I swear I don't know how people do it. I read book blogs of people with jobs and families and social lives and it amazes me how they find time to read. I've been really struggling to find time to read... I spend a lot of time at the library or in lectures, and usually when I come home at night I'm too tired to read, so for the past month most of my reading was in the tube commuting to and from college. So, I read three books in November:
- Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
- Ring for Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
- Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse
I read:
A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Mohammed Hanif)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
The Little Girl who was too Fond of Matches (Gaétan Soucy)
Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro)
I acquired:
Agatha Christie- An Autobiography (Agatha Christie)
Fingersmith (Sarah Waters)
The Little Girl who was too Fond of Matches (Gaétan Soucy)
Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Brida (Paolo Coelho)
Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates)
(All birthday presents except for the autobiography :) )
"Mrs Sucksby was a devil with her dander up.
She looked at Flora and tapped her slippered foot upon the rug, all the time rocking in her chair- that was a great creaking wooden chair, that no-one sat in save her- and beating her thick, hard hand upon my shaking back."
(Sarah Waters: Fingersmiths. 4)
Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should Be Reading and this is how it works:
- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
This mystery centers around the woman in white whom Walter Hartright meets one night on a deserted street in London. This encounter sends his life into a new and dangerous direction.
What fascinated me most about this book were, next to the mystery, Collins´ characters. What a group! Apart from nice and boring Hartright and the fair and feeble Laura Fairlie were Marian Halcombe and the Count. Throughout the book the main characters, the couple in the center, were Hartright and Laura. But to me it felt like Collins gave them to the readers of his time, as what was expected and had to be delivered.
The real heroes of this novel are Marian Halcombe and the Count. They are described as ugly or at least strange looking, the Count as a very large man who plays with his tiny menagerie comes across as ridiculous. Marian is likewise depicted as ugly and repeatedly attributed male characteristics. She can only be very intelligent and pragmatic while being ugly and therefore unsuitable as a love interest and "real" woman. Her intelligence is like a man´s, her hands are as large as a man´s, and she often downplays her abilities and actions because she is only a woman. As such she can only fully be appreciated by the Count, the antihero. And because he is the bad guy she can only be disgusted by his admiration.
In the end Hartright keeps both woman, Laura as his wife and Marian because, really, they need someone to organize their lives and for stimulating conversation.
How did you regard the characters? Did you read them differently?
When he thinks, brother looks around, panicky, as if his noggin isn´t enough and he has to find ideas in things; I don´t guarantee the effectiveness of this method."
(Gaétan Soucy: The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches. 18)
Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should be Reading and this is how it works:
- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) teaser" sentences from somewhere on this page
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn´t give too much away! You don´t want to ruin thebook for others!)
- Share the title and author , too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
"It was in quite fairly tense mood that I dried and clothed the person, and while it would perhaps be too much to say that as I entered the sitting-room some quarter of an hour later I was atwitter, I was unquestionably conscious of a certain jumpiness. When Jeeves came in with the shaker, I dived at it like a seal going after a slice of fish and drained a quick one, scarcely pausing to say 'Skin off your nose'." Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, by P.G. Wodehouse page 13 Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
Hello friends!
I haven't had a lot of time to blog in the past few weeks, but here are my latest posts over on Wordpress:
The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy (review)
Pumpkin Whoopie Pies (recipe)
I hope you'll head over to http://www.booksuniverseeverything.com/ to check them out! :)
A Case of Exploding Mangoes takes the mysterious plane crash of Pakistan´s military dictator General Zia ul- Haq in 1988 and out of it spins a story that involves Zia, two lovers, a blind woman´s curse and, of course, mangoes.
The story is mainly told through the eyes of Ali Shigri, an officer in the military, stationed at the academy. He is seemingly sucked into the intricate web of conspiracy theories and suspicions of the intelligence when his friend and lover Obaid dissapears. Ali himself is actually trying to avenge his father´s death, who may or may not have been ordered to be killed by general Zia. While Ali is imprisoned, he meets a Maoist and sweeper who had been trying to organize the sweepers, then the mango orchard owners. Another cell is later inhabited by a blind woman who cursed Zia. And these are just three who are after the general. Zia himself is plagued by tapeworms, the First Lady, and paranoia. Then there are the usual intelligence and military people around him, who have their own agenda. With all these possible assassins, someone has to succeed.
This book is foremost a political satire, brutally funny in most parts and just brutal in others. Ali Shigri is a likable narrator, at times deeply amused he comments on interrogation methods as if he were a teacher grading essays. He is interesting, sarcastic, and takes his time letting the reader know his part in the heap of conspiracies.
Hanif paints general Zia as a paranoid idiot, deeply religios and superstitoius at the same time. He is lazy, fat and constantly ridiculed by his wife. Zia gives code red when his randomly pointing at a page of the bible (done everyday like a horoscope) seems to contain a warning.
Who did what to rid the country of Zia and who actually succeeds is a thrilling story and Hanif introduces a ridiculous amount of possible candidates and reasons but in the end they are all neatly tied up.
I enjoyed this book immensely and was in turns amused and shocked but always occupied with keeping track of all the plot strands.
I heard about this book through book blogging, and it was amazing!!
It´s tuesday, I´ve got a new book to read, let´s teaser tuesday!
The turn of the expression, however, in her last question, or rather the one chance word, "adventure," lightly fell from her lips, recalled my thoughts to my meeting with the woman in white, and urged me to discover the connection which the stranger´s own reference to Mrs. Fairlie informed me must once have existed between the nameless fugitive from the Asylum, and the former mistress of Limmeridge House."
(Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White. 29f.)
Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should be Reading.
