Books Twenty Three to Thirty Two
Book Twenty Three - The Great Silence by Juliet Nicholson
Source: Library
Challenges? -
Decade published
Rating: 10 / 10
This is a non fiction book about the two years between the end of the First World War in 1918, and the burying of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey in 1920. This book is brilliant. I never expected a non-fiction book to move me as much as this one did! It started just before the end of the war, describing people’s experiences, and then how they felt when the war ended. What was really moving is that it put across how for most people the end of the war wasn’t a celebration at all - they’d lost so many men who were close to them, so it generally wasn’t a happy time. Each chapter took a short period of time and used primary sources like diaries and interviews to write a narrative of what happened in that time, it was written really well as it all came from people who were actually there - all kind of people from children to politicians to shop owners. If I had to have one criticism it would be that there was quite a lot from richer people, but I enjoy reading about those kind of people in that era, so I enjoyed that. The book described how the two minutes silence was started, including initial opposition to it from politicians etc. And then it had an incredibly sad section about how they chose the body for the unknown soldier, how it came back from France and the ceremonies that accompanied it. This is a really excellent book, about a subject which I imagine isn’t much considered - what happens when the war ends, how do people really feel, after their initial happiness. Highly recommended.
Book 24 - The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Source: my bookshelf
Challenges? Book club
Decade published?
Rating: 10 / 10
I’d already read this book before, but this was for my book club (my own choice, which everyone seemed to agree with!), and its so good I was happy to read it again. It tells the story of Hanna, from the point of view of a boy who has an affair with her when he is 15, and then later on in his life when he sees her again. To me this book is so brilliant as what is the main point of the book (which I won’t say here), is revealed so slowly and carefully, that when you realise it everything just suddenly makes sense. This book is sometimes seen as controversial as it in parts appears to excuse the events of the Holocaust - but I don’t read it like that. The reason why she did the things she did is not because she’s some monster - if you read the book its clear why, she didn’t want to admit her weakness - which in a way does seem weird, as compared to what happened it’s a small thing, but unless you have had difficulties in the same things that she had, I suppose you wouldn’t know how you would feel. This is another highly recommended book!
Book Twenty Six - Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Source: My mum’s library
Challenges? Nobel
Decade published?
Rating: 7 / 10
This is the play which was the inspiration for the film of My Fair Lady. It begins with a man meeting Eliza, a cockney flower seller, in Covent Garden, and undertaking a challenge to change her into a “lady”. He is especially interested in phonetics, and how people speak, and how to change this. Him and his friend manage to change Eliza, although she does still go back to her old ways in some of her manners! There is a strange bit where her father turns up and he seems to have won the lottery or something, so he is now a rich man, rather than the poor man he was before, and then after that the ending gets a bit strange! Also the men who had been caring for Eliza seem to totally reject her! Which was a bit strange. But up until that point the play was good. I think it’d be good to see as a play, and now I’d like to see the film of My Fair Lady now, as I haven’t seen that yet! I’d also really like to read more work by George Bernard Shaw.
Book Twenty Seven - Cautionary Verses by Hilare Belloc and Now We Are Sixty by Christopher Matthew
Source: my bookshelf
Challenges? Childrens, poetry
Decade published?
Rating: 8 / 10
This is a funny little book full of poems for children, many of them involving something horrible happening to the children, as a kind of moral tale! But in a funny way - its not preachy or anything. Its also got some great illustrations which make it funnier. They’re just short poems, slightly in the style of the AA Milne poems, but they’re all good for a quick read.
Now We Are Sixty is a collection of “updates” of the poems of AA Milne, updated to be about people who are sixty rather than six! They are funny and have relevant things in them to bring them up to date, for example about mobile phones and bankers and things like that. Not as good as the “original” poems, but still good!
Book Twenty Eight - Digging to America by Anne Tyler
Source: Free with a magazine
Challenges? -
Decade published?
Rating: 6 / 10
This book was free with a magazine so I didn’t expect much of it, but it was better than I expected. It was about two families who adopted children from Korea, and described the different ways they bought up their children, how they coped with the changes in their families, and how it affected their wider families too. One of the families was determined to do everything “right”, and the mother sometimes critisised the other family for not, for example, dressing their baby in Korean costume or keeping her hair in a certain way. The other family, not only did they have this to cope with, but their families also had come from Iran, so they had all the issues associated with that in that their parents and wider family wanted them to keep the traditions, but they weren’t sure whether to keep them or do more “American” things. It was an interesting book in that it showed the clash of cultures between all the families and the children. It got a bit chick-lit-like in the second half where the Iranian mother of one of the parents got into a relationship with the American father of one of the other couple, and she was worrying about whether it was the right thing to do etc, but overall the book wasn’t as light as I thought it would be, and I quite enjoyed it.
Book Twenty Nine - The Birthday Party (and other plays) by Harold Pinter
Source: my mum’s library
Challenges? Nobel
Decade published?
Rating: 8 / 10
This book included The Birthday Party, and two other plays. The Birthday Party was set in some kind of seaside boarding house, where there was one guest and two other guests who turn up during the play. These two guests convince the lady who owns the boarding house (who comes across as a bit stupid!) that it’s the birthday of the other guest, and that they should have a birthday party. As the play progresses you can tell theres some kind of dark undercurrent to these two guests, and their relationship to the other guest. It was a good play in that this gradually came about, and even at the end I wasn’t quite sure who they were! But it was good. The other plays also involved this kind of undercurrent, and as they went through you realised that things weren’t quite what they seemed. I enjoyed reading them, and will definitely look up more of Pinter’s work.
Book Thirty - Fantastic Mr Fox and The Witches by Roald Dahl
Source: My bookshelf
Challenges? Children’s
Decade published?
Rating: 8 / 10
Two more classic Roald Dahl stories! Fantastic Mr Fox tells the story of three Farmers, one who produces cider, one who has lots of chickens, and one who has ducks, who are determined to get the fox who steals their chickens, ducks and cider. They lie in wait for Mr Fox, and he gets his tail shot off when he emerges from his burrow. The farmers then wait at the entrance to his burrow to try and get him when he comes out to get food and water. The Foxes instead burrow down, to create a new home for themselves. The farmers realise that and get electric diggers to dig out the animals. The Foxes continue to dig down, and meet other animals who have been pushed out of their homes by the destruction of the hillside. Mr Fox hits on a great idea and they dig their way underneath the storehouses of the four farmers, so they can keep on getting food without ever coming out of their burrows. This is a lovely little story, which illustrates being inventive and resourceful to save the day! I’d like to see the film now, as I haven’t got round to watching it yet!
The Witches is about a small boy who lives with his grandmother in Norway, and she tells him about the Witches who live all over the world. The Witches hate children (to them they smell of dog poo!), are bald, and have square toes and claws instead of fingernails. Also the grand high witch is so evil that her face is ugly and she has to wear a mask! Every time they see a child they want to get rid of it. The boy and his grandmother go on holiday to Bournmouth, and the boy, whilst hiding in a room, finds out that the Witches want to turn all the children in the world into mice. They have a potion that they plan to use to do this, but putting it in sweets and opening sweet shops, and demonstrate this with a greedy boy from the hotel. The Witches then discover that the boy is in the room, and has heard everything they have said - and they turn him into a mouse as well! The boy/mouse and his grandmother then formulate a plan to turn all of the Witches into mice as well! This is a good book, and you can tell by the style that its Roald Dahl, but its not quite as “inventive” as some of his other books, but still good!
Book Thirty One - The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill
Source: my mum’s library
Challenges? Nobel
Decade published?
Rating: 5 / 10
This is a play, and although I’ve found I like reading plays, I didn’t really like this one. It involved a group of people in a pub / bar in America, and all they really did in the play was sit around and get drunk, while discussing their lives and, basically, how they’d failed in their lives! It was quite disappointing as I kept expecting something to happen, and nothing really happened until the end where one of them confessed that he had killed his wife, and it became a bit “wordy” and not as good to read. They were all just drunk, and saying about how they haven’t lived any of their dreams, they’ve just been drunk, so I suppose this was supposed to be the message behind it, but it didn’t come across in a particularly deep and meaningful or inspiring way. Maybe it’s different on stage, but I didn’t like it while I was reading it.
Book Thirty Two - The Mennyms by Sylvia Waugh
Source: My bookshelf
Challenges? Children’s
Decade published?
Rating: 9 / 10
This is a fantastic book, and a classic from my childhood / teenage years. It tells the story of the Mennym family, who live quietly in their large family home. However they have a secret - they’re not really human, they’re just lifesized and very well made rag dolls which came to life after their creator died. It sounds a bit of a silly idea, but its written really well and you really get involved in their lives! They all have elaborate “pretends”, where they pretend to, for example, drink tea, do the washing up, and eat their dinners. One day the father of the family, Joshua, has his leg chewed by a rat while he is at work as a nightwatchman, and his mother has to repair it. They get a shock one day when a letter comes through the door from someone called Albert Pond, who says he now owns their house and wants to come and visit them. However not everything about this is as it seems! I don’t want to give anything away, but during the course of the story they find another, unfinished, doll in the attic which they bring to life, and Appleby, the “teenager”, suffers something which is catastrophic to a rag doll! This is a great book, really well imagined and all the characters are really well drawn. And it’s the first of a series! So there’s still more for me to read!
Wow, well this year I’ve read more so far than I read in 3 months in 2009…haha. Although I do feel like I’m “cheating” a bit as most of them have been either children’s or poetry! But no matter how long it takes me to read I suppose its still improving my mind and giving me greater knowledge about things, so that’s all good. I’m really enjoying reading the children’s books again, as they were so great when I was younger and are mostly still great now! I’m currently reading “The Plague” by Albert Camus, which so far is much easier to read than I thought - I thought it would be a bit dense and philosophical - but luckily its not, and its really good.
I’ve also got one book (a fantastic collection of poetry!) 6 films (oops, bit behind on those! Might just do short film reviews this year as I’m reading so many books!) and a gig review to do, will come back and do those soon….
Source: Library
Challenges? -
Decade published
Rating: 10 / 10
This is a non fiction book about the two years between the end of the First World War in 1918, and the burying of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey in 1920. This book is brilliant. I never expected a non-fiction book to move me as much as this one did! It started just before the end of the war, describing people’s experiences, and then how they felt when the war ended. What was really moving is that it put across how for most people the end of the war wasn’t a celebration at all - they’d lost so many men who were close to them, so it generally wasn’t a happy time. Each chapter took a short period of time and used primary sources like diaries and interviews to write a narrative of what happened in that time, it was written really well as it all came from people who were actually there - all kind of people from children to politicians to shop owners. If I had to have one criticism it would be that there was quite a lot from richer people, but I enjoy reading about those kind of people in that era, so I enjoyed that. The book described how the two minutes silence was started, including initial opposition to it from politicians etc. And then it had an incredibly sad section about how they chose the body for the unknown soldier, how it came back from France and the ceremonies that accompanied it. This is a really excellent book, about a subject which I imagine isn’t much considered - what happens when the war ends, how do people really feel, after their initial happiness. Highly recommended.
Book 24 - The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Source: my bookshelf
Challenges? Book club
Decade published?
Rating: 10 / 10
I’d already read this book before, but this was for my book club (my own choice, which everyone seemed to agree with!), and its so good I was happy to read it again. It tells the story of Hanna, from the point of view of a boy who has an affair with her when he is 15, and then later on in his life when he sees her again. To me this book is so brilliant as what is the main point of the book (which I won’t say here), is revealed so slowly and carefully, that when you realise it everything just suddenly makes sense. This book is sometimes seen as controversial as it in parts appears to excuse the events of the Holocaust - but I don’t read it like that. The reason why she did the things she did is not because she’s some monster - if you read the book its clear why, she didn’t want to admit her weakness - which in a way does seem weird, as compared to what happened it’s a small thing, but unless you have had difficulties in the same things that she had, I suppose you wouldn’t know how you would feel. This is another highly recommended book!
Book Twenty Six - Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Source: My mum’s library
Challenges? Nobel
Decade published?
Rating: 7 / 10
This is the play which was the inspiration for the film of My Fair Lady. It begins with a man meeting Eliza, a cockney flower seller, in Covent Garden, and undertaking a challenge to change her into a “lady”. He is especially interested in phonetics, and how people speak, and how to change this. Him and his friend manage to change Eliza, although she does still go back to her old ways in some of her manners! There is a strange bit where her father turns up and he seems to have won the lottery or something, so he is now a rich man, rather than the poor man he was before, and then after that the ending gets a bit strange! Also the men who had been caring for Eliza seem to totally reject her! Which was a bit strange. But up until that point the play was good. I think it’d be good to see as a play, and now I’d like to see the film of My Fair Lady now, as I haven’t seen that yet! I’d also really like to read more work by George Bernard Shaw.
Book Twenty Seven - Cautionary Verses by Hilare Belloc and Now We Are Sixty by Christopher Matthew
Source: my bookshelf
Challenges? Childrens, poetry
Decade published?
Rating: 8 / 10
This is a funny little book full of poems for children, many of them involving something horrible happening to the children, as a kind of moral tale! But in a funny way - its not preachy or anything. Its also got some great illustrations which make it funnier. They’re just short poems, slightly in the style of the AA Milne poems, but they’re all good for a quick read.
Now We Are Sixty is a collection of “updates” of the poems of AA Milne, updated to be about people who are sixty rather than six! They are funny and have relevant things in them to bring them up to date, for example about mobile phones and bankers and things like that. Not as good as the “original” poems, but still good!
Book Twenty Eight - Digging to America by Anne Tyler
Source: Free with a magazine
Challenges? -
Decade published?
Rating: 6 / 10
This book was free with a magazine so I didn’t expect much of it, but it was better than I expected. It was about two families who adopted children from Korea, and described the different ways they bought up their children, how they coped with the changes in their families, and how it affected their wider families too. One of the families was determined to do everything “right”, and the mother sometimes critisised the other family for not, for example, dressing their baby in Korean costume or keeping her hair in a certain way. The other family, not only did they have this to cope with, but their families also had come from Iran, so they had all the issues associated with that in that their parents and wider family wanted them to keep the traditions, but they weren’t sure whether to keep them or do more “American” things. It was an interesting book in that it showed the clash of cultures between all the families and the children. It got a bit chick-lit-like in the second half where the Iranian mother of one of the parents got into a relationship with the American father of one of the other couple, and she was worrying about whether it was the right thing to do etc, but overall the book wasn’t as light as I thought it would be, and I quite enjoyed it.
Book Twenty Nine - The Birthday Party (and other plays) by Harold Pinter
Source: my mum’s library
Challenges? Nobel
Decade published?
Rating: 8 / 10
This book included The Birthday Party, and two other plays. The Birthday Party was set in some kind of seaside boarding house, where there was one guest and two other guests who turn up during the play. These two guests convince the lady who owns the boarding house (who comes across as a bit stupid!) that it’s the birthday of the other guest, and that they should have a birthday party. As the play progresses you can tell theres some kind of dark undercurrent to these two guests, and their relationship to the other guest. It was a good play in that this gradually came about, and even at the end I wasn’t quite sure who they were! But it was good. The other plays also involved this kind of undercurrent, and as they went through you realised that things weren’t quite what they seemed. I enjoyed reading them, and will definitely look up more of Pinter’s work.
Book Thirty - Fantastic Mr Fox and The Witches by Roald Dahl
Source: My bookshelf
Challenges? Children’s
Decade published?
Rating: 8 / 10
Two more classic Roald Dahl stories! Fantastic Mr Fox tells the story of three Farmers, one who produces cider, one who has lots of chickens, and one who has ducks, who are determined to get the fox who steals their chickens, ducks and cider. They lie in wait for Mr Fox, and he gets his tail shot off when he emerges from his burrow. The farmers then wait at the entrance to his burrow to try and get him when he comes out to get food and water. The Foxes instead burrow down, to create a new home for themselves. The farmers realise that and get electric diggers to dig out the animals. The Foxes continue to dig down, and meet other animals who have been pushed out of their homes by the destruction of the hillside. Mr Fox hits on a great idea and they dig their way underneath the storehouses of the four farmers, so they can keep on getting food without ever coming out of their burrows. This is a lovely little story, which illustrates being inventive and resourceful to save the day! I’d like to see the film now, as I haven’t got round to watching it yet!
The Witches is about a small boy who lives with his grandmother in Norway, and she tells him about the Witches who live all over the world. The Witches hate children (to them they smell of dog poo!), are bald, and have square toes and claws instead of fingernails. Also the grand high witch is so evil that her face is ugly and she has to wear a mask! Every time they see a child they want to get rid of it. The boy and his grandmother go on holiday to Bournmouth, and the boy, whilst hiding in a room, finds out that the Witches want to turn all the children in the world into mice. They have a potion that they plan to use to do this, but putting it in sweets and opening sweet shops, and demonstrate this with a greedy boy from the hotel. The Witches then discover that the boy is in the room, and has heard everything they have said - and they turn him into a mouse as well! The boy/mouse and his grandmother then formulate a plan to turn all of the Witches into mice as well! This is a good book, and you can tell by the style that its Roald Dahl, but its not quite as “inventive” as some of his other books, but still good!
Book Thirty One - The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill
Source: my mum’s library
Challenges? Nobel
Decade published?
Rating: 5 / 10
This is a play, and although I’ve found I like reading plays, I didn’t really like this one. It involved a group of people in a pub / bar in America, and all they really did in the play was sit around and get drunk, while discussing their lives and, basically, how they’d failed in their lives! It was quite disappointing as I kept expecting something to happen, and nothing really happened until the end where one of them confessed that he had killed his wife, and it became a bit “wordy” and not as good to read. They were all just drunk, and saying about how they haven’t lived any of their dreams, they’ve just been drunk, so I suppose this was supposed to be the message behind it, but it didn’t come across in a particularly deep and meaningful or inspiring way. Maybe it’s different on stage, but I didn’t like it while I was reading it.
Book Thirty Two - The Mennyms by Sylvia Waugh
Source: My bookshelf
Challenges? Children’s
Decade published?
Rating: 9 / 10
This is a fantastic book, and a classic from my childhood / teenage years. It tells the story of the Mennym family, who live quietly in their large family home. However they have a secret - they’re not really human, they’re just lifesized and very well made rag dolls which came to life after their creator died. It sounds a bit of a silly idea, but its written really well and you really get involved in their lives! They all have elaborate “pretends”, where they pretend to, for example, drink tea, do the washing up, and eat their dinners. One day the father of the family, Joshua, has his leg chewed by a rat while he is at work as a nightwatchman, and his mother has to repair it. They get a shock one day when a letter comes through the door from someone called Albert Pond, who says he now owns their house and wants to come and visit them. However not everything about this is as it seems! I don’t want to give anything away, but during the course of the story they find another, unfinished, doll in the attic which they bring to life, and Appleby, the “teenager”, suffers something which is catastrophic to a rag doll! This is a great book, really well imagined and all the characters are really well drawn. And it’s the first of a series! So there’s still more for me to read!
Wow, well this year I’ve read more so far than I read in 3 months in 2009…haha. Although I do feel like I’m “cheating” a bit as most of them have been either children’s or poetry! But no matter how long it takes me to read I suppose its still improving my mind and giving me greater knowledge about things, so that’s all good. I’m really enjoying reading the children’s books again, as they were so great when I was younger and are mostly still great now! I’m currently reading “The Plague” by Albert Camus, which so far is much easier to read than I thought - I thought it would be a bit dense and philosophical - but luckily its not, and its really good.
I’ve also got one book (a fantastic collection of poetry!) 6 films (oops, bit behind on those! Might just do short film reviews this year as I’m reading so many books!) and a gig review to do, will come back and do those soon….