Category: Other

Categories
Other

Read or Reject #3

My New Year’s Resolution is to give up on books that aren’t outstanding. I don’t want to miss out on a gem that happens to have a poor beginning, so I hope that you can help me sort the wheat from the chaff.

Should I continue reading any of these books?

Singing in the Shrouds by Ngaio Marsh 

I foolishly allowed myself to run out of audio books and so grabbed this one from the shelf without doing any research. I hadn’t read any Ngaio Marsh before, but wanted to experience one of her classic crime books. This one is a murder mystery set on a ship. It struggled to hold my attention from the beginning, but I can’t decide if this is due its unsuitability as an audio book or whether I’d have the same issues with the print version. It was slow, felt very dated and the characters were quite irritating. Do you think the print version would be any better?

<

Snowdrops by A D Miller

I ordered this book from my library after seeing several people raving about it on the Booker forum. It had been described as a Russian thriller similar to Child 44, but apart from the fact they are both set in Russia I couldn’t see any similarities. Snowdrops has a strange writing style where things are written in Russian (and then translated into English in brackets). It had a very slow pace and nothing had happened when I gave up at about the 80 page mark. My problems with the book probably only indicate its suitability for the Booker. Perhaps I’ll re-read it when it makes the shortlist?

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

I know that a lot of people really loved this one and so I’m quite sad to be going against the grain. It started off well, but after a gripping first chapter I began to lose interest. I failed to warm to the characters and the plot didn’t do enough to grab my attention. I’m afraid this is another victim of my harsh new rejection policy.

Other books I dipped into, but failed to finish:

The Still Point by Amy Sackville

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter

Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman

Tony and Susan by Austin M. Wright

Was I wrong to give up on any of these books?

Is there magic lurking in the final pages?

Categories
Other

February Summary and Plans for March

The quality of the books I’m reading is continuing to improve. I’m giving up on an increasing amount of books and finding that I’m putting them down much earlier than before – some are hitting the library return pile after just a few pages. I’ll have another Read or Reject post up soon, but I think I’ll have to avoid mentioning books I gave up on quickly as otherwise that post would be enormous!!

I don’t think I’ve read three 4.5 star books in one month before! These three books are very different, but all have that special magic that makes them memorable. I highly recommend that you give them a try.

Books reviewed in February:

Leviathan – Philip Hoare 

The History of History – Ida Hattemer-Higgins 

Independent People – Halldor Laxness 

We – Yevgeny Zamyatin 

Three Sisters – Bi Feiyu 

Chess – Stefan Zweig 

Caroline – Cornelius Medvei 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot (Audio Book) 

‘They’ – Rudyard Kipling 

Light Boxes – Shane Jones 

The Unit – Ninni Holmqvist 

Plans for March

The Orange Prize long list will be announced on 15th March and so the second half of the month will involve my investigations into the list. I’m hoping that I’ll already have read many of them (otherwise my Orange longlist prediction post will make me look silly!), but I’m also hoping to be introduced to a few wonderful new authors.

I’m also planning to read:

Serious Men by Manu Joseph
The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
In the Woods by Tana French
The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht
When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Block
This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

I hope you have a wonderful March!

Categories
Commonwealth Writer's Prize Other

2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Shortlists Announced

I love the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and so was excited to see the 2011 shortlists revealed earlier this week. The frustrating thing is that most of the books are not available in the UK yet, but hopefully this will change now that they’ve made the shortlist for this book award.

The 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize shortlists are:

The books pictured are those available in the UK now (or in the very near future)

The shortlisted winners for the Africa Best Book are:
The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone)
Men of the South by Zukiswa Wanner (South Africa)
The Unseen Leopard by Bridget Pitt (South Africa)
Oil on Water by Helon Habila (Nigeria)
Blood at Bay by Sue Rabie (South Africa)
Banquet at Brabazan by Patricia Schonstein (South Africa)

The shortlisted winners for the Africa Best First Book are:
Happiness is a Four Letter Word by Cynthia Jele (South Africa)
Bitter Leaf by Chioma Okereke (Nigeria)
The Fossil Artist by Graeme Friedman (South Africa)
Colour Blind by Uzoma Uponi (Nigeria)
Voice of America by E. C. Osondu (Nigeria)
Wall of Days by Alastair Bruce (South Africa)

The shortlisted writers for the Canada and Caribbean Best Book are:
The Sky is Falling by Caroline Adderson (Canada)
Room by Emma Donoghue (Canada)
The Master of Happy Endings by Jack Hodgins (Canada)
In The Fabled East by Adam Lewis Schroeder (Canada)
The Death of Donna Whalen by Michael Winter (Canada)
Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard by Richard B. Wright (Canada)

The shortlisted writers for the Canada and Caribbean Best First Book are:
Bird Eat Bird by Katrina Best (Canada)
Doing Dangerously Well by Carole Enahoro (Canada)
Mennonites Don’t Dance by Darcie Friesen Hossack (Canada)
Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod (Canada)
The Cake is for the Party by Sarah Selecky (Canada)
Illustrado by Miguel Syjuco (Canada)

 

The shortlisted winners for the South Asia and Europe Best Book are:
Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela (UK)
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (UK)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (UK)
The Long Song by Andrea Levy (UK)
Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido (UK)
Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett (UK)

The shortlisted winners for the South Asia and Europe Best First Book are:
Serious Men by Manu Joseph (India)
Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph (India)
The House with the Blue Shutters by Lisa Hilton (UK)
Children of the Sun by Max Shaefer (UK)
Grace Williams says it Loud by Emma Henderson (UK)
Sabra Zoo by Mischa Hiller (UK)

The shortlisted winners for the South East Asia and Pacific Best Book are:
Reading Madame Bovary by Amanda Lohrey (Australia)
That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (Australia)
Time’s Long Ruin by Stephen Orr (Australia)
Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones (New Zealand)
Notorious by Roberta Lowing (Australia)
Gifted by Patrick Evans (New Zealand)

The shortlisted winners for the South East Asia and Pacific Best First Book are:
21 Immortals by Rozlan Mohd Noor (Malaysia)
A Man Melting by Craig Cliff (New Zealand)
The Graphologist’s Apprentice by Whiti Hereaka (New Zealand)
The Body in the Clouds by Ashley Hay (Australia)
Traitor by Stephen Daisley (Australia/New Zealand)
A Few Right Thinking Men by Sulari Gentill (Australia)

I have read several of the shortlist:

Room by Emma Donoghue 

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell stars41

The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore 

The Long Song by Andrea Levy stars41

Illustrado by Miguel Syjuco 

Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones  

Grace Williams says it Loud by Emma Henderson  (not reviewed)

The shortlist is too long for me to attempt to complete it and since half the books aren’t available in this country that isn’t an easy task, but I hope that you can help me.

Have you read any of the books on this list?

Do you think that I’ll particularly enjoy reading any of them?

Who do you think deserves to win?

Categories
Other

Win a copy of Clan of the Cave Bear!

Next month the final installment of the Earth’s Children series will be released, over thirty years after the first was published. The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first in the series, is one of my favourite books and so I am always happy to bring the title to a wider readership. A few years ago I answered questions about The Clan of the Cave Bear, so if you’d like to know anything about the book you’ll probably find the answer there – if not, then just leave a comment and I’ll try to answer your questions.

I have ten copies of The Clan of the Cave Bear to give away to readers of my blog.

8 copies are available to those in the UK and 2 will be sent internationally.

If you’d like a chance to win a copy, just leave a comment below before midnight GMT on 18th February 2011.

If you live in the UK please let me know so that I can enter you in the UK draw. All those who leave their location blank will be entered in the international draw.

Winners will be selected at random and notified by email shortly after the closing date.

Good luck!!

Jean Auel will be answering questions about the series at a special event at the Natural History Museum on Monday on 28th February 2011. Tickets are on sale now. 

Categories
Discussions Other

Don’t read the blurb!

Photo credit: Darwin Bell, Flickr

Publishers want you to buy their books and so will do their very best to ensure that the blurb on the back of every book is well written and appealing. They can make even the most boring book sound great. Don’t believe me? Go and find a book that you didn’t enjoy and read its blurb. Sounds appealing doesn’t it?!!

The problem is that blurbs give little insight into what the experience of reading the book will actually be like. I recommend ignoring the blurb and turning straight to the first page of the book. Reading the first few paragraphs will give you much more useful information about the writing style and a better indication of whether or not you are likely to enjoy reading the book.

I have always known that I am terrible at selecting books simply from reading the blurb. In my pre-blogging days I wandered around libraries picking up books that had appealing covers and found a very poor percentage of them to be enjoyable. Now I have an array of wonderful bloggers to provide me with book recommendations I rarely read the blurb on a book, but last week I investigated the Waterstone’s 11 and noticed just how poorly my thoughts on the blurb matched with my enjoyment of the first chapter. If I had to rank the books based solely on their blurbs then Pigeon English wouldn’t have got near the top, but I only had to read the first few lines to know that it is a book I’ll love.

Photo credit: Darwin Bell, Flickr

Another problem with blurbs is that they often give away too much of the plot for me. I prefer to know as little as possible about the story that is about to unfold and even though few books give away the ending, most will explain the events of the first 50 pages. I don’t like having the first hour of my reading experience summarised in a few lines – it lessens its impact.

What is the solution?

I occasionally receive proof copies of books in plain, unmarked covers. I love the fact that I am unable to form an impression of these books from the cover – it leads me to begin the book without any preconceptions and an open mind. I know that people like their pretty covers too much for this to ever happen and so the most I can do is persuade you not to read the blurb before reading the book. Try to decide if a book is for you by reading words the author has written, not the publisher.

Do you like reading blurbs?

When deciding whether or not to read a book do you read the blurb or the first page?

Categories
Other

Read or Reject? #2

My New Year’s Resolution is to give up on books that aren’t outstanding. I don’t want to miss out on a gem that happens to have a poor beginning, so I hope that you can help me sort the wheat from the chaff.

Should I continue reading any of these books?

Searching for the Secret River by Kate Grenville

Five words from the blurb: Thames, Australia, memoir, writing, generations

I loved The Secret River and so was excited about reading this little book in which Kate Grenville explains the research that she did before writing that amazing piece of historical fiction.

Searching for the Secret River was easy to read and quite interesting, but I found that all the particularly interesting facts had been included in The Secret River and so I felt I was reading things I already knew. The process of research doesn’t really interest me – I much prefer to have all the detail coated in a fantastic plot and acted out by wonderful characters. I suspect that this book might to useful to anyone wanting to learn about researching historical fiction, but I am far more interested in reading the finished product. I gave up after about 70 pages.

And This is True by Emily Mackie

Five words from the blurb: van, father, kiss, unpredictable, love

This book is different! It begins with a son kissing his sleeping father. The sexual desire of a son for his father is something I haven’t read about before, but for some reason this book didn’t quite ring true. I never felt any emotional connection to the characters and although it was packed with graphic descriptions of naked men they didn’t feel realistic. Perhaps I’ve just read too many extreme examples of the male mind recently (eg. The Slap, A Life Apart), but this felt too gentle. My mind kept wandering from the page and so I gave up after around 100 pages.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Five words from the blurb: women, marriage, motherhood, shocking, elegant

I know a lot of people love this book, but I’m afraid that I have a lot of issues with it and thought I’d better stop reading it before it wound me up too much. The flowery language annoyed me straight away and the whinging women quickly drove me mad. I don’t know why I have such a problem reading about these privileged people, but I’m quite pleased that I now have the power to banish them from my reading life. If you enjoy books like The Victorian Chaise-longue or The Yellow Wallpaper then I know you’ll love The Awakening, but I struggled to get through 20 pages of it.

Was I wrong to give up on any of these books?

Is there magic lurking in the final pages?