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So, still being a rubbish blogger as big changes mentioned in previous posts are still having an effect and, quite frankly, I’m in a bit of a reading slump. However, if anything is likely to help me out of that it will be Carl’s annual Once Upon a Time challenge, year five and I think that makes it my third one, and hopefully this year I will finish. To make it easy on myself I will be signing up for The Journey, which only requires me to read one fantasy type book between 21 March and 21 June. Hopefully I can do better than that but we’ll see.
Virago Reading Week is here, and I have decided that despite workload and other stuff (I haven’t been very well recently and am vastly behind with everything) I would still try to take part.
I have pulled the following off the shelves:
- Good Bones by Margaret Atwood
- The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
- The Sheik by E M Hull
Although all my copies have lovely old fashioned green Virago covers.
And this challenge will also help with the TBR Dare. Hurrah!
Carl over at Stainless Steel Droppings is hosting his annual Sci-fi Experience between 1 January and 28 February, a challenge that isn’t really a challenge as there are no levels etc. to aim for but just an opportunity to celebrate all things science-fictionish.
I always enjoy the opportunity to indulge my love for space opera and other such things so plan to participate once again.
Given what’s on my shelves it will be a nice way to meet the TBR Dare as well.
I hear the call of Iain M Banks, Gary Gibson and Charles Stross to name but a few…..
Only thinking of doing this at the moment, given that I have told myself that because of my poor record I should be avoiding challenges. But this looks interesting, and I could keep it low-key i.e. only go for the Daring & Curious level which will only require me to read 5 books by 31 December 2011.
And given what’s on my TBR pile surely even I can manage that?
I’m not going to come up with a list yet as I need to mull this over. But I do have some interesting bits and pieces I can include. So, OK, I’m in.
So we’re now almost at the middle of September and it seems like a good time to take stock of my reading year and think about what’s coming up over the next few months, partly triggered by my starting to think of the books to take on holiday with me when I head off for 3 weeks at the beginning of October.
And of course the fact that I haven’t blogged for a while shows that my mind has been elsewhere – a mixture of work and domestic stuff which has kind of got in the way of my best laid plans.
So I am behind with my reviews – only two books behind to be fair, but that shows that I haven’t really been doing that much reading ; the whole standing on the train thing and working at home more than I have over recent months interfering with my reading routine which revolves around my daily commute. But they will be finished and posted over the next couple of days.
I had fully intended to take part in the read-a-long of The Handmaid’s Tale which Trish has been hosting here, but halfway through and I haven’t read a word despite my best intentions, so stepping back gracefully from that one. In fact I’ve decided to drop all of my remaining challenges as well, so the sidebar should be looking pretty clear shortly. Not seeing this as failure but an acknowledgment that my current workload and lifestyle just isn’t suited to directed reading. I may even make 2011 a challenge-free year but we’ll see how things go between now and the end of December; that may be a step too far!
Which brings me to one of my favourite challenges: RIP V, hosted by Carl. Again, we’re two weeks into this and I haven’t even started to make up a reading list for it; so not going to formally sign up but may find myself reading books that fit, and if I do I will blog appropriately. I am naturally drawn to creepy stuff at this time of year so it’s more than likely that I will end up taking part, but we’ll see.
This reads like a slightly downbeat post which it isn’t meant to be at all. I’m enjoying very much the book I’m currently reading (Candia McWilliam’s What to Look for in Winter) though goodness only knows how I’m going to write about something so gloriously complex and moving (but I’m definitely up for having a go).
So, no plans but just picking up whatever takes my fancy, which should be fun.
I always find it difficult to review a biography; I think if you are really going to do it justice you must have some understanding of the subject at hand, and by that I mean the substance of the person’s life. In this case we are talking about Duncan Grant, Bloomsbury figure and a major artist of the 20th century. And this is where I have to declare that although I know quite a lot about Bloomsbury (a mild obsession since picking up my first Virginia Woolf novel when I was a student) but not very much at all about the art world, which is what made this such a fascinating read.
So because of the reading I had done before I knew roughly where Grant fitted in terms of time and style, and his life does cover a period of significant change n the art world – as it says in the blurb, we are talking about a life that spanned Alma-Tadema to Gilbert & George. What I don’t know anything about are the technical aspects of painting, and although I’m sure I missed a great deal of the significance of the technical discussions I certainly didn’t feel horribly left behind, or indeed talked-down to.
Of course when it comes to a member of Bloomsbury then the private life is bound to be absolutely fascinating and that is very much the case here as you would expect. Again I knew a lot about Grant up to the point of Vanessa Bell’s death but afterwards was a bit murky, and the biography was very revealing about his family life and wider circle, his passions and friendships.
So, all in all a very worthwhile and absorbing read, with a great deal of information being passed on but never feeling that the reader is being talked at.
This was my first read for the Art History Reading Challenge.
Annabelle is a small rag doll who doesn’t know whether she is the cause of or merely a witness to the suffering of those people into whose possession she falls.
For suffering and misfortune are certainly all around her, and try as she might she cannot always warn or protect the innocent.
Or something along those lines.
Nightmares and Fairy Tales: Once Upon a Time is a creepily inventive little book of new horror stories and twisted re-tellings of fairy tales, all in graphic form. Wicked nuns, cruel parents, and even poor old Cinderella get the full treatment.
The only thing that saves this from totally over-the-top-grisly-goriness is the fact that it’s in black and white, but it’s still fairly horrible. And therefore right up my street!
This was my fifth read for the 2010 Graphic Novel Challenge, and did a lot to keep me awake during read-a-thon (largely cos I was too scared to sleep……..)
Signing up for the 2010 Graphic Novel Challenge gave me the perfect excuse (in case I really thought I needed one) to re-read the Neil Gaiman Sandman series from scratch, alongside the fascinating-and-occasionally-dipped-into-but-never-properly-read Sandman Companion by Hy Bender. And of course you start at the beginning, with Preludes and Nocturnes.
The thing about the need for an excuse is that my TBR pile (which with my tendency to be unable to avoid buying books plus all the stuff the Book God has in his possession) has actually become a TBR room, if not taking over the whole house, and so any re-reading has to be carefully thought through because there are just so many new(ish) books waiting for me to pick them up.
This is a problem that will not go away for two reasons:
- the Book God and I currently have a combined age of 106, and if you assume that we both started buying our own books as teenagers (let’s say arbitrarily 15) then that’s potentially 76 years of book buying
Which brings me to reason number 2:
- I am constitutionally incapable of getting rid of anything vaguely book shaped. At all. So I almost certainly have just about everything I have bought since I was a teenager
So you can see my problem.
Nevertheless the draw of Sandman was irresistible and I ploughed on, really enjoying the opportunity to get back inside a world that I have always enjoyed. And then another issue hit me – how do I review this? I mean, I can’t really review this as if I have come to it fresh, because I haven’t, and it is such a well-loved series and so many other bloggers have written about it all so eloquently. So I’m not going to attempt the feat at all.
I love it still, and if you haven’t read the series I urge you to have a go.
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I’ve also had a couple of relatively rare outings this week (I don’t count cocktails with Silvery Dude and friend on Wednesday because in my simple little mind that’s the sort of thing I should be doing every day); no, this is proper going out for the evening stuff, involving:
- on Thursday, the Birmingham Royal Ballet performing Sleeping Beauty at the London Coliseum – wonderful stuff with costumes based on the court of Louis XIV and a classic fairy tale on stage the way it should be done
- on Saturday, The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers at the Royal Albert Hall, with the full score performed live by the London Philharmonic Orchestra – and lovely to see Howard Shore, the composer, take a bow at the end.
And then home to Dr Who and River Song. What more could a girl want?
So having enjoyed volume one (reviewed here) and just so happening to have volume 2 kicking around the house for some strange reason, I decided to leap straight into the world of Fables once again with Animal Farm.
So after the fall out from the events of volume 1, not to be discussed here in case there is someone out there who has been even tardier than me in coming to the series, the Fabletown Mayor, Snow White, is heading upstate from New York for her annual visit to the Farm. This is the property, hidden by a glamour, where the non-human fables can live away from the prying eyes of the “normal” world. So we have the Three Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, a few dragons and sleeping giants and so forth.
But all is not well; these fables want to take their homelands back from the Adversary, and are fomenting a revolution in order to do so, led by a very different take on Goldilocks than you would have seen before. Can Snow White stop them, and who can she trust to help her?
If anything this was even more fun than the previous story, with some well-known characters from literature (Shere Khan and Baghera, anyone?) involved, plus who could resist animals with weapons? Not giving away what happens but the fable approach to justice is brutal if necessary.
And you have to feel a bit sorry for Colin the Pig.
Will definitely be continuing to follow this series.
This was my third read for the 2010 Graphic Novel Challenge.
Well, bit of a blogging hiatus as I recovered from the fun-packed-but-tiring read-a-thon with a mountain (well, small pile) of reviews to catch up on both here and over at the Screen God blog. Plus work has been really busy so not reading much that’s new.
All very feeble excuses but the tide is about to turn, and I’m going to start with Bill Willingham’s Fables:Legends in Exile, first in a graphic novel series which is hugely popular in the blog world, and to which I have come, as always, as a late adopter.
So the land(s) of the fairy tale and other legends have been taken over by the minions of the evil being known (so far) only as The Adversary, and they have all been driven out to live alongside us normal folk (well, in New York) in their own environment of Fabletown. And there has been an apparent murder, so the question is who killed Rose Red?
This is really great stuff if you like the idea of a world ruled by King Cole, where Snow White is the Mayor and the Big Bad Wolf (in human form) is a private detective. The mystery isn’t really the point though it’s a good way to get immersed in the world of the fables.
So in summary, a good story, strong artwork and a nice premise makes for an enjoyable read.
And I went straight onto volume 2 which I’ll review shortly.
This was my second read for the 2010 Graphic Novel Challenge.
Bride of the Book God 