August Reads

Time for the August round up! Shockingly low numbers here. I have actually read a third, but it is a manuscript under consideration so I can't tell you anything about it. If it ever gets published I'll review it though.

I do hope that I can bring my average up next month. I'd like to keep the average around 3/4. It is really tough to balance around work.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Karen Joy Fowler
Profile 19/06/14 Paperback
8/10
Off The Shelf

Waacbo, as it is affectionately called in the office, was long listed for the Man Booker Prize. Shortlist to be announced (9th Sept). I'm fairly certain it will be shortlisted, and might even win! It is outselling all the other long list books put together.

I was nothing to do with this book, it was all sorted before my time, but I was very glad to have read it. It has a very interesting look at a topic I knew nothing about. The characters are curious, and intriguing. They are not necessarily people I would want to know... But they make for fantastic reading. READ it. BUY it.

I found the book so interesting, (I can't give away the twist!) and it is written so well. A brilliant insight into humanity, how and why we do things and why it is important. Not to mention the bizarre nature of childhood memories.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Katherine Boo
Portobello Books 7/06/14 Kindle
8/10
Kindle

I hadn't realised that this was non-fiction until I read the acknowledgements at the end of the book. I discovered that Katherine Boo is a journalist (I didn't know she had won the Pulitzer, or that would have been a giveaway...) who threw herself into the slums of Mumbai and became so much part of the furniture that she could recount the incredible stories and events in this marvelous book.

What I loved about this book was not just the stories of poverty, but that within poverty there are different levels of ambition, pride and ability. That a garbage sorter's lively hood might not be as meager as others might think, despite the taboo of the job. An incredible and inspirational story.

See my review of what I thought of reading on a kindle here.

I may have only read two books this month, and one that I can't tell you about, but they were all 8/10. The highest mark I've given so far. I think 10s pretty much belong to old favourites like Diana Gabledon's Outlander series. By the way, is anyone else watching the Starz series of Outlander?

My First Kindle

I always swore I would never get a Kindle. I LOVE real print books.

When my Granddad died, one of the things that I took from the house, as well as two of my Grandmother's necklaces and a trinket or two was his Kindle. It seemed appropriate to take something like that, I like books, I used to recommend books to him and he to me. I was excited to see what was on there, his last recommendations, if you will. ;(

He had a few John Grisham's and both The Moonstone and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I had been reading The Moonstone to Grandma when I visited 6 months before, and had recommended it. So it was lovely to see what he had been reading and that I could carry on reading his recommendations for a few months after his death.

For the past couple of weeks, my Kindle has lived in my handbag. I read Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo on it, John Green has been mentioning it for years and Nerdfighters around the world have just read it for the book club.

So lets really get down to the pros and cons.

Pros
Kindles are great for having more than one book on it. You never have a moment without a book to read, without the hefty weight of carrying a shelf around with you.

On that note; very lightweight. I hardly notice it in my cavernous handbag. chosen for it's ability to hold paperbacks - Side note: how else do you choose a hand bag? Colour, yes. Pockets & secret pockets, yes. Does it hold a paperback, absolutely.

The size is also pretty good, I can hold it in one hand, and not feel like I have to juggle too much.

My last blog mentioned the best gadgets for books, many of them were to help hold a book open with one hand or no hands! With a Kindle you can stand up and read with one hand and turn the page. Which is really useful for standing up in the tube.

Sending word documents to my kindle is a god send. As an editor, carting around great sheafs of manuscripts is just ridiculous, with a kindle I can read what ever I have on the go

Cons
Covers. I don't like that I can't see what people are reading on the train. I love the little train conversations about books and the stories both of us are reading. I also do alot of my window shopping on the train, to really get a feel of what people are reading. Not having book covers with clear titles is a huge loss of effortless publicity for the publisher.

Covers. I inherited my kindle from my Grandfather, it never left the house and was carefully put on the bedside table. The poor thing has had a baptism of fire in the depths of my handbag and has something sticky on the screen, and the paint is chipping off a little. I now have to buy one of those fetching kindle covers I see people using. But I don't really want a cover, it makes it bulkier and

Locations? What is this "locations"? Non linear, random, totally mental deviation from the page number. Very irritating. My hackles are up!

The percentage, pretty useful when talking about the book you're reading: "I'm about 37% through, shes just found the cat..." That does make things simpler than holding up the book and saying: "errrr about that far." But you can't collaborate with people.

Verdict

It is more likely that I'll use the kindle for work stuff and utilise my currently 1hr 20 min commute every day, while pleasure reading would remain a more 3D experience.I hope people continue to read on trains so I know what to read next. This is one reason why I really like @Booksundergrnd. A company, putting print books into the tube system. Check them out!

I saw the shock of the fall only last week, making it's way along the platform at Piccadilly Circus.

Booky Gadgets

When you work in publishing, one can't help feeling the immense pleasure of being utterly UTTERLY swamped in books, I have books on every surface of my bedroom, the bed itself is surrounded on four sides by shelves and windowsill, desk and wardrobe, all of which have books on them. If there weren't shoes in the draw under my bed, there would be books in there too, but lets not get crazy and start throwing out pumps.

There are still a million books I want to read, and every birthday and Christmas, or just because, I am ALWAYS pleased to take a book as a gift. It is a definite winning gift for me. A book? Brilliant. I honestly love getting a book, especially if it is on my wish list. ;) 

But I've been thinking that there might be some other bookish things that people might like that are not books, and I'm not talking about Kindles, that is just a very fancy, very thin library. I'm thinking Gadgetry and accessories. So if you have a bookish friend with a birthday coming up, and you're not sure about what book to get them, why not try one of these:

Prism Glasses

Reading in bed is one of life's little luxuries, but sitting up to read can crick your neck and numb your tail bone. Or you lie on your side and read everything side ways. I would love to try prism glasses. especially at the bargain price of £6.79 on amazon. Buy here.

Transparent Book Weight

So, this is an awesome design by the geniuses at TENT. But after some research, you can't buy it anywhere, and it is almost £50 to buy it from Asia and get it to the UK! If you're ready to invest you can buy it here. I've wondered though, if it would break all your paperback spines...

A Thumb Thing

want want want want. Reading on the tube standing up has opened my eyes to the problem of one handed reading. This is how not to get an achy thumb! There are mixed reviews on Amazon, mostly about the size (medium is very small apparently) and some reports that it might damage your books. hmmm. 

Book-scented Candle!

From the Etsy shop Frostbeard studio, a husband and wife team make Bibliofile style candles including potterhead tea lights that bring the smell of your favourite books, movies and games into your room. And they're soy. Buy it from Etsy.

Magic Book Clip

Similar to the thumb thing, but I feel like this would be more of a textbook/student gadget. for when you need to prop open a book for reference for long periods of time. Buy it here!

Mark My Time Book Mark

This is meant to be to make reading fun for kids, with the Mark My Time bookmarks, you can time how long you read for, an hour here and hour there with an alarm that goes off when the hour is up. It also means when you only have ten minutes to spare before running out the door, you can lose yourself in the book without glancing up at the clock. 

The BookSeat Pillow

Another nifty solution to the crick in the neck. £35 from Amazon. There are a couple of complaints that it isn't weighted well enough and added some bean bag beans to help it stay in shape. Lots of people use it to multi-task while eating or standing and cooking, or knitting. A handy gift for anyone with RSI injuries or recovering from surgery.

Readers Night Stand

You can get these on Amazon for about £30. I think they're a great idea. Although, I do need a drawer for all the things I need every day, tweezers, sleeping pills, kindle charger...but perhaps that could all live in a box...Have a browse on Amazon.

Book Shaped Light

This clocks in at the most expensive at £95 or $160! But I just love this design. I think it would be the best bedside light ever, forget the glare of desk lamps, it casts a gentle light, and when it is closed you can just put your book on top or pop the Lumio into the bookshelf, so you can use the top of your bedside table for other things, like more books...If you buy a Readers Night Stand. Lumio is a Kickstarter success story, by designer Max Gunawan. There are a couple of things I'd be interested in learning about the Lumio design, if I ever get one, I would definitely review it with my thoughts.

Sadly I do not own any of these nifty things but I wish I did. Consider this my Christmas list.

Starting and Finishing

Let me know if anyone else feels this way, but often the hardest moments of anything are the beginning and the end. I like getting comfy and enjoying the middle ground of most things and I actually think that I need a change of attitude. Becoming equipped in starting and finishing what ever I set my mind to is an important skill I need to get used to.

Allow me to explain.

When I read a book, I love the experience. I like turning each page and letting the story unfold through my fingers. But I find it difficult to let go once the story is over. It even spreads to the next book. for a few days I struggle to get into the new book without remembering the characters from the old one. It isn't severe, but I do like to enjoy the middle of a book and starting a new one is harder than I expect it to be because it would mean letting go of the one I just finished. Perhaps that is why I keep so many of my books around me. I never feel I've moved  in somewhere without my library or at least part of it.

If I want to keep up my average of 4-5 books a month for the next year I've got to get over this. In my job I will have to be able to jump between texts familiarly and expertly and constantly. It is one of the reasons I have stepped up my reading goals. I already read a fair bit, but now I am trying to train my self in STARTING books and once they are over, to acknowledge and let them go. That doesn't mean forget them necessarily but I do need to hold on a little more lightly.

For an intern being able to be dropped into any office and get along with the people you find there is harder than you think. Most of us take a few days to warm up to strangers. Keeping quiet, smiling sweetly, keeping your ears open and your mouth shut. Particularly when you become aware of the scrutiny. it is really hard to leave somewhere that you have enjoyed working at and be faced with the uncertainty of the future placement. Like I've said before, you can't know what each placement will be like. I've practiced this a fair bit over the past year! I think I am getting better at it. It has made me more confident going to new places for sure.

And relationships. The middle is always my favorite. The start will always fraught with learning about the other person, and sometimes you don't get much further than that. I've often tried to stretch the middle past where it should be, because if you've got as far as the good bit you've done so well. learning to finish relationships well is almost as important as starting them. you don't want lurking ex's and you don't want past feelings to surprise you because the finishing was not complete, that will in turn make starting new relationships more difficult.

Starting a new job, a new relationship or a new book is difficult; finishing them is even harder, but it has to be practiced, and you have to get good at them all.

July Reads

As with June, I thought I would look at a theme to simplify the books that I review from July. This month I'm looking at the families in all of the books. Five this month, one of them took up half of the month and I didn't even finish it in the end.

Families in July

Dead Ends
Erin Jade Lange
Faber and Faber 03/07/14 Paperback
6/10
Review copy for Movellas
The first book of July!  It was actually Dead Ends that gave me the idea to have the theme of family for this month. My review of Dead Ends can be found here. Donated to the underground #booksontheunderground.




What Was Promised
Tobias Hill
Bloomsbury 13/03/14 Proof
6/10
Book haul (Bloomsbury)

A perfect book to think about family. This book follows three families who start in the Columbia buildings on Columbia road, the flower market. It is set after the end of the first world war. The links between the three families are solidified through their children who all play together, and through the generations we see how those early connections win out later on. The story also makes you think about what it means to be a family. Is it your history? Does blood relation make a family or not? and what family means to each of the characters.  I enjoyed this book, though it felt a little long at times.  I would not read it again, though I do recommend it. A cosy long read, Tobias Hill is a very good writer.

How To Be A Woman
Catlin Moran
Ebury Press 01/03/12 Paperback
8/10
Birthday Present
A hugely controversial topic for me personally. Why in this time would anyone not consider them selves a feminist? It is because of the small outspoken sect of women who give the movement a bad name. It therefore makes it very difficult for the run of the mill woman to admit to being a feminist. A misunderstanding of feminism. A more accurate term would be a humanist. Where race, gender, sexuality or religion do not define. Man hating is not feminism, unfortunately that is what it is sometimes seen as. The display of hate or discrimination one way or the other is not acceptable. It is important to understand that this book is NOT a feminist manifesto, by any means. It is VERY well written, and very funny, but it is not doctrine and it would be a mistake to subvert your own views for Moran's.  Her opinion on sex in particular was very disturbing to me.  She evidently wants to be seen as a strong female figure in her family. However it did occur to me that rather than equality there was an element of submission in the presentation of her husband, I constantly pitied him.

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Penguin 06/09/07 Paperback
4/10
Gift (Penguin Intern)
This book either gets five stars or one. For those who award five, a review of incredibly critical insight is written. For those who award one they apologise for 'not getting it'.  I will not apologise.
I get it. The passage of time, the reality of time, the madness of the human condition. The absurd. One critic called it  Dali in words. I loved passages of the writing. perhaps one paragraph in nine. But I could not finish it. Such importance was put upon the family, but we were raced through it. I lost interest in trying to keep up. Unlike Ulysses where the beauty of the language has to wash over you as you read it (and perhaps this is the downfall of translation) one hundred years of solitude read as a very dull timeline with extraordinary events chucked in. Other critics I read said: one hundred years of Boredom/Tedium/Torture. I am inclined to agree. I did not finish it and I would not recommend it.

Eat My Heart Out
Zoe Pilger
Serpents Tail 26/06/14 Paperback
7/10
Off The Shelf (Profile books)

I really enjoyed this one. Ann-Marie is totally bonkers, but she does have people who care about her. She has some weird philosophies. This book is a mad and frantic romp around London, so energetic and whirlwindy. More like how I see my own experience of it. The family in this story is actually Sebastian's they are the only people who unequivocally accept her for one reason or another. I thought it was important that a) she had a refuge and b) she didn't abuse it too much. Donated to the underground #Booksontheunderground

Dead Ends Review

I recently reviewed Dead Ends by Erin Lange for Movellas. Here it is!

‘Dead Ends’ by Erin Lange is a story about friendship, family and fathers. My alliteration skills astound even me. It might be suggested that Dane, Seely and Billy D are an unlikely friendship group because they are all so individual; The school fighter, the rock chick and the kid with Downs syndrome. But I think that that is a very 2-dimensional view of them as characters. Lange builds people not characters.

Billy D and Dane are brought together, essentially, because they live next door to each other. Thrown together by proximity, they become friends at first because they each have something the other wants and they stay friends because of their fathers.

Both of their dads are MIA, while their useful friend Seely has two. While we don’t ever meet Seely’s parents, Lange introduces a subtle discussion of same sex parenting. While other authors might have used Seely’s “struggle” on how she deals with other people’s views of her having two dads. Lange actually uses Dane as society’s mirror; he struggles at first with how to react. He teased Seely to cover up how uncomfortable he was, but eventually he realises the fact that while she has two dads, he and Billy D don’t have one between them and he cannot begrudge anyone that kind of luck. Dads are important, even the missing ones.

Seely often seems weak to me. Even though Lange has said that she was her favourite character to write. She is definitely a minor character and shows up at appropriate moments to supply a place to hang out/ a car/; a double helping of pseudo father figures. She is unique and clever, sassy and “different” from the other girls at school. I didn’t see her as a “strong” female character; I just thought she was a girl – a useful plot device that just happened to be female. I think she easily could have been a boy, but I expect Lange would be accused of the story being overly male-centric.

The true strong female characters are Dane and Billy D’s mothers. Fiercely protective, hardworking, single, fighters. I read them both as incredibly nuanced and brilliant women. I love that they both had flaws, a quick temper or a secretive nature. It was because of this that they became the most realistic of the characters. Lange can write strong female characters, but it seems, only if she’s not trying and just stumbles on accurate and poignant, normal women.

The comparison to John Green probably comes from the quirk. From riddles and treasure hunts to famous last words, from okay? Okay, to ‘it’s a metaphor’, John Green always has an underlying quirk to his writing. ‘Dead Ends’’ quirk is the funny place names and the riddle/test that Billy D’s dad apparently left for him. ‘Dead Ends’ is a maze and Billy D and Dean are looking for something: Where is Billy D’s dad, why did he leave, who is Dean’s and why are Billy and Dean who they are? So many questions and Lange answers them all.

June Reads

I read 5 books in June, which is a lot for me. I'm very proud of my self for this excellent reading record.  I've given a theme to this month's reviews where I'm going to talk about the protagonists of each book and review them, hopefully that will shorten the reviews up.

The Leading Men and Women of June

Popular: A Memoir

Maya Van Wagenen

Penguin 15/04/14 Paperback

7/10

Bookhaul (Movellas)

Maya, the author of the memoir struck me as a very interesting girl; both in the book and on BBC Radio Four Women's Hour. She documented the effect on her life by following a 50s guide to popularity in the modern day. She got new 50s inspired clothes from thrift stores and every month, studied a new chapter. The most interesting of all was sitting at a different lunch table every day. Here, she made friends with all of the people in her high school, expanding her friendship group. She asked each new group what they thought being popular meant, and whether they thought of themselves as popular. No body did. It was a very unique social experiment and was an easy summer afternoon read.

The Land Where Lemons Grow
Helena Attlee
Particular books (Penguin) 03/04/14 Hardback
6/10
Stanfords Bookshop (Covent Garden)
This heady mix of travel writing, history, biology and social anthropology was a joy to read. The Citruses of Italy are the main characters of this book, but also the people who look after them. The elderly man who maintained a limonaria or lemon house in the northern mountains every winter by carefully regulating the temperature with fires to drive away the frost. The stubborn and yet still fragile characters of Italian lemons have a tumultuous history in the early days of the mafia.  The importance, the rise and decline, and the reflection of the Italian people through their interaction with the fruit is all wrapped up in this sensuous book. A summer/holiday read preferably somewhere where the possibility of procuring a lemon sorbet is at your fingertips.

Throne of Glass
Sarah J Maas
Bloomsbury 02/08/2012 Paperback
7/10
Bookhaul (Bloomsbury)
The role of the female assassin is beautifully captured in Celena Sardothien. I liked that this whole novel was complex. She has a dark history and back story, her relationships, romantic and otherwise, are not clear cut or simple and the mysterious forces that run through the sub plot are complicated. I love that the other characters are constantly trying to figure her out, while the reader can see that Celena is just like every teenage girl in the world, trying to figure herself out as well. A YA read with a fantasy/action hybrid that keeps the pages turning. Bring on book Two. 

Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Paperback
8/10
Borrowed
I really enjoyed re-reading Macbeth.  There are a number of books on my TBR which I ought to have read or have done, but cannot remember them. I studied Macbeth in school when I was in year 7 or 8 and I don't think I really understood it. I feel like I have absorbed more from the general Macbeth zeitgeist of being a literature student and talking about Shakespeare. But now I can genuinely say that I have read it all. I was very pleased that I still understood Shakespeare, I think a lot of people see it almost as a different language. I watched the movie, I've read it twice, and I've seen three school productions. Next stop: The Globe.

Don't Tell The Boss
Anna Bell
Quercus 19/06/14 paperback
7/10
Competition win (Quercus)

My review of Penny in Don't Tell The Boss can be read here.