avatiakh completes 13 in 2013 part 2

I'm aiming to read more than a few books across 13 categories - feel like changing the few categories I haven't as yet started - will see in a couple of weeks.

1: Little Bookroom 16/13
2: Young at Heart 38/13
3: Reality Bites 14/13
4: Scifi and Fantasy 13/13
5: All things Celtic 2/13
6: Collector’s Corner 13/13
7: Down Under 17/13
8: Reading Globally 13/13
9: Israel & Diaspora 19/13
10: Literary & folktales
11: The Book Pile 18/13
12: Cult Writers 5/13
12b: The Sandman 1/10
13: Dropbox 23/13

My current 75 books in 2013 thread is here

1: Little Bookroom
I have a stash of classic children’s fiction from the 1930s-1990s that needs to get read or reread. I’ll be concentrating on British writers such as Alan Garner, Henry Treece, Molly Hunter, Rosemary Sutcliff, Cynthia Harnett, Geoffrey Trease, Penelope Lively etc etc & will include titles from 1001 children’s books you must read before you grow up.

1) The Stronghold by Mollie Hunter (1977) - finished Feb
2) Talking in Whispers by James Watson (1984) - finished 04 May
3) The Mermaid Summer by Mollie Hunter (1988) - finished 20 May
4) A strong and willing girl by Dorothy Edwards (1980) - finished 14 Jun
5) The White Nights of St Petersburg by Geoffrey Trease (1967) - finished 16 Jun
6) The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler by Gene Kemp (1977) - finished 19 Jun
7) The haunting by Margaret Mahy (1982) - finished 05 Jul
8) The Gentle Falcon by Hilda Lewis (1952) - finished 07 Jul
9) The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner (1960) - finished 17 Jul
10) Father's arcane daughter by E.L. Konigsburg (1976) - finished 18 Jul
11) Alhambra by Madeleine A. Polland (1970) - finished 20 Jul
12) A traveller in time by Alison Uttley (1939) - finished 31 Jul
13) The Goats by Brock Cole (1987) - finished 05 Oct
14) The Ship that Flew by Hilda Lewis (1939) - finished 28 Oct
15) Shadow of the Bull by Maia Wojciechowska (1964) - finished 22 Nov
16) the Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner (1963) - finished 30 Dec

Possibles:
The Kelpie's Pearls by Molly Hunter (1964)
A Stranger Came Ashore by Molly Hunter (1975)
Viking's Dawn by Henry Treece (1955)
The Windswept City by HenryTreece (1967)
The Stone Book by Alan Garner (1976)
The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff (1954)
Bows Against the Barons by Geoffrey Trease (1934)
Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease (1940)
Astercote by Penelope Lively (1970)
The Whispering Knights by Penelope Lively (1971)
The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy by Penelope Lively (1971)
The Wool-Pack by Cynthia Harnett (1951)
The Load of Unicorn by Cynthia Harnett (1959)
A game of dark by William Mayne (1971)
Earthfasts by William Mayne (1969)
Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian (1981)

2: Young at Heart –
Young Adult fiction sourced from my tbr pile and long overdue for a read, and some children's fiction will be thrown into the mix as well

1) The Night of Wishes by Michael Ende - finished 05 Jan
2) Mira's Diary: Lost in Paris by Marissa Moss - finished 10 Feb
3) The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland #1) by Catherynne M. Valente - finished 18Feb
4) The Game by Diana Wynne Jones - finished 25 Mar
5) The Cloud Hunters by Alex Shearer - finished 10 Apr
6) Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick - finished 17 Apr
7) Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos - finished 21 Apr
8) A world between us by Lynda Symons - finished 23 Apr
9) The Importance of Wings by Robin Friedman - finished 02 May
10) My own special way by Mitha Al Khayat - finished 15 May
11) Painting out the Stars by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham
12) The fault in our stars by John Green - finished 26 May
13) Wonder by R. J. Palacio - finished 29 May
14) In darkness by Nick Lake - finished 09 Jun
15) Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver - finished 18 Jun
16) Colin Fischer by Ashley Edward Miller & Zac Stentz - finished 20 Jun
17) A fine summer knight by Jan Mark - finished 01 Aug
18) The hit by Melvin Burgess - finished 02 Aug
19) The Center of Everything by Linda Urban - finished 04 Aug
20) The Green Man by Michael Bedard - finished 05 Aug
21) Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks - finished 06 Aug
22) Brain Camp by Susan Kim - finished 16 Aug
23) Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff - finished 27 Aug
24) Black Friday by Robert Muchamore - finished 13 Sep
25) The children of the king by Sonya Hartnett - finished 29 Sep
26) Sweet Clarinet by James Riordan - finished 07 Oct
27) Rose under fire by Elizabeth Wein - finished 20 Oct
28) Mister Creecher by Chris Priestley - finished 26 Oct
29) Countdown by Deborah Wiles - finished 27 Oct
30) The shadow children by Steven Schnur - finished 28 Oct
31) The invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selnick - finished 29 Oct
32) She is not invisible by Marcus Sedgwick - finished 31 Oct
33) The War of Jenkin's Ear by Michael Morpurgo - finished 15 Nov
34) The Dead Men Stood Together by Chris Priestley - finished 19 Nov
35) Through dead eyes by Chris Priestley - finished 21 Nov
36) Music on the bamboo radio by Martin Booth - finished 24 Nov
37) The voices of silence by Bel Mooney - finished 03 Dec
38) The extra by kathryn lasky - finished 29 dec

Possibles:
Boys don't cry by Malorie Backman
Beyond the burning time by Kathryn Lasky
The Voices of Silence by Bel Mooney
The Resistance by Gemma Malley
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez
Frozen Fire by Tim Bowler
The Witching Hour by Elizabeth Laird
The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox
The Forest Wife by Theresa Tomlinson
Al Capone does my shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

3: Reality Bites
non•fic•tion (n n-f k sh n). n. 1. Prose works other than fiction
Concentrating on culinary, historical and travel

1) Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey - finished 19Jan
2) A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway - finished 12Feb
3) Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co by Jeremy Mercer - finished 15Feb
4) Into A Paris Quartier: Reine Margot's Chapel and Other Haunts of St.-Germain by Diane Johnson - finished 22Feb
5) Six days of war by Michael B. Oren - finished 27 May
6) In the land of Israel by Amos Oz - finished 27 May
7) Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl finished 27 May
8) Muhammad: a Prophet for our time by Karen Armstrong - finished 04 Jun
9) Why blame Israel? by Neill Lochery - finished 11 Aug
10) The Gaza Kitchen: a Palestinian Culinary Journey - finished 17 Aug
11) A line in the sand Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East by James Barr - finished 04 Oct
12) The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: a pedestrian in Paris by John Baxter - finished 10 Oct
13) Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec - finished 11 Oct
14) Andalus: unlocking the secrets of Moorish Spain by Jason Webster - finished 14 Nov

Possibles:
The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian
THe Ottoman Centuries by Lord Kinross
The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher
Dear Francesca: An Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted with Love by Mary Contini
La Dolce Vita: Sweet Dreams and Chocolate Memories by Isabel Coe
The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller
On the Road to Babadag: Travels in the Other Europe by Andrzej Stasuik
Running through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who, Volume 1: The 60s by Rob Shearman

4: Scifi and Fantasy

1) The Dervish House by Ian McDonald - finished 28Jan
2) Embassytown by China Miéville - finished 07Mar
3) Among Others by Jo Walton - finished 21 Jun
4) Seraphina by Rachel Hartman - finished 23 Jun
5) when we wake by Karen Healey - finished 27 Jun
6) Mortal Fire by Elizabeth Knox - finished 30 Jun
7) Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones - finished 07 Jul
8) The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater - finished 26 Jul
9) The ocean at the end of the lane by Neil Gaiman - finished 27 Jul
10) Arcadia Awakens by Kai Meyer - finished 19 Aug
11) More than this by Patrick Ness - finished 03 Nov
12) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - finished 17 Nov
13) People of the great journey by O R Melling - finished 29 Nov

Possibles:
Peter F Hamilton
Alastair Reynolds
Iain Banks
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams
Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Goneaway World by Nick Harkaway

5: All things Celtic
Focus will be on exploring the past in Wales, Ireland, Scotland so hopefully lots of historical fiction
chatterbox (Suzanne) gave me a lot of ideas for Scotland and I’ve tracked a few of them down.

Decided to focus on Scottish lit and so will include contemporary fiction as well, otherwise this category might never take off

1) The Crow Road by Iain Banks - finished 26 Jul
2) The King's swift rider by Mollie Hunter - finished 27 Nov

Possibles:
The World, the Flesh and the Devil & Fatal Majesty by Reay Tannahill
Child of the Phoenix & Kingdom of Shadows by Barbara Erskine
The Flight of the Heron by D.K. Broster
Nigel Tranter’s Bruce trilogy
Waverley by Sir Walter Scott
The Founding: The Morland Dynasty by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles (#1 of 34)
Falls the Shadow & The Reckoning by Sharon Penman
Sunrise in the West by Edith Pargeter
Owen Glendower by John Cowper Powys
Lion of Ireland, Bard: the Odyssey of the Irish, Red Branch, Finn Mac Cool & The Horse Goddess by Morgan Llywelyn

6: Collector’s Corner – series, short stories, novellas, essays, poetry and anthologies

1) The dance of the seagull by Andrea Camilleri (Montalbano #15) - finished 21 Apr
2) There once lived a girl who seduced her sister's husband and he hanged himself: love stories by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya - finished 13 Jun
3) Marry Me by Dan Rhodes - finished 06 Aug
4) Anthropology and a hundred other stories by Dan Rhodes - finished 10 Aug
5) Who will die last: Stories of Life in Israel by David Ehrlich - finished 20 Sep
6) Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch (Peter Grant #4) - finished 22 Sep
7) Never go back by Lee Child - finished 25 Sep
8) The Collaborator by Matt Rees (Omar Yussef #1) - finished 26 Sep
7) The treasure hunt by Andrea Camilleri (Montalbano #16) - finished 13 Oct
8) Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman - finished 13 Oct
9) The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde - finished 12 Nov
10) The Bat by Jo Nesbo (Harry Hole #1) - finished 03 Dec
11) The man in the wooden hat by Jane Gardam (Old Filth #2) - finished 11 Dec
12) Saturday the Rabbi went hungry by Harry Kemelman (Rabbi Small #2) - finished 21 Dec
13) The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis - finished 22 Dec

Possibles from my unread 2012 challenge list:
Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles - #5 The Ringed Castle
Dance to the music of Time by Anthony Powell #7
Bruce Medway series by Robert Wilson
Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace
Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan (Ireland)
My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: great love stories - ed. Jeffrey Eugenides (US)
From under the overcoat by Sue Orr (NZ)
Selected stories of Patricia Highsmith by Patricia Highsmith

7: Down Under – Australia & New Zealand

1) The God Boy by Ian Cross (NZ) - finished 01 Apr
2) The Field by Bill Nagelkerke (NZ) - finished 03 May
3) A necklace of souls by Rachel Stedman (NZ) - finished 20 May
4) Nell's Festival of Crisp Winter Glories by Glenda Millard (Aus) - finished 22 May
5) Wizard's Guide to Wellington by AJ Ponder (NZ)- finished 30 May
6) Again the bugles blow by Ron Bacon (NZ) - finished 02 Jun
7) The ACB with Honora Lee by Kate De Goldi (NZ) - finished 05 Jun
8) The tender moments of Saffron Silk by Glenda Millard (Aust) - finished 04 Jun
9) Questions of Travel by Michelle De Kretser (Aus) - finished 26 Jun
10) Into the river by Ted Dawe (NZ) - finished 09 Jul
11) Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany (Aus) - finished 01 Aug
12) The Intentions Book by Gigi Fenster (NZ) - finished 10 Aug
13) The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion (Aus) - finished 24 Aug
14) The Ink Bridge by Neil Grant (Aus) - finished 30 Aug
15) Rebecca and the Queen of Nations by Deborah Burnside (NZ) - finished 30 Aug
16) The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (NZ) - finished 08 Sep
17) The mannequin makers by Craig Cliff - finished 25 Nov

Possibles from my unread in 2012 list:
The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
Just Relations, Silence or The last love story by Rodney Hall
The French Tutor by Judith Armstrong
Notorious by Roberta Lowing
Letty Fox : her luck by Christina Stead
Black Mirror by Gail Jones
The Book of Rachael by Leslie Cannold
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally
The Vivisector by Patrick White
Breath by Tim Winton
Magpie Hall by Rachael King

8: Reading Globally – books in translation & reading globally theme reads

1) The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda (Catalan/Spain) - finished 30Jan
2) By a Slow River by Philippe Claudel (France) - finished 28Feb
3) Fields Of Glory by Jean Rouaud (France) - finished 15Mar
4) The Dragon & other stories by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Russia) - finished 31 Mar
5) Fish change direction in cold weather by Pierre Szalowski (French Canada) - finished 12 Apr
6) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (France) - finished 15 May
7) The scapegoat by Daniel Pennac (France) - finished 15 July
8) The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson (Sweden) - finished 30 Jul
9) A hundred million francs by Paul Berna (France) -finished 16 Oct
10) Agnes Cecilia by Maria Gripe (Sweden) - finished 05 Nov
11) Cold Skin by Albert Sanchez Pinol (Spain) - finished 23 Nov
12) The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat (Iran) - finished 26 Nov
13) Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas - finished 10 Dec

Possibles:
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis (Greece)
The Widow Killer by Pavel Kohourt (The Czech Republic)
The Railway by Hamid Ismailov (Uzbekistan)
Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras (Argentina)
The Secret in Their Eyes by Eduardo Sacheri (Argentina)
Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia (Argentina)
Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas (Spain)
Days of Hope by Andre Malraux (France)
Brothers by Ya Hua (China)

9: Israel & Diaspora

1) Great House by Nicole Krauss - finished 11 Jan
2) The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Andrzej Szczypiorski - finished 18Feb
3) A Jew Must Die by Jacques Chessex - finished 22Feb
4) The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz - finished 22Feb
5) The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer - finished 15 Mar
6) The Innocents by Francine Segal - finished 18Mar
7) A Journey to the End of the Millennium - A Novel of the Middle Ages by A. B. Yehoshua - finished 20Mar
8) The People of Forever are not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu - finished 16 Apr
10) Between Friends by Amos Oz - finished 14 May
11) Panther in the Basement by Amos Oz - finished 21 May
12) The Last Song by Eva Wiseman - finished 23 May
13) Jerusalem: a family portrait by Boaz Yakin - finished 26 May
14) The Final Solution by Michael Chabon - finished 08 Jun
15) The Property by Rutu Modan - finished Jun
16) Hereville: how Mirka met a meteorite by Barry Deutsch - finished 21 Jun
17) A Family Secret (2007) & The Search (2007) by Eric Heuval - finished 06 Aug
18) Smoke over Golan (1974) by Uriel Ofek - finished 25 Aug
19) Path beneath the sea by Devorah Omer - finished 08 Nov

Possibles:
The Bridal Canopy by S.Y. Agnon
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
Be my knife by David Grossman
Daughters of Jerusalem by Charlotte Mendelson
The Lessons by Naomi Alderman
Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

10: Anything Literary – essays, folktales, biographies, memoirs, books about books/writing/illustration

Possibles:
The Gothic in Children's literature: haunting the borders by Anna Jackson
A whiff of burnt boats by Geoffrey Trease
The voice that thunders by Alan Garner
The Hidden Roads by Kevin Crossley-Holland

11: The Book Pile –
Focus on books/writers I keep wondering why I haven’t read yet, books I started and haven’t finished and Mt tbr in general.
Mini-focus on writers Jane Gardam & Beryl Bainbridge.

1) Old Filth by Jane Gardam - finished 09 Jan
2) The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge - finished 03Feb
3) Stamboul Train by Graham Greene - finished 01 Jan
4) The spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst - finished 04 Jan
5) Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith - finished 24Jan
6) When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Penman - finished 28Jan
7) Pied Piper by Nevil Shute - finished 11Feb
8) The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene finished 13Feb
9) Justine by Lawrence Durrell - finished Mar
10) An Ice-cream War by William Boyd - finished Mar
11) Before I go to sleep by S.J. Watson - finished 26 Apr
12) A stricken field by Martha Gelhorn - finished 10 Jun
13) Time and Chance by Sharon Penman - finished 14 Jul
14) A quiet life by Beryl Bainbridge - finished 03 Sep
15) Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh - finished 18 Sep
16) The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde - finished 08 Nov
17) The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer - finished 14 Dec
18) Kingdom Come by Bernice Rubens - finished 26 Dec
19) Dominion by C.J Sansom - finished 28 dec

Possibles:
A long way from Verona by Jane Gardam
The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge
The Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor
The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg
Alexander Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1/4)
The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth
Count Belisarius by Robert Graves
When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

12: Cult Writers
Books or writers that are mentioned in The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction and with a sub category for Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series

1) Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - finished 07 Jan
2) Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh - finished 12 Jan
3) Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake - finished 24 Jul
4) Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake - finished 11 Sep
5) Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake - finished 19 Oct

Possibles:

All the King’s Men
Christ stopped at Eboli
The Golem
Riddle of the Sands
Atomised
Riders of the Purple Sage
Maltese Falcon
Day of the Locust
News of a Kidnapping
How late it was how late
Girlfriend in a coma
Good fairies of New York

12b: Neil Gaiman's Sandman

1) Preludes and Nocturnes - finished 18 Jan
2) The Doll's House
3) Dream Country
4) Season of Mists
5) A Game of You
6) Fables and Reflections
7) Brief Lives
8) Worlds' End
9) The Kindly Ones
10) The Wake

13: Dropbox – library books, new books, challenge books, LT recommendations, group reads – anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere

1) Building Stories by Chris Ware - finished 14 Jan
2) We3 by Grant Morrison - finished 14 Jan
3) Howl: a graphic novel by Allan Ginsberg & Erik Drooker - finished 16 Jan
4) A Quiet Flame (Bernard Gunther #5) by Philip Kerr - finished 10Feb
5) The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn - finished 11Feb
6) Capital Punishment by Robert Wilson - finished 05 Apr
7) The reinvention of love by Helen Humphries - finished 15 Apr
8) The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson - finished 15 Apr
9) Delphine by Richard Sala - finished 25 May
10) Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell - finished 01 June
11) Life after life by Kate Atkinson - finished 18 Jun
12) The Humans by Matt Haig - finished 21 Jun
13) Alia's Mission: saving the books of Iraq by Mark Alan Stamarty - finished 21 Jun
14) The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness - finished 20 Jul
15) The Spider King's Daughter by Chibundu Onuzo - finished 22 Jul
16) The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín - finished 20 Aug
17) Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge - finished 05 Sept
18) Goliath by Tom Gauld - finished 01 Oct
19) Boxers by Gene Luen Yang - finished 27 Oct
20) Saints by Gene Luen Yang - finished 28 Oct
21) An officer and a spy by Robert Harris - finished 20 Nov
22) The Outsiders by Gerald Seymour - finished 18Dec
23) The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse - finished 22 Dec
24) Dark Satanic Mills by Marcus & Julian Sedgwick - finished 29 Dec

saved

Cool new digs! I love the art for your categories.

You're doing very well this year and I'm thoroughly enjoying following along!

Happy new thread! :)

_
103) Into the River by Ted Dawe (2012)
new zealand, YA fiction / Down Under category

This is a prequel to Thunder Road which Dawe wrote a few years ago. I really liked TR and looked forward to finding out more about racer Devon, one of the characters. Dawe wrote an 800 page manuscript which was rejected by his publisher and so edited it down to 380 pgs and self published it.
When 13 yr old Te Arepa wins a scholarship to a prestigious private boarding school in Auckland, he finds himself in a different world from the one he grew up in. Home is his grandfather, Ra and young sister Rawinia, and the Maori heritage he has grown with. At school he encounters friendship, bullying and unsympathetic adults. By his second year Te Arepa, now known as Devon, has grown away from his family, the Maori traditions and the expectation for him to become a tribal leader. Devon's new friends introduce him to a wilder, more exciting underworld that tempts.
Dawe, who taught for many years at Dilworth College, a school for disadvantaged boys, has written an exceptional story about the isolation and dislocation of young Maori teenagers as they move away from supportive rural communities to the unfriendlier urban environment, it's also a book for them to read.

This book won the NZ Post Children's Book of the Year late last month. A few days later a couple of items and an editorial in a national paper launched a big kerfuffle over the suitability of the book to receive the award. Part of the problem is that last year the award was renamed from NZ Post Children's and Young Adult Book Award to just NZ Post Children's Book Awards, the other is the inability of the protesting parents to understand that YA or senior fiction includes not just books suitable for the lower end of the age range but quite often books for the older end of the age range up to 18yrs. The newspaper included a link to an excerpt which was just non related extracts of the more explicit paragraphs from the narrative. Most complaints about the book come from those who only read these extracts and did not read the book.
There was an unattractive campaign from a parents' group on the Award's FB page including defacing the logo to call it a 'porn' award, naming the writer as a paedophile and calls for the sponsor to withdraw from the awards. There was a lot of support for the book as well with links to articles and blogs that explained why books like these are necessary to teens. Most people supporting the book were fine with parents shielding their own children from reading books they don't approve of but the issue becomes red hot when they want to ban the books outright for all children. All supporters were in agreement that the book was recommended reading for 15+.

So how do I feel about the explicit content? The use of the c***t word was completely in context with the type of rough element the boys were hanging out with. The descriptions of Devon's first sex encounters were typical and awkward for these types of teenage reads. There are drugs and a predatory teacher but the worse by far for me were the descriptions of bullying.

Emma Neale worked as an editor on the manuscript and blogged about the response here
Bernard Beckett was chief judge and responded on his blog, the comments are especially worth reading, he responded to every one.
The New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards FB page
The Family First FB page

Time and Chance by Sharon Penman (2002)
historical fiction / The Book Pile

I'd been struggling to finish this book since the group read back in April. There's nothing that wrong with the book, it is a straightforward historical fiction, the second book in the Eleanor of Aquitane trilogy, but then again I just haven't been in the mood for historical fiction based on royal families. So I set a daily page count and managed to finish it. I'm hoping that bk 3 Devil's Brood is more interesting, it's one of my group reads for August.


The scapegoat by Daniel Pennac (1985)
fiction, french / Reading Globally
Benjamin Malaussène #1.

I've read book 2 of the Malaussène or Belleville series and had to wait a long while to find a copy of the first book. The premise sounded very intriguing, Malaussène's job title is 'Quality Controller' at the Paris department store where he works, but in essence he is a scapegoat, called in when customers come in to complain. He takes the blame, the managers all yell at him, the customer feels sorry for him and often withdraws their complaint. He's well paid and that's good because his mother is a bit useless, usually pregnant and his numerous siblings need to be supported. Then the bombs start exploding in the store and he becomes one of the main suspects.

I liked book two more, but this one is pretty good as well. If you like oddball mystery/crime novels set in the immigrant-rich arrondissement of Belleville then this series is for you. Now once I find it in the piles of books around the house I'll be diving into book 3, Write to Kill.
Pennac is more well known for his The Rights of the Reader and the extremely good nonfiction School Blues. He's written some good children's fiction as well.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner (1960)
children's fiction / Little Bookroom
Tales of Alderley/The Weirdstone trilogy (1) bk 1

This is a great children's fantasy, featuring a wonderful adventure sequence deep in underground mines that had overtones of the LOTR/Hobbit adventures. This was Garner's first book and he set it close to his home and based it on local folktales of an enchanted sleeping army. Danger galore as many of the ordinary people in the village turn out to be on the side of the darker elements such as The Morrigan. Colin and Susan have come to Adderley Edge to stay with their mother's old nurse and her husband while their parents are abroad. They soon find themselves in a fight between good and evil.
I'm hoping to read the other two books before year's end.


Father's Arcane Daughter by E. L. Konigsburg (1976)
children's fiction / Little Bookroom

Konigsburg died earlier this year so it was time for a tribute read. As I've read most of Konigsburg's books I looked around for one of her earlier ones and the plot for this one had me intrigued. Winston and his sister live a very quiet life, their wealthy father hardly notices them and their mother is overprotective. One evening they are startled by the arrival of Caroline, their father's grown up daughter to his first wife. Caroline had been kidnapped 17 year's earlier and feared dead. Their mother had been the first wife's nurse until she died. Winston's mother is suspicious of Caroline, is it really her, she's arrived just in time to claim her late mother's fortune before it reverts to the father. The children's lives slowly change for the better, they've been excessively sheltered until now and the mystery of Caroline is revealed at the end.
This was a great read and one wonders aboiut Caroline and her motives right to the end.

There's a 1990 tv movie, Caroline starring Stephanie Zimbalist - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GmbbFtaxDU

The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness (2013)
fiction / Dropbox category

This is based loosely on a Japanese folktale, a man helps an injured crane one night and the next day a mysterious woman appears and becomes his lover. I enjoyed the urban London setting for this. Unhappy and divorced, George owns a print shop and has a grownup daughter with her own problems, enter Kumiko who brings happiness but also unsettling mystery to their lives. Not everyone is going to love this but it worked for me. Ness adds in a narrative between a volcano and a crane that mingles in and out of the main story as Kumiko creates art that complements George's more clumsy creations. It's quite intriguing, the folktale element has to give the story a fantastical edge.

I might move this to my scifi/fantasy category

Alhambra by Madeleine Pollard (1971)
YA historical fiction / Little Bookroom

Set in the time of Isabella and Ferdinand's conquest of Malaga and Granada. Two young Christian children, Jacinta and Juanito are taken from their home by Moorish warriors to Granada to be sold into slavery. They escape into the gardens of the Alhambra and are accepted into the royal household as companions/servants of the Caliph's niece. While Jacinta assimilates to the Moorish life, eventually marrying into the faith, Juanito never forgets that he is a Spaniard even when he realises that he loves his childhood playmate, the unattainable Nahid, a royal princess. His ambition to join the army of Isabella and Ferdinand to fight against the Moors is at odds with his sister's desire for a Moorish life.
I thought Pollard's Children of the Red King was a great read and this is also quite captivating. The book has quite striking ink illustrations at the start of each new chapter.

The Spider King's Daughter by Chibundu Ohuzo (2012)
fiction, nigeria

I've wanted to read the book since reading Andrea Eames talk it up after they were both shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize last year. Ohuzo started writing this when she just 17 and was only 21 when it was published. The book was long/short listed for the Commonwealth Prize (Africa), the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, so I had to find out for myself.
I felt the story brought the contrast between the lifestyles of the rich and the poor of modern Lagos to your attention in a quite interesting way. Abike is a rich 17 yr old girl who one day buys an icecream from a street hawker, he's handsome but poor. They strike up an unlikely friendship/romance, but there are hidden elements to both their stories. Abike's father is head of a wealthy empire built from corruption whereas the hawker's family has only hit hard times since the death of their father a year or so ago. The ending was a little weak for me but I loved the story up till then. This looks like it's a romance but it's anything but.

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (1946)
fiction / Cult writers category

There is a Jul-Sep Group Read of the Gormenghast trilogy if anyone wants to join us.
I'd tried reading this once before and got about 150pgs in before abandoning the book. This time I kept reading and really enjoyed the grotesque characters, the wonderful descriptions of Gormenghast itself and the weird rituals of the Earldom. The book kicks off with the birth of Titus Groan, the heir to the 76th Earl and also the day that a young, ambitious kitchen hand, Steerpike, decides he's had enough of working under the despicable chef Swelter.


The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks (2013)
graphic novel

This was a lot of fun. Superhero Girl is just your average superhero trying to start out in a new location away from her more impressive family. There are still some parts of her 'act' to workout like who is her arch-nemesis, her back story etc but given time it should all sort out though Skeptical Guy has his doubts about her.

The Crow Road by Iain Banks (1992)
fiction / The Book Pile

I'd already read The Wasp Factory some years ago and have had The Crow Road on Mt tbr for a long while. This was a great novel to become immersed in. I wasn't at all sure where it was going but the story grows bigger and uncovers more mystery as it goes. The plotting and mixing of timelines is impressive and probably typical Banks territory, though I haven't read enough of his straight fiction to be sure. Not as dark as The Wasp Factory and not as violent as Stonemouth.
Prentice arrives home, just north of Glasgow, for his grandmother's funeral and once we are introduced to his family, the story meanders into the past...

113) The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
YA fantasy / iPod audiobook
Fantasy/scifi category

I've been constantly reading good reviews of this, most saying they were pleasantly surprised by how good it was and I have to agree. There are just so many interesting aspects to this paranormal story. Blue is the only member of her family not to have psychic powers but she's a magnifier, whenever she's around everyone else's power increases. The boys from the private and elite Aglionby Academy in her town are nicknamed 'raven boys' because of the school emblem. Blue becomes involved with a group of boys and finds they are not at all like she expected. Can't wait for the next book, The Dream Thieves.


The Ocean at the end of the lane by Neil Gaiman (2013)
Fantasy/scifi category

A great dark fantasy story. A man returns to his hometown for a funeral and when he drives to the street of his childhood home he remembers what happened there when he was really young. Gaiman based the story on his own childhood home. He's a remarkable storyteller.

The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson (1954)
fiction, swedish
Reading Globally category

This was another group read and one I had doubts about finishing before the month ended but was such a great read I ended up finishing with a day in hand. A wonderful saga about Vikings, the story starts with our hero, Red Orm being kidnapped as a youth. He has many adventures, makes many friends and lives to a ripe age before going on his final adventure. Set at the end of the 10th century quite a bit of story is set around converting heathens to Christianity. So glad I finally read this one. Recommended.


A traveller in time by Alison Uttley (1939)
children's fiction / Little Bookroom

Last of my July reads. This is a time slip book set in the 1930s and the 16th century. Penelope and her siblings travel from London to stay with their great aunt and uncle to convalesce after a long illness. They live in 'Thackers', an old farmhouse that was once the country home of the Babington family in Elizabethan times. Penelope slips into the past and the time of Anthony Babington who plotted to free Mary, Queen of Scots from the nearby country home that she had been confined to for more than twenty years. She knows the tragic outcome for the Queen as well as for Anthony Babington but is unable to warn him.
I found this a quite nostalgic read, the descriptions were really vivid but the story was a bit plodding with a sense of tragedy in the making overwhelming the story a little too much for me. The actual time slip and her 'ghosting' effect from time to time was really effective. I loved her great-aunt who seemed to be identical in both time eras.
Another entry in the 1001 children's books you must read before you grow up.

Uttley writes in the foreword that she based the story on her childhood years spent in the area of the manor-house and the stories her father told her of a secret passages underground. The 1586 Babington Plot led to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots and the conspirators were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.

wow you've been busy! some great reviews...(althouh I've managed to dodge any BB except for longships but Claire is reading that at the moment)

I loved weirdstone as a kid and have recently been thinking of re-reading since I have never read the 2nd or 3rd books

I am wondering which Banks to read - the crow road I bought in hardback so been a long while since I read that one...

almost time to start the second Gormenghast book :-)

Pete - I have 4 of Garner's books on my Mt tbr. I'd read The Owl Service and Elidor but not these or The Stone Book Quartet and Thursbitch. So many parts of Weirdstone I really enjoyed and I'll probably reread at some stage. Always makes me wonder what I did read when I was young as so many of these books don't ring any bells for me.

My next Banks will be Espedair Street as I picked up a used copy recently and the blurb on the back cover calls to me....rock music, 1970s etc....and one of the LT reviews mentions a Gormenghast-style house! I loved Stonemouth, mainly because I listened to it and the narrator had a great Scots accent.

I read the first 3 chapters of Gormenghast today, a tiny headstart, I'll soon fall behind.

Moving over to your new thread Kerry, and wow on the reading front!

@ 27 -- Glad you enjoyed The Raven Boys! I'm also looking forward to The Dream Thieves...it's on hold at the library already. :) Have you read Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races? If not, I HIGHLY recommend it!!!

I'm hoping to pick up The Crow Road at the library as part of the Random CAT. Glad to hear it's a good one!

Oh, hullo, excellent progress over here! I almost dodget the bullets but I'll have to add The Raven Boys to the wishlist - I too have only heard good things. I was planning on joining in the Gormenghast read, but now I have another chunkster to do battle with, but I have a few months left, right? :)

A fine summer knight by Jan Mark (1995)
children's fiction, audiobook
Young at Heart category

I read Mark's YA The Eclipse of the Century a few years back, it's an interesting scifi-ish novel that I keep thinking about. I wanted to read some more of her work and do intend to read Useful Idiots because I think it's such a great title and the plot sounds interesting. Anyway I saw this audiobook on the library website so grabbed it.

Grace is the youngest in her family, her siblings are all much older than her, most are grownup and a couple even have children of their own. Her nickname is 'Auntie' which she has grown to hate because everyone calls her that, even at school. Family life revolves round the parents' passion for restoring old steam engines. One day looking through the telescope she sees a knight walking on a patch of green on a distant hill and becomes determined to discover more about this mystery.
This was a great little story about friendship and family. I loved all the characters, the restoration of the old machines etc and how Grace ends up finding an unlikely solution to her father's problem.


Mateship with birds by Carrie Tiffany (2012)
fiction / australia / Down Under category

I'd been looking forward to reading this one, it was on the Orange Prize longlist earlier this year as well as the Miles Franklin Award shortlist and won the inauguaral Stella Prize which is the Australian equiv of the Orange Prize. It also won the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award (Christina Stead Prize, 2013) and was on the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction Shortlist (2012) and Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award Finalist (2012).

I did not enjoy it. Luckily it was a quick read and I'm writing my comments now so I can push the book far from my mind....
I've read a couple of reviews and can see why it's so highly thought of. It's about a lonely farmer in 1950s rural Australia and his relationship with his neighbour, Betty, and her two children. Harry is socially inept but highly observant, and keeps a journal on the family of birds that live in his backyard. It is really wonderful in its evocation of the rural lifestyle, Harry loves his cows, his dog, his birds and I really enjoyed the parts of the novel set around his relationship with nature. He cares but doesn't quite know how to show it. Betty is unsure too, her children have been the product of sexual encounters rather than loving relationships that failed.
But then I just found it difficult to read through too many pages of crude sexual observances (Harry tries his hand at writing a 'how to manual of sorts for Betty's teenage son) and then there was the altercation with another neighbour who had been 'carrying on' with his pet ewe....well I never! I got the point, no one had taught these poor men how to talk to women, how to communicate, how to build relationships with people.

From the Stella Prize website - "Her second novel, Mateship with Birds, is a triumph of noticing and, having noticed, of carefully, meticulously assembling the things that have been noticed into a novel that shows, on almost every page, not just an eye for detail, but also a conviction that every detail is in some way connected and that the connections have meaning. Mateship with Birds seems like a natural extension of Tiffany’s sculptures: her skills in the meticulous piecing-together of fragments are apparent in this novel, where she uses several different kinds of text – letters, diaries, homework, nature notes – to weave a single strong narrative showing the interconnectedness of all things, and supported by a broad and generous world view....For Mateship with Birds is, above all, about sex and desire: ‘mateship’ here is translated from its familiar Australian meaning into a word for the practice and the art of mating. The book juxtaposes, in unexpected and surprising ways, its observations about love, sex, character, instinct and the natural world to create an original, tender, frank and funny version of the oldest story in the world: how a man and a woman get together."
Christina Stead Award judges - "In this wonderfully lyrical book, Tiffany evokes the breadth of a rural landscape through her moving story of two wary people who each lack the confidence to believe they could be loved by the other. The simplicity of Tiffany’s language and the gentleness of her narrative give to the story a poetical brilliance that is at once energetic and serene. With an eye for detail and a willingness to confront topics more easily left untouched, Tiffany has created in Mateship with Birds a memorable work of gentle beauty, wry humour and delicate but earthy imagery."

I'm with Pete on the Weirdstone of Brisingamen books in never having read the sequels although Moon of Gomrath is on my tbr shelves so a revisit may be in order for me too. Though as I credit the first book for my love of fantasy I'm a little apprehensive of doing so.

I read some comments by a respected child literature expert who re-read the Weirdstone recently, it was a childhood favourite for her. Her only criticism was the lack of character development of the two children through the course of the book. The third book, Boneland, was only published last year. I have favourite books that I'll never reread as I don't want to be disappointed.

Catching up here.. The Long Ships is proving to be a great read... quite enjoying the knowing humour running throughout.

The Crow Road has to have one of the best opening lines ever.. I can still remember it even though I read it a while back It was the day my grandmother exploded" ;-) .... I think I might have an Iain Banks category next year.

The Hit by Melvin Burgess (2013)
YA fiction / Young at Heart

A thriller about an ultimate drug, Death. If you can afford it, you have the ultimate week long high but then must pay the ultimate price. I wasn't sure how the story would proceed on a premise like this but the plot while a bit far-fetched had its moments. The main character, Adam, is not the brightest spark on the planet, none of the characters prove that likeable.
Not Burgess at his best but still an interesting action-packed escapist read. Be aware that there's quite a lot of violence. It's set in a bleak near future where a large part of the population is repressed by a totalitarian government.

Burgess was approached by publisher, Barry Cunningham, The Chicken House to write this book after an initial working of the novel was presented to him by a couple of philosophy lecturers. In the acknowledgements Burgess discusses the constraints of working on someone else's ideas for the story.

The original idea was not Burgess’s at all however, and The Hit is a uniquely collaborative project. The initial idea came from two A-Level philosophy teachers who approached Chicken House MD Barry Cunningham with a novel they had written that tackled big ideas. Cunningham, who liked the idea, but didn’t think the novel worked, asked if he could take it to Burgess. ‘When Barry came to me with the idea,’ says Burgess, ‘I was interested really. I’ve done a little bit of work for TV and am used to the collaborative approach, and I was keen to give it a try. I’m always interested in finding new ways of writing, new approaches.’ He’s quick to credit Barry, ‘Barry picked out the idea, he spotted it’, and the two obviously worked very closely on the book.'

I read the original novel’ says Burgess, ‘and tried to keep as much of it as I could. Initially Barry and I approached it as if it was a treatment for a film or for TV, and I thought that version kind of worked. It was only when I came to write it that we realised neither of us are as experienced as we’d thought!’
The Hit remains true to the vision of those two philosophy teachers, and underneath the comedy, serious points are being made.

http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/issue/199/childrens-books/articles/melvin-burgess-int...

#38: Claire - Yes, The long Ships was highly enjoyable. I would have been quite happy to accompany Orm's sons on their adventures in a second volume.
I've decided to switch my Celtic historical category to a 'Scotland literature' one as I have an Irvine Welsh novel and a few other contemporary novels that could go there including more Banks. This year's group read of Penman's Eleanor of Aquitane series has given me less opportunity or enthusiasm to pick up the historical fiction that I'd planned to read in this category.
I love that opening line.

The Center of Everything by Linda Urban (2013)
children's fiction / Young at Heart category

This is another thoughtful story from the author of A Crooked Kind of Perfect. It's set around a town's annual parade that celebrates the founder who is famous for inventing the hole in the donut. Ruby has won the school essay competition so has a special role. Books referenced in the narrative include Rebecca Stead's When you Reach Me and L'Engle's A wrinkle in time.


Marry Me by Dan Rhodes (2013)
flash fiction / Collector’s Corner

I picked up this short collection at the library in the new release area. The initial stories were rather fun and reminded me of a stand up comics routine but then became a little 'more of the same'. Funny, cynical flash fiction on the theme of marriage, mostly around getting married or leaving the spouse. I read a few aloud to my daughter and we had a good giggle.
The reviews on GR indicate that his first flash fiction Anthropology 101 true love stories is stronger so I've put in a request for that.


The Green Man by Michael Bedard (2012)
YA fiction / Young at Heart

Average YA fantasy that is lifted by setting most of the action in a used bookshop called The Green Man and focusing on poets. Ophelia or 'O' arrives to spend her summer helping her aunt run the bookshop. Dark magic is lurking in the shadows. I'd probably read more by the author.

Friends with boys by Faith Erin Hicks (2012)
YA graphic novel / Young at Heart

Hicks did the artwork for Brain Camp which might be familiar to some of you. I really liked this, the storyline is the serious one about fitting in to a new high school but comes with stacks of humour and great artwork. Maggie, the youngest of 4, is starting high school and after being homeschooled like her older brothers it's a big step. I enjoyed the relationship between Maggie and her brothers, the friendship she strikes up with brother/sister loners, Lucy and Alastair and then the improbable problem she has of being haunted.


_
A Family Secret (2007) & The Search (2007) by Eric Heuval
children's graphic novel / Israel & Diaspora

These were produced in cooperation with Anne Frank House and the Resistance Museum of Friesland and serve to educate (Dutch) children about Holland during WW2 and what happened to Dutch Jews. The first one focuses on Helena who is friends with a Jewish girl Esther. The second one is more especially focused on the Holocaust. Both start out in the present day with the grandsons of Esther and Helena making a discovery that brings the past to life.
These are for a younger audience than Maus and have more straightforward artwork in full colour.

I just read Hicks' descriptions of her SDCC-visit this year on her tumblr - hilarious!

I do like that Hergé-style art of Heuval's work, it will be interesting to see how it works with a serious topic. *wishlist add*

Oh I enjoyed reading that tumblr too. Thanks for alerting me to it.

Wow, Kerry so much to take in here. I loved The Wasp Factory when I read it a few years ago and had thought that my next Iain Banks read would be Stonemouth so I was very happy to see you mention that you loved it. I also have added The Spider King's Daughter to my wishlist.

Judy - I found The Crow Road to be quite a sprawling multi-generational read whereas the plot in Stonemouth is much more direct. Do try for the audio version if you are into audiobooks. Can't say enough how I adored the Scots accent of the narrator.

After falling in love with the audio version of Trainspotting mostly due to the reader's Scots accent, you have sold me on the audio of Stonemouth.

Oh yeah, I went on to Trainspotting on audio from Stonemouth! I've just copied the cds for Skagboys onto my iPod so will be listening to that if I ever get through my current listen.

The Intentions Book by Gigi Fenster (2012)
fiction, new zealand
Down Under category

This debut novel is on the shortlist for the New Zealand Post Book Awards, the winner will be announced at the end of the month. I found it very accomplished and read most of it in one sitting. Morris looks back over his life; his childhood and marriage, while waiting for news of his daughter who has not returned from a solo tramp in the Tararua Ranges.
Fenster, a lawyer, is from South Africa and studied for her MA in Creative Writing in Wellington.

Other shortlisted novels include The Forrests by Emily Perkins, Absence of Heroes by Anthony McCarten (UK-based) and The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn (Scotland-based).

Why Blame Israel? by Neill Lochery (2004)
nonfiction / reality Bites category

With new peace talks underway between the Israeli government and PA, I felt it timely to read some neutral background to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Lochery makes a good job of analysing the facts, Dr. Neill Lochery holds the Catherine Lewis Lectureship in Modern Israeli Politics and is director of the Centre for Israeli Studies at University College London. He's fluent in Hebrew, Arabic and Portuguese and has served as an advisor to politicians in the Middle East, on both sides of the political divide, and consults for business leaders.

From author's website: 'For a surprising number of people, Israel has become a pariah state, a threat to world – not just regional – peace and security. Israel gets the blame for half a century of Middle Eastern violence, for inciting Islamic-based terrorism throughout the world, and for stealing land whose historical right of ownership is at best contentious. This book examines the true history of the conflict and asks what could inspire such a caricature, and whether any truth lies behind it. Should Israel shoulder this blame, or are the realities of the conflict far more complex? And how can a geographically tiny state of only 6.5 million people be thought to have such a profound effect on world politics?'

Points covered include:
How being forced by peace mediators to make concession after concession has not led to peace but only weakened the Israeli position.
How Israeli politics have evolved in reaction to the changing demographics is the country - the influx of the Arab-Jewish refugees (50% of Israeli Jews) through the early 1950s favoured the Likud Party as they felt the ruling Labour had handled their absorption poorly. The arrival of Soviet Jews from 1990, who now make up 20% of the Jewish population also changed the political scene, expected to vote for Likud, they voted for Labour as they felt Likud had handled their aliyah poorly. Hard to imagine in both cases how difficult for a small population to absorb such large numbers of immigrants at all.
Israel has been under considerable world scrutiny and pressure through the past 60 odd years, at every move they make to ensure their security and survival even they come in for condemnation. Having a democracy and a free press has made the government and military more open to criticism from the media and public than those of neighbouring countries. Lochery is critical of various Israeli politicians and their motives especially the deals done with religious parties in order to stay in government. This has given the minority Ultra-Orthodox parties an unfair influence over Israeli society.

The book includes several maps from Martin Gilbert's The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Why at the very start they did not make Jordan a Palestinian state is beyond me. Why all this insistence on security and survival, is because Israel is a very small country smaller than Vancouver Island which makes it very vulnerable especially when you consider that on the 1949 armistice lines it is only 9 miles (14.5km) wide along part of the coastal belt between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

My only regret was that the book doesn't cover the last 9 years, he adds a postscript to the paperback edition to cover Arafat's death in Nov 2004.

Born in Scotland, Lochery has written several books on Israel and Portugal. I want to read at least three more by him:
Loaded Dice: The Foreign Office and Israel - Professor Lochery examines the truth of the myth that the British Foreign Office has been heavily prejudiced in favour of the Arab cause in the Middle East.
Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-45 - atmospheric history of Portugal's capital city during World War II is a gripping tale of high-stakes intrigue, betrayal, double-dealing and survival.
The View from the Fence: The Arab-Israeli Conflict from the Present to Its Roots - an even-handed analysis of the history of the Middle East - and dissects the failure of recent peace efforts.

Anthropology and a hundred other stories by Dan Rhodes (2000)
flash fiction / Collector's Corner

Another volume of Rhodes short short stories, this one is about girlfriends and I probably slightly preferred it to his followup Marry Me up in post #184. One thing I've enjoyed in these two volumes are the exotic names of his girlfriends and wives - Running Water, Zazie, Badr-al-Budur, Aurelia, Tadhana etc

"Crying":
story number 13 from Anthropology
"My girlfriend left me, and I started crying in my sleep. My nightly lament became so loud that my neighbors called the police. The press found out, and people came to stand outside my house to hear me call her name and moan. Television crews arrived, and soon a search was on to find the object of my misery. They tracked her to her new boyfriend's house. I watched the coverage. People were saying they had expected her to be much more beautiful than she was, and that I should pull myself together and stop crying over such an ordinary girl."

"Anthropology"
story number 1
"I loved an anthropologist. She went to Mongolia to study the gays. At first she kept their culture at arm's length, but eventually she decided that her fieldwork would benefit from assimilation. She worked hard to become as much like them as possible, and gradually she was accepted. After a while she ended our romance by letter. It breaks my heart to think of her herding those yaks in the freezing hills, the peak of her leather cap shielding her eyes from the driving wind, her wrist dangling away, and nothing but a handlebar moustache to keep her top lip warm."

some more here: http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0900/rhodes/excerpt.html

And here's the description from a book site:
In 101 words each, the 101 witty, haunting stories of Anthropology chronicle the search for love in an age preoccupied with sex. Each story is a pure distillation of heartbreak, longing, delusion, and bliss. Each spins speedily, shockingly, to its unpredictable climax. And each is unlike anything you have read before.
Anthropology's macabre humor builds imperceptibly, story by story and girlfriend by girlfriend, until it reflects with surreal accuracy how we try to complete ourselves through--or at the expense of--another. Read it to laugh and forget your sorrows; read it to recognize and remember your delights; read it to discover a vivid, provocative new talent.

I posted about dvds and films that I've been watching through the year on my 75 books thread here at #198 through to post #209. I tend to binge on either actors or directors I like.

Adding the Lochery book to the wishlist - sounds very interesting. Great list of "watchings" as well. Shallow Grave is one of my all-time favorites - there are some classic scenes in that one! And, McGregor, Eccleston, Stott, and Lewis in the same film is just brilliant. Footnote is quite heart-wrenching, isn't it, and Ashkenazi absolutely shines!

Eva - another academic who I've been reading is Efraim Karsh. He has some really interesting articles archived on the Middle East Forum. I've got a couple of his books on my Mt Tbr to get to. Also came across Martha Gelhorn's 1961 article for The Atlantic, 'The Arabs of Palestine' which makes interesting reading, I have to find more of her work on Spain and WWII.
I'm not reading many books at the moment, my current obsession is politics and history and I've been reading lots of online archival stuff, lining up a few books and getting into a bit of de-cluttering around the house which also means off-loading a lot of the books I've read but haven't as yet donated or tried to sell on our local trading site.


Brain Camp by Susan Kim (2010)
graphic novel / Young at Heart category

I got this from the library on the strength of Faith Erin Hicks who is the illustrator. I also remember in the dim past reading a great blog post about the cover design. The story is not particularly strong but is creepy and quite imaginative and revolves around a summer camp that takes in failing rebellious teens and turns out high achieving model citizens within a couple of weeks.

As I said above I'm reading online stuff so not much at all to report on the reading front, making little progress in most books I have on the go. I'm putting up with the narrator of my current audiobook, Arcadia Awakens, which isn't the greatest YA paranormal I've come across but the narration adds to the dismal experience. I will finish it.

Currently reading:
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake - still sitting at the 100pg mark.
A line in the sand: Britain, France and the Struggle That Shaped the Middle East by James Barr
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Arcadia Awakens by Kai Mayer - audio

The Gaza Kitchen: a Palestinian Culinary Journey by Laila El-Hadad & Maggie Schmitt (2012)
cookbook / Reality Bites category

This came out earlier this year and was the result of one of those kickstarter type productions. The money raised enabled the two authors to travel to Gaza and interview women, look at food and agricultural enterprises etc and produce a cookbook that showcases the local Gazan cuisine, ingredients and way of life. The writers do not make excuses for the political stance that comes across in some of the entries in the book. What's in here is quite interesting; recipes, interviews with ordinary residents from the strip, photos, information about the aid packages they receive each month, the economy, the local enterpreneurs, the water supply, electricity supply, crops, home gardens, local artisans etc etc. It is an attempt to capture a changing way of life as with modernisation and higher education of the new generations of women there is less time to spend in the kitchen.
The recipes are typical for the region, with the Gazan speciality being dill, dill seed and more chili than other local Arab cuisine. They also claim to be the home of red tahini though I had recently read a food blog about an Arab business in Jerusalem's Old City that has specialised in red, black and white tahini for many years. Many of the recipes call for the red tahini and the writers suggest substituting ordinary tahini and sesame oil.

The book is not a glamorous production like we expect from cookbooks generally nowadays but then again it doesn't set itself out to be a typical cookbook and the production values are appropriate for the cause. I found the guest introduction to be superfluous and in fact repetitive to the content in the writers' own introduction. The editing and layout could have been improved, the photos could have had captions etc etc, but there is a lot of content. Some of the statements I personally found too political but other readers will probably be ok with them.
Laila el-Haddad is Harvard educated, born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents from Gaza and grew up in Saudi Arabia. She chose to live in Gaza with her young children for several years to establish a career in journalism, quite a decision because her Palestinian husband, a US based physician had to remain behind. She kept a blog - gazamom.com which led to a book deal, Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between which covers her own experience and that of her parents who stayed on in Gaza after she left in 2006. Schmitt is a food writer/researcher from Madrid.
One interview that stuck in my mind was that of a women who struggled to put her daughter and then son through university, but chose an uneducated 16 yr old for her son's bride as 'it's better that way'.
It was interesting to read about the aid packages which they receive each month (I think). The recipients generally sell part of them for cash so that they can then purchase fruit/veges and meat. It's clear that these food aid packages are very basic and don't cover a family's needs and children especially suffer from lack of fresh healthy food. Flour, legumes and milk powder are not enough. The fresh foods are readily available but many of the families are in economic difficulties.
Many of the women grew herbs and vegetables in their backyards, others also bred rabbits. Some were lucky enough to live on small farms.
Several recipes are available on the website: http://gazakitchens.wordpress.com/category/recipes/

Interesting project - I'll definitely look closer at the recipes on the blog.

Some of the recipes are interesting from an anthropological POV but most have similarities to typical Arab cuisine of the whole region, though I'd not heard of kishik, the fermented yoghurt/wheat 'biscuits' which are added to dishes.
I did think the recipe for falafel was an interesting one, much spicier with added chilli. And a speciality of Khan Younis is stuffed falafel. I cook Middle Eastern food quite often, my first ME cookbook was Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Food which educated me quite a lot about the food from the region.

I think the best cookbook that you probably won't end up cooking from is Oaxaca al Gusto by Diana Kennedy - simply gorgeous, totally interesting and most of the photos used in it were taken by Kennedy herself.

Current Progress:

1: Little Bookroom 12/13
2: Young at Heart 22/13
3: Reality Bites 10/13
4: Scifi and Fantasy 10/13
5: All things Celtic 1/13
6: Collector’s Corner 4/13
7: Down Under 12/13
8: Reading Globally 8/13
9: Israel & Diaspora 17/13
10: Literary & folktales
11: The Book Pile 13/13
12: Cult Writers 3/13
12b: The Sandman 1/10
13: Dropbox 16/13

Arcadia Awakens by Kai Meyer (2012)
YA / audiobook
Scifi/fantasy category
This is a paranormal fantasy cum mafia cum Romeo & Juliet story. An ancient order of shapeshifters that once dominated the Mediterranean, these powerful Arcadian clans having settled in Sicily have formed the backbone of the mafioso. Alesandro and Rosa meet on a flight from the US back to Sicily but their attempts at building a friendship seems to be at odds with family feuding.
I found the narrator a bit hard to take, all the Italian accents distracted me from the storyline. For most of it I felt a little blase but it did have everything - action, shapeshifters, romance, guns, fast cars, vendetta.


The testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín (2012)
fiction / Dropbox
Very beautiful prose. The story has been told before but it is interesting to read these retellings. Overall I think I preferred My name was Judas just because Stead's Judas is a more interesting character and his relationship with Jesus had that interesting factor, tension. Tóibín's Mary was a bit too pallid, she had no influence over her son or really even any interactions with him, so the book was a tad reflective and the tone doom-laden. Booker Prize longlist 2013.

->57 avatiakh:
Oh, Oaxaca al Gusto is beautiful! I want!! My favorite Middle Easter cookbook is Sephardic Israeli Cuisine, or at least it's the most stained - that is usually a good indicator. :) I have Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food (which I'm guessing is a "follow-up" to Book of Middle Eastern Food), but I haven't actually used that one much for some reason.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion (2013)
fiction, australia
DownUnder category 13/13
This was an entertaining read. Originally starting out as a screenwriting project was switched to a novel and won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for unpublished manuscript over in Australia last year. The main character, Don, is an accomplished but eccentric professor of genetics. He has asperger's syndrome and this dictates his very ordered life until he decides it's time to find a wife. Rosie does not tick any of the boxes on his checklist... Predictable but fun and will make a great romcom movie.

#60: Eva, I'm going to track down a copy of Sephardic Israeli Cuisine. The Roden was a Penguin paperback, no glossy photos but a really interesting read, I've got the new version as well now. I also used Tess Mallos' The Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook which has also just come out in a new, revised and very beautiful edition.


I made the falafel Gazan style last night to a sort of mixed reception. The addition of green chilli was great, too much salt in the recipe and the extra garlic over onion was ok. I didn't have any fresh dill so only added fresh coriander leaves in addition to the parsley. I'll probably adapt my own recipe (which originally came from the Mallos book) to incorporate extra garlic and the chilli.

Ooh, I want. The Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook goes on the wishlist.

Salty falafel = extra pita! :) Or unsalted french fries (yes, shoved into the pita!). Dill is usually around in my house (it's a staple of Swedish cuisine), but it won't grow in Southern California, so I have to go buy it at the store, which is a bit of a pain.

It's the wrong time of year here for a lot of fresh herbs, but I went out and bought extra parsley, dill and coriander plants today. I generally buy fresh dill at the weekly farmers market but haven't been much over the winter. Really looking forward to spring veges, I noticed that the supermarket was selling red capsicums from the Netherlands for a small fortune this week.

I like the look of The Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook. I've had the Claudia Roden one for ages (although mine does have pictures) and I do cook middle eastern food quite often as well.

I noticed that the supermarket was selling red capsicums from the Netherlands for a small fortune this week.

I am embarrassed to admit I had to look up 'capsicums' to discover what they are. I love red capsicums (bell peppers) but boy they can be pricy. Our prices don't go through of a much seasonal variation over the year because the majority of the capsicums in our grocery stores are of the hot house variety that are grown year round.

Yeah, we have just hit the 'highest price' season here and I've stopped buying fresh ones for a few weeks. They're selling for over 4USD each red one, green for a little under. Usually I can buy a whole bag of them for that. I was just surprised that the red ones on sale were coming right around the world...our winter ones generally come from Australia.

Will have to start thinking about 2014 now that the new group is up.

They're selling for over 4USD each red one,

OUCH! I will never, ever complain about the prices I pay after seeing that! I bought one earlier this week and still have the receipt. Looks like I paid $1.54 Canadian..... when the signs in the stores state a price per weight I tend to lose all sense of what cost what.

We're seeing our grocery prices rising steadily here for the last few years. It means lots of shopping around to find the good deals. I've almost completely given up buying meat at the supermarket unless it is on promotion. The producers would rather export everything than let us have it at a reasonable price.

Anyway I'm making a start on The Luminaries today.

I'll be very interested to see your reveiw of The Luminaries Kerry, right now I'm a little put off by the size.

One of my biggest food whinges is that we grow so much great meat and produce, but then have to pay through the teeth for it, or we get the seconds because all the top grade stuff is exported.

I looked up the price of red peppers as well as 4USD sounded horrendous. 80p for read or green. So that's maybe slightly over 1USD?

#70: Alana - I have to say that the size of The Luminaries has also stopped me from picking it up. Today I made a small dent in it, and it is compelling reading. I ordered my copy direct from Victoria University Press and was delighted to find that Catton had signed it.
Agree about the meat and produce, I started going to the weekly market in Otara but haven't been over the winter. I just refuse to pay top price for meat and hasn't fish got expensive as well.

#71: Rhian - that 4USD price is real extreme and unusual for here and only been for the last week or so. With spring about to happen the prices will improve but generally it has gotten quite expensive here in the past couple of years. I think UK prices are generally reasonable, I went shopping a few times with my daughter in London earlier this year.

US$4 for bell peppers?! Yikes. How much meat is actually produced in NZ? I know of the "obvious" sheep, but do you do anything else on a larger scale. I don't think our grocery prices have risen that much here (counting from the start of the recession), but that might be a state-driven effort rather than nationwide.

We export beef and lamb mainly to China I think as all the other markets have quotas in place that restrict product. Venison is a gourmet export and I'm not sure of quantity. We're well known for lamb but I would never buy frozen lamb and only buy the fresh stuff. Wine is quite cheap too.
The bell pepper price is as I said in previous posts, an anomoly and the prices will come down again in a couple of weeks. Annoying at present if you want to add them to a salad. Llocal tv stations have done supermarket shopping comparisons from time to time with the UK and Australia, and generally NZ has come out more expensive plus our wages are lower.

I found an interesting website that compares countries: http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/NZ

Most of the time the price fluctuations over here make sense, but I have seen such anomalies over here too - I remember filling a bag with peaches before looking at the price and then carefully placing them back on their tower, probably looking a bit odd. :)

"Wine is quite cheap too."
To make up for the high prices of everything else, or to make you forget?

That's a very interesting site - only one red bar in favor of the US, all others green... It was quite enlightening looking through the different countries on the list - apparently Sweden uses more electricity than US, which doesn't look good, but when you consider a huge amount of it is wind and water powered, not completely bad. Thanks for that link - I'm bookmarking it for future reference.

The site is a little addictive to start with. I found it when I was googling for a comparison between Israel and NZ and found I'd be slightly better off in Israel.
The top end of our wine market is all exported but I'm happy enough to drink at the cheaper end anyway.

California is heaven for cheap-and-cheerful wines. Plus, I'm a blasphemer who mainly drinks spritzers anyway if I have to drink wine, so don't waste the expensive stuff on me.

The difference between US and NZ and the difference between US and Israel seems to be very similar - I'd make less money, but everything else on that list would be better. :)

131) Smoke over Golan by Uriel Ofek (1974)
children's fiction, Israel category

I found this book in the library stacks when looking for fiction set in Syria. I hadn't heard of Ofek before but very much enjoyed this story which seems to have been based on historic fact though I can't track down the specifics.
Eitan moves with his parents to found a small farm on the Golan Heights in 1968 called Neot Golan. It's right on the border with Syria, and life is fairly idyllic and he even makes the news as the sole pupil in his school which is set up in the tool house with a girl soldier for a teacher. He befriends a Syrian boy, Saleem, from across the border when he comes to the Israeli side looking for a stray donkey. When the Yom Kippur War breaks out right beside his farm, Eitan is home alone, and right in the thick of all the action.
The book focuses on friendship and comradery, bravery and courage and was an IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Honour Book in 1977.

I didn't find any children's fiction set in Syria but did bring home In praise of hatred which blurbs: censored by the state: the famous novel that was banned in Syria. Also Writing Love: a Syrian novel.
I just googled 'children's fiction syria' and the first search result was an Arab news headline '120 children slaughtered in Syria's Tal Abyad - Alalam News Network' - so sad what has been happening there.

@74 that is a very cool site. It does seems USA pays well but everything else suffers a bit, its same with the UK.

77 spritzers.. faints ;-)

132) Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff (2013)
YA fiction / Young at Heart 23/13
This YA thriller is compulsive reading but ultimately unrewarding not at all meeting the satisfying feeling you get from reading every one of Robert Muchamore's Cherub series. It is the first book in another new series about a trained teenaged assassin, in this one we follow him on assignment in NYC. There are lots of unanswered questions from his past that will probably unfold in future books. As I said before it is ultimately unsatisfying but a racy read for all that.
I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the latest Muchamore, Black Friday which has just been published.

Now back to Catton's book which is proving a great read just hard work for my wrists. Not getting anywhere on my two group reads.

->79 clfisha:
And my all-time favorite drink is Snakebite and Black. Go ahead, faint away! :)

I am finding all my recent visits to your thread, Kerry, involves me conducting on line research. That is a great comparing the various countries!

> 81 - Since I don't like stout, I don't think I will be trying a Snakebite and Black anytime soon.... although the cider bit intrigues me!

@81/82 ..mumbles.. cruelty towards cider .. mumbles..

snakebite & black - the ultimate Goth drink...

I like the look of the gaza kitchen

The Ink Bridge by Neil Grant (2012)
YA fiction, australia
DownUnder category

From the publisher: 'The Ink Bridge was written with a grant awarded from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2005 to write a novel about the refugee situation in Australia. Neil travelled to Afghanistan in 2009 to research this project. The resulting novel is set primarily in suburban Melbourne and in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.'

This was a really interesting read showing the perils faced by a young refugee boy fleeing the Taliban around 2001 and travelling all the way to Australia as one of the boat people. After having his tongue hacked out by the Taliban when he is found watching the dynamiting of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, young Omed must flee as the local Taliban Commander decides that he needs even more punishment. While in Australia there is a grieving teen who has become a selective mute, their paths cross when both end up working in a candle factory in Melbourne. The third part of the book is set back in Afghanistan.
It received an Honour Award at this year's Australian Children's Book Awards (YA fiction) and won the 2012 Queensland Literary Award (YA fiction) and is on the current YA fiction shortlist for the Western Australia Premier's Book Awards.


Rebecca and the Queen of Nations by Deborah Burnside (2013)
children's fiction, new zealand
DownUnder category

This is the first in a new historical series for 9-12yr olds, 'New Zealand Girl', and the line up of authors so far is quite stellar. I think Burnside is a great writer and this quick read is no exception. It's about life on board the 'Queen of Nations' 1874 voyage to New Zealand from Ireland, orphaned 10 yr old Rebecca has managed to get a job at the last minute on board helping an expectant mother with her unruly brood of children. I'd be happy to read a sequel.
The next book is Hone and the Burning Harbour by Paula Morris. I noticed on the Penguin NZ website that they have a Cover Photo competition for the third book in the series, Charlotte and the Golden Promise by Sandy McKay. How cool to have the chance to be on a book cover.

Hoping for a better reading month in September as August turned into a dead loss. Yesterday we walked around the waterfront in Auckland CBD and I came across this lovely reading zone - books seem to be mainly culled library books.
_

It was a lovely sunny day, hope to see more of these in the next few months.
_

->84 psutto:
Well, I can't deny having that as my past - too much photographic evidence of black dresses and and excessive eyeliner. :)

->86 avatiakh:
Lovely pics - wish I were there!

A quiet life by Beryl Bainbridge (1976)
fiction / audiobook
The Book Pile category
Once again I find that listening to a book limits my ability to comment on it. Mainly set at the end of WWII, the story revolves around a dysfunctional family, a husband and wife who don't get on at all, their son on the cusp of adulthood who is scared to take any risks, and a daughter who embraces risks. Both are products of their upbringing. It's a study of character rather than an action packed plot. The contrast between Alan with his girlfriend, their relationship already seeped in restrained normality and Madge, the younger sister, sneaking out to meet a German POW who she has fallen in love with makes this an interesting read.
The book was recently reissued by Virago and there is a nice little write up on it here. Apparantly Bainbridge based the story on her own family.

Can't resist adding the final sentence from gaskella's review: 'One of the funniest moments was actually on the first page where Madge writes to Alan “suggesting that if they were going to put Mother in the same grave as Father it might be a waste of time to carve ‘Rest in Peace’ on the tombstone.”'

Love the reading zone! and look at that lovely weather :)

every city should have a reading zone! nearest equivalent in Bristol is the free library in the Bear Pit (a big roundabout in the centre which has a set of subways & a pedestrian area with market stalls) usually though the shelves are empty...

Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge (1998)
fiction, audiobook
Dropbox category

I decided to slip this audiobook in before going back to a nonfiction listen. I've now read 3 Bainbridge books this year and will definitely be going on to read more. This was historical fiction set between 1846 and 1854. While the book is about Master Georgie, the story is told by 3 narrators who are involved with his life in different ways. The book starts out in Liverpool but moves on to a Crimean War setting. Georgie's interest in photography is part of the story and the book is divided into six plates rather than parts. You never quite pin down the essence of Georgie as you are more seeing him as each narrator sees him. I won't blather on and will point you to rebeccanyc's eloquent review on the book page.
This won several awards and was also longlisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Bainbridge was famous for being the Booker Bridesmaid, shortlisted five times without ever winning, and in 2011 Master Georgie won a public vote for the 'Best of Beryl' Booker.

I'm happy that you like the reading zone. It looked like a really comfy place to sit in for a while and next time I go I'll be prepared so I can do a book swap.

Wish we had a reading zone like that at the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk or San Francisco Pier 39!

The Ink Bridge has caught my attention and I've added it to my wishlist. I love the idea of a reading zone!

137) The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (2013)
fiction, new zealand

TIOLI challenge #16. Read a book set in a British Commonwealth Country prior to 1950. A bit daunting at 800+ pages but from the first chapter you are immediately sucked in to an intriguing tale set around the 1860s goldrush in New Zealand's West Coast. Catton introduces us to her twelve players and through their stories we find a mystery involving lost and found gold, opium, shipwrecks, forgery etc etc. I enjoyed the wide variety of characters she used especially the Chinese focus that is sometimes overlooked in stories about the goldrush.
She has structured the story around the Zodiac, attributing each of the main characters a Zodiac sign, this does not need to be understood to follow the plot. I'm inclined now that I've finished and know the characters and their motivations to look at each one from this astrological perspective. She also structures the book around a diminishing length of each part and chapter, so while the first part is almost half the book, the last 12th part is only one page. This seems to accelerate your reading of the last 200+ pages of the book as the mystery begins to unravel.
I loved Catton's debut novel The rehearsal and have been waiting for a few years for this one to come out, yes the wait was well worth it. This is a wonderful New Zealand novel, she evokes the times really well. Last year I read a lot of the same online newspaper archives (PapersPast) that Catton used for research as I was researching my family history in the 1860s Nelson hotel industry. It's amazing how many hotels these small towns had.

I'm hoping this makes the Booker Prize shortlist, though as I've only read one other from the longlist, The Testament of Mary, I'm basing my hope on my reading from other Booker years.

Great review of The Luminaries Kerry! I am really looking forward to reading it, when I get my hands on a copy. Like you, I was very impressed with Catton's debut novel and happy to see she is proving she can produce great stories.

Nice review of The Luminaries Kerry, I think I will pick this up eventually - when I'm in the right mindframe for a brick of a book!

Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (1950)
Book #2 in Gormenghast Trilogy
fiction / Cult Writers category

I'm so pleased that I've finally tackled Peake's work, and this second book is truly inspired. It covers Titus as he grows from schoolboy into manhood and uncovers more aspects of life in the castle with a focus on the professors who attempt to teach (or avoid teaching) the young boys of Gormenghast. Steerpike also continues in his ambitious quest for power. Peake's world is quite unlike anything I've come across, the language and descriptive passages are just wonderful, Dickenesque?, and the plot motors along at a better pace than the first book and the characters new & familiar are all fantastically grotesque yet also appealing for all that. The overwhelming theme of this book is Titus and his ongoing dilemma of being the 77th Earl (and the Gormenghast traditions and rituals that that implies) over his individual desire for freedom.
I've read on the group read thread that the third book, Titus Alone is fairly weak as Peake was unwell when writing it and at half the length of the other two, he was not able to pull off a work of brilliance. He had planned a series of volumes. I'm looking forward to reading book #3 for all that.
From wikipedia: Parkinson's disease and Peake's ensuing death at age 57 prevented him from writing down more than a few hundred words and ideas for further volumes.

I am sorry I missed the group read, but it has been interesting to follow along since I do mean to get to it sooner or later.

Black Friday by Robert Muchamore (2013)
CHERUB #15 or Aramov #3 series
YA fiction / Young at Heart category

As I said when #14 came out last year, I love Muchamore's series for teen readers. They are all action packed thrillers involving highly trained children and teenagers going under cover to help solve crime. This third book dealing with the Aramov Clan seems to tie everything up and features the now adult James from the Cherub series coming back to Cherub campus as a trainer/mission controller.
The Henderson Boys series about the WW2 start of Cherub has also finished.

Muchamore has a new series coming out next year, 'Rock Wars'...and just read about it, it will be about rival boy bands.

#99: Eva - Reading the trilogy across three months has been a strain for me. When we plan these things it looks so simple, one book each month, but when the time comes there are a lot of other books (library ones usually) that are equally as compelling to read. I also committed to the Sharon Penman group read and that hasn't helped even though we have a one book every three months leeway.
That said, I've finally managed to pull the Gormenghast books off my shelves and that feels like a triumph. They are quite different reading and you'll love the characters when you get round to it.

You just never know, right? I fully expected to take the full three months for the Count of Monte Cristo group read and it took me a little over a week. It was an easy read and I didn't happen to have any librarybooks out at the time. The Gormenghast discussions have really piqued my interest, so I'm going to try and fit them in soon.

Another writer that might interest you is Kate Forsyth, her latest book The Wild Girl looks very interesting and looking back at all her other writing that all looks good too.

Thanks! I saw the "Grimm" tag and that is always a good sign - wishlisting.

I really must get round to doing my review of Gormenghast! I didn't enjoy the third book as much as the first two, the second is the best I think

Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh (1952)
fiction / audio
The Book Pile

This is the first in The Sword of Honour trilogy and I'm very much looking forward to reading the other two books. We follow the trials and tribulations of 30ish Guy Crouchback as he trains to be an officer in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers around 1940/41.
I have an omnibus of the trilogy that has sat on Mt tbr for too long so was pleased to get a headstart with the audiobook.


Who will die last: stories of life in Israel by David Ehrlich (2013)
short stories / Collector's Corner

I came across this Israeli writer when looking at images of bookshops/cafes in Israel. He opened the literary cafe, Tmol Shilshom, in 1993 in Jerusalem, named after one of the works of S.Y. Agnon, Israel's only Nobel Laureate. Ehrlich has had numerous short stories published in English and two short story collections published in Hebrew. This book finally pulls together some of his translated work in one volume, what is possibly unusual is that there are a variety of translators. I enjoyed all these stories of life in contemporary Israel. While some were only a couple of pages long others covered more ground. Some were wistful, others humorous. I liked 'Tuesday and Thursday Mornings' about a charismatic busker and his effect on the regulars at a cafe, 'Lilly' which was also set in a cafe and 'On Reserve' which was about miluim or reserve duty, (מילואים - male Israelis are called up for mandatory reserve service until the age of 51). The first story 'To the Limit' is a 'fun' road rage story.

'David Ehrlich has published two books of short stories in Hebrew, 18 Blue and Tuesday and Thursday Mornings. His bookstore-cafe in Jerusalem, Tmol-Shilshom, is a haven for avant garde artists and writers, hosting readings by authors such as David Grossman, Etgar Keret, and A. B. Yehoshua. The late Yehuda Amichai, who read from his poetry at the cafe’s opening, was one of its major patrons: his favorite chair still stands in the corner.' More on Ehrlich here: http://www.jpost.com/Travel/Jerusalem/Voices-of-Jerusalem-Good-coffee-good-conve...

Tmol Shilshom

Wish I had known about Tmol-Shilshom when I was in Jerusalem - I would have loved to visit!

142) Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch (2013)
fantasy

TIOLI challenge #13. Read a book containing one element (author, location, theme, etc.) from previously listed book. This is the 4th Peter Grant book and another good contender. I'm enjoying these but won't go into any details just suggest that you start at the beginning.

Glad you enjoyed #4. I'm waiting for the pb release until I get around to it.

Have to say that cafe looks fantastic.. and a reminder to finish Etgar Keret!

Never go back by Lee Child (2013)
thriller
Collector's Corner category

This is #18 in the Jack Reacher series. Nothing literary here, just good escapist fare.


The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Rees (2006)
mystery / audiobook
Collector's Corner category

This is the first in the Omar Yussef series set in Bethlehem. Yussef teaches history at an UNRWA school in the nearby refugee camp. His sense of justice is stirred when a former pupil, a decent and caring Palestinian Christian man is arrested on the charge of collaborating with the Israelis. As he makes his own enquiries into the first killing that instigated the charge, Yussef is protected by the fact that he is known as a decent man and from a strong clan.
As the former TIME's Jerusalem bureau chief from 2000 until 2006, Rees has been able to bring the reader a great insight into the tensions in this Palestinian town between the various clans and also between Muslim and Christian Palestinians.
I was also interested in this book as I have hazy memories of visiting Bethlehem back in about 1982 when it was a much safer and friendlier place than it has become since the Oslo Accords.

I recently read The Collaborator of Bethlehem also and really enjoyed it. What a fascinating insight into a very complex situation.

I can highly recommend the next one in the series as well, A Grave In Gaza - another interesting location and Omar Yussef gets to really shine.

I'm definitely in for some more of these.

145) The children of the king by Sonya Hartnett (2012)
children's fiction, australia

One that I struggled to read and can't say I enjoyed it that much. The main character was difficult to like and that started to sum up how I felt about the whole book. I've really enjoyed her other work so won't hold this one against her.

Winner of the Younger Readers Book of the Year 2013 by the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA).
Judges' comments: Hartnett gives us a classically constructed, cultured novel that achieves the rare feat of bringing history to life. When two girls in wartime England connect with a much older, ghostly legend, strong characters and skilful storytelling make for an easy suspension of disbelief. They also enable the author to weave more contemporary themes of war and social difference into a compelling, rewarding narrative.

I like the cover, but judging from the style, I would have expected it to be a book from the 1950s or earlier. It does match the subject matter.

Fortunately, the milk by Neil Gaiman (2013)
children's fiction

A father who returns from collecting a carton of milk from the corner shop for his children's breakfast spins a very tall tale on his adventures once he left the shop clutching said carton of milk. Pirates, wumpires, time travel, space bullies etc etc. The illustrations add much to the reading pleasure of this tale. Includes a foldout middle section. This is suitable as a read aloud from about 4+ or a first book for emergent readers through to reluctant middle grade/intermediate readers. The UK version that I read is illustrated by Chris Riddell and the US version by Skottie Young, both look to be good.
Added to October's TIOLI #13. Read a book by an author that is on LT's Top 75 Authors list.

And though I've returned many library books lately I did pick up the Code Name Verity sequel today, it's set in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp - Rose Under Fire.

116> Eva - it did read a bit like one of those 1950s classics.

Goliath by Tom Gauld (2011)
graphic novel / Drop Box category

This was a msf59 (Mark) recommendation from the 75 books challenge group and I'm glad I took it up. A short but beautifully illustrated retelling of the Bible story, David and Goliath. This time the story is told from Goliath's POV and Gauld draws a sympathetic portrait of a simple Goliath who would rather be in camp doing admin than out on patrol. By far the star of this book is the artwork, it is quite stunning - simple and spare using a brown palette.

Goliath looks really sweet.

I heard Gaiman read from his book this past July and he had the whole audience cracking up. I can't wait to see it. I am also jealous that you got the new Weir book. I loved Code Name Verity and hope the sequel is as good.

I been meaning to check out Goliath, I love his cartoons.

A line in the sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East by James Barr (2011)
nonfiction

A useful read giving a solid background into all the shenanigans that Britain and France got up to in their dealings in the Middle East between 1914 & 1948. Because Barr wrote this fairly recently he had access to newly released material from both the British and French government archives that gives new insights into some of politiking that went on. I read the first half back in August and the last half over the last couple of days so what sticks in my mind is how hated the French were and then in their turn the British by the time they left the area. So much meddling and how different it all could have been.
maimonedes has written a great review that's worth reading if this book is of interest.

Haha! The seconds of confusion before it occurred to me that it was a link to another LT:er and not the Rambam! It's still early morning over here - I'll be brighter in a few hours. :)

The Goats by Brock Cole (1987)
YA fiction / Little Bookroom category

I've had this on my tbr pile for a couple of years, picked up cheap as I was intrigued by the title and the cover image. I found out that it had been on some banned book lists when it first came out and that it had also been on several award shortlists.
I started it last night when I was looking for something to read while soaking in the bath that I wouldn't get too cut up about if it got an accidental soaking. The story had me hooked from the first page.
It starts off in a summer camp, a boy and a girl have been abandoned for the night by their peers on a small nearby island (Goat Island), they've been labelled 'the goats' and stripped of their clothes as part of an old camp tradition. Both are loners, only children and not at all popular. Together they decide not to wait for morning and when they make it back to the mainland on their own, they steal some clothes and decide to escape from camp altogether. The two children form a lovely platonic friendship, each helping the other and together they are strong.
I was expecting these two protagonists to be much older from the blurb on the back of the book and the cover image but they are only tweens. This is a great little read, and very realistic in its portrayal of friendship.
Why was it banned? Maybe the bullying but probably because the two huddle together for warmth when they sleep....and some of the adults in the story immediately jump to wrong conclusions.
There's a lovely review of it here:
'There are a handful of truly beautiful books from my young adulthood, and THE GOATS by Brock Cole is one of them...It is still as sweet and solemn and kindhearted and hopeful as it was when I first opened the book and discovered a writer and a pair of protagonists who spoke so strongly to me. The loveliness of this little novel lies in the spare, fluid writing and in the two main characters, Laura Golden and Howie Mitchell, whose friendship in the book is perfect. '

#123: Eva - I love that user name....and since we're on the topic, I've recently downloaded the audio of Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds by Joel L Kraemer. Not sure when I'll listen to it but I grabbed it when I saw it on the library catalog and it is 'safely' stored in my iPod till then. I'm finding listening to nonfiction quite doable.

I have that one sitting on Mt. TBR - if you get to it before me, I'll be very interested to hear what you think.

I've tried non-fiction on audio, but it doesn't work for me, unfortunately. I'm even a bit envious of those who can do that - imagine how many of my guilt-trip non-fictions I could have gotten through that way! :)

Well as long as my iPod doesn't need to be reset like a couple of months ago, it will sit there and I'm hoping to tackle it over the New Year. I'm currently listening to Defiance: The Bielski Partisans and finding the slight Eastern European lilt of the narrator very soothing.
I've managed to make myself listen to the books, though I do often go back and redo some sections. It's also up to the narrator, if I don't get on with the voice I don't bother. With nonfiction I do like to have a copy of the book to refer to for name spelling, maps, book notes, photos, bibliography etc etc Well either that or wikipedia.

That's part of it - I get hung up on names of things and if I have to look it up, I might as well be reading a paper copy. The narrator plays a huge part, but that's true of fiction as well - a bad narrator can murder the best of novels. I have managed popular science stuff on audio, like Stiff for example, but that's because it has a more straight-forward narrative. History on audio isn't really an option for me, but, like I said, I'm very envious of those for whom it works!

@ 117 -- I too had to buy Rose Under Fire as soon as it came out...I probably won't get to it until the 2014 challenge, though! :)

I've just started it and I already feel that it is going to be a winner.

Eva - if I didn't listen to these books I'd never get to them no matter how many good intentions I have. I did stall on The Battle for Spain so I could study some maps and look up all the abbreviated names of all the fighting units, so many anarchist and communist ones and now I feel like starting over again.

Right?! I have deliberately added a non-fiction category for next year, so I will have finished at least 12 of them before the end of next year. :)

I wish you every success! I've done quite well reading non-fiction but I never end up reading the ones I think I'm going to or should read, but that goes with fiction as well. All the chunksters get ignored in favour of the slimmer volumes.

Catching up on threads! I also enjoyed the Goliath book. It was so cute and whimsical, so different from the biblical portrayal of the giant.

Thanks for the tip on the Maimonides book. I'll put it on my audible wishlist.

Sweet Clarinet by James Riordan (1998)
YA fiction / Young at Heart

I read Riordan's The Cello a few years back and thought it quite nifty, about a gay teen who played cello and lived on an estate, a bit of a recipe for disaster and a good read. This one also uses music as a form of breakthrough, this time it is young Billy who is horribly burnt and orphaned during the London Blitz and spends several years undergoing plastic surgery on his disfigured face while living in an isolated residential home in the countryside with other disfigured and disabled casualties of the war. He's given a clarinet and through the solace of music begins to nurture a dream of a better life rather than dwelling in the past.
This was Riordan's first novel and gleaned from wikipedia - 'when Riordan was nine he was in an air-raid shelter that was bombed, killing several people nearby and leaving him suffering from such severe shock that for over 50 years it was a repressed memory before he worked elements of it into his first novel.'

I'm definitely reading more of Riordan's work, he's also collected and translated a lot of folktales. His bio is very interesting, he played football in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, became a leading expert on sport under communism and studied politics in Moscow before he was expelled when one of his articles was mistranslated.
His obiturary is here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/jim-riordan--russianist-and-childre...

Hi Jonathan - I'm following your reading on Club Read and wow you do read some interesting nonfiction. Glad to draw your attention to the Maimonides book.

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris by John Baxter (2011)
nonfiction / memoir
Reality Bites category

I started reading this in January before I visited Paris, but put it down when I realised it was more a rambling type of memoir than a straight out guidebook. I saw it on the shelf the other day and noticed that I'd already got to the halfway point so thought I'd finish it. I enjoyed several of the chapters, especially the one on the French Revolution. I appreciated the numerous quotes both those at the start of each chapter and the ones sprinkled through the text, some are quite obscure but almost all are about Paris. Baxter is an Australian writer who came to live in Paris with his French wife many years ago. He started doing guided walks by chance some years ago and in this memoir he tells us how he fell into being a guide and commentor on Paris and a little about odd corners of Paris. It's rather enjoyable and I've noted a few places - cafes, statues, streets that I'd like to visit on my next visit to Paris. There is a strong literary theme running through the book that adds to the ambiance but he can sound at times like quite a snob, and gives the impression that his walks are quite pricey. I also have The Flaneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund White around somewhere and should finish that one as well...and Paris: a guide to the city's creative heart out from the library which has beautiful photographs and from the little of the text I've read so far, it seems to have a lot worth noting down for any future trip.

On the metro, I always ride in first class. In second class, I would risk running into my creditors - Boni, Marquis de Castellane from the days of the 1st 2nd class carriages

Cafés noted from Baxter's book -
La Coupole - is a shrine to art deco. It was created in 1927 by two men from Auvergne, Ernest Fraux and René Lafon. the evening of its inauguration, all those from the worlds of art, literature and night were there: artists and their models, socialites and gamblers and easy and impossible girls. The restaurant was launched. The action glided from the American bar, run by Bob, to the rows of tables topped with paper and fabric tablecloths. Side by side the painters Derain, Léger, Soutine, Man Ray, Brassai, Kisling, Picasso often came here. Aragon met Elsa, Simenon dined with Josephine Baker, Breton slapped Chirico and Kessel downed drinks. An unknown man with tiny round glasses, Henry Miller, had breakfast at the bar; Matisse drank beer while Joyce lined up his whiskeys. When Mistinguett made her entrance surrounded by her boys, the room stood to applaud her. After France was liberated, the party began again. The 'Échelle' painters designed a fresco and work was displayed by artists from the School of Paris. Yves Klein wanted to paint the obelisk blue; La Coupole gave him a cocktail. César shared an intimate dinner with the bust of President Auriol, Camus celebrated receiving the Nobel prize at his usual table - number 149 - and Jean-Paul Sartre left hefty tips.
In May 1968, Cohn-Bendit climbed on top of a table. Patti Smith played guitar on the terrace, Renaud busked and Gainsbourg and Birkin came for Sunday lunch - Paris Tourist info

Angelina - Located beneath the arcades of the busy rue de Rivoli, across from the Tuileries gardens, this tearoom is most famous for its African Hot Chocolate, a thick, luscious concoction that has been compared to a melted chocolate bar. For over a century, the Angelina has established itself as a high point of Parisian gourmet pleasures, Marcel Proust and Coco Chanel were regulars here - ChocoParis

Café Procope, in rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, 6th arrondissement, is called the oldest restaurant of Paris in continuous operation. It was opened in 1686. During the Revolution, the Phrygian cap, soon to be the symbol of Liberty, was first displayed at the Procope; the Cordeliers, Robespierre, Danton and Marat all used the cafe as a meeting place. After the Restoration, another famous customer was Alexander von Humboldt, who lunched here during the 1820s every day from 11am to noon. The Procope retained its literary cachet: Alfred de Musset, George Sand, Gustave Planche, the philosopher Pierre Leroux, M. Coquille, editor of Le Monde, Anatole France were all regulars. Under the Second Empire, August Jean-Marie Vermorel of Le Reforme or Léon Gambetta11 would expound their plans for social reform. - wikipedia

Brasserie Lipp - one of Hemingway's hangouts
The Brasserie Lipp is famous for three things: Its choucroute; its cevelas, cold, squishy sausages smothered in mustard; and the man who made those sausages famous, a young writer named Ernest Hemingway, who came here when he had enough francs in his pocket for a cheap lunch. It’s not so cheap anymore.

Some cities are made for walking. Victoria, BC where I live is a good example of a compact, walkable city, and while I have never actually visited Paris - it is on the "to-do" list, trust me! - what I have read about Paris gives me the impression it is a walkable city, so of course, "seeing' Paris from a pedestrian's point of view, appeals to me.

Defiance: the Bielski partisans by Nechama Tec (1993)
nonfiction / audiobook
Reality Bites category

I watched the 2008 movie based on this book a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. The book itself is based on interviews with the various survivors who recounted their time with the partisan group. This was really interesting focusing on life in the forests, avoiding the Germans and then coming under the authority of the Soviets. Tec does a good job of giving us an understanding of the character of the three main brothers especially that of Tuvia who she was able to interview only a couple of weeks before he died in 1987. This was quite a good listening experience, though there were some local or Russian words used that I would have liked to see printed down, also a map would have come in handy.
I enjoyed learning about the camp and how Tuvia set up the many workshops which gave work to the non-fighting members - such as the bakery, metalworking, a tannery and shoe making etc etc which all came to be valued by the other non-Jewish fighting groups. Tec devoted a couple of chapters to the women of the group and how they adapted, many became partners of the fighters in order to have a better chance of survival.

From wikipedia: The Bielski Partisans were an organization of Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination and fought against the Nazi German occupiers and their collaborators in the vicinity of Nowogródek (Navahrudak) and Lida in German-occupied Poland (now western Belarus). They are named after the Bielskis, a family of Polish Jews who led the organization. Under their protection, 1,236 Jews survived the war, making it one of many remarkable rescue missions in the Holocaust. The group spent more than two years living in the forests and was initially organised by members of the Bielski family.

Finished another category with this one.

Lori - I haven't been to Victoria but after several trips to Paris can assure you that it is a delightful city for walking. My last trip was in the late winter so things were a bit chilly but we had a travel pass and caught the buses mostly and the occasional metro. So much to see and do there.

The treasure hunt by Andrea Camilleri (2013)
fiction, italy
Collectors Corner

This is the 16th in the Montalbano series and I always enjoy my 'visits' to Sicily to eat the food and solve a mystery or two with the increasingly perplexed Inspector. Another enjoyable entry and now I must wait for the next one to be published.
I was going to start reading the Pepe Carvalho books by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán as my library has a lot of them, but I've decided to leave that for next year.

Make good art by Neil Gaiman (2013)
speech / Collector's Corner category

Gaiman's speech at a commencement class last year was quite inspirational for creative arts students and ended up being published as a 'gift' book with playful typography and thoughtful design. He acknowledges that the creative arts is currently evolving with technology and advice that could have worked for his generation will probably not work for today's students. Would make a good present for a student.

There's a youtube clip of the speech here

That's a great speech - I'll happily pick that book up for someone as a graduation gift.

Oh your right that would make a great gift. I think everyone is going to get a book for Christmas whether they like it or not so I am sure someone will get it :)

A hundred million francs by Paul Berna (1955) alternate title The horse without a head
children's fiction / Reading Globally

One of the 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up. This book has been lying around my house for many years and I decided to finally read it when I pulled it out of a box the other day. The title has always appealed and I don't think I would have felt so inclined to read it if I had a copy titled The horse without a head.
The story is set in an outlying workingclass area of Paris after WW2 and features a gang of children, a train robbery and a battered headless horse/tricycle. All the elements of classic children's literature here with the intrepid children outwitting a bunch of fairly bumbling robbers, along with supportive parents and a distracted policeman. What I really liked was just the simple joie de vivre of the children whose favourite pastime is taking turns to ride the old horse trike down the steepest street in their area. Also Marion, the oldest girl, has trained most of the neighbourhood dogs and adopted numerous strays which comes in handy when dealing with the thugs.
There are a couple more books about this gang of children and I read somewhere that Berna grew up in this area of Paris so really captures the essence of these children and their community. I also have to commend the b&w illustrations in my edition by English illustrator Richard Kennedy, in the notes it says he made his sketches in Paris and this adds to the authenticity.

I'm adding this to my translated fiction category rather than the classic children's fiction one as I can see myself struggling to finish this year's challenge, I seem to have chosen categories that just aren't doing it for me this time around.

158) Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake (1959)
fiction / Cult Writers category

Concluding book in the Gormenghast trilogy. TIOLI challenge #2: Read a book from the library of an LT Author. That was easy because Rob Shearman has thousands of books (17,765) and I think if I could visit just one writer's home library it just might come down to his. From his LT profile - 'I'm very lucky - I've a house just about big enough to cope with the demands of my enormous (and ever growing!) book collection. I still have to smuggle them in when my wife isn't there to notice, however; both she and the cat are being edged out of the place! I love books - the smell of a new one, and the touch of an old one that has been loved already. Oh - and they're good for reading, too.'
...and he wrote the Daleks back into the Dr Who TV series..what's not to love.

Peake had hoped to write several more Gormenghast books but was already not well when he was writing this one and the first edition of the book was carelessly edited, several chapters omitted. So make sure your edition is at least from the 1970s. This boook is half the length of the first two and at first not as compelling a read. The gothic highlight of the three books is definitely the second one, but I really enjoyed the second half of this book with the build up to the farewell party and the party itself. Having left Gormenghast, Titus finds himself in a strange new world full of weird people, unusual ideas and laws and begins to doubt his own existence.
'Peake was a war artist and documented the liberation of Belsen. His experiences there haunted him and they filter up, barely digested, again and again in his final novel....This raises an important question. Should art that attempts to confront atrocities be polished and coherent, or is Peake's trembling inability to make full sense of what he has seen not, in the end, more honourable and more humane a response to events that are in themselves unthinkable?' from the Guardian

I'm so pleased that I managed to read all three Gormenghast books this year, they'd sat on the bookshelves for too long. I also have Sebastian Peake's biography of his father, The Man and his Art and hope to read that next year.

Rose under fire by Elizabeth Wein (2013)
young adult / Young at Heart category

Could hardly wait to start this after picking it up from the library as I really loved everything about Code Name Verity. Alas, for me this was not in the same league as CNV. In the author's note at the end of the book we read that Wein went to a week-long European Summer School at Ravensbrück. 'I’m here is to validate my own intentions, my understanding, my authority, my ability as an author. So, I’m validating. I hope.' Here's a post from her blog: http://eegatland.livejournal.com/95830.html

Anyway the book is about another female pilot, Rose Justice, and we meet a couple of characters from CNV but briefly. Rose comes from the US, is young and has an uncle high up in the military hierarchy who manages to get her a couple of chances to pilot him over to Europe in 1944. She ends up making a forced landing on German territory and is taken to Ravensbruck where she is incarcerated with young women from the various resistance movements who've survived horrible medical experiments by Nazi doctors. The last part of the book deals briefly with the Nuremburg Trials. We know that Rose survives from the structure of the book.

So why does it not gel for me - quite a few things. First too much of Rose's poetry - not a fan of liberal sprinkling of poetry in a novel, I never read them on principle. Second, I just felt that Rose was the wrong character to be telling a story like this, she was there but seemed 'apart', it just felt wrong to insert a pampered American girl in Ravensbruck dealing with concentration camp experiences. I wanted the others' stories not that of Rose or Rose telling me about their stories. Also the Polish Roza, kept saying that she never got her high school diploma - did the Polish Education system in those days do high school diplomas? It just felt like a more modern US term.
The structure took away most of the tension of the novel, we know ahead of time that Rose makes it out of the camp as she is writing about her experience in a Paris hotel, 'The Ritz' thanks to same uncle with contacts. That too feels wrong, most camp survivors did not get whisked away to spend a few weeks recovering at the Paris Ritz.
I do think Wein covers an important part of history that possibly hasn't been written for the YA market before, I just wish the framing of the story had been a little different.

The names of the real 'rabbits' (young women who were operated on) are listed in the background on the title page.

Other YA/children's books set in concentration camps/ghettos:
The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
Stones in Water by Donna Jo Napoli
The Man from the Other Side by Uri Orlev
The Island on Bird Street by Uri Orlev

Mister Creecher by Chris Priestley (2011)
YA fiction / audio
Young at Heart category

This Frankenstein retelling was quite a fun listen. It's light gothic horror set in Victorian England and tells the story of 14yr old Billy, a streetkid, who 'befriends' a large monstrosity of a 'man' that he decides to call Mister Creecher. Billy helps Creecher trail two Swiss visitors to London and then across England. One of them, a Mr Frankenstein, has close ties to Creecher. Quite a good twist right at the end.
Now I'm able to read Priestley's latest two books which both look to be good reads, Through dead eyes and the dead men stood together.

Hi Kerry, Mister Creecher sounds like a book I would like and I was happy to see that my library has a copy.

Judy - I really liked his The Dead of Winter. The twist at the end of Mister Creecher is more of a revelation and not much to do with the plot, but saying anything more is a spoiler.

It's light gothic horror set in Victorian England

SOLD! ;-)

*off to track down a copy*

Countdown by Deborah Wiles (2010)
children's fiction / Young at Heart category

Described by Wiles as documentary fiction - great description for a great read. This is set during the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 and is about 12yr old Fran who has a 'barmy' great uncle living with the family and friend problems at school. It's a military family, Fran' father is a pilot and they live by an airbase near Washington DC. What sets the book apart from similar reads is the inclusion of lots of news clippings about the crisis and civil rights, political photos & posters, song lyrics etc from those times. The book opens with a 'duck and cover' drill. Fascinating and would make a great read for the 10+ age group. This is the first book in a 1960s trilogy that Wiles is writing, the next book 'Revolution' is due out next year and covers the civil rights movement in the South.
I was really impressed by this use of nonfiction material mixed in with the fiction story - if you see the book on a shelf in the library or bookstore, do take it down and have a flick through.

Kerry, I read Countdown last year and was also very favourably impressed. I am looking forward to her next entry in this trilogy.

The Shadow Children by Steven Schnur (1994)
children's fiction / Young at Heart category

A holocaust story that comes with haunting illustrations. A young boy goes to stay with his grandfather in a remote French village for the summer a few years after the war. He 'sees' children but no one will talk about them, his grandfather's horse won't go past a stone bridge in the nearby woods. By the end of the book we find out that the village had to give up the many Jewish children they'd been sheltering and the Nazis loaded them onto a local train that ran through the woods near the bridge. They never came back but their memory haunts all the village inhabitants.


Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang (2013)
graphic novel / Dropbox category

I requested these from the library when I saw that they had been shortlisted for the National Book Awards recently, as I enjoy Yang's work and it is unusual for graphic novels to be shortlisted. I gave them to my daughter to look through and she read them straight through in one sitting so I got straight on to them the next day. Great introduction to the Boxer rebellion in 1900 and the arrival of Christianity to China. Each book is told from the different viewpoints of two young people from opposing sides whose paths cross during the disturbances. I really enjoyed these.


Note: Boxers should be read first.

The ship that flew by Hilda Lewis (1939)
children's fiction / Little Bookroom category

A timeless magical story for children that I would have loved to have come across as a child. When spending a day in town on his own, Peter finds himself outside an old shop in an unfamilar street. In the window is the perfect model boat that he was after. He soon finds that this is a magical ship that can grow and shrink and fly through space and time. Together with his brother and sisters, they travel through time and have the most marvelous adventures.
There always seems to be one child in these classic children's books with a fixation on food and eating.
From the foreward: Novelist Hilda Lewis created this story when on holiday in Normandy in 1937 with her children as they had nothing to read. It became her first children's book. Another entry in the 1001 children's books you must read before you grow up.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selnick (2007)
children's fiction / Young at Heart category

Added to TIOLI Challenge #11: Read a book everyone has read - bar you. Can finally confess that up until today I hadn't read this book, I've even seen and loved the film. After finishing the documentary novel Countdown the other day I had a hankering to read another book that relies heavily on the visual image. This had spent a couple of years on my bedside table without me once picking it up but I found it yesterday when going through a box of children's books and pulled it out. I knew I'd love it and I did. I also loved the movie. For anyone who loves film this is a great tribute to an early film-maker, Georges Méliès, who realised that film was the ideal medium to bring your imagination (and illusions) to life.
Another 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up book.

From wikipedia: Georges Méliès (1861 – 1938), was a French illusionist and filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès, a prolific innovator in the use of special effects, accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his work. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the first "Cinemagician". Two of his best-known films are A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). Both stories involve strange, surreal voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy.

Looks like you've had some good reads lately!

Hugo Cabret is so wonderful, isn't it. I loved that all the action parts are drawn, since it does wonders with the pacing. I saw the film on a plane a while back, but I should rewatch since it's hard to concentrate 100% while people are moving about around you.

She is not invisible by Marcus Sedgwick (2013)
YA fiction / Young at Heart

I took this with me when I had to go out this morning and in next to no time had read the first 100pgs, so came home and finished it. Sedgwick must have had a lot of fun writing this fast paced (almost) thriller. The book is based on the idea of coincidence and when 16 yr old Laureth's father goes missing when on a writing research trip, she reads an email meant for him, decides to take matters into her own hands and takes off for New York with her 7yr old brother Benjamin in tow.
There's something different about Laureth (and also Benjamin) which is best to find out by reading the book. I really enjoyed the story and the two children. Sedgwick quotes quite a bit of Carl Jung, we end up at Edgar Allen Poe's cottage and find out a little about Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli's theories on coincidence. There are reading group notes and a reading list at the end of the book which might give the inquisitive teen the impetus to explore more on these thinkers and their ideas.
Sedgwick has also collaborated with his brother, Julian, and their first joint graphic novel, Dark Satanic Mills, has just been published. Looking forward to seeing it.

Now I better get back to the books I'm meant to be reading. I'm enjoying The Mannequin Makers, it's got quite an unusual premise that makes for interesting reading. Can't wait to see where it's heading. Elizabeth Knox's latest novel, Wake, comes out tomorrow and I'm keen to read it since reading her blog post about it a few months back - http://www.elizabethknox.com/archives/2013/10/14/where-wake-came-from/

Elizabeth Knox on horror: http://booknotes-unbound.org.nz/fandom-elizabeth-knox-horror/

More than this by Patrick Ness (2013)
YA fiction / scifi fantasy category

Well once I got into this racy little number I just couldn't put it down and have read the last 300 pages straight through. All I'm going to say is that it starts with a boy drowning who wakes to his own personal hell. I was going to say a couple more things but will leave it there. Ness is a great writer and this is a 'fun' read, definitely for the YA market but great for us adult readers too.
The title was inspired by a Roxy Music song 'More than this'.

Agnes Cecilia by Maria Gripe (1978)
YA fiction / Sweden
Reading Globally category

I've had this on Mt tbr for a couple of years and when I listed it as proposed reading for my category challenge late last year I had several Swedish LTers raving about Gripes being their favourite childhood writer. Gripes won the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1974 and this book is included in 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up.
Agnes Cecilia is a ghostly mystery that centres around teenaged Nora, who has been sent to live with distant relatives when her parents are killed in a car crash. Her grandparents are not able to have her. Her feelings of isolation and abandonment overwhelm her ability to fit in with her new family and a ghostly presence in her new room in the apartment that the family have just moved to adds to her discomfort. Then there is the mystery behind a doll given specifically to her by an unknown old woman. Really interesting reading and covers an important lesson in misinterpretation of other people's actions and motives. Nora feels abandoned and alone, but really her new family are just acknowledging that she needs space and time to adjust to her new life.

I've added this to my Reading Globally category as my two children's and YA categories are stuffed to overflowing and other areas are completely neglected.

Glad you enjoyed it - I was pleasantly surprised at how well described the psychological parts were, since I thought it was pretty much a straight ghost story.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
fiction / The Book Pile

I read this on my mobile phone so it took a bit longer to get through as I only read it when I was caught without other reading material. I really enjoyed the story and so pleased to have crossed another classic off my list. I'll probably do some reading about the book as it definitely has depths to it. My next mobile read is Wilde's The Canterville Ghost and it is already proving rather ghostly.


Path Beneath the Sea by Devorah Omer (1969)
YA fiction, Israel & Diaspora

Omer was a well regarded Israeli writer that I had never heard of till I came across this book. She received the Israeli Prize for her services to literature in 2006 and died earlier this year.
This YA novel is sort of in two parts. The first is about a Moroccan boy Taboul, who stows away on a ship to Israel when his father won't let him make aliyah (immigrate) with his school group. He's obsessed with becoming a diver in the Israeli Navy, but first he must reach the age of conscription. His class is taken to work on a new kibbutz in the Negev and they all suffer from the endless toil under the hot sun, they are city kids from Fez.
Taboul runs away and ends up living on the streets, and is treated like a second class citizen. His father back in Morocco has disowned him and ordered his sisters to cease all contact with him. He joins the army before he turns 18, changes his name to Uri and so at last begins his journey to fit in to his new country. The process is long and hard, he is resentful, tough and lonely but he eventually finds his way to the divers training and a new kibbutz where he at last feels accepted and at home.
The second part is set during the Six Day War, Uri is now an adult, married and a father. He takes part in a secret dive mission in Egypt, all his years of training have been leading up to this moment but once they leave the sub nothing goes quite according to plan.
I really liked this story of a boy's determination to fit in to his new country. The second part set in Egypt was exciting and the first time I've read about Israeli 'frogmen'. The author says that this part of the war action is still shrouded in secrecy, though she was writing only a year or so after the conflict ended.

I won't be around that much between now and the end of the year as I'll be away from home, and my internet access will be limited.

You will be missed, Kerry. I hope you are going somewhere exciting.

Happy travels!

Thanks everyone, I'll be spending a few weeks in Spain again.

Finished The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde this morning - cute ghost story for my Collectors Corner category

I'm jealous. Spain sounds great. I've read some of Wilde's fairytales but nnever a ghost story. They great but not cute. They are about as cynical as fairytales get.

I haven't read his fairytales but might while I'm on this Wilde roll. The ghost story was a quick fun read. Looking forward to the trip, just got to get out of the house and have a million things to do as we're leaving our three sons to cook and fend for themselves. I'm reading Andalus: Unlocking the Secrets of Moorish Spain by Jason Webster which is mostly good.

Yep, envy from me too - have a great time in Spain and "see" you when you get back!!

"leaving our three sons to cook and fend for themselves"
You brave woman, you! :)

Enjoy your trip. Hope you don't come home to a broken house.

Have a wonderful time in Spain!

OK, I don't have great wifi access at present but wanted to check in as my challenge ends today. I read books in every category except for the folklore one, though I did read books with a folklore aspect i put them in other challenges.
According to my 75 books challenge i read 200 books this year, pls note that a lot of these were children's fiction. I hope to list all the books I've read since mid November but need to get hold of my daughter's laptop to do this more easily than on the iPad I'm currently using.
I haven't been keeping up with many threads at all but hope to make the rounds and check out everyone's reading highlights for the year and hope to make my own later on.
For now Happy new year to any visitors to my thread and see you over on the 2014 challenge,

Wow, 200 books -- congratulations!

Ok, here's the list. You'll have to visit my 75 thread to see my comments on them - http://www.librarything.com/topic/158449

Andalus: unlocking the secrets of Spain by Jason Webster - nonfiction
The war of Jenkin's ear by Michael Morpurgo
Ready player one by ernest cline - scifi
The dead men stood together by Chris Priestley - YA based on Tennyson's poem
An officer and a spy by Robert harris - brilliant fiction on the Dreyfus affair
through dead eyes by Chris Priestley - YA Frankenstein retelling
Shadow of a bull by Maria Wojciechowska (1964 carnegie medal) - excellent children's fiction about boy who is 'destined' to be a great bullfighter just like his late father
Cold Skin by Albert Sanchez Pinol - creepy fiction set on sub-Antarctic island
Music on the bamboo radio by Martin Booth - children's fiction set in Hong Kong & China during WW2
The mannequin Makers by Craig Cliff (2013) - New Zealand historical fiction
The Blind Owl by Sadiq Hiayat - Iranian fiction / novella
The King's swift rider by mollie Hunter - children's historical fiction about Robert the Bruce
Mind's Eye by Paul Fleischman - YA novella/ play
People of the great journey by O.R. Melling (2013) - disappointing new agey fiction
A dying light in Cordoba by Lindsey Davis - historical fiction
The Bat by Jo Nesbo - crime fiction
The voices of silence by bel Mooney - YA fiction
Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas - fiction on the Spanish Civil War
The man in the wooden hat by Jane Gardam - fiction
The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer - historical fiction
The outsiders by Gerald Seymour - crime fiction
Saturday the Rabbi went hungry by Harry Kemelman - light crime fiction
The wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis - novella, historical fiction
The winter ghosts by Kate Mosse - historical fiction with ghosts
Kingdom Come by Bernice Rubens - historical fiction about false Messiah
Dominion by C.J. Sansom - alternate history
Dark Satanic Mills by Marcus & Julian Sedgwick - graphic novel
The Extra by Kathryn Lasky - YA historicall fiction about gypsies during the Holocaust
The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner - children's fantasy - bk 2 of 3.

That was my catchup list of books read in the last 6 weeks. I still have to do my best of list.

I'm looking forward to your best-of-the-year list. Your thread is always full of book bullets!

My 2013 Highlights sorted by my categories challenge:

1) Children's Classics from before 1990
16 books read - 10 by male, 6 female
Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner (1960)
Talking in Whispers by James Watson (1984)
The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler by Gene Kemp

2) Young at Heart - (YA and children's books - general)
38 books read - 16 by female, 22 by male authors

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (and I loved the movie)
Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos
A world between us by Lydia Syson

3) Nonfiction
14 read - 5 by female, 9 by male
Six Days of War by Michael Oren

4) Scifi / fantasy
13 read - 6 by female, 7 by male
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
Among Others by Jo Walton

5) All things Celtic
only 2 read - 1 by female, 1 by male
The Crow Road by Iain Banks

6) Mix - novellas, short stories, series
13 read - 3 by female, 10 x male
The Collaborator by Matt Rees - bk 1

7) Down Under - NZ and Australian
17 books read - 10 by women & 7 by male
The Tender Moments of Saffron Silk by Glenda Millard - children's fiction, the last in the wonderful series about the Silk family - highly recommended
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser

8) Translated Fiction
13 read - 2 by female, 11 by male
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

9) Israel & Diaspora
19 read - 6 by female & 13 by male
Between Friends by Amos Oz
The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Journey to the Milennium by A.B. Yehoshua

10) Folklore - 0 reads
failure!

11) Mt TBR
19 read - 9 female & 10 male
(I did read from my tbr pile in other categories as well)
An Icecream War by William Boyd
A Stricken Field by Martha Gelhorn

12) Cult Writers
5 read - all male
Gormenghast trilogy - all three books by Mervyn Peake
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

13) Dropbox - new books, library books, graphic novels etc
24 read - 7 by female, 17 by male
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Powell
The Orphan master's son by Adam Johnson
An Officer and a spy by Robert Harris

Great finish!! I've been trying to catch up on threads from my Kindle, but it's as hopeless as an iPad, so... :)