Month: January 2009

Categories
2000 - 2007 Recommended books Richard and Judy Book Club

The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson

I had heard lots of good things about The Gargoyle, and seen it on several people’s “Best of 2008” list, so was expecting great things. Perhaps I built my expectations up too much, as I was slightly disappointed.

The book follows the nameless narrator, as he recovers from severe burns after a car crash. His life is enriched when Marianne Engel, a mysterious sculptress of gargoyles, begins to visit him in the burns unit. Marianne claims to be a 700-year-old Medieval scribe, and she slowly reveals some of the events that she has witnessed over her long life.

I really enjoyed all the modern sections of the book. The thoughts of the burns victim were incredibly vivid, but were described in an almost comic way, so I was not disgusted by them:

Even when the skin did take, the absence of oil glands in the transplanted tissue resulted in extreme dryness. “Ants beneath the skin” is not only too cliched a description of how it felt, but also not graphic enough. Lumberjack termites brandishing little chainsaws, maybe; or a legion of fiddler crabs wearing hairshirts and fiberglass shoes; or a legion of baby rats dragging tiny barbed-wire plows. Tap-dancing, subepidermal cockroaches wearing soccer cleats and cowbuy spurs? Perhaps.

The book was very well researched, and I learnt a lot about the treatment of burns, schizophrenia and Medieval Germany. I also found Marianne’s character very interesting. I loved trying to work out whether or not she was schizophrenic, but I found that many of her tales seemed to drag on a bit. Although I realise their purpose in the story, I think that many of them could have been reduced in length, or removed completely. They interfered with the flow of the book, and made it overly long.

I enjoyed the ending of the book, it brought everything together, and rounded it all off nicely. Andrew Davidson is clearly a very skilled writer, and this is a great debut novel, but I think he tried to fit too many things into this book. I look forward to reading future books by him, as his imagination is wonderful!

Recommended for the vivid descriptions of life as a burns victim, and for re-enforcing the message that a person’s real beauty is underneath the skin, but be aware that fifty percent of the book is fairly average.

Also reviewed by Fresh Ink Books

Categories
Blog Improvement Project Other Uncategorized

Blog Improvement Project Week 2: Brainstorming Ideas

This is the second week of the Blog Improvement Project. This week’s task is to brainstorm ideas, and then use them to create a new regular feature for our site.

I was trying to think of something new to do when I stumbled upon a link to this site. (Thanks Books and Movies!) In which you have to guess a book’s Amazon rating by it’s cover. This has inspired me to create a weekly bookish quiz for my blog.

I’m not sure how successful it will be, but I’ll give it a try!

In honour of my inspiration for this task, my first quiz will be “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover!!”

I’m off to look for a multiple choice quiz widget to use. Does anyone know where I can find one?

Categories
Classics

Wuthering Heights – Discussion on the first 15 chapters

 
Sandy at You’ve Gotta Read This! is hosting a group read of Wuthering Heights. Apart from the few I read at school, I have read only a couple of classics. I am trying to change this, and put classics, as one of my titles in the 999 challenge this year. I jumped at the chance to have a few people to encourage me through the book, and hopefully make the reading of it more enjoyable.

The idea was to read the first half of the book this week, and hopefully finish it by next Friday. We’ll all stop to compare notes halfway through.

I have to admit that I’m not really enjoying the book so far though. The characters are all miserable, the writing style is slow and difficult to follow in places and there isn’t any action, or emotional depth – not much to like really!! I hope everyone else is enjoying it more than me!

1. What was your first impression of the inhabitants of Thrushcross Grange, as described by Mr. Lockwood?

First impressions were actually quite good. It took a few pages to get used to the writing style. I quickly realised that this book required my full concentration, so I found myself a quiet corner and dedicated several hours for each reading sitting. I found the initial setting very atmospheric, and I enjoyed the character introductions. They all came across as interesting characters, with lots of nice flaws to make for a good book!

2. Do you think the ghost of Catherine was real or a product of Mr. Lockwood’s imagination?

I think the ghost must have been real. I can’t see any reason why Mr Lockwood would be prone to hallucinations. I also think ghosts make any story more interesting!

3. Can we rely on Nelly’s account of events?

I don’t see why not. As a servant in the household she knew all that was going on there, and it this point in the story I see no reason why she would want to mislead Mr Lockwood.

4. Do you think Catherine really knows the true meaning of love?

Not at all! Her only thoughts seem to be of the wealth a husband could give her.

5. Which character so far do you like the least? The most? Why?

The character I like the least is Catherine. She just comes across as a spoilt, ungrateful person, whose only interest in people is how much money they possess!

The character I like most at the moment is Mr. Lockwood, not because he has done anything to endear me to him, but because he hasn’t managed to do anything especially irritating yet!

6. If you had to come up with one word that represented Heathcliff, what would it be?

Outsider. It seems that he just spends his whole life trying to be accepted by the family. He just wants to belong, but as he must compete for affection with everyone else in the household I think he feels a bit left out.

For discussion on chapters 16 – 34 see here.

Categories
Uncategorized

Q & A – Vikas Swarup

Books Before Blogging Review

This week there has been lots of publicity for the release of the film Slumdog Millionaire here in the UK. The book is based on the novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to let you know that it is well worth reading.

I picked this book up in a charity book shop about a year ago. I started reading the first page, to see if it would be my sort of thing, and it gripped me so much that I barely put it down until I’d finished it.

The story is based around eighteen-year-old Ram Mohammad Thomas, who is arrested after winning the Indian version of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionare’. The show’s producers are convinced that a boy from the slums could not have answered all twelve questions correctly without cheating in some way. Each chapter in the book explains the extraordinary reasons why Ram knew the answers to a diverse range of questions.

Many of the situations described were very unbelievable, and seemed to have been constructed around a fact that seemed to have been picked at random, rather than writing a realistic plot around more general questions. This didn’t really matter though, as the ending makes up for it!

It is a real page turner, with a great central character. Ram’s view of the world is touching and funny:

We especially like watching the films on Sunday.These films are about a fantasy world. A world in which kids have mothers and fathers, and birthdays. A world in which they live in huge houses, drive in huge cars and get huge presents. We saw this fantasy world, but we never got carried away by it.

It’s a nice, easy read, filled with the sights and sounds of India.

Recommended.

Also reviewed by Just Add Books

Categories
Orange Prize Recommended books Richard and Judy Book Club

We Need to Talk about Kevin – Lionel Shriver

We Need to Talk about Kevin won the Orange Prize for fiction in 2005.

It is an incredibly powerful book in which the narrator, Eva, describes the events in her life leading up to the day her son went on a killing spree at his high school.

The book deals with one of the few remaining taboos in our society: a mother, who doesn’t like her own child. She feels invaded by pregnancy, and before her son is even born she is scared of him:

….any woman who passes a clump of testosterone-drunk punks without picking up the pace, without avoiding eye contact that might connote challenge or invitation, without sighing inwardly with relief by the following block, is a zoological fool. A boy is a dangerous animal.

Once her son, Kevin, is born he is a difficult baby. He cries constantly and Eva becomes more and more alienated by him. He grows into a difficult toddler and Eva slowly loses control of him.

Having done much research on ‘spirited’ children, I did, however, feel that some of Kevin’s behaviour was unrealistic. A single child would not have displayed the strange mixture of reactions that Kevin did.

Eva is also supposed to be a powerful, high flying business woman, who must be of reasonable intelligence, so I find it hard to believe that she would accept things the way they were, and make no attempt to find solutions to her problem. She is rich enough to be able to employ any number of psychologists, or even just read a few books on the subject. I don’t really understand why she failed to do this.

Despite these minor flaws, this book was a great read. It was very thought provoking, and would be perfect for a reading group, as there are so many discussions that arise from it. Are all children sweet, innocent things, or are some born evil?

I couldn’t see how anyone could claim to love children in the generic anymore than any one could credibly claim to love people in a sufficiently sweeping sense as to embrace Pol Pot, Don Rickles, and an upstairs neighbour who does 2,000 jumping jacks at three in the morning.

And how much of a child’s actions can the parent be held accountable for?

When you’re the parent, no matter what the accident, no matter how far away you were at the time and how seemingly powerless to avert it, a child’s misfortune feels like your fault.

This a very important book, especially for new parents. It will remain with me for a long time, and I will be encouraging all my friends to read it – just so I can talk about it!

Highly recommended. Especially for reading groups.

Edit June 2011: Rating increased to after realising this is one of my all-time favourite books.

Categories
Other Uncategorized

Has anyone read ‘Maps for Lost Lovers’?

Has anyone read Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam? I’m about a third of the way through it and am finding it very hard going. I am thinking about giving up on it. If someone has read it, then I’d love to know whether it is worth finishing. Does it get better? If someone can convince me to read the rest, then I will, but for now it’s going back on the shelf!

I don’t mind slow books, as long as they appear to be going somewhere. It seemed to be OK for a while in the beginning, but now it just seems to be getting bogged down in the details of their lives. It’s also coming across as quite racist. There are so many characters (I know it’s a common criticism of mine – I can’t help having a brain unable to cope with lots of different people!) I don’t feel empathy for any of them, and keep getting them all mixed up in my head.

If it was a shorter book, then I’d probably go ahead and read it, but it is going to be a large investment of quality reading time, so I need to make sure it isn’t wasted!

Please help me to decide whether or not to continue! Thank you!