Sunday Salon: A book and a challenge.

England is back to windiness and rain - typical as I need to get out and buy some food! The Ask and The Answer arrived yesterday and so far I have left the package undone, it is going to be my reward this evening for spending this afternoon marking.


This morning I quickly finished the last few pages of Pretties by Scott Westerfeld, the sequel to Uglies which I reviewed here. This book starts with Tally a Pretty living the Pretty life. Hangovers, parties and a wide choice of clothes. Her friends are part of a group called the Crims who get up to adventures and misdeeds. Tally is eventually made aware of her pledge to test out a drug counteracting the brain lesions which are secretly inserted into people at 16 to make them compliant. She then spends the rest of the novel trying to get herself and her friends out of Pretty Town and on the run to the Old Smoke.
I enjoyed the first book in the series, but didn't like this one anywhere near as much. When Tally was a Pretty the book became very teenish (I so made up that word). And I kept thinking this will disappear, but it kind of stuck with the novel. I didn't feel that this one explored ideas of our lives and our preconceptions anywhere near as much as the first. I will however go onto read the third book Specials just so I have completed the trilogy.

Read for Barts YA Dystopian Reading Challenge.


The Twenty Ten Challenge hosted by the great Bart. This is me signing up for my fourth challenge for 2010 (I'm limiting myself to no more than 6 challenges at a time), luckily this one shouldn't be too hard to complete. To make it a bit more of a challenge I'm going to say that each book has to be by a foreign writer - hopefully helping me work on my Olympic Challenge.
Bart wants us to read 2 books for each of the following categories:

Young Adult
Any book classified as young adult or featuring a teenage protagonist counts for this category.
T.B.R. **
Intended to help reduce the old T.B.R. pile. Books for this category must be already residents of your bookshelves as of 1/11/09.
Shiny & New
Bought a book NEW during 2010 from a bookstore, online, or a supermarket? Then it counts for this category. Second-hand books do not count for this one, but, for those on book-buying bans, books bought for you as gifts or won in a giveaway also count!
Bad Blogger’s ***
Books in this category, should be ones you’ve picked up purely on the recommendation of another blogger count for this category (any reviews you post should also link to the post that convinced you give the book ago).
*** Bad Bloggers: Is hosted by Chris of Stuff as Dreams are Made on.
Charity
Support your local charity shops with this category, by picking up books from one of their shops. Again, for those on book-buying bans, books bought for you as gifts also count, as long as they were bought from a charity shop.
New in 2010
This category is for those books newly published in 2010 (whether it be the first time it is has been released, or you had to wait for it to be published in your country, it counts for this one!)
Older Than You
Read two books that were published before you were born, whether that be the day before or 100 years prior!
Win! Win!
Have a couple of books you need to read for another challenge? Then this is the category to use, as long that is, you don’t break the rules of the other challenge by doing so!
Who Are You Again?
This one isn’t just for authors you’ve never read before, this is for those authors you have never even heard of before!
Up to You!
The requirements for this category are up to you! Want to challenge yourself to read some graphic novels? A genre outside your comfort zone? Something completely wild and wacky? Then this is the category to you. The only requirement is that you state it in your sign-up post.

Young Adult
T.B.R. ** Slumdog Millionaire & The White Tiger
Shiny & New
Bad Blogger’s ***
Charity
New in 2010
Older Than You
Win! Win!
Who Are You Again?
Up to You! (Anthropological Non-Fiction)

Crafty Corner

This is a picture heavy post: Be warned!
I spent my Saturday afternoon crafting away. Delusion spread through me and I thought I could handmake several photo albums in an afternoon: I managed one!
This is for one of my fav girlies at work, in our department there are 3 of us all around the same age and without those two I would go insane. Its very strange as when they both started I thought I wouldn't get on with either of them, but then we gelled and now have to be careful not to exclude the new people.
I'm making them each a photo album that they can then fill with pictures of their choice. There is space for journalling and a little pocket for things like theatre tickets etc.
This one is for Hayley, she's the least girlie out of the 3 of us so I tried to pick papers which would fit her style. Tomorrow I'm going to tackle Mikala's, she's super girlie and I'm already in love with the paper I have chosen for her - it will hurt to give it away!
I've included a picture of the front and back page and a couple of pages inside, there are 12 pages in total in the actual album.

My Thoughts: The Knife of Never Letting Go

Be warned this is a gushing post!!!!!


So, everyone in the blogging world has read this book except me. And everyone I know who reads will soon be badgered into reading it!
The Knife of Never Letting Go is set in an alternative world where women don't exist (or so he thinks) and where everyone can hear all of your thoughts and no secrets can be kept (or so he thinks). A month before his 13th birthday, the day he, the final boy, will becaome a 'man', he discovers his world is a lie. And he has to run for his life.

When I opened the first page and saw that there were words like 'thru' spelt in text language and the punctuation reminded me vividly of that of some of my kids at school I considered putting it aside. I'll just read the first chapter I said to myself. It didn't take a chapter for me to be gripped, by the bottom of the first page I was emersing myself in Todd's world. The punctuation ended up being a massive driving force. The lack of full stops, the pages with the disjointed sentences running down the page created a frantic pae to fit the frantic mood.

I accepted things which in other books would have made me sigh at the complete lack of reality. I read grimicing through the violence, the 'CRUNCH' I could hear in my head and see vividly in front of me, and boy did my stomach turn.

In short I was fully emersed in this world, and may have to go and buy the next book as 27 people are ahead of me in the library reservation queue!

You can read here a story set before The Knife of Never Letting Go starts, which Ness wrote when he was writer in residence for the Booktrust website

Read for Bart's YA Dystopian Challenge

The GLBT Challenge: The Challenge Which Dare Not Speak Its Name

I saw this challenge last year and didn't sign up as I was already bogged down in challenges. I thought this would be a good challenge to read for as I would be venturing outside of my normal reading Zone.

Amanda has set this up so that there are three different participation levels, at the moment I am going for the smallest level, although I may up it later on. The Lambda Level requires 4 books, and I managed to find 4 books which would fit the challenge on mount tbr :D

Regeneration by Pat Barker
The Swimming Pool Library, Hollinghurst
Funny Boy, Selvadurai
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters.

The challenges blog can be found here

Sunday Salon: A Japanese Pairing

I woke up this morning to sunshine :D although the weather forecast says we will be back to torrential rain and wind by late afternoon :(
I spent a good 10 hours reading yesterday, finishing 2 books and I'm halfway through The Knife of Never Letting Go. When I opened the first page and saw a lack of punctuation and misspelt words I thought I would be abadoning it quickly, but after a page I was gripped. Eye strain was all that made me give in and send myself to bed.
Today I'm being creative Peanut Butter Cookies to bake for work tomorrow, ATC's to be made and then snuggling back down with A Suitable Boy and then The Knife of Never Letting Go!!! Can't wait.

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
I read this book really early in the week and for some reason didn't write anything about it - I always write about books as soon as I finish them.
Sumrie has given up college and work to become a writer, she almost lives in a parallel world to everyone else, she gets up in the afternoon and writes all night. Her only real point of contact in the world is her best friend, our narrator. He is secretly in love with her but knows that she has no feelings for him.
When Sumrie meets Miu at a wedding her life quickly changes. She falls in love with the older woman, who offers her work and thus transforms her life into that of a normal young woman. Things turn strange when Sumrie and Miu travel to Europe together on a business trip.
I read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and a collection of Murakami's short stories, I was expecting this book to be stranger, more magic realsim. What I did love was the smoothness with which it could be read.

Piercing by Ryu Murakami
This book I polished off last night in about 90 minutes. Kawashima is overcome at night by a fierce sweat and the smell of burning, and then the intense desire to stab someone with an ice pick. At this point his desire is to stab his 4 month old baby daughter. Desperate to rid himself of this desire he creates a plan to stab a prostitute, believing that he will then be able to return to a normal life.
What Kawashima doesn't expect is to pick a prostitute who was also abused as a child and who is also suffering the everlasting effects of such abuse.
The tale is a very strange one, violence threatens to spill over on every page, and I often found found myself wincing not knowing if I really wanted to read the next line in case he finally managed to stab her. Despite this, this book was strangely engrossing and I found that I couldn't stop reading because I had a desire to discover what happened next.

Challenge:
Japanese literature reading challenge.

My Thoughts: The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

In my pledge to create myself a mini-read-a-thon this weekend so that I can tackle my huge pile of books I have read for a good 4 and a half hours today and knocked the first book off of the pile :D Only about 50 more to go! lol

The Glass Room is the second book in the 2009 Booker Shortlist which I have read, and it definately deserves to be part of that list. (I've read the winner, and thought that this was the better of the books).

The Glass Room is actually a glass house, a thoroughly modern home built on a hillside over looking a Czech city. The house, built for the Landauer family, becomes the symbol of sexual and emotional relationships as the novel progresses.

Viktor and Lisel Landauer have this home built in the early days of their marriage, when life is a bunch of roses for the family. Viktor is the founder of a famous car manufacturer, and the wealthy couple fill their home with piano recitals and modern art. The glass building becomes a home for their small family, a symbol of oppulance and luxury.
As the marriage cools, Viktor finds comfort away from home, whilst Lisel's life is made exciting through the gossip and behaviour of her sexually adventurous best friend Hana.
When the war looms, Viktor and Lisel are forced to move away, he a Jew and she a German. They escape with his mistress over the border to Switzerland. The house then becomes an empty shell, facing the destruction of bombs, govermental ownership and possession and scientific experimentation.
The characters gripped me from early on, especially Hana and Kata, Viktor's lover. But all in all I wanted to know what happened to the characters, how their life turned out. I felt robbed when I discovered that the book suddenly moved 20 odd years into the future and I had missed out hearing about Ottilie (love that name) and Martin's childhood. The house reminded me of the house in To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. There is a segment in that novel when the war is occuring and the destruction of Britain and the family is characterised by the deterioration of the family home.
A fantastic read, I highly recommend it.

Challenges:
War Through the Generations
Booker

Time, time, time...

Feels like a long time since I had the time to sit down and read properly. I have books stacking up. I finally have some free time this weekend as I have no teaching till Wednesday, teacher training Monday and Tuesday. This weekend (which is looking pretty dismal both socailly and weather wise) I'm thinking of doing a mini-read-a-thon on my own. 8-12 hours each day, hopefully that'll knock a few of the books off the piles.
So hopefully you might see some reviews coming up on this sadly neglected blog. My google reader is drowning in several hundred posts, so I'll be marking them all as read and starting afresh.