One year ago, I embarked upon the project of recording in my LJ all the books I read and films I watched during the course of the year 2007. I'd written about things I'd read or seen fairly frequently before then, but had never done it systematically. I decided to start because I'd tried to look back over the books I'd read in 2006 when answering ( Read more... )

Read on the way to and from Verona.

I was given this book by one of my MA students when I left Belfast, which means that it's taken me two and a half years to get round to reading it - and even then it only really happened because my actual bedtime reading at the moment is rather large and unwieldy, and I wanted something light that I could fit in ( Read more... )

I read this book on the canal, and for a book group which has just started up at work. I'm actually not too sure how long I'll stay in the book group, for two reasons: 1) I didn't feel particularly drawn to any of the other people in it at our initial meetings, and 2) I was in a book group once before in Oxford, and ended up letting it drop because ( Read more... )

I interrupted reading this book in July to read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in preparation for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and then interrupted Half-Blood Prince in turn when I still hadn't quite finished it on release night. So for a while there, I had three books on the go at once, nested within each other - ( Read more... )

Thanks to this site, I have taken to reading short stories by Saki while eating my lunch-time sandwiches. I've enjoyed the odd Saki story in the past (my favourite probably being The Stalled Ox), but the Square Eye site offers the opportunity to read them systematically, collection by collection, so I have now read the entirety of Reginald - his ( Read more... )

I read this book because a) it is about me my mythological namesake, b) my Mum bought it for me two Christmases ago, knowing that it would appeal to me for that reason, and c) I've always vaguely thought I ought to read something by Margaret Atwood ( Read more... )

When I originally set out to record all the books I'd read this year, I stated that this was not going to include my work-related reading. This book, however, I read during my usual bedtime leisure reading slot, and primarily for my own enjoyment - although with the obvious secondary motive of broadening my professional expertise as well - so it ( Read more... )

Read partly because I love Clueless, of course, but also because I very much enjoyed reading Pride and Prejudice at school, and have enjoyed the odd film or TV adaptation of her books here and there since.

Like Pride and Prejudice, what I liked most about it is the range of character types depicted, and the way their interactions allow Austen to ( Read more... )

Very enjoyable. I think overall I slightly preferred Wintersmith, mainly because its story-arc felt better crafted - some the scenes in the Queen's domain dragged a little for me. But I like Tiffany all the more now, and I warmed to the Nac Mac Feegles over the course of this book in a way I hadn't with WintersmithI'm also now in a better position ( Read more... )

Amazon page here.

Not the sort of book I would normally read - it's a historical thriller, and proudly proclaims on the front that it was 'shortlisted by Richard and Judy's Book Club 2005'. Quality!

Nonetheless, I did read it, mainly because it was given to me for free at the Diana Wynne Jones day I attended in Bristol last summer, and also ( Read more... )