Author: Jackie

Categories
Booker Prize Other

The Booker long list 2009 has been announced…..

The long list this year is….

The Children’s Book by AS Byatt  stars3h
Summertime by JM Coetzee
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey  stars51
Me Cheeta: The Autobiography by James Lever
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel stars1
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Not Untrue and Not Unkind by Ed O’Loughlin
Heliopolis by James Scudamore
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín stars3h (review coming soon)
Love and Summer by William Trevor
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters stars4

I have read 5 of the list, counting Wolf Hall which I didn’t manage to finish.

I have just ordered the rest of the list, so I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with quite a few Booker books on my blog for the next few months.

I am so happy that Wilderness made the long list. I really hope it wins, as it is one of my favourite books of the year so far.

What did you think of the list?

Are you planning to read them all?

Categories
2008 2009 Other Prizes Recommended books

Blackmoor – Edward Hogan

Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2009

Blackmoor is a small mining village in Derbyshire, England. The book is set during the 1990s, a time of fast decline for the mining industry, which eventually ends in the closure of the pit. The tight-nit community struggle to deal with the loss of employment, but have the added problem of methane building up beneath their homes.

Vincent is a teenager growing up surrounded by these problems, but the mystery of his past is a more pressing concern for him. Why did his mother die? Why is his father so distant from him?

The book flicks backwards and forwards, slowly revealing his mother’s secrets and snippets of Vincent’s confused life.

Vincent’s mother, Beth, is an amazing character. She is an albino, suffers from post-natal depression and is the source of much gossip within the village. The depiction of her strange behaviour was always respectful and gave a great insight into the mind of someone suffering from this type of depression.

Vincent was also amazingly well drawn. The confusion and innocence of a teenager’s mind was perfectly captured.

This is a really good book. The writing is simple, but it grabs your attention from the start. It is packed with twists and turns and had a very satisfying ending.

If you’d like to find out more about a very different side to English life then this is a great choice – it’s a really good first novel, and I will be looking out for more books from this author in the future.

Recommended.

stars4

Categories
2000 - 2007 Audio Book Historical Fiction

Rhett Butler’s People – Donald McCaig

I loved Gone with the Wind, but was surprised by the abrupt ending, and left desperate to know what happened next. I quickly discovered that there were a few sequels out there and so decided to pick one up.

Rhett Butler’s People tells the story of Rhett Butler, the central male character from Gone with the Wind; from his early childhood until a few years after the close of GWTW.

Initially I was quite impressed with the story, as I learnt about Rhett’s difficult childhood, but then the book came to where Gone with the Wind begins and I found that it just seemed to be repeating everything I already knew. It wouldn’t have been so bad if if the story had focused on things from Rhett’s perspective, but it didn’t. Scarlett seemed to be the centre of this book too and the book kept retelling her story, despite the fact Rhett wasn’t even present for the majority of it. This was completely unnecessary as I can’t imagine anyone picking up this book without having read GWTW first, and the repetition began to irritate me. 

The last few chapters explain what happened to the couple after the end of GWTW and although they felt realistic, I came to realise that I didn’t really want to know what happened. The ambiguous ending is what makes GWTW so special, a sequel only ruins this.

The writing was very similar to GWTW, and if you had told me that Margaret Mitchell had written it then I would have believed you. The only problem was that there were quite a few inconsistencies between the two books. I noticed a few things occurring in the wrong order, or missing completely from one of the books. I think this would drive true GWTW fans mad.

I listened to the audio book version of this book and while it isn’t perfectly suited to this media, it wasn’t bad. John Bedford Lloyd did a really good job narrating it, producing a range of voices, but the length and descriptive passages of this book meant that I would have preferred to read it for myself.

Overall, this was a reasonable book in it’s own right, but as a companion book to GWTW  it had a lot of flaws. Recommended only to GWTW obsessives – who have probably sought it out already!

stars3

 

Have you read any of the GWTW sequels?

Would you recommend them?

Categories
Other

Links I’ve stumbled across this week

Bookish Links

My School Book Club is a great new idea for providing books to school children in the UK. Go and take a look if you’d like more information.

Entertainment Weekly have launched a new blog.

The Boston Bibliophile had a great post about bloggers and commercialism.

Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness wrote a great post about the importance of book reviews on a book blog. Make sure you keep writing them, despite the fact they have the least number of comments!

The Infinite Shelf has a great cartoon about battling with unread posts on Google reader

If you’d like to sell your old books here are 100 sites for selling all your books.

Books I’m looking forward to

The release date for Steig Larsson’s new book was announced this week. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest will be released on 1st October 2009 in the UK. 


I thought the sad death of Micheal Crichton to cancer last year meant that the end of his books, so am happy to discover that he had completed another one before his death. Pirate Latitudes will be published on 16th November.

Award

Cathy invented a new award to honour blogs which she can’t stay away from, despite an over-loaded Google reader.

I had a lovely, warm fuzzy feeling after discovering that I am among her first recipients for this award. Thank you Cathy!

Categories
Short Story Weekly Geeks

Mr Icky from ‘Tales of the Jazz Age’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This review has been specially written for this week’s weekly geek task. It is written using randomly generated key words and phrases.

Some of the weekly geeks are writing reviews for real stories, others imagined. 

 Do you think this review is for a real story?

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald is most famous for writing The Tale of Benjamin Button, which can be found in in his collection of short stories Tales of the Jazz Age. In the same collection is the strangely titled short story Mr Icky.

Mr Icky is described as the quintessence of quaintness in one act.

Mr Icky is an old man, dressed in the costume of an Elizabethan peasant. He has a conversation with a young boy called Peter. They discuss the planets, the bible and many seemingly random aspects of life.

Some of the language is a bit strange:

How ghastly! Science is the bunk.

The story isn’t all garble though – the jazz lusts throughout the pot of this story. It is a tale full of promise and happiness. I don’t think it will win a prize for being the best short story ever, but it does contain a few memorable quotes.

I care not who hoes the lettuce of my country if I can eat the salad!

Overall I found it to be a pretty average short story and I recommend it only to people who have an interest in studying short stories of this time period.

stars3

 

Do you think this review is for a real short story?

Which are the randomly generated words I had to use?

Visit the other Weekly Geeks to play along!

NO GOOGLING!!!!

Categories
2009 Historical Fiction

Kill-Grief – Caroline Rance

This book transports you straight into the horrors of an 18th century English hospital. The problem was that I’m not sure it is a place I ever want to witness! The squalor was vividly described, and I don’t think I have ever read a book which conveys the smells of the scene so convincingly. It was disgusting!

The book has clearly been meticulously researched and contains many interesting snippets about the medical practices of the time, but the majority of the time I didn’t really want to read about them: 

He pressed his thumb into the inflamed skin and a thicker bead of pus exuded from the cut, retreating like a wary maggot when he let go.

I was alternately absorbed and revolted!

The book follows Mary, a reluctant nurse, who has to deal with the all the bodily functions thrown at her, on top of the secrets she is hiding. Mary is struggling to become independent and is initially over-whelmed by her new  life in Chester, as she is used to a very different life by the sea. As the book progresses she gains in confidence and her hidden past is gradually revealed. The book is very well paced and the plot, although quite simple, is compelling.

If I had to make one criticism it would be that the male characters in the book did not stand out for me. Mary was such an amazing character that all the men in the book seemed to pale into insignificance beside her. I didn’t really mind this though – it is good to see such a strong female character, particularly in historical fiction, every once in a while.

Recommended to historical fiction fans with a stomach of steel!

stars4

Are you squeamish?

Can you read gory scenes easily?