Category: Updates and information

Top Ten Tuesday – Books with a high page count

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. This weeks top ten is books with a high page count. I’m sometimes wary of reading long books because I hate not finishing a book so usually make myself carry on reading even if I’m hating it but here are 10 with 500+ pages

  1. Middlemarch – George Elliot – 912 pages – This was a lot better than I expected. Elliot’s prose was enjoyable and the story was fairly interesting. I’m not sure it really needed to be so long though.
  2. A Widow for One Year – John Irving – 576 pages – My second Irving and while not as good as The World According to Garp it was suitably weird and interesting.
  3. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides – 529 pages – Very enjoyable tale of three generations of the same Greek-American family.
  4. Tigana – Guy Gavriel Kay – 676 pages – A second attempt at this one. An excellent fantasy novel. I’m glad I persevered this time.
  5. 11/22/63 – Stephen King – 849 pages – A interesting time travel tale, much better than the TV show with James Franco.
  6. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel – 653 pages. I read this last year and it was a bit of a slog. It started well and ended well but I felt a bit bogged down in the middle. Still unsure if I am going to read on.
  7. Moby Dick – Herman Melville – 720 pages – This was a bit of a slog. There are some good moments of adventure but also lots and lots of information about whales.
  8. Labyrinth – Kate Mosse – 515 pages. I really enjoyed this holy grail fantasy. It’s much cleverer than the Da Vinci Code although it’s just as absurd. I probably will read on but I haven’t yet.
  9. Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon – 776 pages – I did not enjoy or understand this one but I slogged my way through it. Not sure it was worth it.
  10. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – 1392 pages – This was a bit up and down. Some of it was really enjoyable but I found the war elements less interesting than the personal relationships of the various characters.

Top Ten Tuesday – Genre freebie – Horror

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

How it works:

I assign each Tuesday a topic and then post my top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join me and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

This week’s Top Ten is a genre freebie. I have decided to choose horror as it is a genre I have read for a long time and one I still enjoy.

  1. Let the Right One In – John Ajvide Lindqvist – I read this after watching the film and enjoyed this much more. It’s darker and more disturbing’
  2. Thinner – Richard Bachman – For some reason this book has stuck with me. I read it a long time ago but it still gives me the creeps to think about it. The way he just keeps getting thinner still makes me shudder.
  3. The Rats – James Herbert – Another book that I read in sixth form but that had a long lasting effect on me. I’m not normally freaked out by animal stories but Herbet hits the right note of horror all the way through.
  4. The Stand – Stephen King – It’s hard to pick a Stephen King book – I easily could have picked 10 by him for this list – but this is one of the first post-apocalyptic stories I read which sent me down a new reading avenue for a while afterwards.
  5. Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin – This is a masterclass in suspense and even though I had seen the film, the book was still incredibly tense.
  6. I am Legend – Richard Matheson – I recently re-read this and I had forgotten how good it is. A vampire tale with a difference. Difficult to say much without spoilers but needless to say the film of this is one of the worst adaptations of a horror film that I have seen.
  7. The Road – Cormac McCarthy – More post-apocalyptic horror from McCarthy. I had read a couple of his westerns before this which blew me away. Shame he didn’t write more in this vein.
  8. Dracula – Bram Stoker – A classic and another story that the films don’t really do justice to.
  9. Some of Your Blood – Theodore Sturgeon – This is a disturbing tale which starts with the psychological evaluation of a soldier and doesn’t reveal what he has done until the very end. Very dark.
  10. The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells – I think this is my favourite of Wells’ books. Again, this is different from the film with a dark description of one man’s descent into madness/

Discworld re-read – The Colour of Money.

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I decided that I would start to re-read the discworld books in order. It was a decision made because I wanted to read something that I knew I would like. I’ve been struggling a little so far this year with deciding what to read and then picking things that I don’t really get on with. I’m not intending to read only Pratchett but maybe every other book will be a Pratchett. I haven’t ever read the whole series in the right order. My first one was Pyramids which I bought in the early 90s. I enjoyed it but I was a bit slow to start reading any others (perhaps because it is a stand alone story). For a while, I picked them up in haphazard fashion, buying new releases while trying to catch up with previous ones although from about 2000 onwards, I was reading them in the right order.

So I started last month with The Colour of Magic. It is strange reading it now, a bit like watching the first episode of a comedy show that you really like but which didn’t quite gel at the beginning. The characters were all there, the setting was the same but things definitely felt a little undeveloped. Death was a different character, colder and less likeable. Of course, as yet, he hasn’t been Bill Door or the Hogfather so his character development is all in the future.

Rincewind and Twoflower make a good pairing though. Twoflower is an excellent comic invention with his naivety only matched by his ability to get into dangerous situations. Combined with Rincewind’s abilty at running away, this makes for some classic Pratchett comedy. Even so, I felt like there was something lacking. I’m not even sure what it was but I definitely didn’t enjoy this as much this time round. I already know that the next two books (The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites) are not ones that I love so it will be interesting to see what I make of them this time round.

Top Ten Tuesday- Top Ten Titles to do with Spring

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

How it works:

I assign each Tuesday a topic and then post my top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join me and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

I’ve changed this weeks Top Ten a little as it related to book covers that are spring like. I’m not very good at remembering what book covers look like so I’ve gone for titles that relate to spring and nature.

  1. Hag-Seed – Margaret Atwood (2016) – One of my favourites of Atwood’s recent novels. A rewriting of The Tempest set in a prison, where Felix plans retribution for losing his job.
  2. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep – Joanna Cannon (2016) – This coming of age story started well and I enjoyed the narrative voice but unfortunately it became unconvincing.
  3. Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes (1966) – A thought experiment about the effects of intelligence on the way other people treat you. An excellent read.
  4. The Swan Thieves – Elizabeth Kostova (2010) – I enjoyed reading this – I gave it 4 stars – but I admit I can’t remember much about it. It’s about art and Impressionism but it clearly didn’t make a huge impression on me.
  5. The Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt (1986) – When his son comes out, a father begins to question his own sexuality. An excellent family tale.
  6. Black Swan Green – David Mitchell (2006) – My favourite Mitchell – probably because it is the most straightforward. A coming of age tale.
  7. Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens (2018) – Unlike almost everyone else, I didn’t get on with this book. I found it unconvincing and didn’t get on with the characters.
  8. Rabbit Run – John Updike (1960) This was a depressing read and although it was well written I didn’t enjoy it and I haven’t been able to make myself read anymore of the series.
  9. Cloudstreet – Tim Winton (1991) – An excellent family drama set from the 40s-60s in Australia.
  10. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham (1957) – When all the women in one village become pregnant at the same time, the children are bound to be a bit unusual. As ever, Wyndham is most concerned with how people react to the children and their telepathy. Much recommended.

Reading last year and this.

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I didn’t set out to make this the year I read more female authors although every year when I look at what I read, I think that I should. Nonetheless, that is what has happened. 13 out of the 20 books I’ve read this year have been by female authors. This is a lot more than I would normally read. I’m not sure why I tend to be drawn more to male authors. I tell myself that I don’t think about the gender of the writer but there must be something that directs my attention in that way. Perhaps it is the genres that male and female authors stereotypically write in. I’m certainly no fan of romance (and yes I know, some men write romance. I’ve never read Nicholas Spark and I really don’t like David Nicholls. One Day is one of my least favourite books.) Anyway, for whatever reason, there were more women this year. Mostly, it was a good thing with some very enjoyable reads such as Labyrinth by Kate Mosse and Blue Lightening by Ann Cleeves. The only real disappointment was The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. It’s a long time since I read The Lovely Bones but I really enjoyed it. The Almost Moon was nowhere near as good. Given the difficult mother daughter relationship at its heart, it should have been exciting and interesting but it was sluggish and I was bored by it.

I wanted to have a more relaxed reading year after years of doing reading challenges. The aim was to read some of the big thick books that were on my shelves and that I’d been avoiding. I only read 20 books but some of them took a while. (Also I no longer have a long commute or a lunch break when I get to sit and just read.) I felt like I was reading Wolf Hall for most of the year. Not that it wasn’t enjoyable but it was a slog at times. I enjoyed the beginning and the end but almost abandoned it in the middle. I’m not sure if I’m going to read the others.

Highlights of the Year

1. Labrynth – Kate Mosse

2. Mother’s Boy – Patrick Gale

3. Between Shades of Grey – Ruta Sepetys

Top Ten Tuesday – Books I DNF

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This weeks list is top ten books I did not finish. It isn’t often that I DNF a book. I’m not sure what I think will happen if I abandon a book but I tend to struggle on. The ones on this list really annoyed me.

  1. Whatever Love Means – David Baddiel – Tedious exploration of masculinity and sex which is neither exciting or clever.
  2. Lorna Doone – R. D. Blackmore – I had seen an adaptation of this and really enjoyed it but the novel was slow and lacking in tension.
  3. The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith – Peter Carey – This was a very strange book. The style was hard to read, the events made no sense and I didn’t care for the characters.
  4. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky – I really wanted to enjoy this but I didn’t really get that far. The protagonist was annoying and the narrative was stodgy.
  5. The Virgin’s Lover – Philippa Gregory – This was about Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley and reads a bit like Carry on Tudors. Ridiculously bawdy.
  6. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne. The prose style was unreadable.
  7. On the Road – Jack Kerouac – Sexist nonsense. Perhaps he should have taken longer than three weeks to complete the first draft.
  8. Atonement – Ian McEwan – I finished this but I genuinely wished I hadn’t bothered. I won’t spoil it but to me it felt like McEwan had said ‘and then they woke up’ at the end. It felt lazy and annoying.
  9. The Time Traveller’s Wife. – Audrey Niffenegger I did in fact finish this but only because the thing that annoyed me was right at the end. To be fair, I was already a little irritated but when I realised Clare waited to see Henry one more time, it tipped me over the edge. I know it’s supposed to be romantic but if I’d realised that was the end, I’d definitely have stopped earlier.
  10. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Schaffer – Another time the film was a lot better than the book. Very disappointing.

It’s been a while…

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I decided this year not to do any reading challenges or make any lists of what I was going to read. I finished the TBR challenge last year but I didn’t finish the blogs so I decided no more challenges. My only plan was to read some of the fatter books on my shelf. I didn’t even sign up to the Goodreads challenge as I find that stressful if I get too far behind – which I would if read some long books. I didn’t realise the impact this would have on my blogging but suddenly it is April and I haven’t written a single one. Not good.

It is a little weird not to have a plan. For the last five years, I have always known roughly what books would read and it is weird that everything is now open to me. My only thoughts at the moment are I will probably read Wolf Hall, The Green Mile and A Prayer for Owen Meany as they have been on my shelf for a while but I am currently reading The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt on my kindle and I suspect that is going to take a while so I don’t want to read another long fiction book until I finish that. As such, I am reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow at the minute which is a bit lighter.

So far this year I have read the following:

  1. Between Shades of Grey – Ruta Sepetys (2011) 4/5 I was given this for Christmas and I really enjoyed it. It tells the story of Lina a Lithuanian teenager who is suddenly removed from her home by Russian soldiers and sent ultimately to the Arctic Circle. This was a bleak, difficult story about an area of history I was unaware of and it was definitely worth a read.
  2. Big Little Lies – Lianne Moriarty (2014) 3/5 This had been on my kindle for a while. It was okay chick lit with some heavier themes than I was expecting. I did see the twist coming though.
  3. The Evil Seed – Joanne Harris (1992) 4/5 I bought this not realising that it was Harris’ debut novel and had been out of print for a while. It was quite different from the other of her novels that I’ve read as it is a vampire tale but it was still well written with parallel stories and a good amount of tension.
  4. The Sellout – Paul Beatty (2015) 5/5 This has also been on my kindle for a couple of years. It won the Man Booker Prize in 2016 and I can see why. It is a biting satire on the state of race relations in the US, looking at slavery, segregation, celebrity, sociology and stereotypes. First 5 star read of the year.
  5. Tigana – Guy Gavriel Kay (1990) 4/5 (The first of the tomes at 676 pages) I had been meaning to read this for a while but I admit I found its length a bit off putting. I had made an attempt at it while I was at university in the nineties but didn’t manage to finish it even though I remembered enjoying it. Although it took a long time to get through, I’m glad I read it. It was a beautifully written fantasy with action, romance and interesting characters.
  6. Mother’s Boy – Patrick Gale(2022) 5/5 I picked this up about a month ago in a charity shop (much to the annoyance of my husband as I’m not supposed to be buying books). It is a fictional telling of the life of Charles Causley. Not that I knew anything about Causley but Gale is one of my favourite authors so I wanted to read it quickly. It is written from the points of view of Causley and his mother who had a complicated relationship and describes his life as a signalman in the navy. Thoroughly recommended.

TBRYear 10 – 1. The Children of Men by P. D. James

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Genre: Dystopia

Narrative style: Chronological, shifts between first and third person.

Rating: 2/5

Published: 1992

Format: Kindle

Synopsis: Babies are no longer being born anywhere around the world. This has been so for over 20 years. Theo Faron is merely getting through his days with no hope for the future – either his own or that of civilisation. Then he meets Julian who is part of an activist group. Theo is immediately attracted to her and agrees – against his better judgement – to help the group out.

Time on shelf: I’ve wanted to read this for a long time. I bought this copy about three or four years ago but I kept overlooking it.

Reading challenges: TBR Challenge

I really wanted to enjoy this. I’m a big fan of dystopias (The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984 and Brave New World are some of my favourite books) but I couldn’t get to grips with this one. It’s a shame as James clearly had some interesting things to say about power and its abuses. The things she describes happening are apt and I could imagine that would be how things would go if such a dreadful thing were to occur. Unfortunately the plot and characterisation didn’t live up to that promise.

My first problem was with Theo’s first person narration – written as diary entries. I know that he was a historian and also bored with his existence but did his voice have to be so dull and plodding? He is also an unpleasant person with barely a thought for anyone else. He accidentally ran over and killed his daughter but shows little feeling for the child or for her mother when she is grieving. Don’t get me wrong, I love a less than perfect hero as much as the next person but Theo was almost impossible to like. There was no way to root for him.

James switches from Theo’s diary entries to third person narration from Theo’s point of view every couple of chapters. I wasn’t really sure why she used this device as it didn’t allow the reader access to anyone else’s thoughts. It did at least save the reader from the tedium of Theo’s first person voice. About halfway through the novel, Theo throws away his diary and the novel from then on is in third person. Fair enough but there were third person chapters before that happened.

The plot is very slow moving. It feels like a long time before anything happens. Even once Theo has met Julian, things don’t speed up. He agrees to help her and the other members of the ‘five fishes’ group after seeing the horror of a ‘quietus’ – the government’s way of dealing with the immense number of elderly people – where the elderly are expected to ‘voluntarily’ commit suicide when they reach a certain age. (This was one of the better parts of the book. Theo is forced to think for himself and to realise that the Government are actually not as good as he thought.) This is further brought home to him when he naively goes to visit Xan, the Warden of England, who also happens to be his cousin and finds he cannot persuade him to change any of his ideals.

I felt that James could have picked any issue to write this dystopia. While there are details of women christening their pets or pushing around dolls in prams because the focus is on Theo (who didn’t even love the child he had) we don’t see much of the emotion of the situation. There is no longing for a younger generation from him. He is only concerned for himself. At the end of the novel, Theo shoots the Warden and takes the ring that symbolises his power. It seems that he will be the next leader of England – especially as he can now introduce the first baby born since 1995 to the world. Given Theo’s lack of feeling for others, it is doubtful he will make a better leader than Xan. The novel ends with him baptising the new baby suggesting his new sense of power and Julian (the baby’s mother) can only look on, pushed aside as surely as she would have been if Xan had still been in charge. James makes a strong point about power and the way men push women aside even when they are needed for the most important job in the world. I just wish that the story that brought us to this point have been better.

Round up of last year

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I lost my blogging mojo in the middle of last year. I’m not sure why. I was a little busy but no more than usual. I could have done it but I just couldn’t bring myself to write them. In the end, I wrote the blogs for TBR Challenge 2022 (hosted by Roof Beam Reader) but even then I only just managed to finish by the end of the year. I read the last book – The Princess Bride – by the start of December but didn’t manage to write the review until the end of the month. I’ve been meaning to write this round up for days. I had to make myself sit down and do it.

It isn’t general apathy. I’m reading and writing as much as I can. I haven’t read as many books as previously (33) because I am commuting less and I don’t have a lunch break where I can just sit and read anymore but I’m still enthusiastic about reading. I’m hoping that I’ll get back into it this year as it is something I do enjoy. I’m not going to try to review every book I read – although it is my intention to do the TBR Challenge again because it is enjoyable and helps me read books that have been hanging around on my shelves for ages.

As for reading. it was generally quite a good year. Quite a few of the books I read for the TBR Challenge were very good – Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt and Ananci Boys by Neil Gaiman were all excellent and I would thoroughly recommend. Other favourites of the year were Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead. I didn’t manage to finish Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky which was disappointing but I made a decision a few years ago that I wasn’t going to struggle on with a book that was annoying me and I found I had little care about the narrator and his plans. Life’s too short to read a book that isn’t pleasing.

List of what I hope to read this year:

  1. The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimananda Ngozi Adiche – Finished 21/9/23
  2. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis Currently reading
  3. The Man in the Red Coat – Julian Barnes – Finished 28/1/23
  4. The Tennant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte
  5. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – 10/3/23
  6. The City and the Stars – Arthur C. CLarke – Finished 8/1/23
  7. Invisible Women – Caroline Craido-Perez
  8. The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan – Finished 2/8/23
  9. I, Claudius – Robert Graves
  10. Munich – Robert Harris – Finished 7/3/23
  11. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A Heinlein 17/4/23
  12. A Widow for One Year – John Irving – Finished 26/11/23
  13. The Children of Men – P. D. James -Finished 20/1/23
  14. Fludd – Hilary Mantel
  15. No One Writes to the Colonel – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  16. All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
  17. Big Little Lies – Lianne Moriaty
  18. Me Before You – Jojo Moyes -Finished 11/10/23
  19. Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell – Finished 10/5/23
  20. Dr Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
  21. Tales of Mystery and Imagination – Edgar Allen Poe – 29/4/23
  22. The Ministry of the Future – Kim Stanley Robinson – Finished 2/10/23
  23. Touching the Void – Joe Simpson
  24. The Accidental – Ali Smith – Finished 31/7/23
  25. N-W – Zadie Smith
  26. No one Here Gets Out Alive – Danny Sugarman and Jerry Hopkins – Finished 4/7/23
  27. The Magician – Colm Toibin – Finished 17/3/23
  28. The Return of the King – J R R Tolkien – Currently reading
  29. Black Mischief – Evelyn Waugh 26/5/23
  30. The Golem and the Djinn – Helene Wecker 2/6/23
  31. Harlem Shuffle – Colson Whitehead

The long road to being published

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I’d forgotten how soul destroying this process can be. And I’m not even up to submitting my work yet. Nowhere near. For the last few weeks, I’ve been hunched over The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, looking up publisheers on the internet, making notes. I’ve a long list of publishers and information. But I’m still no nearer sending my work out then I was when I wrote the last blog post saying I was starting on this road. I know this is why people decide to self publish. It’s why I did all those years ago when I published Shattered Reflections.

One of the main problems is that anyone who looks remotely like they might suit me and my work is currently not open to submissions. It may be that this is not the best time to be trying to submit work. This may be due to lockdown and not working in the office. Or it may be (as someone suggested on Twitter) that they are snowed under with all the people who started writing during lockdown. Either way it is incredibly frustrating.

There are also a lot of publishers who, while claiming not to be vanity publishers, expect the writer to pay towards publication. I can’t afford to do this anyway but even if I could, I’d be dubious. The whole idea makes me feel uneasy. At least part of the point of publishing in a more traditional way is so that I don’t have to take the risk of potentially losing any money.

Another issue is the length of my manuscript. A lot of publishers set maximum length at 120000 words and Choose Yr Future is 158000 words. Quite a lot to lose. I’m not sure that I could make those sort of cuts even if I wanted to. I’ve already done what seems like a lot of hard work, getting it to where it is now. I don’t really want to start messing around with it again. It’s worth noting for the future though. I have a lot of half spun tales hanging waiting to be chosen for the next project.

So, the upshot is I’m no further forward but I’m not giving up. I’m determined not to go the self publishing route this time. I’m starting to look at agents instead of contacting publishers direct. I’m still searching for publishers which fit and are open for submissions. I must confess that patience isn’t really a virtue I possess but, for the minute, I’m sticking to this path.