Stuff that's tickled me recently...

I signed up to Twitter a couple of months ago, tweeted once and the abandoned ship for a while. I have revisited it in the last week and started my tweeting journey in earnest. Currently I have 12 followers and counting... I have found that it's something you have to keep on top of if you want to get value out of but so far I'm finding it a great way of keeping abreast of literary developments and other fun bookish things. It's also the main source of the rest of this post. Hoorah for Twitter!

The 2011 Tournament of Books is something I hadn't heard of previously. It takes a list of books that were big news in the previous calendar year and and panel of judges work to select the best one. There are 2 really cool things about this award that sets it apart for me. One, the judges have to explain their choice and lay bare their biases and leanings. Two, we, the common folk, get a say. You can vote for your favourite of the bunch and if it gets eliminated earlier on it can be revived in the Zombie Round! Nice. In the interests of full disclosure, I voted for Room by Emma Donoghue, but there's loads of great books on the list including my current read, The Finkler Question. 

Here Lionel Shriver, author of award winning We Need to Talk About Kevin (among others), talks about the hilarity and head-banging frustration of publishers cover choices for her books. Really, it's a critique of the Old Boy's Club within the literary world that still exists despite the vast majority of writers being women not to mention women making up 80% of the fiction buying market. Eighty percent!! Why then do fantastic writers like Shriver get the short shrift on cover choice, trying to make her hard hitting unisex fiction look soft and feminine just because a she is a female writer? I don't hav the answers to that one but I think anyone who can come up with this fab quote: "trussing up my novels as sweet, girly and soft is like stuffing a rottweiler in a dress" deserves MUCH respect.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Oh. My. Goodness. WHY have I never read their blog before? I was laughing so hard at some of their posts in the greatest hits section that my doggy started barking at me! More maniacal giggling then ensued. The basic premise of this blog for those who don't know (and I really might be the last one to find this but hey, just in case) is that the two women are smart girls who love to read romance novels and review them. I'm not a fan of romance at all but you don't need to be. The fun is in reading what they write about these books and how they write it. Genius. Check it out if you didn't already. 

Also, I found this stroke of brilliance through SMTB. Enjoy.

Finally, I'm fairly sure I have made my feelings about the Twilight series clear (in short: terrible, terrible writing but if kids are reading it's not all bad). So then I found out that the favourite book of the 2 characters of Bella and Edward is in act my own favourite: Wuthering Heights. I was unsure of how I felt about having anything in common with these characters, least of all my all-time favourite book! However, according to the Guardian, the fact that Captain Shiny Skin and Little Miss Glum love this book (plus a clever rebrand to make it look Twilight-esque) has sent sales of Wuthering Heights through the roof and it is topping the classics bestsellers chart. Now if only the kids that are buying the book actually read it and realise what real literature is. Am I too idealistic? Perhaps. Well, at least they own it for future reference...

Photo credits: Lionel Shriver - BBC
                Wuthering Heights cover - Guardian

War and Peace Wednesdays

I've been trying to read this darned book for ages now. I keep starting it and then getting busy or distracted by other things. But! I have not given up - I am going to read it one way or the other and to help myself stay a little more focussed, I'm going to set up this regular slot here on my blog to track my progress... or otherwise.

What else have I done to help myself? I happened across a War and Peace read-a-long on Facebook which has its own wikispace and reading schedule so I thought well if nothing else this will keep it front and center in my mind. The reading schedule is:
February 1-14: Volume One, Part One (1-124)
February 15-28: Volume One, Part Two (125-231)
March: Volume One, Part Three (232-342)
April: Volume Two, Parts One and Two (343-490)
May: Volume Two, Part Three (490-573)
June: Volume Two, Parts Four and Five (574-712)
July: Volume Three, Part One (713-809)
August: Volume Three, Part Two (810-973)
September: Volume Three, Part Three (974-1103)
October: Volume Four, Parts One and Two (1104-1219)
November: Volume Four, Parts Three and Four (1220-1335)
December: Epilogue (1339-1444)

As at January 19th, 2011
Pages read so far - 35
Confidence level - 4/5 - Peachy keen but I'm a little intimidated by the weight of this thing!
Words I have had to look up:
Postilion - man who rides the leading left hand horse of a team.
Adjutant - Military officer who acts as admin assistant to a senior officer.
Erudition - Possessing great knowledge
Comments - Holding this book up in a comfortable reading position is hard!!

Room by Emma Donoghue: Review

Room
By Emma Donoghue
Published in 2010
Published by Picador
ISBN: 978-0-330-51992-2

I was given this book as a gift from my fantastic husband and I was not paid for this review.

The Josef Fritzl case shocked anyone who heard about it. A father who had locked away his teenaged daughter in a custom built apartment in the basement of the family home and used her as a sex slave. She fell pregnant 8 times, although she lost two: one to miscarriage and one to respiratory disease. Her twenty four year ordeal all came to light in 2008 and I guess it's fair to say that a lot of us had been watching and waiting for some kind of literary response to this, a way of making sense of the darkness and the horror.

Although Donoghue's books is inspired by the events of the Fritzl case, she wisely steers away from replicating the exact circumstances. The captor is not the father, they are not kept in a basement and there is only one child, Jack. And it's Jack who is the focus of this novel. He is five years old and has never been outside of Room, the modified garden shed in which they are held. In fact he has no concept of the outside world as his mother has chosen to not explain it. He thinks the entire world consists of this room, that the television channels are different planets orbiting the room and that his mother's captor, Old Nick, is the supplier of all things. However, as the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that they need to escape. Jack's mother (Ma) realises that Old Nick is capable of far worse than holding them here for the rest of their lives and hatches a plan with the help of Jack to get out.

This book captivated, repulsed and inspired me. All at the same time, all the way through. It's a car crash story - you can't stand it but you can't look away and all the time you have the knowledge that something like this really happened... it's creepy. The character of Jack is a completely believable portrayal, not only  of a five year old child but of a five year old who has no concept of the outside world. His language reflects his worldview as he doesn't use any articles, such as 'the'. Room isn't 'the room' because to his knowledge there are no other rooms and so since there is only one, then there is no grammatical need to use articles. So everything is just Bed, Wardrobe, Skylight - capitalised as if there were only one of them like there is only one of Jack.

The part of this story that intrigued me the most was the relationship between Ma and Jack. As I'm now in the age range where a good portion of my friends are now becoming parents, I regularly hear that all parents need 'time off' to get some space away from the kids and to just relax - something I completely agree with - but imagine being in one small room with your child, 24/7 for years. Under these circumstances. The way in which Ma interacts with Jack, teaching him stories, making sure he gets daily exercise and love is one of the most moving things about this book. I don't know if it's just because I'm around the same age as her character or if it's because I'm starting to think more seriously about becoming a mother myself but I just couldn't help but wonder what on earth I would have done in her position. I have no idea and thank God I won't have to find out.

I'd wanted to read this book ever since the 2010 Booker prize longlist came out and I heard about it on the Guardian Books Podcast. I was pretty disappointed when it didn't win but it's safe to say that this is a book that is hugely successful and deservedly so. It gives you so much to think about and genuinely changes your perspective on the world by giving you the opportunity to see life through the eyes of Jack. This was one of top three books I read in 2010 - I really can't recommend it any more highly.

Have you read Room? What did you think of it?

Related links:
Guardian Books Podcast about this book with interview with Emma Donoghue
Once upon a life: Emma Donoghue
The Official Emma Donoghue website
An extract from Room

Photo credit: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Sarah's Key: Review

Sarah's Key
By Tatiana de Rosnay
Published in 2007
Published by St. Martin's Press (1st ed)
ISBN: 978-0312370831 


I read this book as part of my book club and I was not paid for this review. 


Dark days. Every country has at least one of these in its history, some have many more. This novel is about one of France's less shining moments, when French Police rounded up hundreds of Jewish men, women and children and kept them in inhumane conditions in the Velodrome d'Hiver before being shipped off to their deaths in Auschwitz. Some Parisians tried to help them, most turned a blind eye. 


The story has two intertwining narratives. Sarah, the girl of the title, locks her brother in a concealed closet when the police come knocking on her family's door, thinking that she will be able to return and rescue him. Julia, an American journalist who has lived in Paris for most of her life is asked to write a story about the Roundup for its sixtieth anniversary. She finds the story captivating and quickly becomes personally involved in her research, particularly when she discovers that her husband's family's and Sarah's histories overlap. 


It's a very interesting premise but I just couldn't lose myself in this book. I found that the characterisation of Sarah was a little heavy handed and felt that she had been created more for the purpose of being the vehicle or the author's musings on 'how could the French Police have done such a thing' rather than being a real imagining of a 10 year old girl being wrenched from all that she knew and losing everyone she loved. Additionally, the relationship between Julia and her over-sterotyped French husband (snide, xenophobic and philandering but makes it up to her with amazing sex - oh come on) didn't ring true for me either. 


Another issue I had was the ending. I don't want to give too much away or those who haven't read it yet but I just have to say that I didn't believe the ending. I don't think that Sarah would have done that and I certainly didn't believe the implied romance between the two characters at the end. It fell flat and let the last gasp of air out of a book that could have been really good. 


That said, my rating of this book was 2.5/5 at our book club but other people really loved it and gave it 4/5. To it's credit, it taught me something I didn't already know and I liked the descriptions of Paris. It's not a bad book, it just didn't move me the way I wish it had. 


Has anyone else read this book? If you have, were you surprised to find out about the round up?


Other reviews of this book: 
The Literary Amnesiac
The Avid Reader's Musings

Books I read in 2010

Books I have read 2010

1. The Zero by Jess Walter

2. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

3. Crossing the Bridge by Michael Baron

4. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (GG)

5. The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho

6. Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

7. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

8. Taiwan A to Z by Amy C. Liu

9. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

10. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

11. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

12. The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith

13. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows

14. Skinny is overrated by Danielle Milano, MD

15. Beneath a Marble Sky by John Shors

16. Cesar's Way by Cesar Millan

17. Be the Pack Leader by Cesar Millan

18. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller

19. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan

20. Night by Ellie Wiesel

21. Falling Man by Don DeLillo

22. Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

23. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

24. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

25. The Dream of the Red Chamber by Tsao Hsueh-Chin

26. The Rector's Wife by Joanna Trollope

27. Come Back by Claire and Mia Fontaine
28. Beauty Junkies by Alex Kuczynski

29. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

30. Room by Emma Donaghue

31. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

32. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

33. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

34. Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

35. The Necklace by Cheryl Jarvis

36. Falling Man by Don DeLillo

37. Smoke of Spirits by Claire Frances Raciborska

38. The Big Ten of Grammar by William B. Bradshaw, PhD

The Year of the Flood: Review

The Year of the Flood: A novel
By Margaret Atwood
Published in 2009
Published by Anchor Books
ISBN: 978-0-307-45547-5

I own this copy of this book and was not paid for this review.

For quite a long time now, I have been interested in post-apocalyptic and dystopic fiction. Not the apocalyptic stuff where the world is about to end and everyone runs down the street screaming while buildings fall down en masse. No no no. I care about the what next? What happens after? What do you do when the fabric of society has been shredded to pieces and survival is your top priority. What happens to the people in this situation?

A number of years back, while studying English Literature at undergraduate level, a lecturer who is now happily my thesis supervisor introduced me to Margaret Atwood through Oryx and Crake. I was instantly hooked, completely consumed by the weird and wonderful future world she had created - so you can imagine my excitement when I heard a sequel was being released. I've been wanting to read it since I heard about it, so when a friend passed it along to me I was thrilled.

Only, I'm not sure I want to call it a sequel. It's another angle on the same story, told from the perspective of two women (Ren and Toby) this time instead of the male perspective of Jimmy. It's Oryx and Crake from the other side of the looking glass filling out and expanding on the same story whilst also being an entirely self-sufficient novel. If you haven't read Oryx and Crake it doesn't matter and if you have, this story won't bore you.

The story is told from the perspective of Ren and Toby, separately. We meet them in Year Twenty-Five, the year that the flood has hit but we are transported back in time for large sections of the novel to various points in time in the preceding twenty years when both Toby and Ren lived with a small environmentalist sect called The Gardeners. Through these flashbacks the reader learns a great deal about the lead up to the so-called "Waterless Flood" - a fatal pandemic of epic proportions - and life in the pleebs, the seedier living areas outside of the well-groomed corporate controlled compounds.

As with Oryx and Crake, human progress gone mad is a key theme in this book. The same weird animal combinations that exist as a result of gene-splicing are there as is the intriguing but terrifying darkness. No-one is safe - security is controlled by corporations, law is controlled by corporations and those who speak out or put a foot wrong usually disappear permanently or are found in a gruesome state a few days later. I think this is the part of this novel that captivated me the most because I kept thinking none of this is impossible. Every single thing that happened in this novel is possible right now in our world. The technology and power struggles already exist. Which is not to say that this is an inevitability for society but it should surely be read as a warning of the darkly possible future that is lurking in the shadows of today's multi-national corporations and technological advances.

I unreservedly loved this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the characters and the possibilities it presented. I completely recommend this book, particularly if you're a fan of the dystopic/science fiction genre. But even if you're not, if you're a fan of a really good story that has really interesting and unique ideas - read this book. And Oryx and Crake too.

Have you read either of these books? Which other post-apocalyptic/dystopic fiction have you read and enjoyed?

Smoke of Spirits: Review

Smoke of Spirits
By Claire Frances Raciborska
Published in 2010
Published by Falconers Press
ISBN: 986-865-170-0

I was sent this copy in exchange for my review by the author. I was not paid for this review.

Before I moved to Taiwan, someone once told me that in every expat community there tends to be a significant proportion of people who have run away from something in their home country. Whether or not you agree that this is true, this concept of running away from your past is the basis of this novel. Lucy, our protagonist, has found herself in Taiwan after what feels like a mad dash away from her native South Africa in a bid to maintain her sanity and salvage her identity. What she finds here is a raft of unlikely companions and an affinity with this crazy wonderful island that I also call home.

Who are we? Are we our culture? Are we our past? Are we who others think we are? These questions are universal as people from everywhere struggle to figure out who they are. When Lucy comes to Taiwan, she is guilt-ridden and cast adrift from her immediate family as a result of a recent tragedy. We find out in the prologue that she believes that she has killed someone and that this someone was very close to her - but that's about all we find out about it until the very end of the novel. In between time we meet a cast of characters who become Lucy's makeshift family: Rashnid, who has left India to escape religious and social restrictions; Missy, who has left Australia due to commitment phobias and Jenna, also South African, who has come to Taiwan to celebrate her new-found freedom from the shackles of an unhappy marriage and the responsibilities of motherhood.

Something this book does extraordinarily well is to track the arc of culture shock that most foreigners experience upon arriving in Taiwan. From the oft referenced "trafficking drugs carries the death penalty" sign which you see as soon as you get off the plane to the inexplicable feeling of menace lurking around every corner, the description of this experience was so close to mine it was like reading my diary! Luckily, as Lucy settles in to Taiwan, she comes to love Taiwan with all its hidden beauty and the warmth of her people meaning that the experience of culture shock is contextualized and dealt with rather than leaving the reader with the feeling that Taiwan really is a scary, nasty place. Reading this book really gives you an excellent insight into what it's like for someone from a western culture coming to live in Taiwan. If you're interested in coming here, this book is a good place to start. Yes, it's fiction but all in all, it's an accurate depiction.

There were a couple of things I had a problem with in this book. The first was how long it took for the full story of what happened to make Lucy run away to be revealed. I really don't like being given repeated teasers of "Something terrible happened to me" without being told something new about it. I don't mind waiting for the full story but I do take issue with being reminded that I still don't know. Building suspense for a reader is great but stretched too far can just cause frustration.  The second issue I had was that the ending was a little strange for me. The concept behind it is really good but it didn't feel like it was smoothly woven into the fabric of the rest of the story.

Overall, this was a very high quality novel. So far it has been self-published but I wouldn't be surprised at all if a publisher picked this up - in fact I really hope they do. It's very well written, it has a great story set in a setting that not many people know that much about but it has themes that are international in their reach, making it a tantalizing mix of the original and the universal.

If you're interested in getting a copy of this book, please check out this webpage.

Bookdrum Honour!

I was casually reading the Bookdrum email newsletter a couple of days ago when I came across this:

Most Popular Profiles

The Top 5 profiles, by number of Facebook "Likes" are:

1. Saturday by Ian McEwan. Profile by Kathryn Liu

2. The Cure by Antoine Devine. Profile by the author

3. Dracula by Bram Stoker. Profile by Victoria Hooper

4. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Profile by Jenny Martin and Kat Matfield

5. Clan by David Elliot. Profile by the author

If you'd like to see your profile in the Top 5, encourage your friends to click the Facebook Like button on the profile index page. This will also plant a link on their Facebook wall, bringing new visitors to your profile.

Hey! What the... I'm number one!!! Cue happy dance (which I'm glad no-one saw!) and much whooping! The coolest thing was that the Likes had all come from people I didn't know. Very cool. Made my month.

Anyway, if you'd like to see (and potentially "Like"!) my profile, click here and check it out. 

Shibuya Intersection November 2010

This is a gif of photos I took of Shibuya Intersection in Tokyo on a recent quick trip there. This wasn't even peak hour, just 3.30pm in the afternoon!

The Secret Life of Bees: Review

The Secret Life of Bees
By Sue Monk Kidd
Published by Penguin Books
Published in 2002
ISBN: 0-14-200174-0

I found this book at the CSC-Taipei's Official Bookcrossing Zone and I am not being paid for this review.

"Then, without warning, all the immunity wore off, and I felt the hollow, spooned out space between my navel and breastbone begin to ache. The motherless place." (151, TSLOB)

This was, for me, the most heart-rending and accurate lines in a novel that I've ever read. Lily, who accidentally shot her mother in the midst of a domestic between her parents has been living with overwhelming guilt and grief her entire life. Not only this but she has had to tolerate a mean-spirited father whose idea of a fair punishment is to make her kneel on grit for extended periods of time. Lily, as a result is left, un-parented and desperate for love and affection.

She finds this in the least likely of places - she runs away from home after rescuing her coloured maid, Rosaleen, from a certain doom at the hands of a bunch of racist men she insulted. Not knowing where else to go, she heads for a town scribbled on the back of a wooden placard with the photo of a Black Madonna her mother once owned. What she finds are the Boatwright sisters, three coloured women living together who make the brand of honey that bears the mark of the same Black Madonna that Lily clutches in her hand.

This story unfolds in South Carolina in 1964, a time of great racial unrest in America. In theory, segregation had been outlawed but the prejudices still remained deeply entrenched. In stark contrast are August Boatwright's bee hives, where hundreds of bees live in harmony with each other and nature. The symbolism of the hive is strongly drawn upon throughout this novel as Lily struggles to come to terms with her past, her feelings and find her place in the world.

I loved this novel. It is beautifully written, deeply involving and very thoughtfully presented. The symbolism of the hive and the bees was very interesting to me as I felt like I'd learned a lot about bees through reading this. The sisterhood of the Boatwright sisters and their Daughters of Mary friends draws a warm blanket around the shoulders of all those who read this. Nobody is an outsider, all are accepted. I would recommend this novel to all who are looking for a novel that will challenge them uplift them and leave them with something to think about once it is finished. It really is top-notch.