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Weekly Geeks – Week 3, 2009

Weekly Geek Task Three:

In the third Weekly Geeks of 2009, let’s have fun with the classics. For our purposes, I’m defining a classic as anything written over 100 years ago and still in print. (If your memory needs jogging, see: Classic Literature Library for examples.)

For your assignment this week, choose two or more of the following questions:

1) How do you feel about classic literature? Are you intimidated by it? Love it? Not sure because you never actually tried it? Don’t get why anyone reads anything else? Which classics, if any, have you truly loved? Which would you recommend for someone who has very little experience reading older books? Go all out, sell us on it!

Apart from a few I read at school I have read very few classics. In fact, I have read three: Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights (which I finished reading yesterday). I always feel that I should read more of them, and I’m going to try to in the future. Older books are a lot of effort for the reward given – I much prefer more modern books. Perhaps I’m just not reading the right ones?

I’m afraid I haven’t read any classic that I could recommend to someone else, as I haven’t liked any of them enough. I look forward to seeing which books other people recommend though, as I’ve committed to reading 9 classics this year (thanks to the 999 challenge)

2) A challenge, should you choose to accept it: Read at least one chapter of a classic novel, preferably by an author you’re not familiar with. Did you know you can find lots of classics in the public domain on the web? Check out The Popular Classic Book Corner, for example. Write a mini-review based on this chapter: what are your first impressions? Would you read further? (For a larger selection of authors, try The Complete Classic Literature Library).

I’ll do this later in the week, and do a separate review post for it.

3) Let’s say you’re vacationing with your dear cousin Myrtle, and she forgot to bring a book. The two of you venture into the hip independent bookstore around the corner, where she primly announces that she only reads classic literature. If you don’t find her a book, she’ll never let you get any reading done! What contemporary book/s with classic appeal would you pull off the shelf for her?

I guess it would have to be a modern day classic like The Color Purple or To Kill a Mocking Bird. I don’t really know what classic appeal is though, as for me classics don’t appeal at all!! I only want to read them so I can do well in general knowledge quizzes!

4) As you explore the other Weekly Geeks posts: Did any inspire you to want to read a book you’ve never read before—or reread one to give it another chance? Tell us all about it, including a link to the post or posts that sparked your interest. If you end up reading the book, be sure to include a link to your post about it in a future Weekly Geeks post!

I’ll come back and do this once more people have recommended a book. Hopefully someone will inspire me to read a classic or two!

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Other Richard and Judy Book Club

Richard and Judy Book Club 2009

Richard and Judy host a TV programme, here in the UK. Every year they chose a selection of books, and then review them on their show. I have been following their book club for a few years, and have read some great books thanks to them, including The Time Traveler’s Wife, Cloud Atlas and Random Acts of Heroic Love (one of my favourite reads of 2008)

This year Richard and Judy have moved to a new programme on a satellite channel called Watch. I don’t have satellite TV, so I can’t watch the show any more, but I’m still going to read the books, as most of their choices turn out to be great reads. So for the next few weeks, I will mainly be reading Richard and Judy’s 2009 selection, listed below. If you’re a follower of their book club please leave a comment below, as although I know there are 1000s of us out there, I haven’t come across any yet!

 

Richard and Judy’s 2009 Book Club Choices


Brutal Art by Jesse Kellerman

Sucked into an investigation four decades cold, Ethan will uncover a secret legacy of shame and death, one that will touch horrifyingly close to home – and leave him fearing for his own life.

Reviewed on Wednesday 21st January

 

 

Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

This true story has all the hallmarks of a classic gripping murder mystery. A body, a detective, a country house steeped in secrets and a whole family of suspects – it is the original Victorian whodunnit.

Reviewed on Wednesday 28th January

 

 

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

As she spins her tale, Scheherazade fashion, and relates equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life – and, finally, to love.

Reviewed on Wednesday 4th February

 

 

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

In rural Devon, six-year-old Joanna witnesses an appalling crime. 30 years later the man convicted of the crime gets out of prison. In Edinburgh, 16-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a doctor. But Dr Hunter has gone missing & Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. DCI Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person.

Reviewed on Wednesday 11th February

 

 

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

Jordan returns to visit his mother in jail. As a teenager he was expelled from his family & community, a secretive Mormon offshoot sect. Now his father has been shot dead & one of his wives is accused of the crime. Over a century earlier, Ann Eliza Young, the 19th wife of prophet & leader of the Mormon Church, tells her story.

Reviewed on Wednesday 18th February


The Bolter by Frances Osborne

Idina Sackville first met scandal when she left her very rich husband and two small children for a penniless army officer in 1918. She went on to marry and divorce a total of five times and be the founder and ‘high priestess’ of White Mischief’s scandalous Happy Valley of Kenyan settlers. Here, her great- granddaughter tells her story.

Reviewed on Wednesday 25th February

 

 

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

In early 2006, Chuck Ramkissoon is found dead at the bottom of a New York canal. In London, a Dutch banker named Hans van den Broekhears the news, and remembers his unlikely friendship with Chuck and the off-kilter New York in which it flourished: the New York of 9/11, the powercut and the Iraq war.

Reviewed on Wednesday 4th March

 

 

The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite by Beatrice Colin

This novel tells the story of an orphaned daughter of a cabaret dancer and her rise from poverty and anonymity to film stardom, all set against the rise and fall of Berlin, the background of WWI, the debauchery of the Weimar era, the run-up to WWII, and the innovations in art and industry that accompanied it all.

Reviewed on Wednesday 11th March

 

 

December by Elizabeth H Winthrop

11-year-old Isabelle hasn’t spoken in nine months, and as December begins the situation is getting desperate. As her parents spiral around Isabelle’s impenetrable silence, she herself emerges, in a fascinating portrait of an exceptional child, as a bright young girl in need of help yet too terrified to ask for it.

Reviewed on Wednesday 18th March

 

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

Tense and heartbreaking to its last page, ‘The Cellist of Sarajevo’ shows how life under seige creates impossible moral choices. When the everyday act of crossing the street can risk lives, the human spirit is revealed in all its fortitude – and frailty.

Reviewed on Wednesday 25th March

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Other Quiz

Can you judge a book by it’s cover?

I’m testing a new weekly feature for my blog, as explained in the Blog Improvement Project post below. I didn’t manage to find a quiz widget, so I can only really do one question at a time. It’s not quite what I wanted, but please let me know what you think.

All questions are based on the Amazon.co.uk site.

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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?

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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

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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!