#ThrowbackThursday. November 2011

I've been doing Throwback Thursdays for a while but I noticed that I wrote a lot of reviews in a short time when I first started. One of my blogger friends always posts the reviews of one month but that would be too much. So, these are my reviews from the first part of November 2011.

Adams, Richard "Watership Down" - 1972

This sad story as a sign how careless we are with Mother Nature, how easily we destroy our home planet, how little we consider our fellow human and animal beings.

Dirie, Waris "Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad" - 1998
I remember hearing about female genital mutilation but I think this was the first time I read about it in detail. I think I was so shocked, couldn't believe that anyone would do such a thing ton an innocent young girl, the book has never left me. Not what you expect from the autobiography of a famous model.

Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan) "A Passage to India" - 1924

This novel takes us both to a different time and a different area, India in die 1920s. Of course, the protagonists are British who live in the time of the Indian independence movement but the main character is a young Indian who gets into trouble just through the carelessness of the English. The book talks about friendship, colonialism, the wish of all human beings to be independent.

Hamilton, Jane "A Map of the World" - 1994
"Happiness is an Illusion, Pain is Reality" - Alice Goodwin, the main character of this novel, receives this as her fortune cookie when visiting a Chinese restaurant with her husband. She doesn't think this sounds like a reality but is reminded of it shortly afterwards when her life changes so much, nothing will ever be the same again.

Smith, Zadie "On Beauty" - 2005
Again, I quite like the author's style, the way she portrays the different characters. Apparently, an homage to E. M. Forster's "Howards End". The fact that she manages to make this into a very modern story shows how timeless a writer she is.

Smith, Zadie "White Teeth" - 1999
A great book with interesting plots, good descriptions, good language.
Zadie Smith's first book takes place in Zadie Smith's a Jamaican hair salon in North London, an Indian restaurant in Leicester Square, an Irish poolroom turned immigrant café, a liberal public school, a sleek science institute.

Read my original reviews, for the links click on the titles.

Follett, Ken "The Armour of Light"

Follett, Ken "The Armour of Light" - 2023

"The grand master of gripping fiction is back. International No.1 bestseller Ken Follett returns to Kingsbridge with an epic tale of revolution and a cast of unforgettable characters."

Yes, he is a grand master indeed. After having written four books about Kingsbridge, their cathedral and the inhabitants, rich and poor from 997 until the 16th century, here is the follow-up for the Industrial Revolution.

With the story of  Kingsbridge, we also learn the story of England and the United Kingdom. Anytime we read about history and how people lived, we must be thankful to live today. Even though we also have political problems, we as "the little people" have a lot more rights than people ever had. And we owe this to people like those described here.

I hope the story of Kingsbridge will continue into modern times. Then we could just go on with the century trilogy.

In any case, this is THE series for lovers of historical fiction.

I missed a list of all the characters before and during the book. And, like I said before, I would have enjoyed a timeline of what happened at the time. Yes, I have the internet and plenty of other books where I can look this up but I find having it in the actual book I'm reading is actually very helpful.

From the back cover:

"Revolution is in the air

1792. A tyrannical government is determined to make England a mighty commercial empire. In France, Napoleon Bonaparte begins his rise to power, and with dissent rife, France’s neighbours are on high alert.

Kingsbridge is on the edge

Unprecedented industrial change sweeps the land, making the lives of the workers in Kingbridge’s prosperous cloth mills a misery. Rampant modernization and dangerous new machinery are rendering jobs obsolete and tearing families apart.

Tyranny is on the horizon

Now, as international conflict nears, a story of a small group of Kingsbridge people - including spinner Sal Clitheroe, weaver David Shoveller and Kit, Sal’s inventive and headstrong son - will come to define the struggle of a generation as they seek enlightenment and fight for a future free from oppression. . .

Taking the reader straight into the heart of history with the fifth novel in the ground-breaking Kingsbridge series, The Armour of Light is master storyteller Ken Follett’s most ambitious novel to date."

The Classics Club: The Classics Spin #39

 

"Words and Peace" is a blog I've been following for a couple of years and I have always found some interesting new (or olde) books there, especially French ones.

On her page, I found the posts by "The Classics Club" asking us to create a post, this time before next Sunday 20^th October 2024, and list our choice of any twenty books that remain "to be read" on our Classics Club list. They'll then post a number from 1 through 20 and we have time until Sunday 18^th of December 2024 to read it.

This time, I read only the one book from my old list (Classics Spin #38) ("Cannery Row"). But there are always some new books that I can add to my challenge. The books are all in chronological order.

1. Aristophanes "Lysistrata and Other Plays" (Lysistrata) - 411BC
2. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Urfaust. Faust Fragment. Faust I" (Faust) - 1772-1808
3. Dickens, Charles "Nicholas Nickleby. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" - 1838/39
4. Dumas, Alexandre fils "Camille: The Lady of the Camellias" (La Dame aux Camélias" - 1848
5. Flaubert, Gustave "Madame Bovary" (Madame Bovary/ Madame Bovary) - 1857
6. Turgenjew, Iwan Sergejewitsch "Fathers and Sons" (Отцы и дети/Otzy i deti) - 1862
7. Conrad, Joseph "Victory: An Island Tale" - 1915
8. Hamilton, Cicely "William - an Englishman" - 1920
9. Hesse, Hermann "Wir nehmen die Welt nur zu ernst" [We just take the world too seriously] - 1928
10. Faulkner, William "The Sound and the Fury" - 1929
11. Hemingway, Ernest "A Farewell to Arms" - 1929
12. Meigs, Cornelia "Invincible Louisa" - 1933
13. Krleža, Miroslav "On the Edge of Reason" (Na rubu pameti) - 1938
14. Némirovsky, Irène "Les biens de ce monde" (All Our Wordly Goods) - 1941
15. Cela, Camilo José "The Family of Pascal Duarte" (La Familia Duarte) - 1942
16. Zweig, Stefan "Schachnovelle" (The Royal Game/Chess) - 1942
17. Wilde, Oscar "Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast" - 1946
18. Huxley, Aldous "Ape and Essence" - 1948
19. Hemingway, Ernest "Across the River and into the Trees" - 1950
20. Simenon, Georges "Maigret's Memoirs" (Les mémoires de Maigret) - 1951

This is a great idea for all of us who want to read more classics. Go ahead, get your own list. I can't wait to see what I get to read this time.

Here are all the books on my original Classics Club list.
And here is a list of all the books I read with the Classics Spin.

#ThrowbackThursday. October 2011 Part 4

  

I've been doing Throwback Thursdays for a while but I noticed that I wrote a lot of reviews in a short time when I first started. One of my blogger friends always posts the reviews of one month but that would be too much. So, these are my reviews from the fourth part of October 2011.

Ashworth, Andrea "Once in a House on Fire" - 1999

The author describes her youth in a penniless household full of violence and other problems. Her depressive mother sends the family through a series of stepfathers, none of whom can be describe as "normal" family members.

Balliett, Blue "Chasing Vermeer" - 2003
A nice book about art for children, a mixture between fiction and non-fiction. 

Clarke, Marcus "For the Term of His Natural Life" - 1870-72
This novel describes the life of a convict from when he first gets condemned through the voyage to the new continent and the rest of his life. 

Hegi, Ursula "Stones from the River" - 1994
Quite a different war story, Trudi is a dwarf and grows up in war-torn Germany, not a good time for anyone who is not what the Nazis expect a "normal" person to be.

Hornby, Nick "About a boy" - 1998
A funny yet thoughtful and touching novel. Will, the "teenager forever" meets Marcus, the strange child.

Stewart, Chris "Driving over Lemons. An Optimist in Spain" - 1999
The former Genesis drummer is now a farmer in Spain and has written a book about it. 

Read my original reviews, for the links click on the titles.

Top 5 Tuesday ~ Awards

Top Five Tuesday was originally created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, but is now hosted by Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads. To participate, link your post back to Meeghan’s blog or leave a comment on her weekly post. I found this on Davida's Page @ The Chocolate Lady.

* * *

This week’s topic is Awards. Meeghan says: "Those You can pick a specific award (I’ll be doing the Aurealis Awards for Aussie-written fantasy) or just any book you’ve written that’s ever won an award. What are your faves?"

Awards is a great topics. I love awards, especially the Nobel Prize for Literature, so I have decided to go with my favourite book by my favourite Nobel Prize winning authors.

Mann, Thomas "Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family" (GE: Buddenbrooks) - 1901 

Camus, Albert "The Plague" (F: La Peste) - 1947

Buck, Pearl S. "Peony" - 1948

Morrison, Toni "Beloved" - 1987

Pamuk, Orhan "My Name is Red" (TR: Benim Adım Kırmızı) - 1998

As you can see, all the authors have their own links which means I have read at least three of their books.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

* * *

🏆 Happy Reading! 🏆

📚 📚 📚

The 1970 Club

This book challenge takes place twice a year and concentrates on one year and one year only. I call it "Read the Year Club". This time, 1970 was picked. For more information, see Simon @ Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy @ Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings (here is Karen's invite and here is Simon's).

If you are looking for inspiration, there are a few books from that year that I read already:

Bach, Richard "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" - 1970
Hanff, Helene "84 Charing Cross Road" + "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street" - 1970 + 1973
Scott, Mary "Haven't We Met Before?" - 1970
Segal, Erich "Love Story" - 1970
Wallraff, Günter "From the Guy Who Went Forth and Learned to Fear" (GE: Von einem, der auszog und das Fürchten lernte) - 1970

I also found some other ideas (Karen has more on her page):
Blume, Judy "Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret"
Brown, Dee "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" 
Herriot, James (James Alfred Wright) "If Only They Could Talk" 
Morrison, Toni "The Bluest Eye"

This challenge takes place from 24 to 30 October 2024.

I had this on my TBR pile, therefore I picked:
Morrison, Toni "The Bluest Eye" - 1970

Six Degrees of Separation ~ Long Island

Colm Tóibín

Tóibín, Colm "Long Island" - 2021

#6Degrees of Separation:

from Long Island (Goodreads) to Croatian War Nocturnal 

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.

The starter book this month is Long Island by Colm Tóibín.

As so often, I have not read this one and I doubt I am going to because I really didn't like the author's first book, "Brooklyn". So here is the description:

"From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work, twenty years later.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.

One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting.

Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis’ life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost."

The best way to deal with books that I haven't read is usually to go by words in the title. So it was this month. The starter word is Long.

Ingalls Wilder, Laura "The Long Winter" in Little House Books" - 1932-71

Stachniak, Eva "The Winter Palace. A Novel of Catherine the Great" - 2011

Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Midnight Palace" (El Palacio de la Medianoche) - 1994

Rushdie, Salman "Midnight's Children" - 1981

Stroyar, J.N. "The Children's War" - 2001

Štimec, Spomenka "Croatian War Nocturnal" (Esperanto: Kroata Milita Noktlibro) - 1993

Both the first and last book are written by a young girl/woman and based on their life in harsh circumstances, none of which we would ever wish on a child nowadays but, unfortunately, there are still too many who have to live like that.

📚📚📚