Book Quotes of the Week

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested." Francis Bacon

"Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach."  Roberto Bolaño, 2666

"I became a book lover at a very young age. Books taught me that there are different lives and beautiful things." Rene Denfeld

"Let books be your dining table and you shall be full of delights, let them be your mattress and you shall sleep restful nights." St. Ephraim the Syrian

"Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read." Groucho Marx

Find more book quotes here. 

Palma, Félix J. "The Map of the Sky"

Palma, Félix J. "The Map of the Sky" (Spanish: El mapa del cielo) - 2012

Fantasy and/or science fiction is not really my favourite genre, and that is putting it mildly. However, last year I came across "The Map of Time" in the chunky book group and I really liked it. Probably because it was a spin-off of "The Time Machine" which I did like as a movie (the old version, that is, never seen the new one). But maybe also because the author is a good writer. And very creative. Nothing is impossible for him.

As in his first novel, Félix J. Palma makes a spin on an H.G. Wells novel, this time it was "The War of the Worlds". But he also includes other novels like "The Time Machine", "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" and we see many famous people, first and foremost, of course, H.G. Wells himself, then Christopher Columbus, Galileo, Karl Gauss, Marco Polo, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, to name just about the most famous ones.

In this novel, we have a lot of adventures to pass. We are stuck on a ship in the frozen North Sea and we have to fight alien machines who want to overtake the whole world. At that point, we arrive in a dystopian environment. There is hardly a genre or a subject not touched in this novel. There is something for everyone. The author even manages to slip in a love story.

Even though this is a brilliant story, I did prefer the first of these two novels but I am still looking forward to the third and last of the books in this Victorian Trilogy which apparently will work around the themes of "The Invisible Man". I think I should start reading H.G. Wells in the meantime.

From the back cover:

"A love story serves as backdrop for The Map of the Sky when New York socialite Emma Harlow agrees to marry millionaire Montgomery Gilmore, but only if he accepts her audacious challenge: to reproduce the extraterrestrial invasion featured in Wells's War of the Worlds. What follows are three brilliantly interconnected plots to create a breathtaking tale of time travel and mystery, replete with cameos by a young Edgar Allan Poe, and Captain Shackleton and Charles Winslow from The Map of Time.

Praised for lyrical storytelling and a rich attention to detail, (Library Journal, starred review), Palma again achieves the high standard set by The Map of Time."

Book Quotes of the Week

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us."  Franz Kafka

"Books are a completely portable magic" Stephen King

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

"A book is a magical thing that lets you travel to faraway places without ever leaving your chair." Katrina Mayer

"When we open our favourite books, we do so to spend time with our best friends." N.N.

Find more book quotes here. 

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Top Ten Favourite Classic Books.

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish". Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.

July 1: Top Ten Favourite Classic Books (however you define classic) or Top Ten Classics I Want To Read  

Austen, Jane "Persuasion"
Brontë, Anne "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall"
Collins, Wilkie "The Moonstone"
Dickens, Charles "Great Expectations"
Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment"
Eliot, George "Middlemarch"
Mann, Thomas "Buddenbrocks" (Buddenbrooks)
Steinbeck, John "The Grapes of Wreath" 
Tolstoy, Leonid "War and Peace"
Trollope, Anthony "Barchester Chronicles"