I did not do as well with the 50 books in a year challenge for 2008 as I'd hoped. It was quite disappointing really, but my final total was at least better than the year before! Despite having a good start, the amount of books read over the summer dropped drastically so that I was well behind by the time I'd got into the second half of the year. I had a bit of a spurt after September, thanks to my new collection of Doctor Who eBooks, but it was a case of too little too late really. I think by the end of December, I'd pretty much given up on 2008 and was already looking forward to starting afresh in 2009. Not a good way to end the year but let's hope that drive will push me to a better final target next year. I finished the year with three books still in progress which wasn't good for 2008, but hopefully will be a good starting point for 2009!
Final total: 38
Books Completed
The Ragwitch ~ Garth Nix
Tales of the City ~ Armistead Maupin
Inkheart ~ Cornelia Funke
Inkspell ~ Cornelia Funke
Landscape of Lies ~ Peter Watson
The
Phantom Tollbooth ~ Norman Juster
The Black Tattoo ~ Sam Enthoven
Mister
Monday ~ Garth Nix
Grim Tuesday ~ Garth Nix
Drowned Wednesday ~ Garth Nix
Sir Thursday ~ Garth Nix
Lady
Friday ~ Garth Nix
Shade's
Children ~ Garth Nix
The Medici Seal ~ Theresa Breslin
Doctor Who: Made Of Steel ~ Terence Dicks
Confessions of a Closet Catholic ~ Sarah Darer Littman
Luna ~ Julie Anne Peters
The World's Greatest Mysteries ~ Joyce Robins
Dragonology:
The Complete Book Of Dragons ~ Dr Ernest Drake
Flatmates ~ Chris Manby
Turbulent Priests ~ Colin Bateman
The Amulet Of Samarkand ~ Jonathan Stroud
Greece On My Wheels ~ Edward Enfield
Across
The Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other
Stories ~ Garth Nix
Butch Is A Noun ~ S. Bear Bergman
The Fall - Garth Nix
The Golem's Eye ~ Jonathan Stroud
Shadowmancer ~ G.P. Taylor
Ptolemy's Gate ~ Jonathan Stroud
The Feast Of The Drowned ~ Stephen Cole (eBook)
The Clockwise Man ~ Justin Richards (eBook)
The
Monsters Inside ~ Stephen Cole (eBook)
Baby Love: An Affectionate Miscellany ~ Rachel Hale
Made Of Steel ~ Terence Dicks
Winner Takes All ~ Jacqueline Rayner (eBook)
Wormwood ~ G.P. Taylor
The Pig Of Happiness ~ Edward Monkton
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West ~ Gregory Maguire
Books Ongoing
Traditional Tales from Long Long Ago ~ Philip Wilson [Michael reading to me]
Boston City Guide ~ Mara Vorhees and John Spelman
Deviant
Strain ~ Justin Richards (eBook)
This was the last month for the 2008 challenge and as I needed to read 14 books this mornth in order to make the 50 target, it was not looking promising. I'm not sure what I was doing this month instead of reading, but it must have been interesting because I only managed to complete two books in the entire month! 38 down, 12 to go.
Books Completed
The
Pig Of Happiness ~ Edward Monkton
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West ~ Gregory Maguire
Books Ongoing
Traditional Tales from Long Long Ago ~ Philip Wilson [Michael reading to me]
Boston City Guide ~ Mara Vorhees and John Spelman
Deviant
Strain ~ Justin Richards (eBook)
Waiting to be read
The Encyclopedia of Magic and Witchcraft: An Historical Exploration
into the World of the Magician ~ Susan Greenwood
The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry
Potter ~ Allan Kronzek, Elizabeth Kronzek
Judaism for Dummies ~ Ted Falcon, Rabbi Ted Falcon
Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish
Religion, Its People and Its History ~ Joseph
Telushkin
Night ~ Elie Wiesel, S. Rodway (Translator)
Hello
Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Teen Suicide ~ Kate
Bornstein
The Drag King Anthology ~ Donna Troka, et al
Sex Changes: Politics of Transgenderism ~ Patrick
Califia-Rice
Dress
To Kill ~ Eddie Izzard with David Quantick and Steve
Double
Dragonology
Handbook: A Practical Course In Dragons ~ Ernest Drake
Working
With Dragons: A Course In Dragonology ~ Ernest Drake
The
Dangerous Book for Boys ~ Conn Iggulden and Hal
Iggulden
Bringing Up Baby Dragons ~ Ernest Drake
Tracking And Taming Wild Dragons ~ Ernest Drake
Possibly re-read Deathly Hallows
I'd heard of this book thanks to the popular musical that it has now been turned into, but I didn't know a great deal of the plot. A friend recommended that I read it and so I did.
My first thought when I started to read it, was that there must be very few books where you know already what the ending is going to be before you even start it. Unless you have not seen or heard anything about the film of The Wizard of Oz, that is, and due to the impact it has had on popular culture, that has to be a very small percentage of people. So you know that the Witch dies in the end. It kind of reminded me in a very strange way of the play Evita; she starts the play off dead, and then you see how she got to that point so it's kind of told in reverse.
This is a very hefty book. It does cover a great deal of ground though; it starts from when the Witch is born right up to her final moments, which is nearly 40 years. Although the original Oz series is written for children, this is very definitely not an children's book. This is made quite clear from the start which includes mention of sex, and uses the words tits and cocks. At first, I wasn't really sure that such language was necessary, it seemed to smack rather of 'this is an adult book, so I'm going to use really base language, just because I can!' Especially when the same chapter had the phrase 'the cloven place' which seems to be an outdated term. It wasn't until later on that I realised the author was probably trying to portray how coarse the midwives were to use such terms in their speech, but I'm not sure it came over very well.
The main theme of the story is very much discussion of evil, what it is and whether it's inherent in our nature. It's also the original obsession of the Witch and so it gets brought up a lot throughout the book. Of course, with a title like Wicked, and the main character being a witch, it was bound to be an important factor, but it did get a bit repetitive though and seemed as though the Witch couldn't think of anything else to talk about.
There are lots of characters in this book. Some appear and reappear through the story, others aren't quite so important. The main character of course is the Witch herself. She has been given the name of Elphaba (pronounced EL-fa-ba) which was created from L. Frank Baum's initial, L-F-B. I thought that was a really nice touch and very clever. It also lead to the amusing short version 'Elphie' which of course, is not the kind of name you imagine a witch to have. Elphie turns out to be a really interesting character and is very well written. I was quite surprised to find myself both identifying and sympathising with her and her life experiences. She's a very well rounded character; she's intelligent, sarcastic but protective to those she loves, idealistic and well aware of her faults. With this being a book, rather than a film, I kept forgetting that she is also green which I think actually works in the book's favour. When we get to know a person, we look beyond their external appearance and I think that's why it helps here. I was surprised that the author had decided that green was not a normal skin colour even in Oz, I was expecting that a place which had talking animals would be a bit less uniform in that area.
I did find the book to be a bit heavy going in places and there were time when I just wasn't sure at all what it was trying to say. There's probably a lot in it that I didn't get, and it left me with lots of questions at the end. I didn't understand why there were all the references to Elphaba being 'a girl by nature, if not by choice' (I can't remember the exact quote) and there didn't seem to be any explanation for it. I also didn't understand why Nessarose had to be born without arms, as it was just completely bizarre. The plan of Madam Morrible which was mentioned twice didn't seem to have any point or resolution that I could see and neither was there any reason for Nessarose and Elphaba to be given the completely inappropriate nickname of 'wicked witch'. I don't know whether any further reads of the book would make these things clearer or not but I'm not sure I would actually want to read it again because it was so confusing and heavy going. It's a shame because it was a good book with some really good characters, but just left me rather bemused at the end.
The
Pig Of Happiness ~ Edward Monkton
Until just now, when I was researching Edward Monkton to write this review, I didn't know anything about the author or the books. I'd previously read one of his books, the one entitled Love and I didn't quite get it because there seemed to be some joke behind it that I was missing. Now that I know the author is actually Giles Andreae, the man behind Purple Ronnie; I can now see the similarity in the drawing style of the two creations, but I think that the ideas behind the two entities are quite different. The only reason I happened to pick up this book because it was a present that my sister had received and I was curious about the contents of a book with such a title. I flipped through the pages and within the space of about five minutes, I had read the entire thing.
The book itself is very short. It consists of 32 pages (according to Amazon) but I think that total probably includes the title page and the other pages that don't actually have any of the story on them. The story itself takes up very few pages at all. It has a crudely drawn cartoon style picture on one side and accompanying text on the other. Think of something like a slightly larger version of a Mr Man book, and you'll be on the right track.
It's hard to really comment on the plot of the story because to summarise the plot would be to tell the entire story - it's just that short! There's probably more words in this review than there is in the entire book! It's pretty much a simple philosophical tale, a modern-day parable if you will. At least that's the description from Amazon. It is a nice little story, with a nice inspirational moral at the end and the kind of thing that you could read whenever you need a lift or a bit of a kick in the arse to get motivated. Personally, that sort of book is not really to my taste, but it was a nice little story all the same.
I've not done so well this month, especially considering two of the books I've completed have been eBooks and two others only took me an hour each to read! I still haven't started the big thick library book that I borrowed the other month and it's getting close to renewal time again. I'm considering giving it up as a bad job and returning it instead. Only one more month to go and I doubt somehow that I will be able to read 14 books in it! 36 down, 14 to go.
Books Completed
The
Monsters Inside ~ Stephen Cole (eBook)
Baby Love: An Affectionate Miscellany ~ Rachel Hale
Made Of Steel ~ Terence Dicks
Winner Takes All ~ Jacqueline Rayner (eBook)
Wormwood ~ G.P. Taylor
Books Ongoing
Traditional Tales from Long Long Ago ~ Philip Wilson [Michael reading to me]
Boston City Guide ~ Mara Vorhees and John Spelman
Deviant Strain ~ Justin Richards (eBook)
Waiting to be read
The Encyclopedia of Magic and Witchcraft: An Historical Exploration
into the World of the Magician ~ Susan Greenwood
The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry
Potter ~ Allan Kronzek, Elizabeth Kronzek
Judaism for Dummies ~ Ted Falcon, Rabbi Ted Falcon
Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish
Religion, Its People and Its History ~ Joseph
Telushkin
Night ~ Elie Wiesel, S. Rodway (Translator)
[recommended by Michael - not to be read before bed]
Hello
Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Teen Suicide ~ Kate
Bornstein
The Drag King Anthology ~ Donna Troka, et al
Sex Changes: Politics of Transgenderism ~ Patrick
Califia-Rice
Dress
To Kill ~ Eddie Izzard with David Quantick and Steve
Double
Dragonology
Handbook: A Practical Course In Dragons ~ Ernest Drake
Working
With Dragons: A Course In Dragonology ~ Ernest Drake
The
Dangerous Book for Boys ~ Conn Iggulden and Hal
Iggulden
Bringing Up Baby Dragons ~ Ernest Drake
Tracking And Taming Wild Dragons ~ Ernest Drake
The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt Volume 1: Venetian Years ~ Giacomo Casanova, translated by Arthur Machen
Possibly re-read Deathly Hallows
I'd recently finished Shadowmancer which was my book to take to work and as this is by the same author I thought I would read this one too. I'd only read this once, when I first got it, and like Shadowmancer before it, it was similar to reading it for the first time. I had a vague remembrance of the plot, but that was no more knowledge than I would have had from reading the blurb anyway.
The general outline is that there's a comet which is going to crash into Earth, possibly killing everyone. It's set in Victorian London but it's hard to tell if it's our Victorian London or if there's a twist to it, such as a parallel universe or something of that nature. It's kind of our history but not as we would recognise it; it seems to be different somehow.
It's well written but could be possibly more engaging than it actually is. The writing style is not simple but seems to be quite hard work and for some reason any dramatic moments that happen seem to be told in a kind of monotone which makes them less dramatic and exciting than they could be. It's as if the author is detached from the story and has no interest in the telling of it. There seems to be a nod to Dickens with one of the characters going on some kind of mystical journey and awakening in an empty grave in a cemetary early one wintery morning. I'm not sure if the reference was intended or if any of the intended audience of young adults would have noticed it. It took me nearly a month to finish the book because as well as the dull writing style, once the angels and religion started to appear in it, I didn't want to read it any more. It was an effort to continue and I only did so because I don't like leaving books unfinished unless they are absolutely dreadful.
There are quite a few characters to keep track of and some of them have different names which makes it a little confusing. The air of detachment makes it hard to really care about any of them which is another reason why I found it so hard to maintain any interest in it. The ending is quite disappointing. It's totally undramatic, there's very little emotion in it and a lot of it seems to be completely contrived. It's almost as if the author either lost interest in it himself and just wanted to get it over with, or that he'd only got a certain amount of pages and so jumped to the ending because he was running out of space. It finishes with a hook that would seem to indicate a sequel but there was nothing in it that would make me feel the need to know more.
All in all, not a great book in my opinion. I don't think this is an author that I could really get to grips with. I don't like how he seems to bring religion to be the main point in all of his works that I have read, whether or not it would seem to be relevant.
Winner Takes All ~ Jacqueline Rayner
I had high hopes of this book because I'd listened to the audio book of The Stone Rose by the same author and quite enjoyed it. (Although some of that may have been down to David Tennant's wonderful reading of it, but there was an intriguing idea and a good plot anyway!) After my disappointments with the previous Doctor Who novelisations, I thought that I might not be quite so badly let down with this one. And I wasn't. It was much more enjoyable than the other novelisations.
I found the plot quite interesting initially: the Doctor and Rose are back in London and there's a craze for a new video game. People get scratchcards which give them a chance to win a console or a holiday, but as this is Doctor Who, nothing is ever as simple as it sounds. I liked how the use of video games made it relevant to today's culture and then used that as part of the threat. It was similar to the use of mobile phones and their networks which have been used in the actual programmes. Part of the plot required the Doctor to actually play the game and I wasn't quite sure what I felt about that. On the one hand, it was amusing to think of the Doctor doing something like that because it seemed to be so out of character for him, but on the other hand, it was so out of character for him, that I had to wonder if it really worked all that well. The main reason for him doing it was that he is so much more intelligent than any human that he would be the only one able to play the game to the end and win so there really isn't any alternative there, but it just jarred a bit for me.
The baddies here were original to the book. Actually, there were two sets of baddies: the ones that the humans are fighting and then another set that the first baddies are fighting! It sounds confusing, but in the context of the book, it wasn't. I didn't find either of the baddies to be particularly noteworthy and a little disappointing. Towards the end of the book, I began to wonder if the second set of baddies would actually turn out to be all that bad, and there is a twist in that area at the end but I did rather see it coming.
The characterisations were fairly good. The Doctor and Rose were quite decent but I wasn't sure about Mickey. Jackie was not in the book enough to really make an impression - something that I wasn't too bothered about as I didn't like the character anyway. An original character called Robert was an interesting addition. It was a little confusing as he was introduced as being a character in a book, but it was eventually made clear that this was just his daydream and his way of dealing with his life. I quite liked the character although I was never sure exactly how old he was. Sometimes he seemed to be about 10 or 11, but as soon as he started perving over Rose, he seemed to be more like 15 or 16. It was a little odd.
All in all, this was about the best New Series Adventure that I've read so far (not counting the audio book of The Stone Rose because I've yet to read the actual text version).
I read this only 6 months ago, but for some reason I read it again. It must have been a brief moment of insanity or amnesia. I didn't really enjoy it any more this time than I did back in May either. It's really not a great book at all but I've since got rid of it so I won't be tempted to try reading it again.
This book came to me direct from the publisher thanks to the Early Reviewer programme at LibraryThing. I wasn't really sure what to expect from it apart from lots of photos of babies!
Firstly I was pleasantly surprised with the size of the book. It's a hardback book and is pretty large and hefty. For some reason, I didn't expect a hardback, I thought maybe it would be a softback of some kind so that was nice. I think the hardback does it more justice though, maybe because it's more art and not a novel. The cover is rather eyecatching in a pale yet bright green and a photo of a baby covered in bubbles, bathing in the sink. There's an interesting effect to the image of the baby which makes it stand slightly proud of the background which is very nice but I'm not sure it enhances it any further. Another added factor in the book are the foldout pages which contain a bigger image than will fit on just two pages. I didn't realise this at first but it was an interesting addition and one that I think works quite well. There are only a couple which would be about the right amount, any more and it would be too gimicky, I think.
The photos are - in short - absolutely gorgeous. The colours are a strange combination of both intense and muted, in that they are vibrant even though the majority of colours in the photos are pastels or more subtle tones. There is also a softness to the photos which seems particularly visible in the closeups of the babies' skin which makes it seem velvety and as if it would be possible to feel it through the page. I think the level of detail in the photos helps with this as in some images the tiny downy hairs on the babies faces are visible and distinct. The subjects of the photos are basically babies and toddles of varying ages in different poses and settings. Some of the babies are very young and it must have taken a great deal of patience to get decent images from them!
One of the things that I do like about the photos, is that in the majority of them, there is no indication to the gender of the baby. They are all dressed similarly in nothing more than a pair of pants covering the nappies, occasionally with a hat. The beauty and personality of the baby comes through just as well, even without any gender indicators.
Most of the photos are accompanied with text of some sort, either a poem, quote or the definition of a term that includes the word baby. I was already aware that it contained information on baby names and how birthdays are celebrated around the world but was quite disappointed by both of these. The baby names contains examples of how half a dozen cultures chose the name for a baby; I was expecting more of a detailed list or explanation of this. The section on birthdays was quite interesting but again lacking in the amount of countries chosen. I was also quite startled to find that the information given on how birthdays are celebrated in England is completely inaccurate and bears no resemblance to any birthday tradition here!
All in all, it's a lovely looking book and the photos are wonderful. It didn't take me at all long to look through, maybe half an hour at the most. I'm not sure whether I'd look at it a second time though, there's not really a great deal of re-reading in it. It would probably be a lovely gift for anyone who is expecting a baby though.
Spoiler alert - the following review contains spoilers about this book.
I wasn't sure about this book from the start. I'd previously read a Doctor Who novelisation by Stephen Cole and did not enjoy it or his characterisation of the Doctor. Plus, with this one, the title seemed to have a bit of a giveaway about the nature of the monsters. It turned out that my suspicions were not without merit.
The characterisations here were marginally better than in Feast of the Drowned. Perhaps Stephen Cole has trouble with capturing the Doctor in his tenth incarnation and not so much with the ninth. It wasn't quite up to par but it was an awful lot better than in the other book. Rose wasn't great - she seems a lot younger than 19 here and certainly more of a troublemaker than has ever been suggested before. All the other characters were original, but the majority were bland, two-dimensional and nothing more than stereotypes.
The plot itself was an interesting idea. It certainly started off well. But then the monsters were revealed. Having my suspicions about who they were going to be, I was not surprised in the slightest. However, there was a twist. Unfortunately, it sank the book into the realms of very very bad fanfiction. Imagine a book where the Mary Sue is not the companion, but the monster. Yes, in this book, the monsters were not just Slitheen, but the Slitheens evil cousins, the Blathereen. I couldn't believe what I was reading. I expected it to be a joke, that the monsters were taking the piss at the expense of the Doctor, but no, it was supposed to be completely serious. I managed to finish the book, though not with a great deal of enjoyment. I'm glad that I don't have any more novelisations by Stephen Cole in my collection so far because I think I would be giving them a very wide berth or reading them with a huge grain of salt. Very disappointing.
