Day Three

Day 03 – Your favourite series

This is no secret .. it has to be Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books. They never cease to entertain and amaze me.

Day Two

Day 02 – A book that you’ve read more than 3 times

The book I've read the most is Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' .. I try to read it every year and probably have read it eight times, maybe more.

Other multiple reads are all the Jane Austens, Harry Potters and Nancy Mitfords 'The Pursuit of Love' which is my favourite comfort read when I have the mean reds.

Day One

Thanks to Frankie at the BCF for posting this 30 day list. I will try my best to grapple with it.

Day 01 – Best book you read last year
Day 02 – A book that you’ve read more than 3 times
Day 03 – Your favourite series
Day 04 – Favourite book of your favourite series
Day 05 – A book that makes you happy
Day 06 – A book that makes you sad
Day 07 – Most underrated book
Day 08 – Most overrated book
Day 09 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving
Day 10 – Favourite classic book
Day 11 – A book you hated
Day 12 – A book you used to love but don’t anymore
Day 13 – Your favourite writer
Day 14 – Favourite book of your favourite writer
Day 15 – Favourite male character
Day 16 – Favourite female character
Day 17 – Favourite quote from your favourite book
Day 18 – A book that disappointed you
Day 19 – Favourite book turned into a movie
Day 20 – Favourite romance book
Day 21 – Favourite book from your childhood
Day 22 – Favourite book you own
Day 23 – A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t
Day 24 – A book that you wish more people would’ve read
Day 25 – A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 – The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 – Favourite title
Day 29 – A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 – Your favourite book of all time

Day 01 – Best book you read last year

And straight away I'm conflicted. I'm going to say 'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides, I just loved the writing, and the story was original and both funny and sad with great characters.
I must also put a good word in for 'Neverwhere' by Neil Gaiman, he's just the master when it comes to inventive, fantastical, storytelling and for my money this is his best book .. so far.

The Good Fairies of New York

Synopsis: Morag and Heather, two eighteen-inch fairies with swords, green kilts and badly dyed hair fly through the window of the worst violinist in New York, an overweight and antisocial type named Dinnie, and vomit on his carpet. Who they are, how they came to New York and what this has to do with the lovely Kerry - who lives across the street, and has Crohn's Disease, and is making a flower alphabet - and what this has to do with the other fairies (of all nationalities) of New York, not to mention the poor repressed fairies of Britain, is the subject of this book. It has a war in it, and a most unusual production of Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and Johnny Thunders' New York Dolls guitar solos. What more could anyone desire from a book?

Review: If you like your fairies to be demure twinkly little things then you won't like this book. These fairies are whisky swilling, aggressive, potty mouthed and loose (in the moral sense of the world, it's perfectly ok for instance for brother and sister fairies to have 'relations' together .. in that way they're more akin to the animal kingdom than the human one,) and the style takes some getting used to, it's quite erratic, jumping from plotline to plotline, sometimes all on one page, in a jerky rather frenetic style. The fairies in New York are a bit of a mixed bunch, there is Morag and Heather (my personal favourites) a couple of Scottish fairies who are on the run (they are in disgrace after cutting up what they took to be an old sheet to make blankets, only it turned out to be 'The MacLeod Fairy Banner .. and to have the murderous MacLeod's after you is a fate worse than death.) They fall out very soon after arriving (which seems to be the story of their lives .. the MacPherson and MacKintosh clans being natural enemies) and take up residence with two humans .. the beautiful, flower loving, free spirited, Kerry who is suffering from Crohn's Disease and who just wants to be able to play all of the New York Dolls guitar solos and the obese, lazy and uncouth Dinnie who is obsessed by the TV sex channel and who plays the violin badly.

Morag and Heather are very funny, making jokes at each others expense, getting into fights and scrapes and generally causing mayhem wherever they go. The book does focus on these two in particular and I'm glad it does because I found them to be the best and funniest characters. Also in New York, dazed and confused after consuming too much whisky, beer and magic mushrooms are five more fairies who have run away from their tyrant leader .. Tala fairy king of Cornwall .. including his rightful heirs Petal and Tulip. Back in Cornwall King Tala is furious and wants them found at all costs (fearing that the rebels he is already fighting will claim them as leaders and usurp him.) Add to that the Italian, Chinese and Ghanaian fairy communities already resident in New York, Magenta the bag lady who believes she is a legendary Greek general (too much sipping on a 'Fitzroy' cocktail .. a concoction consisting of shoe polish, meth's, fruit juice and herbs) and the ghost of Johnny Thunders looking for his beloved stolen Gibson guitar and you have well, at least some of the plot.

It's great fun, but you do have to concentrate, it's all over the place and keeping track of all the threads takes effort. Also, whoever proofread it needs shooting because there are loads of mistakes (spelling mostly .. I wouldn't notice a punctuation mistake if it jumped up and bit me,) I gave up counting in the end. I think kids would enjoy it but the language and sexual references mean that it's entirely unsuitable which is a bit of a shame because, in a way, it falls between two stools. The book comes highly recommended by Neil Gaiman which is praise indeed (there's a great introduction from him saying that he didn't dare read it for five years because he was afraid it would be similar to the book he was writing 'The American Gods'.)

Entertaining but weird.

Burnt Shadows

Synopsis: In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders. August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later. There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound them together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerising in its evocation of time and place, "Burnt Shadows" is an epic narrative of disasters evaded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed.

Review: This book was lent to me by a neighbour and from the cover I didn't think it would be my kind of thing (actually after I'd read the book the cover bugged me even more.) The book is extremely ambitious, spanning decades and taking as it's backdrop the Nagasaki atomic bombing, Partition in India, 9/11 and the Afghanistan war and that is one of it's problems it's a little too ambitious and busy. These events are for the most part just backgrounds, they have an impact on the characters emotionally and physically but they are not explored in any great detail. When Hiroko (the main character and the one that remains in the book throughout) moves from Nagasaki after that 'unspeakable day' to Delhi I found myself wanting to stay and see how the country coped in the aftermath of such horror but the purpose of this story is to write about how people cope when faced with tragedy and displacement, how some triumph (or at least find a way of surviving) and how others falter and how all of this that can filter down and affect future generations.

If Hiroko was to turn up on your doorstep you might want to move out straight away as disaster seems to follow her around a bit but then, as we all know, man's appetite for war is unquenchable, and there's hardly a place she could go to on earth that hasn't had it's share of bloodshed. So back to the cover, Hiroko's father and fiancé are killed after the Nagasaki bomb falls and she herself is injured .. the kimono she is wearing melts into her back and she is left with burns shaped like birds from the pattern on her kimono ... lots of dead flesh and charred and puckered skin and this is what annoyed me about the winsome front cover .. I know it's only a representation and to realise it properly would have been gruesome but it cheapens her ordeal a bit and what's worse it's got a definite whiff of the Mills & Boon about it!! I've seen some beautiful covers for it since and wish that the story I'd read had been enclosed in one of them (because I'm ridiculously partial to nice covers.)

Anyway, back to the book, I won't go into detail as Waterstone's have written such a good synopsis (hurray, at last a 'fairly' short review.) I thought it was well written and interesting, there were parts of the story that bored me slightly and parts that confused but all in all I was gripped and the pages flew by. The ending was unexpected, there's a twist to the story which I didn't see coming (yeah .. I know .. no-one's surprised!) one to make you look for more pages in order to resolve it. It's half hinted at in the tiny prologue, there's a man taken to a cell and stripped naked, he suspects he will soon be wearing an orange jumpsuit, he wonders 'how did it come to this' but you don't know who he is or why he's in the cell .. you don't find out until the last few pages.

The book cover I liked more.

Crime and Punishment

Synopsis: A troubled young man commits the perfect crime - the murder of a vile pawnbroker whom no one will miss. Raskolnikov is desperate for money, but convinces himself that his motive for the murder is to benefit mankind. So begins one of the greatest novels ever written, a journey into the criminal mind, a police thriller, and a philosophical meditation on morality and redemption.

Review: I'll start with a quote from Virginia Woolf about Dostoevsky because she puts it better than I ever could ...“The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled around, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Outside of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.”

If he has written a better book than this then all I can say is wow! that book must be phenomenal because this one is just extraordinary. The book opens with a murder and that you continue, if not to have sympathy, then to have compassion for the murderer is quite an achievement. It's not as if the murder is an act of revenge or honour. It's a cruel and senseless act (which, through mischance, becomes even more so) and we're not told why Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov decides to commit it apart from that he feels in some way pre-destined to do it and also that he feels he could do some good with the wealth that will come from it and become an extraordinary man.

click here to continue review - possible spoilers

Perhaps it's his reaction to what he's done that convinces us his heart is not truly evil. His body sinks into illness and fever and his unquiet mind is a maelstrom of hallucinations and delusions which at times border on insanity. If anyone is going to incriminate him then it is he himself for his behaviour is nothing short of ludicrous. He revisits the scene of the crime and makes preposterous statements which hint at his guilt. He veers from wishing to conceal his crime to wishing to confess it, it's a burden that weighs him down and this burden is intensified one hundred fold when his behaviour attracts the suspicion of police detective Porfiry. I loved the depiction of Porfiry with all his wily sarcasm and veiled hints. His words weigh so heavily on Raskolnikov that they do far more damage than any outright accusation or arrest could ever do. They gnaw away at him and he tortures himself with thoughts of Porfiry and what he may or may not know. But more crushing to him than the crime itself is the fact that he has failed to execute it properly .. he will never be the great man he aspired to be and his pride is wounded.

Dostoevskys writing is quite reminiscent of Dickens (calling to mind 'Our Mutual Friend' in particular), perhaps even tipping into Dickensian sentimentality at times with his depiction of prostitute (not in the unwashed, syphilis ridden way or yet in the glamorous, good time girl sort of way but in the virtuous, chaste, sacrificing all for the family or they would starve type of way) Sonya, but he doesn't go overboard and get quite as maudlin as Dickens. Raskolnikov is drawn to Sonya and she may well prove to be his saving grace. There's a great mix of characters, the destitute Marmeladovs, the cunning and twisted Svidrigailov, the good humoured and amiable Razumhikin and Rodion's devoted and loyal mother and sister.

It is dark, brooding and claustrophobic (for a lot of it you are festering inside Rodion's head), there is hardly any light, but for all that it's still hugely entertaining. There is plenty of absurdity and of course lots of suspense .. you get caught up very quickly in this immense battle of good and evil playing out in the heart of Raskolnikov. But the tension doesn't belong solely to him there is plenty to keep you on the edge of your seat in the scenes between the evil Svidrigailov and Rodion's sister Dunya.

I'll end with another famous quote ..."All I can say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an illness." -- Robert Louis Stevenson on reading Crime and Punishment.

A House for Mr Biswas

Synopsis: 'A work of great comic power qualified with firm and unsentimental compassion' - Anthony Burgess. "A House for Mr Biswas" is V.S. Naipaul's unforgettable third novel and the early masterpiece of his brilliant career. Born the 'wrong way' and thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mohun Biswas has spent his forty-six years of life striving for independence. But his determined efforts have met only with calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the domineering Tulsi family, on whom he becomes indignantly dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in an arduous struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. Heartrending and darkly comic, "A House for Mr Biswas" has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels and this triumph of resilience, persistence and dignity masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of post-colonial Trinidad. 'A marvellous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels' - "Newsweek".

Review: This book is one of Susan Hill's recommendations from her book 'Howards End is on the Landing' and it's one of those books that mix comedy with pathos so although it's very funny in places there's an underlying sadness running through it. Though Mr Biswas's parents hail from India, the book is set in rural Trinidad where he is born. Mr Biswas (as he is always referred to, even as a baby) is ill fated from the start. When he is born, the midwife shouts that he is 'six-fingered and born the wrong way' and the pundit declares that 'he will have good teeth but they will be rather wide, and there will be spaces between them. I suppose you know what that means. the boy will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well' .. his family are warned to keep him away from trees and water and his father is forbidden to look at him for twenty one days and even then his first glance of him should be in the reflection of some coconut oil. Bad luck certainly seems to follow him around throughout his childhood and beyond. As a young adult, he goes to work for the Tulsi family at their store and is attracted to their daughter Shama, and writes her a love letter. The next thing he knows the Tulsi's have got them married off and he feels he has been tricked into it.

He spends the rest of his life trying to escape from the confines of being a Tulsi family member and all that entails. There are many generations of them living and working together and their lives are steeped in age old devotions, rituals and customs. There's a pecking order too and Mr Biswas, having only lately entered the family, is pretty low down. He'd like to be independent, he'd like a house of his own, he is constantly uprising, but most of his efforts are futile and his large and small rebellions thwarted. The story of his adult life is like one great big groundhog day, he needs a job, he needs transport, he needs somewhere to live. All of these things can and often are provided for him by the family, but he longs to break free and often does only to fail miserably and have to return with his tail between his legs (in spirit that is .. in truth he is anything but daunted and continues relentlessly with his verbal haranguing of the family.) So instead of living in a modicum of comfort he'll sometimes take himself off and attempt to have a 'house' built, only for it to turn out to be the most ramshackle old hut that ever was seen.

The person I felt most sorry for was his wife Shama constantly caught in the crossfire between her family and Mr Biswas with seemingly little affection from any of them. You don't get to know her well, you don't get to know anyone but Mr Biswas well, but you know enough to feel great sympathy for her and the children. There are small victories, Mr Biswas eventually gets a job working as a journalist for the Trinidadian 'Sentinel' (and this part of the book I loved, he writes some seriously outlandish articles and reports) and he is able to acquire a car but it's always two steps forward, two steps back. His ambition is to die in his own house and to liberate his son Anand through education (and much effort is put into this including feeding him on a 'brainfood' diet of milk and prunes.) Although you do root for him, he's not altogether likeable but still you find yourself laughing at his almost childish behaviour and insults. There's a part of you that admires him for refusing to conform but then there's another part of you that just wishes, for the sake of his family, he'd just settle for a quiet life. You want to both shake him and pat him on the back .. he really is a bizarre, frustrating character but an immensely interesting one.

It was a longer story than I thought, I have an old penguin copy and the book doesn't look very big but it turned out to have 590 closely written pages and it took me forever to plough my way through it. It didn't help either that the book started crumbling as I read it and I lost big chunks of it each time I picked it up. I enjoyed it though and want to read more by him, I was disappointed that this wasn't on the 1001, some other books by him are and I knew I'd seen it on a list .. it turned out to be Susan Hill's list of books she couldn't live without.