Sunday 31 October 2010

Booklog #1

Happy Halloween!  Okay, so now that's out of the way let's move on.  I'm not a fan of this festival, or at least of what it has become (I have no problem with the original Pagan Samhain, which is actually very interesting).  I don't see why I should be obliged to use my own money to buy sweets or whatever and then hand them over to children/teenagers I don't even know, just because of the date.  I get that it's fun to dress up, have a party and all that, but walking the streets going to strangers' houses and asking for sweets...isn't that the exact opposite of what we're taught as children?!

Anyway, onto this week's books! 

I haven't finished anything this week (too much studying getting in the way!) but these are my 'in progress' reads:
The Children's Book by A S ByattImage by Pickersgill Reef via Flickr

The Children's Book ~ A.S. Byatt
Be prepared to see this one listed every week for a loooong time - it's really heavy-going because there is so much detail stuffed in there, not a single thing can be mentioned without a long ramble about a bunch of other topics and history related to it, diverting your attention from the plot.  I know A.S. Byatt is a well-established and highly-respected author, but I can't help but feel that there could have been a lot of pruning done to this book before publishing it!  I can only manage a chapter per sitting, so it's going to take me a long time to get through it, which is not like me at all.  But I hate not finishing something I've started! 

The Book of Secrets ~ Tom Harper
Much more my cup of tea - I'm a bit of an addict when it comes to Dan Brown-esque 'race to find historical artefact/secret before bad guys do' stories!  This one concerns the very earliest printed books and alternates between the present day chase and the historical story of what they are searching for came into being.  A book about the invention of books - what could be better?  I may well have finished by next week as it's very fast paced and every time I pick it up I find it hard to put down...

Angels ~ Marian Keyes
I've read a fair bit of 'chick lit' - Cecilia Ahern, Sophie Kinsella and Lindsay Kelk being my favourites - but never any Marian Keyes.  Given that she is considered to be one of the best I thought I'd try one - after all, if I want to write one myself, I need to see some good examples of how it's done!  Amazon is recommending all sorts of different authors of this type to me at the moment, so I plan to go on and download more samples onto the Kindle to get a feel of whose work I might like. 

The Redbreast ~ Jo Nesbo
As I mentioned last week, I’m reading this because it’s the current selection of the mini ‘crime’ book club that I’m in at work (don’t worry – we meet at lunchtimes, not while we should be working!).  It’s of the ‘dysfunctional alcoholic police detective’ vein of crime novels, but I have to say that it’s not doing much for me.  It was written in Norwegian originally, so obviously takes place in Norway, but this means it uses acronyms that I’m not familiar with, and there are so many  characters with similar sounding names and jobs within government/the police that I can’t remember who’s who.  Not that I’m really that bothered though, as I don’t feel any connection with or sympathy for any of the characters, even the main detective.  There’s a lot of reference to WWII, Nazis, neo-Nazis and political stuff that – not to sound like a total airhead – just doesn’t interest me.  Overall it feels very grey and two-dimensional...perhaps you need to have read Nesbo’s earlier books to ‘get’ the detective more, but to me he just seems really sulky and overly critical of himself.  I want to tell him to pull himself together!  Needless to say, I’ll look forward to when this one is done and hopefully our next selection will be something more like Agatha Christie/Sherlock Holmes where there are a list of suspects and a bunch of clues and we can try to guess whodunit before the sleuth reveals the answer. 

Question!  If something exists in both book form and TV form, which would you consume first?  I have Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth on the Kindle, but it’s also being shown in a brand new six-part series on TV at the moment, which my satellite recorder is storing up for me.  If I read the book first, the series will be taking up valuable space on my recorder’s hard disc while I read (and it’s quite a long book).  But if I watch the series first to get it off the recorder, then when I read the book I’ll have preconceived ideas of what the characters, places etc look like, which would have been quite different had I read the book first. 

It’s a bit like when the Lord of the Rings films (which I adore, I’m not criticising them) came out – they overwrote the mental pictures that I’d created of everything from reading the books many years previously as a young teenager (and then again several times over!).  I can’t remember now how I used to ‘see’ Rivendell, because all I see now is how Peter Jackson believes it should look.  It’ll be the same when The Hobbit is released I suppose, which makes me quite sad because that book is a real childhood friend.  I can still see the exact mental images that I had as a child of Bilbo in Smaug’s lair, riding the barrel, riddling with Gollum and so on.  Once the film comes out it will wipe these out and replace them, because seeing that with my eyes will undoubtedly create much stronger memories than the ones I made up in my mind.  Having said that though, I’ll almost certainly not be able to resist seeing it anyway!  
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Wednesday 27 October 2010

I like days like these...

Greetings readers!  You'll have to imagine me beaming at you down the cables (? airwaves? fibre optics?) as today has been a really productive day! 

Not only have I done some writing (Project Blake - police/forensic) but I've also finally finished my archaeology course AND caught up to where I should be on my Exploring the Classical World course.  HURRAH!!  I can't say I'm sad to finish the archaeology - though I love the general idea of it, I've learnt that I'm not really made for the science side of things, I think I'd be more the anthropologist who comes along to look at the stuff after they've dug it up and cleaned it, and work out whose it was, what it was for etc.  But hey ho - I gave it a try and that's what life's all about isn't it? 

Classical World though is another thing altogether, I love it!  You may remember that last week I was doing my first assignment (still no result back by the way :o( ) about Homer's Odyssey, well this week looked at the 'prequel' poem the Iliad, which is just as fascinating, all about the Trojan War.  It's about 25,000 lines long so we don't study all of it (thank goodness!), just a variety of extracts, but all the same it's so thought-provoking to consider and learn about an era from so long ago.  Having been there last year and seen it first-hand, I can't wait to get to the blocks about ancient Rome! 

Totally unrelated to either writing OR studying, but taking up a semi-large chunk of the day - hubby and I also sorted out our greenhouse ready for winter (the frosts have started already here), so my tomato and pepper plants are now safely housed in the conservatory away from rain, wind and cold.  Here's to the stir fry their produce will eventually end up in!  :oD

Until my first proper 'Booklog' post on Sunday, goodbye and have a great week! 
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Sunday 24 October 2010

Books, books, books - a new idea!

Hello!  Yes, I know it's Sunday night and you're probably wondering why on earth I'm posting, but I was just reading another blogger's post ( The Taming of the Shelves ) and it struck me that the amount and variety of books which I read must surely impact on my writing.  I thought that looking at this in more detail could be interesting, or at the very least might suggest books that you may not have tried but may like to. 

I'm what you might call a butterfly reader - I flit from book to book depending on my mood, so at any time could have anything up to six or seven different ones on the go.  This has increased since I got the Kindle (oops!), the way that it saves your place within each book is just so handy - and of course popping onto the site and downloading new stuff is so easy that it's hard to resist.  People sometimes find it hard to understand how I can read multiple books without getting confused, but it's second nature to me.  Surely it's no different to watching different TV series?  I've watched Lost, Heroes and Sex And The City, but I never got confused when Carrie wasn't on the island or Sylar wasn't in Bloomingdales! 

So my idea is to post here every Sunday about what I've read during the week, what I think of it, and anything else book-related that occurs to me. Of course if you have any recommendations please do post them - I'll try most things! 

As it's quite late right now - and I have work in the morning - here's a quick starter for ten.  This week I finished reading:

Company of Liars ~ Karen Maitland 
Please Forgive Me ~ Melissa Hill
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow ~ Washington Irvine
Heart of Darkness ~ Joseph Conrad
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ~ Lewis Carroll

I'm still reading:
The Book of Secrets ~ Tom Harper
The Children's Book ~ A S Byatt
The Redbreast - Jo Nesbo (this is for my book club)

I'll do some reviewing and scoring next week - but right now my bed's calling me!  :oD
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Wednesday 20 October 2010

Homer...but not THAT one

Hello!  Well you'll be pleased to know that I have done some writing today instead of playing Wii...however it's been in the form of the first essay for my new Open University course, rather than any of my projects.  It was unavoidable though, as the deadline is midday this Friday and because I'm out at work at that time, I have to upload it on Thursday night.  So I have even less time available!

Fortunately it is only a 500 word essay - a critical review of an extract of Homer's Odyssey (an epic read, to say the least!).  However because it's only 500 words I have to be pretty picky with which ones I use.  That's one of the benefits of these courses, they do teach you how to be economical and efficient with words, getting your meaning across in the most concise way possible.  Of course fiction does require a little more than that to stop it from becoming dry and lifeless, but the idea is the same.  Pretty much all the writing advice books I've ever read have mentioned at some point the fact that however many words you put into your first draft, you'll need to take a good percentage of them out to make it into something that an editor/agent/publisher would consider. 

This makes me think of the problem I have whereby I self-edit as I go along.  I seem to be trying to take out words before I've even got them all down!  Maybe what I need to do is try to be as wordy and waffly as possible (in the safe knowledge that any or all of it can be removed later) so that I can steam through and make proper progress with the story, instead of hanging around at the beginning worrying about the small stuff.  I wonder whether there is any way of flicking my brain into this mode..? 

Thanks for reading!  Knowing I have to write to you every week is very motivating - even if (as today) I didn't do any project work, it can be quite thought-provoking to consider how what I have done can relate back to writing. 

Have a great week! :o)
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Wednesday 13 October 2010

A shameful performance

Dear readers, it is with great shame and feelings of guilt that I must inform you that I have done no writing today.  Wait, WAIT...before you all unfollow me (!)...let me tell you that I have instead spent time working out with the Wii, so it hasn't all been time wasted! 

I've had Wii Fit for ages now but go through phases of using it all the time then ignoring it for weeks, possibly because it's a bit too casual and allows you to choose what you'll do (when offered with that choice, I'm never going to pick the rock hard exercises!).  For some reason this morning I felt the urge to put it on, when I fired it up the little Balance Board character told me that it had been 101 days since our last session.  Eep!!  It's a good job he doesn't have a face because if he did I think he would have been giving me an angry scowl...

So I did half an hour of Wii Fit and managed to burn enough calories to cancel out a piece of toast (or so it told me) when the postman turned up with an Amazon parcel which contained a game I'd ordered ages ago and forgotten about - EA Active.  I figured I'd give it a quick whirl - just to see what it was like before I buckled down to work you understand - created my virtual me (with some very fetching gym kit that I'd quite like in real life!) and started an 'easy' workout.  All I can say is: IT'S A LOT TOUGHER THAN WII FIT!  If you want to work out at home, this is the game to get!  The programme I did took about 25 minutes but it really got my heart going with a mixture of stretching, sports games (shooting hoops etc) and cardio.  There are video guides to all the different exercises and constant feedback from the virtual trainer and it's all set in a variety of nice backdrops (if you have time to look at them!) with a cool music playlist. 

Look at that - I've turned into a games reviewer!  Maybe that's an avenue of writing I should pursue..?  ;o)

I hereby solemnly swear to do better and WRITE next week.  Adios till then!
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Wednesday 6 October 2010

Back to full strength...well, almost.

So firstly I must apologise for not posting last week...we went to Paris for the weekend, but travelled by coach with - seemingly - the sickest people that could be found en route, who spent the whole journey sounding like they were about to cough out their internal organs.  I did my very best positive thinking, surrounding myself with a mental bubble to keep germs out, but inevitably something got me and I started with a cold just as we were a couple of hours from home on the return journey.  Curse you germs!!  It kept me off work for a full week (I went back yesterday) and while ordinarily a week off work would have been a wonderful opportunity to get some writing done, I just haven't had the mental capacity!

On the plus side though, Paris was amazing - I love it and I want to run away and live there!!

Today then, with a couple of symptoms still lingering, I had to kick my own butt into gear and get some words down.  And I'm pleased to say that I have!  Project Crunch (chick lit) is now over the 2000 word mark, at 2444.  I've finished the opening argument scene that was troubling me in my last post and though I know it'll need revision to tidy it up, I'm pleased with how it's turned out.  And I'm glad to have got one chapter under my belt! 

Lastly, just a quick update on my relationship with Mr A. Mazon-Kindle...it's true love!  The hardest part is holding myself back from buying book after book with just single clicks on the website (I find it easier to browse online rather than through the device.  I've got quite a good mix downloaded now - some fantasy, some historical, crime, chick lit and a mixture of modern fiction, as well as a selection of blogs (I love 'Overheard in New York - so funny!).  I think that in a year's time or so, when it's much fuller, it will have become one of those 'how did I ever live without this?' kind of things.  If you like reading - get one! 
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