Mirthful’s bookblog

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
The first half, or thereabouts. Abysmally bad, actually.

The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly
Entertaining, slightly scary in parts. Well worth the time.

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.

Hva annet kan man gjøre når Notabene har en haug Anne-Cath. Vestly-bøker til 49 kr stykket som del av Mammut-salget. Noe har vi jo fra før, så her gjelder det å holde tunga rett i munnen. Etter dagens fangst (se books bought) kan jeg i hvert fall konkludere at vi har mer enn halvparten… Med hjelp fra wikipedia skal jeg nå lage meg en har-har-ikke-liste her, så vet jeg hva jeg skal se etter senere (Norli hadde også noen, så jeg - litt dyrere riktignok.) Jeg har ikke engang lest alle disse selv, så det spørs om jeg ikke faller for fristelsen… I tillegg kjøpte jeg Maria Gripes Skygge-serie, og de skulle jeg vel også lest igjen (de er det vel dessuten ikke så aktuellt å lese høyt om noen år, de tror jeg Oda skal få oppdage på egen hånd).

Ok. Anne-Cath. De med - foran har vi nå…

Ole Aleksander

- 1953 – Ole Aleksander Filibom-bom-bom
- 1954 – Ole Aleksander på farten
- 1955 – Ole Aleksander får skjorte
- 1956 – Ole Aleksander og bestemor til værs
- 1958 – Ole Aleksander på flyttefot
1971 – Ole Aleksander hjemme og ute
1971 – Ole Aleksander og den slemme gutten
1971 – Ole Aleksander på skolen
1971 – Ole Aleksander på sirkus
1971 – Ole Aleksander og julepresangene

Mormor og de åtte ungene

- 1957 – Åtte små, to store og en lastebil
- 1958 – Mormor og de åtte ungene i skogen
- 1959 – Marte og Mormor og Mormor og Morten
- 1960 – En liten takk fra Anton
- 1961 – Mormors promenade
1986 – Mormor og de åtte ungene på sykkeltur i Danmark
1999 – Morten og Mormor og Stormvind

Knerten-bøkene

- 1962 – Lillebror og Knerten
- 1963 – Trofaste Knerten
- 1964 – Knerten gifter seg
- 1971 – Knerten i Bessby
- 1973 – Knerten og forundringspakken
- 1974 – Knerten på sykkeltur
1998 – Knerten detektiv og Handelsreisende Lillebror
- 2001 – Knerten Politimann
2002 – Den store boken om Knerten

Aurora-bøkene

- 1966 – Aurora i blokk Z
- 1967 – Aurora og pappa
- 1968 – Aurora og den vesle blå bilen
- 1969 – Aurora og Sokrates
- 1970 – Aurora i Holland
- 1971 – Aurora på Hurtigruten
- 1972 – Aurora fra Fabelvik

Guro-bøkene

- 1975 – Guro
- 1976 – Guro og nøkkerosene
- 1977 – Guro alene hjemme
- 1978 – Guro og fiolinen
- 1979 – Guro og Lille-Bjørn
- 1980 – Guro på Tirilltoppen
- 1981 – Guro og Frydefoniorkesteret

Kaos-bøkene

- 1982 – Kaos og Bjørnar
- 1983 – Lilla Olaug og Lubben
- 1984 – Kaosgutten i Vetleby og verden
- 1985 – Kaos førskolegutt
- 1987 – Kaos og hemmeligheten

Ellen Andrea-bøkene

- 1992 – Ellen Andrea og mormor
- 1993 – Forundringspakken og Lagertha rasebasse
1994 – 5 på reise
- 1995 – Kostemarsj på Tirilltoppen
1996 – Mormor og én til hos Rosa
- 2000 – Småtassene og andre folk på Tirilltoppen
- 2002 – Monrad tenker
- 2004 – Monrad og mormor i den store klubben

Og disse må jeg se etter…:
Selvbiografier
1990 – Lappeteppe fra en barndom
2000 – Nesten et helt menneske

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.

En ganske så stillferdig, men svært så tankevekkende historie om “landsbyidioten” som nekter å evakuere fra hjembyen sin i Finnland under krigen og hans møte med russerne og deretter de tilbakevendende finnene. Nok en bookcrossing-bok, dette, og jeg er glad for at den falt meg i hende.

A rather beautiful book, another one that came my way thanks to bookcrossing. Bolton’s illustrations are magnificent and the story is concurrently charming and haunting, just as Commedia dell’arte should be. I will have to keep this copy for a while and enjoy it again before sending it on its way (and also, probably, put it on the wishlist).

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…)

“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.

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.

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.

Dreadful. And now I can hardly remember what I’ve read all summer (and autumn…). I’m bound to leave something out.

Anyway:

The Imperfectly Natural Baby and Toddler - Janey Lee Grace
Interesting and contains lots of tips for things I hadn’t heard about before, but reads a blit like a list of weblinks at times (this is good for usefulness but for readability? Not so good.)

First Among Sequels - Jasper Fforde
Brilliant, but missing something that I can’t put my finger on. Still, definitely brilliant. Just not quite perfect.

Harry Potter 1-6
Just to make sure I was prepared.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling (duh)
Ah. Finally. Pretty happy. The first half was really rather depressing and dreary, but then again that’s a pretty good description of what being at war is really like, and the second half was a whole lot of tell in proportion to the show which we are told is a bad thing, but I really do not see how she could have managed it better. Hats off to Ms Rowling. I hope no one ever persuades her a sequel is a good idea after all, but I do hope she gets an idea for a completely different series (though if she does I’ll wait until the last book is published before starting the first, I’m not stupid).

A Widow for One Year - John Irving
Yay! I finally got around to finishing a John Irving novel! I brought A Widow for One Year to Austria planning to release it once I’d finished, but somehow didn’t get as much reading done as I’d intended. For a long time I thought I might just leave it even if I didn’t finish, as I didn’t feel compelled to keep reading, even half-way through the book, but that would have entailed having to buy something else to read, and I never found anything I wanted to buy. By the time we were packing our bags to go home I only had a couple of hundred pages left, and found that the story had grown on me and that suddenly I could hardly put it down. Strange stuff. I might just have to buy some more Irving (especially if I find more cheap second-hand copies like this one).

Death at La Fenice - Donna Leon
A bookcrossing copy I picked up in Vienna. Pretty entertaining, I’ll probably read more Leon.

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
On the 1001 books list. I can see why.

Intimacy - Hanif Kureshi
Also on the 1001 books list, which is why I read it. That is, I read the story actually entitled Intimacy, and struggled to get through that, despite its relative briefness and it’s status as a “classic”. I’m sure it’s a brilliant portrayal of a middle-aged guy planning to leave his wife, but I just thought it was dreary. I then read the following story in the book, something Night-ish, and found that it was basically about a middle-aged guy who’d left his wife. And then I gave up. I’m sure I’m at fault rather than Kureshi, we all have our hang-ups and one of mine is that my empathy fuse blows when you mix infidelity into the story and so I fail to connect with the characters at all, which takes the fun out of it.

So Many Books, so Little Time - Sarah Nelson
Unfortunately not as good as I’d hoped. As many of the other readers of the bookcrossing-copy I read I would have liked more books and less life, I guess, but my main gripes were with Nelson’s way of presenting herself and her reading. Firstly, she talks about her “discovery” that you really don’t have to finish books you don’t like as if it’s something profound - a rite of passage, “growing up” - which rather irritated me, but then she goes on to say that she doesn’t want to discuss or give her opinion on books she’s given up on. What? You read 200 pages of a 400 page novel and then decide you really can’t be bothered to finish it, but you maintain that you don’t have the “right” to say that the book sucked (or wasn’t quite to your taste) since you didn’t stick with it to the bitter end? Seriously, if a novel doesn’t manage to capture your attention sufficiently to make you finish it has fundamentally failed in its object and you’re entitled to say whatever you like (well, ok, I’d stay away from such statements as “the ending sucked” if you haven’t actually read the ending, but you know what I mean…). It made me suspect that Nelson really hasn’t “grown up” and that she’s still uncomfortable about leaving books unfinished, for all her protestations that this is something she has learned to do. The other is with the project itself: She reads books for a living, for goodness sakes, and still 50 books a year seems to have been a daunting task? Even last year, when I really didn’t read a lot, I read that much, and I’m up to 43 (and two halves) this year, despite giving birth in January (which everyone told me would be the death of reading novels, as I’d never be allowed to, or indeed able to, concentrate for long enough). I’m not impressed.

The World According to Bertie - Alexander McCall Smith
Perfect, as usual.

The Complete Polysyllabic Spree - Nick Hornby