Book Club Books

Book Club time! Love the chance to borrow some great books. With the Bloomsday readalong starting next week I needed to get my hands on Ulysses (James Joyce) and luckily for me my friend had a copy.  My first reaction? Damn this thing's HUUGE. Seriously how do people read this brick in one day? Then I looked inside and there are parts of this that aren't even in English! Here's an example extract that freaked the crap out of me:

"....Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident, Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivat-docentgeneralhistoryspecialprofesordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein....."

Oh yes, that just happened. It's okay, I enjoy the odd challenge, and who knows maybe I'll get to learn some Irish along the way as I'm sure that's going to be scattered around in there somewhere, so here we go. I have decided to give myself some leeway because otherwise I just know I may give up on this one. So I'm going to start this Bloomsday and I have to finish (no matter what!) by next Bloomsday. That way if things get too much I can put it down and pick it back up again without any feelings of failure. Right so lets do this!

Going from bottom to top in the pic next up I borrowed The Odyssey (Homer) as it's on my challenge lists and since there are references between Ulysses and The Odyssey I figured I should probably read them about the same time. I'll probably flick between these two books over the next few months.

Then I grabbed Always Looking Up (Michael J. Fox) as I read his first book Lucky Man and loved it, so I want to read his second since I really enjoy his writing style. Where the first is more about his career, early life and early diagnosis, this book is about his foundation and ongoing work with Parkinson research. 

Next up is Maus I (Art Spiegelman) a graphic novel set in World War II where the Nazis are represented as cats and the Jews are mice. This will be a good quick book to jump to when Ulysses's stream of consciousness text just gets a bit too much and I need a break and something a bit different.

Both After Dark (Haruki Murakami) and Anatomy of a Disappearance (Hisham Matar) were borrowed from last month's book club but I hadn't gotten to them yet so took them back to give others another chance to borrow them. But they're back in my pile again this month.

And finally grabbed The Happiness project (Gretchen Rubin), a non-fiction book about how to work towards a happier life by giving yourself little projects that mean something to you. A great book to pull me out of the depressing mood I'll be in when I realise I have been reading Ulysses for what feels like forever and I still have half the friggin' thing to go because it's so damn big! I'll need that.

Happy reading peops! 

Oops I did it again! Book Club Borrowings 15 Nov

Apologies for the terrible singer reference but after I only just said I had too many borrowed books on my shelf and I needed to get through them before the end of the year we had our book club and I just couldn't help myself and borrowed another 4 books! I mean seriously I think I have a problem....

This month I borrowed (from bottom to top) Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie), followed by The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Brontë), Little Women (Louisa Alcott) and finally Valley of the Dolls (Jacqueline Susann). It's not all bad as both Midnight's Children and Little Women are in my 100 book challenge list and the Little Women edition is a beautifully old one with illustrations. But it certainly looks like I won't be short of summer reading this year!

Now who has that song stuck in their head?!......

Book Club Borrowings 25 Oct

Last night was book club! Where a group of my fabulous friends get together and drink wine and chat.. oh and talk about books of course, after which we share these fantastic books amongst us. This month I had the pleasure of hosting and it was wonderful to see everyone.

This month I was very careful not to take too many as I still have books from the previous month that I haven't read yet.

So this time I only grabbed two. Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys) is the untold story of the wife of Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre. I fell in love with Jane Eyre when I read it recently and so I'm really looking forward to trying this follow up and it should be an interesting take on one of the characters. I also grabbed Affinity (Sarah Waters) as my friend likes her as an author but I haven't read anything of hers so thought this was a good one to try.

Happy reading everyone!

Book Club Borrowings 20/09

Last night was book club! Where a group of my fabulous friends get together and drink wine and chat.. oh and talk about books of course, sharing fantastic books around the group. This month we had a guest appearance from one of my friends who has just moved back from London who we all missed so it was awesome to see her there.

I was pretty lucky in the books that I borrowed. I took a few more than expected but that's usually the case at book club.

So this month I have the enormous hardback that is Fall of Giants (Ken Follett) set during the first world war. I loved his other books; Pillars of the Earth and World without End, and although I know Fall of Giants hasn't been getting very good reviews I haven't read a lot of books about the first world war so I'm really interested to read it. The Lollipop Shoes (Joanne Harris) aka The Girl with No Shadow (US edition) is the sequel to Chocolat which was such a nice book. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt) is a book I have seen around a lot but actually didn't know that much about. I was surprised to find out it is set in Ireland so I'm really looking forward to reading it. Botswana Time (Will Randall) looks like it will be a fun light read, always a good option for breaking up longer books. And finally the one I'm most excited about, To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee). I honestly do not know how I haven't read this book yet but I have it now so can't wait to read it and it will be another one to cross off my 100 book challenge list.

Happy reading everyone!

Book Club Borrowings 03/08

Last night was my monthly book sharing club with my friends where we share and review books. Books here are so expensive it's a great way to get your hands on more than you may normally can afford and to try books you wouldn't normally pick off the shelf.

I borrowed 4 books from last nights meet up. The one I am most excited about is The Help (Kathryn Stockett) as I have been wanting to read it for weeks now and my friend said she had it and would be happy to bring it to lend out. Yay! Next up is The Road (Cormac McCarthy) which is not the type of book I normally read as I can find post-apocalyptic stories too depressing but I'm willing to give this one a chance. Then I borrowed The Song of Troy (Colleen McCullogh) about the story of Helen and Troy and finally tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albem) a true story about Mitch Albem who gets back in contact with his mentor of 20 years previous, his professor Morrie Schwartz who is dying of ALS (motor neuron disease) and they start meeting up every Tuesday again like they used to in college.

I'm looking forward to all of them! But mainly The Help which I have already started even though I was supposed to read Jane Eyre next :)

Book Club Borrowings

My friends and I run a book club with a twist. Rather than all reading the same book and talking about it, every month we get together and each bring a book we have read and are willing to share with the group. After everyone has reviewed their books they all go into the pile and we take turns borrowing the books we would love to read. The next time we bring back the books we have borrowed and review them for the next person to borrow and bring a new book to add to the pile. It is a great way to share books among friends and to try books that you might not normally pick up off the shelf.

This month I have borrowed two new books from book club. The Alchemist is the story of an Andalusian shepherd boy who travels from his homeland in Spain to North Africa in search of the Pyramids, meeting a variety of spiritual messengers on the way.

And Three Cups of Tea follows Greg Mortenson as he returns to the Pakistan village that helped him recover from a failed attempt at a K2 climb in order to build a school for their community. There has been a huge media storm recently because of the expose by 60 minutes claiming that large parts of this book were made up and that there have been mismanagement of the charity funds but I still want to read it.