an intellectual reader?

Not so much one book but more of a selection. I will go on about my classics to make myself sound super intellectual. Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Oscar Wilde, the list goes on. I do genuinely enjoy reading them but I will bring them up to make myself sound smarter and more well read.

Lust. What attributes do you find most attractive in male or female characters?

Romance!! Most people who know me will know that I am a complete sucker for romance. However I always like to read about a strong female character. I talked ages ago about a romance book that I absolutely hated because the female character was so very weak willed, she pushed everyone away and spent time feeling sorry for herself. Wasn't a good read.

Envy. What book would you like to recieve as a gift?

I love a beautifully bound hardback. I've also really gotten into fairy tale collections during this past year. But I think that right now I would really love some more Jules Verne novels, I want to read them all!

Well that's all, let me know if your prefer these posts and what are some of your deadly reading sins? Until next time,

Catherine

The Day of the Triffids

Hello everyone, this week I thought I'd do a very quick review of John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids'. Before I start I would like to say that in order to get the full impact of this book you must go into it without any knowledge of what it is about or the events that occur within it. So if you are a science fiction fan and you don't know what I'm talking about, stop reading and go buy this book. Don't even read the blurb, just delve into it.

Now for everyone that is left, I really enjoyed it. It is a very mysterious read, it starts off in a confused manner that throws the reader straight into the story and then continues to give hints about future events without elaborating further. For some this can be a very frustrating read however I love novels that do this. On reflection I do find the beginning quite ironic. After waking up blind to a silent world, Bill Masen is incredibly hesitant to taking off his blindfolds. Despite being told that that was the day they would come off he only removes them when the darkness begins to scare him, and he still removes them slowly. It is ironic because while he is hesitant about restoring his sight the majority of people at that time would love to rip their own blindness away.

This book is overall, quite a tragic read, mainly because it provides what I believe to be an accurate picture of our society, should it become blind overnight. The taking of lives due to an inability to cope, kidnapping sighted people just to get around and starving to death when help doesn't come all seem like potential realities to me. And we don't have Triffids. Strangely enough the triffids didn't worry me until toward the end when they started overwhelming people with sheer numbers. 

The only disappointing part about this book was in fact the end. After building up mystery after mystery you would expect John Wyndham to have created an ending that provides a complete resolution to the story. However he didn't. It almost seems like this book is missing a sequel, that this story was the attempt to restart life and it's missing the rebuilding of life afterward. None the less I think that it was a fantastic read and as always I would definitely recommend this. Let me know your thoughts, did you enjoy it as much as I did? Until next time,   

Catherine.

The Wordsworth Book of Horror Stories

I know that I have done a lot of author recommendations and I have done a lot of book reviews and thus recommendations but I don't think I've ever just said 'go out and buy this book' without first reviewing it. Well, now I will. The Wordsworth Book of Horror Stories (I don't think I'm typing all that again) is an absolute gem of a book, fantastic for any true horror story fan. It doesn't feature any modern stories but it features over 1000 pages of classic story telling.

Within this wonder anthology you will find writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and it even features Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker!! I was also very excited to find Vendetta by Guy De Maupassant in there. Overall it contains 103 tales by 39 different authors. A must buy and for anywhere between $5-$15 there is no reason not to purchase this.

 

So I have been buying far to many books again, I tried to stop buying so many which lasted for a little while but I'm back again. I currently work in a large shopping centre which has book sale stands every so often. And they're placed along the route I take to work. This is bad.

Tea for You, Tracy Stern. This is a book on the art of blending and creating teas. Being a heavy tea drinker when I found this I couldn't pass it up, mainly for the fear that I would never find it again if I did. This is a delightful little book with a wonderful design. It even has a section of biscuit and treat recipes to make with your tea and a list of flavour profiles for matching ingredients for blends. Very handy.

The Day of The Triffids by John Wyndham. This was a book recommended to me by a friend but also one I would have found on my own as it was mentioned during a favourite series of mine. I am currently reading it and it is absolutely fascinating. Incredibly mysterious and is always giving me two questions for every answer I receive. I'm really enjoying it.

One of the other down-falls (or bonuses) of working in a large shopping centre is knowing others that work there and getting discounts. Like book discounts. One of the girls I know was working at the book sale stand when I came up planning to purchase just one book. She then sends me back saying 'pick whatever you want and I'll get you a good deal'. Well how could I resist? 

Of Beasts and Beings by Ian Holding. Set in Africa it tells two people's stories, that of a man forced into slavery and a school teacher struggling to survive in Zimbabwe. I must admit that it was the title that drew me to the book and partially convinced me to read it but it sounds really good.

The Mayan Resurrection by Steve Alten. My curse strikes again! I found out after I brought it that this is actually a sequel to The Mayan Prophecy. That being said I had actually wanted to read The Mayan Prophecy so I am glad that I brought this because it will remind me to buy the first. Once again I mainly brought this because of the title. It's something about Mayan or Aztec based books that just fascinates me. 

Well that's all for this week. Leave some feedback in the comments please, I would really appreciate it. Until next week,

Catherine

Jules Verne

Hey everyone, I don't know what happened this week but I just have not been in the mood to write. I think I'm going to move my post day to Monday just because Sundays are generally pretty busy after work for me and I end up really tired. But this week I just kept putting the post off for whatever reason. But now that I'm finally getting it done my author for this week is Jules Verne. 

While science fiction is not my favourite genre I do enjoy it and I am a huge fan of Jules Verne, the original science fiction author. I got my first Jules Verne novel when I was around 10 years old and I absolutely loved it. It was a copy of '80 days around the world' and somehow it got misplaced sometime in the years that passed. A couple of months ago I rediscovered him with 'Journey to the centre of the earth' which I enjoyed immensely. I am planning on buying the rest of his books and ModCloth has a beautiful hardback collection of some of his works which I would love to get. http://www.modcloth.com/shop/books/collected-works-of-jules-verne

Journey to the centre of the earth is a truly fantastic book. Here Verne introduces possibly one of the first fictional 'mad scientists' and his very reluctant nephew who find a note within a book claiming a passage to the centre of the earth that is survivable. Before and during the writing of this novel many new scientific discoveries and theories were being placed forth. Verne plays on this a lot and some of these theories made the basis for his novels. This book is not at all comparable to the movie aside from the fact that two people and their guide go on a journey to reach the centre of the earth. Otherwise most of the details are wrong and some of the story line. Got us again Hollywood! 

I do plan to read the rest of what he has written and highly recommend his books for any science fiction fan. They are not as action packed as more modern novels but they are fascinating and the language is not as dense as most 19th century writers which makes it more accessible to most people. Until next week,

Catherine

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

Hello everyone, this week I thought I'd let you all know about a fantastic online Jane Austen adaptation. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries were a Pride and Prejudice adaptation created by Hank Green and Bernie Su and featured on YouTube. It formed a series of video diaries by the main character Lizzie Bennet and eventually many spin off video diaries by other characters arose. 

This is a brilliantly planned and produced idea that recreates many of the original concepts of Pride and Prejudice in a modern and relevant way. It actually produced quite an addictive viewing experience for myself and I was very disappointed to see it end. This series was so successful it won an Emmy award for Original Interactive Program. It has also began fantastic careers for many of the actors and crew involved.

Fortunately for all the fans this is not the end of Hank Green's and Bernie Su's work. The next series to be produced was a work called Welcome to Sanditon. This was based on Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon. Because it was an unfinished novel this series featured a lot more viewer interaction which did make it a bit less popular than The Lizzie Bennet series. This adaptation revolved around Gigi Darcy (who also appeared in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries) and featured scenes with William Darcy (also from the original series).  This series has just finished and although it has not received any awards yet I keep my finger crossed for the future!

And what's next you ask? Well currently in production is the online adaptation of Emma! So get reading fans, hopefully we'll be seeing episodes soon! To investigate The Lizzie Bennet Diaries for yourself follow this link, http://youtu.be/KisuGP2lcPs 

But be warned, addictive is just the beginning. Hopefully you enjoyed reading about some more of my addictions. Until next time,

Catherine.