My life according to the books I’ve read this year

A fun meme doing the rounds that I first spotted at Petrona is

Using only books you have read this year (2009), cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title.

If you want to  check that I haven’t cheated you can see all my 2009 reads by clicking on the 2009 tag in the cloud to the right. I’ve read 83 books this year so far. As I said when commenting on the post at Petrona I should read some more upbeat titles once in a while to avoid looking like a troubled soul when doing this sort of thing. I was going to write some explanations for my choices but decided against it. Make of them what you will.

Describe Yourself: Careless in Red

How do you feel: Alone

Describe where you currently live: The Tin Roof Blowdown

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Valley of the Lost

Your favorite form of transport: The Night Ferry

Your best friend is: The Girl Who Played with Fire

You and your friends are: The Sweetness of Life

What’s the weather like: Dead Cold

Favourite time of day: The Darkest Hour

If your life was a: Devil’s Game

What is life to you: Trick or Treat

Your fear: Pandemic

What is the best advice you have to give: Search the Dark

Thought for the Day: Murder will Travel

How I would like to die: Death by Sudoku

My soul’s present condition: State of the Onion

 

Quick Question: which book to read?

You’d think that being on holidays I would have increased reading time (not to mention blog tidying time) but my overseas visitors seem to have occupied all that spare time I imagined having. Oh well, it’s always great to see family.

But on to my dilemma…

My face to face book club is meeting on Sunday week (August 23) and I have a choice of two books to read. I don’t own either, haven’t had a chance to get near a library and don’t know the first thing about either book. I will need to buy one of them and take it with me to Melbourne this Friday (for some unfathomable reason we are taking the train so I will have oodles of reading time then).

First choice is Lisa Gardner’s The Neighbour. I don’t know a thing about it but I haven’t had a huge amount of success with Gardner’s  books. The last one I read, Alone, was really only worthy of the one word review: meh.

My other choice is Lee Child’s Gone Tomorrow. I’ve never read any of Child’s books before and am frankly a l  little daunted by starting a series on book 13. Also I was underwhelmed by the panel’s discussion about the book  on last week’s episode of the First Tuesday Book Club (a panel-style TV book show in Australia) in which not one of  the 5 panelists had anything terribly positive to say about the book.

So if you’ve read either book or have an opinion about which one I should read let me know. Staring at them both in bookshops hasn’t helped me make a decision so I’m hoping someone will say something that makes me more decisive.

 

Mid-Year Report

Yes folks it’s graphs and charts time again. I did a quarterly report in March and I’m sure you’ve all been holding your breath to see how things are faring.

I’ve read 63 books so far this year whicb means I’m well on track to reach my target of 100+. The vast bulk have been crime fiction. I used to fairly regularly intersperse some other genres amongst the murder and mayhem but these days I’ve got so many good recommendations in my preferred genre I don’t seem to find time for much else. I’m pleased with the amount of new authors I’m continuing to read (slightly more than half of my total) but I’d like to read more Aussie authors.

This next graph is more troubling as it indicates how poorly I am doing with respect to reducing the size of my collection (if you can’t read the teeny print the larger bars indicate my total number of books owned and the smaller ones deal with the number of books I have that are unread). I have given myself a good talking to with respect to both of these issues and hope to address them in the remaining half of the year.

Other random, useless facts

• I read 6 audio books this quarter (only 1 in the previous quarter). This is a direct consequence of trying to get more physically active (which in turn is a direct consequence of my hatred of public transport). I adore audio books.
• I have give six books a 5-star rating (one was a non-crime so doesn’t appear below), though only two of those this quarter. However 37 of my 63 books have rated 3.5 or above which is a very pleasing figure as these are all books I would happily recommend to other readers.
• Of the 82 (gulp) books I’ve acquired the majority were mooched or from other free sources (but I did buy 38 so I’m not leaving authors completely hanging in the wind).

Picking my top ten for the year so far has been difficult. I’m reading more than ever now (as my TV turns into a piece of art rather than something I bother to watch) and generally the quality is better (since I rely more on recommendations from people I trust rather than the drones who stock the shelves at my local chain stores). Largely the list is based on my rating scale although I did some weeding-out based on the book’s level of ‘stickinmymindness’ which is calculated from the length of time I can remember the important details combined with the number of times I bang on about it to friends and family after finishing it (a highly scientific process I assure you).

The list is in alphabetical order:

• Black Ice by Leah Giarratano (rating 5/5) (Aussie author)
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (rating 4.5/5)
• Diamond Dove (a.k.a. Moonlight Downs) by Adrian Hyland (rating 5/5) (Aussie author)
• Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin (rating 5/5)
• Sacrifice by S J Bolton (rating 4/5)
• The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson (rating 5/5)
• The Murderer’s Club by P D Martin (rating 4.5/5) (Aussie author)
• The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas (rating 4/5)
• Valley of the Lost by Vicky Delany (rating 4/5)
• Voodoo Doll by Leah Giarratano (rating 4.5/5) (Aussie author)

 

4-Play

I am generally a bad blogger in that I don’t respond to memes and/or challenges. Mostly it’s because I keep this blog on topic (a personal challenge requiring enormous restraint some days) and partly it’s because some of them remind me ever so vaguely of the chain letters that ruined a perfectly good teenage friendship.

However I’ve been tagged by Kerrie, one of the people who inspired me to start my own blog (though she may not know that) and , with a bit of tweaking, I can keep it on topic.

4 places I’ve lived:

Adelaide, Australia (setting for Kirsty Brooks’ The Vodka Dialogue featuring a sassy PI and a must read for chic lit fans)

Jerusalem, Israel (setting for one of Jonathan Kellerman’s standalone novels and a great read: The Butcher’s Theatre)

Katoomba, Australia (setting for one of my all time favourite traditional house-party mysteries called Grim Pickings by Jennifer Rowe)

Sydney, Australia (setting for a top-notch PI novel called Dry Dock by Cathy Cole)

4 places I’ve visited

The Nile, Egypt which I sailed down on a felucca and drank cocktails at the hotel that was featured in the movie of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile

Chicago, America where I made my own walking tour of sites from Sara Paretsky’s V I Warshawski novels

London (and other bits), England, where I bored my then boyfriend to tears by dragging him on a tour of Sherlock Holmes related sites (for the record he returned the favour by making me trudge across the country to see what he says was Hadrian’s wall and I say was a pile of rubble)

California, America where a friend and fellow Sue Grafton fan and I did a driving tour of the area of all the places that surround the fictional Santa Teresa in which the alphabet novels are set

4 places I want to go to

Alaska (home of Dana Stabenow’s spiffy Kate Shugak series)

Botswana (home of Alexander McCall Smith’s No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series)

Russia (I rather fell in love with Tom Rob Smith’s Leo Demidov this year and have always loved Doctor Zhivago)

…Egypt (again) (for an Elizabeth Peters inspired tour of course)(plus it is my favourite place on the planet)

4 Australian authors I recommend

Leah Giarratano(picture me doing a happy dance due to her new novel’s imminent publication) (reviewed here and here)

Kerry Greenwood (reviewed here and here)

Adrian Hyland (reviewed here)

Felicity Young (reviewed here and here)

The top 4 books I’ve read this year

I’ve got 5 books rated 5 so far this year, but here are the 4 crime fiction ones

Leah Giarratano, Voodoo Doll

Adrian Hyland, Diamond Dove (a.k.a Moonlight Downs)

Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire

Johan Theorin, Echoes from the Dead

4 blogs I watch daily

I’ve deliberately chosen non book-related blogs here – I can’t think of any of those that haven’t already been mentioned by other responders and I do have other interests (shock horror),

Roz Savage, Ocean Rower(a 40+ year old English woman is rowing solo across the Pacific to bring attention to what’s ailing our poor planet and she’s blogging and podcasting the entire adventure, she’s funny and inspirational too)

The Scott Adams Blog (he writes what I already think but more succinctly and funnier and he makes me view the world differently)

Unleashed (ABC Australia’s opinion & essay blog – exposing myself to a load of different ideas keeps me, hopefully, from becoming too set in my thinking)

Graph Jam (blame Maxine, it makes me laugh every day)

And because everyone else seems to have added and subtracted their own categories I’m going to add my own, inspired by a tiresome week

4 things I would remove from my world if I had a magic wand

Alzheimer’s (no reading tie in but an old family friend is suffering from this hideous disease and it’s just awful for all concerned)

Celebrities (I am sick of reading about them and their mindless doings every time I pick up a newspaper)

Politicians (Ditto)

WHO (their daft definition of pandemic has made my working days a drudgery)

I’m not tagging anyone for this but if you should want to participate in the comments below or on your own blog, have at it.

 

The Moody Blues

The title of the post really has not much to do with anything. Except that when I thought of the word moody I remembered this album that my older brother played a gazillion times during my childhood. I was an Abba loving 10 year old at the time and the endless instrumentals did not appeal to me (a girl can’t dance to The Moody Blues).

And moody is how I am feeling about my reading at the moment. I’ve picked up a half-dozen books in the last few days and not read more than a few pages of any of them. I don’t think they’re genuinely bad but I just can’t seem to get into a story.

It might have something to do with the fact I’ve spent my last few working days reading stodgy legal documents which are so dull I’ve been tempted to gouge my own eyes out with a spoon.

Or it might be that the planets are out of alignment.

Or something else entirely.

This kind of reading slump doesn’t happen to me very often but when it does it makes me particularly moody. And blue.

 

Sunday Salon 2009-05-17 – Reading Accessories

 It’s confession time folks. I have recently bought what might be the silliest product ever. And I love it.

First, the justification. Winter is approaching fast here in Australia and as someone who is a bit of a cheapskate and who is also aiming to be more environmentally responsible I try not to rely on heating if I don’t really have to.

When reading in my favourite chair I use layers of clothes, ugg boots and a blanket to ward off the chills. But the blanket has never been a terribly satisfactory solution because I always have to reach out from under to hold the book or turn the page.

Which is where my new purchase comes in.

I bought a blanket with sleeves. They have been advertising them on late night TV for ages at a price beyond a cheapskate’s budget but when Catch of the day recently had them on sale I succumbed to temptation.

I think it is my new favourite reading accessory. It is so snuggly (it’s made of polar fleece) and I can stay warm underneath it without having to uncover my arms and let the cold in.

My only concern is that it might send me completely bonkers as the people in this clip appear to be (although so far I’ve had no urges to dance around in my blanket or wear it to a local tourist attraction).

So…What about you? Do you have a favourite reading accessory? Something that brings something extra to your reading experience? A light? A stand? Anything as silly (but lovely) as a blanket with sleeves?

 

Quarterly report January-March 2009

In my working life quarterly reports are mandatory and I have been drowning in bar graphs, pie charts and thinking up new ways to say the same thing as I said last quarter. I sometimes think it wouldn’t matter whether my team did the work we’re paid for as long as I completed the quarterly report templates well enough. Anyway, as reporting has been on my mind, I thought I’d report on something more interesting (to me). These statistics are just as meaningless as the ones I collect for work but I had more fun with them

The graph to the right shows I’ve read 31 books (which if I keep up the rate will allow me to reach my target of at least 100 books for the year). I’m pleased with the ratio of new authors in the mix as I’ve been making a conscious effort not to stick to all my old favourites. I’m not nearly as thrilled about the number by Australian authors. I will aim to improve things during the current quarter.

The graph below shows I’ve been doing well at selection as I have rated 21 of them 3 or more out of 5 and only one was a DNF. All this means that I’m really enjoying more than two thirds of what I’m reading.

My 5-star rated reads were

Echoes from the Dead, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Voodoo Doll and (non-crime fiction) The White Tiger.

• The most troubling statistic though is that I’ve acquired 48 books during this period. Even though most of those acquisitions have come via bookmooch or other free sources it is worrisome because another goal for this year is to read more books than I acquire.
• I have disposed of some books via bookmooch but my collection has increased overall by 30 (to now stand at 737 books).
• And I still have 155 books unread, not counting the ones I have borrowed from libraries and friends. Nor counting the ones I’ve ordered via book mooch or from ARC sources. Clearly I’m going to have to read faster.
• I did impose a ban on book buying at the end of February and at the time of posting it has been 33 days, 20 hours, 58 minutes and 23 seconds since I purchased a book (not that I’m counting).

 

Sunday Salon 2009-03-28: On libraries, delight and guilt

Last week one of my face to face book groups picked Jincy Willet’s The Writing Class as our next reading assignment. I’ve had the book on my ‘must read’ list since hearing the author on a local radio show last year and was chuffed that I would now have a reason to read the book. I am currently in the middle of a self-imposed, three-month ban on purchasing any more books (refer here for my ‘greed’ post that prompted this) so I headed to the local public library (funded out of my considerable property taxes) and found they may be able to provide me a copy some time next millennium if I am a very good girl.  I was bemoaning my fate at some length when a colleague piped up with the gem of information that I am eligible by my very existence to borrow books from the public library that’s near work. As this library is in a completely different government boundary it is entirely funded by other people’s considerable property taxes it never occurred to me that I would be allowed to borrow items from it. 

Astonishingly though my colleague was right. The joining process was free and remarkably easy and they had a copy of The Writing Class available. For no additional fee they had it brought to the campus of the library that is a mere stroll from my office rather than have me traipse off to the other end of town to pick it up myself. There were also copies of many other new release books that I have been wanting to read and a whole load of interesting-looking audio books available for my instant gratification.

While I am quite giddy with delight at the unnecessary (because I already have a huge pile of books TBR) but wonderful opportunities I am, not surprisingly to the people who know me well, consumed with guilt. How can I partake of such wonder without contributing a single cent to the institution’s upkeep? Shouldn’t they charge me a nominal fee given that I don’t live in the district and therefore don’t support the institution in the normal way? How on earth can the place stay afloat lending out items to interlopers such as myself? Can I live with myself if I continue to partake of the delights of this institution without contributing anything?

 

Weekly Geeks 2009-#10: Worst Movie Adaptations

This week’s Weekly Geeks question is difficult to answer:

The recent release of Watchmen based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore got me thinking about what I thought were the worst movie adaptations of books. What book or books did a director or directors completely ruin in the adaptation(s) that you wish you could “unsee,” and why in your opinion, what made it or them so bad in contrast to the book or books?

It’s difficult because there are so many bad adaptations of great books. I’m not a slave to the faithful recreation of every detail but  I do mind when movie makers seem to miss the point of the book entirely and you wonder if they’ve ever even read the thing. Like Sari I’ve been very disappointed by adaptations of some of my favourite Stephen King novels, especially The Shining because so much of the psychological nuance is left out and all that remains is blood-filled horror which is never what the books are solely about. And 2005’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy seemed to ignore entirely the subtle humour of Douglas Adams’ book to the point that I walked out of the screening I was at and only saw it all while held captive on a long flight to Europe.

And because this question asks specifically about film adaptation I won’t rant about what the BBC did to one of my favourite book series when it created the Inspector Lynley Mysteries based, loosely, on Elizabeth George’s series of novels. Instead I’ll talk about The Name of the Rose. The book was written by Umberto Eco in his native Italian in 1980 and translated into English in 1983 and it guides the reader on a journey through some of the most significant events in medieval times using the solving of a whodunit as the major plot device. It tells a fantastic story and is full of rich, historical detail.  The film adaptation, released in 1986 starring Sean Connery and F Murray Abraham, may be a good movie (Connery won a British Academy of Film Award for his role) but it is a lousy adaptation of a book, seeming to go out of its way to depict the places and characters in a way that contradicted Eco’s creation. It doesn’t just gloss over key details it ignores them all together which changes the story completely and the characters are all extreme versions of the originals with none of the subtlety that made the book so interesting and thought provoking. The book uses the murder mystery as a device to enable the reader to ponder a broad range of theological and social issues but the film concentrates only on the mystery and doesn’t even to that very well because many of the motivations and reasons for events and actions are not included so the resolution seems quite inexplicable. In short it’s a film I wish had never been made.

 

Sunday Salon 2009-03-08: Sometimes it’s good not to read

Rarely a day goes by without me doing some reading. It’s my preferred form of relaxation and entertainment. Normally the only time I don’t do a lot of reading is when work is so busy that I don’t have any time for relaxation. But at the moment my lack of time for reading is for a much better reason. This month in the town where I live is a great time for alternative forms of entertainment.

This weekend is Adelaide’s annual WOMAD festival which features a range of world music.  I’m due to head off soon for the last day of the festival and I’m thoroughly looking forward to a day of sunshine, great music and wonderful food.

A week ago Adelaide’s annual Fringe Festival held its opening parade which kicked off three weeks of comedians, dance, theatre and street performers from all around the world. My biggest problem has been to narrow down my choices enough to enable me to do some work in between having fun.

This month there’s also a major horse racing carnival and one of the country’s biggest car racing events in town so there’s entertainment choices for all. As usual I am a little annoyed that we cram all this goodness into the space of a few weeks but I’m taking as much advantage as I can. Which is why I have little time for reading just now but, for once, I don’t mind too much.