If you are what you read, right now, I am

A hardbound monkey with a typewriter. ~ Bookish Girl is reading Vikram Chandra's Red Earth And Pouring Rain.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Forget what we're told/ Before we get too old.

HALF MOON INVESTIGATIONS
EOIN COLFER

Another one from my kiddie book phase. Not fantasy at all, just a really nice detective yarn starring a twelve year-old Irish boy nicknamed Half Moon. Definitely worth a read.

So don't delay/ Act now/ Supplies are running out.

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE OPAL DECEPTION
EOIN COLFER

Prebooked my copy of Deathly Hallows, and found myself itching for a really cracking kiddie read. Considered reading Half Blood Prince again, but I think I'll save it for July, just before HP7 is released. (In fact, I think I'll catch Order of the Phoenix as soon as it opens, then start rereading HBP, and finish just in time for the new book.)

Didn't really feel like Pullman. Neither did I want to take a chance and pick up Stroud, whom I've never read. (But sounds like fun.)

Which brought me straight to Colfer. Loved the first Artemis Fowl book. And though I didn't exactly adore the other two, they were quite good.

Needless to say, I loved Opal Deception. Nice plot. Elaborate doublecrosses. Lovely aside about responsibility versus action. Ultracute villain. And the usual dwarf gags.

Will get to Lost Colony really, really soon.

Lessons learned:

1. Eoin's pronounced 'Owen'.

2. Dwarf spit is luminous.

And it's sink or swim/ Like it's always been.

JIGS AND REELS
JOANNE HARRIS

Liked Chocolat. Made it through (a little falteringly, though) Blackberry Wine. Quite liked Five Quarters of the Orange. Still, would never count myself as a Harris fan. Picked this one up pretty much by chance, was in the mood for short stories somehow.

The book wasn't bad. Which isn't to say it was good.

I found her stories a little too self-conscious. And formulaic. You know, like they were set as writing project topics or something - very constructed.

There are some good ones, of course. One about the last original story ever written. Another, about a spooky cookbook. Discovered some others online, you could read them here, here, here, or here.

Dropped it halfway, largely due to my shortattentionspanitis, which has assumed chronic proportion in the last few weeks.

Plus I was dying to get into an Artemis Fowl state of mind.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Foolishly laying our hearts on the table/ Stumblin' in.

44 SCOTLAND STREET
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

Compulsory reading for all writers-in-hiding. Purely as a study in characterisation, 44 Scotland Street belongs on your bookshelf. It's beautifully written, and the episodic structure (it was originally serialised in The Scotsman) keeps it fresh all the way to the end - a quality I often missed in the Botswana books.

What I liked most about the residents of 44 Scotland Street wasn't their general weirdness (a la Woody Allen's Sherry, or Kugelmass), but their underlying normalness. Little Bertie just wants to play with his trains. Young Pat, a memorable gap year. Pushy Irene, some distraction from her dull marriage. Diffident Matthew, to be taken seriously. Philosophical Lou, to be loved.

Can't wait to read Espresso Tales.

Lessons learned:

1. Knowing that someone is wrong for you doesn't affect your falling in love with him. (Pat)

2. Your parents are/ were always right. (Pat)

3. Youthful vanity is so satisfying. (Bruce)

4. The systemic absorption of hair gel makes you immune to good sense. (Bruce)

5. Curiosity can only wound you seriously. It's boredom that will kill you. (Domenica)

Thursday, April 12, 2007

We are spirits/ In the material world.

JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL
SUSANNA CLARKE

Heard so much about this book. All complimentary, too. Imagined it to be a bit like Pullman, which I think it is. But I never quite sank my teeth into it.

I don't know if it was the teeny-tiny print of my edition. Or the fact that it was set in the eighteenth century.

It just gave me this strange(!) CS Lewis vibe.

Maybe I'll come back to it at a later point in time. It's happened with Tolkien. And Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

Or then again, maybe I won't.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Sending out an SOS/ Sending out an SOS.

ADRIAN MOLE: THE CAPPUCCINO YEARS
SUE TOWNSEND

Not the best of the Mole oeuvre, but fairly representational. Funny in bits, peopled with dysfunctional characters, and hysterically British.

Perhaps I discovered it too late. After all, the first Mole diary appeared in '82, a good fourteen years before Bridget introduced us to a world populated by Colin Firth, singletons, smug marrieds, and f*kwits.

Gave up reading it a couple of times, but it's one of those harmless little books that forgive you easily. I really appreciate that.

Can't see myself as a huge fan, but the Mole books would fit quite comfortably on a shelf alongside Gayles and Fieldings.

Lessons learned:

1. There is a place in Leicestershire called Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Seriously.

2. Every British comic novel must feature an obsession with a TV character completely unknown to the rest of the world. For instance, Bridget worships the completely unfanciable (or so I thought till I read this!) Colin Firth. And young William Mole, Jeremy Clarkson.

Well, it's one for the money/ Two for the show.

BLUE SHOES AND HAPPINESS
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

Another happy Botswana tale that relaxed my frown lines and lowered my blood pressure the minute I started to read it.

It's the usual blend of tea and crime, set right by the traditionally-built Mma Ramotswe.

If you're planning to read it, do it now. If not, head straight to the Guardian's highly condensed version.

Lessons learned:

1. New shoes are good.

2. Agony Aunts are not.

3. Tea improves thinking.

4. Even the nicest of men have stupid, preconceived notions about feminism.

5. In Any Damn Thing vs. Happiness, Happiness always wins.

She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere.

AFTERNOON RAAG
AMIT CHAUDHURI

It's a slim volume of poetry cleverly disguised as a novel. Lyrical, romantic, and subtle as a feather, it barely lasted me a stifling summer afternoon.

A simple enough love story elevated by a delicate interlacing of flashback, dislocation, and irony, it's a book so light that it practically evaporates as you read it. (Cotton candy comes to mind, but, unfortunately, that's a phrase reserved for a different kind of writing. However, I must admit that it's closest to describing the deliciously sweet floatiness of Chaudhuri's prose.)

I loved its elegance. And the sureness of its writing. (Remember the phrase 'felicity of expression'?)

Will be reading more of him, I'm sure.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Showers wash/ All my cares away/ I wake up to a/ Sunny day.

Five months of books. Of words read, savoured, and, by now, forgotten. A few linger, and those I cannot ignore.

THE ROBBER BRIDE
MARGARET ATWOOD

Zenia is every woman you know, mixed up with little bits of yourself. (Or the reverse, if you're me, but that's pretty damn unlikely, isn't it?)

It's a lovely read: light, unassuming, and sure-footed. As someone I know commented, it's the sort of book you believe no man should read, because it lays bare the inner workings of every woman's heart and mind.

HOUSE OF LEAVES
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI

Mysterious, engaging, and quite astonishingly scary. It's an ambitious debut, that I've heard, more than once, compared with White Teeth. And it's true, they share a great deal: a perfectly self-assured voice, a refusal to be dumbed down, and a strangely endearing density.

It taught me a new word: ergodic, meaning a kind of literature that requires effort to be read.

It's a lovely book, on many levels, and I'm just surprised I haven't run into it earlier.

SACRED GAMES
VIKRAM CHANDRA

Took ages to make my way through this one, as it was simply too heavy a book to carry around with me. Was completely worth the effort, though, since it's beautifully written, and, in combination with Shantaram and Maximum City, forms a sort of 2006 Bombay trilogy for me.
 
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