koboldmaki

Book Title: "The Ghost Road"
Author: Pat Barker
Page Count: 278
First Published: 1995
Summary: Final installment of the "Regeneration"-Trilogy, now focusing solely on Dr. Rivers and Billy Prior.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

Yeah. Well. I just...

( Spoiler )

So, the whole of the Trilogy. What did I want to write about? Of course I don't remember, and of course I did not take notes. I could recommend the sparse, poignant language, I guess, or the vivid characters, or the terrifying descriptions of warfare throughout the novels. I could also try to compare them. So, "Regeneration" was very character-driven, very introspective. "The Eye in the Door" had the most gripping plot, which is surprising for a middle book. And "The Ghost Road" had the tragedy and the gore (and hardly any Sassoon, by the way, but that's all right, I'll just read his own account of the time). It also had an interesting treatment of death and ghosts (I would not have thought that I would actually read about ghosts in this one, but there you are) in different cultures. As you may notice, I'm all out of words.

Remarque, Erich Maria: "Im Westen nichts Neues"/ "Der Weg zurück" (I felt like it would be silly not to read it, as a contrast to Barker. That's "All Quiet on the Western Front" and its sequel, by the way. My edition is close to being the ugliest book of all time, I think.) 
Graves, Robert: "Goodbye to All That" (his autobiography) 
Tomalin, Claire: "Jane Austen - a life" (just because it was the last one Amazon had in the blue Penguin Celebrations edition, really. Oh, I had a gift certificate.)

And a collection of the War Poets that Penguin issued to celebrate 80 years of the armistice, but it's disappointingly wee. A tiny, fragile book, and what I want is a large one with annotations and stuff. I'll keep it anyway, it's way pretty.

I need need need Siegfried Sassoon's other autobiographies, because I don't want to start with the last volume. I also need his three George Sherston novels, but one step at a time.

So here I am in a bit of a dilemma. A friend of mine, the one I vacationed with just now, has given me books. Six of them. Which is of course awesome. But. They aren't quite my taste. A bit of chick lit, a bit of mystery, and one book a lot of people whose opinion in books I respect hated. But I guess I'll just put them on the list and see. The weather certainly calls for brainless reading.

1) Reilly, Tina: "Flipside"
2) Various: "Scottish Girls About Town"
3) Various: "Irish Girls About Town"
4) Clarke, Stephen: "Ein Engländer in Paris"
5) Greeley, Andrew M.: "Irish Mist"
6) Same: "Irish Idontremember"

and then I had to buy a book as a souvenir, obviously, so I chose
7) Ransmayer, Christoph: "Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis"

oh and for my collection arrived
8) Krüss, James: "Gäste auf den Hummerklippen"

So that's eight new ones on top of the 270 I already have, and what do I do? Re-read Harry Potter, that's what.

Can you believe it's July already?

46) Maupin, Armistead: "Babycakes" ******
47) Summerscale, Kate: "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher" ***
48) Moore, Alan: "V for Vendetta" ****
49) Roy, Arundhati: "The God of Small Things" *
50) Arbor, Jane: "Yesterday's Magic" *****
51) French, Nicci: "In seiner Hand" *****
52) Barker, Pat: "The Eye in the Door" ******
53) Wassermann, Jakob: "Das Gold von Caxamalca" *****

Book Title: "Das Gold von Caxamalca"
Author: Jakob Wassermann
Page Count: 62
First Published: 1923
Summary: Novella about the last days of the last sovereign of the Inca Empire, Atahualpa, told by one of the conquistadors.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

I really loved the somewhat bombastic descriptions and the development of the narrator from greedy usurper to man-hating hermit. But. This novella is popularly read at school. So I tried to get into the mind of a 16-year-old again (I will not say if that was hard or not), and seriously, I would have hated this so much. Too many words, too soppy, all manly men and cruelty... and I bet there would have been a presentation on the Inca, and it would have sucked. Still. I'm not in school anymore, so I could really enjoy it.

And this is me logging off for another two weeks of vacation, how decadent.

Book Title: "The Eye in the Door"
Author: Pat Barker
Page Count: 280
First Published: 1993
Summary: Second in the "Regeneration"-Trilogy. Billy Prior and Dr. Rivers are now both in London, Sassoon is back at the front and later wounded. Rivers treats patients, new and old, and Prior works for the Ministry of Information. And then dramatic things happen and I think there's a reason the backs of these books don't have a summary either.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

Oh well. It did suffer a bit from Middle Book Syndrome. You know, I think I mentioned it before, the way the second book of a trilogy always seems to be lacking something. The characters aren't new anymore, although Barker manages to give them new angles that feel right and shocking at the same time, and often, there's a bit of a cliffhanger, so it's just not a satisfying book, and Barker does indeed leave the reader with the question whether Billy will be sent back to the front or not (which gives the informed and infatuated reader an endless repeat of "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" in her head...). It did have a plot of its own, thankfully, and a bitter, heartbreaking one at that. I hope I will remember everything I want to say when I finally write about the last book, because it really should be all in one entry.

Video does not represent taste in music of livejournal user.

Book Title: "In seiner Hand"/"Land of the Living"
Author: Nicci French
Page Count: 413
First Published: 2002
Summary: Thriller. Abbie Devereaux is abducted, tortured, manages to escape - and no one believes her. She tries to reconstruct what has happened in those days she lost due to a bout of amnesia, and can trust no one.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

I hardly ever read thrillers, you will have noticed, so when I read one, it tends to have a more thrilling effect. So I was biting my nails through this (just two, though, because I'm a strong, independent woman and I don't need to bite nails. I started watching "Friends" again...) and even though I cannot believe how stupid the otherwise very smart and savvy heroine was on the last few pages I really liked reading this.

Book Title: "Yesterday's Magic"
Author: Jane Arbor
Page Count: 186
First Published: 1977
Summary: A Mills&Boons Romance. From the back: "At twenty-eight, Rachel had for a long time taken it for granted that she was destined to remain single. She had made a quiet life for herself, living with her family and helping to run their lovely country home, and she was reasonably content. But a visitor from the past changes all that - David Winslow, bringing with him memories of her vanished, unhappy love for Jon Sandred. Soon her memory of Jon had faded and David had taken his place - but how could Rachel compete with his attraction to her pretty young sister Iris?"
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

Pushed all the right buttons, solid writing, interesting characters, but that's not the point! This is a contemporary romance from 1977. It's basically a historical document. First of all, everyone smokes! Fascinating. Casual smoking by the pool, during guided tours in elizabethan buildings, seventeen-year-olds, spinster aunts, everyone! And everyone gets paired off neatly except for the little sister but she is only seventeen and gets a modeling career in Paris, so. And and and! The fashion. Oh, the fashion. Rachel has her make-over-princess moment in a blue/green, peacock-like dress with amber accessories, and that's just what I remember vividly. Much more fun that reading something actually contemporary, which always kind of bores me. But these I could read by the dozen.

Book Title: "The God of Small Things"
Author: Arundhati Roy
Page Count: 308
First Published: 1997
Summary: The hauntingly beautiful story of a pair of twins, growing up and apart in India of the 1960s, and a dark secret that ... I can't. Did you even see what I was trying to do? Sounding like the back of any recently published book that isn't genre? Anyway, summary: Twins, someone dies, caste system, communism, people being people, and India.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

I kind of hated this book. Starting with the prose: How often can you read the same contrived sentence describing the same trivial thing before you go mad? Why do you have to make up words that just feel wrong and forced? Ending with the story: Hinting at something happening again and again and again until everyone knows what is going to happen and then letting it happen on the last three pages is not tension - it's annoying. And then Roy introduces a touch of magical realism (which I tolerate at the best of times and generally hate) by giving the twins "one soul" and never follows through with it. Sort of drops the concept in the second half. I have no idea why this book is still so widely read, or why it got the Booker in the first place. Maybe there weren't any other Indian author's available, and it was their turn? 

Book Title: "V for Vendetta"
Author: Alan Moore, David Lloyd
Page Count: 296
First Published: 1981
Summary: In a post-apocalyptic (I should at least think that a world mostly destroyed by nuclear weapons qualifies?) Britain, fascists have come into power, and one man has decided that anarchy should reign instead.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

I'm afraid my main point of critique is that it isn't "Watchmen", so I suck. But it didn't give me the same rush of reading something awesome. The drawings also made me feel seasick. I mean sure, the story is something. The setting is eerie as it gets, and the characters (well, some of them) are fascinating. But it lacks that certain spark, for me.
Maybe it's because I'd seen the movie before. I liked the movie. Didn't love it, but enjoyed it. But now that I know the source, I can't help but be angry.

Oh shut up.

Miss Read: "Chronicles of Fairacre" & "Further Chronicles of Fairacre"
Hill, Susan: "I'm the King of the Castle"
Kingsolver, Barbara: "The Poisonwood Bible"
Nafisi, Azar: "Reading Lolita in Tehran"

It was a flea market, all right? They had cotton candy and pancakes. I didn't stand a chance!

Book Title: "Der Verdacht des Mr. Whicher" ("The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House")
Author: Kate Summerscale
Page Count: 431
First Published: 2008
Summary: True Crime! Tells the story of the actual murder of a little boy in a wealthy Victorian family in England in the 1860s.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

Of course Summerscale did an impressive Job collecting all her data. Letters, transcripts, bills, she seems to have gathered every little thing connected to the case. This is also what makes the book terribly boring. I can't say I really care how much money the inspector spent on his train journeys. I also couldn't read significant parts of the book because they, in an attempt, I think, to show the influence of this true murder on literature at the time, give away the whole plot of novels I still want to read - "Lady Audley's Secret", for example, or "The Moonstone". I can't stand that.

Before I go to bed, so I can sleep with a conscience clean of at least blog-things. I almost forgot about this, bad me.

Barker, Pat: "The Ghost Road" (I got impatient and just ordered one online, used. It took too long to get to me, seriously, what's up with the Royal Mail? I didn't care for edition because I figured I could get any, read it, sell or swap it, and then search for the one I want at leisure. But, as it turned out, fate was kind and the edition I got is the edition I wanted. So, in short, Hurray.)

Sassoon, Siegfried: "Siegfried's Journey" (which was the only Sassoon they had at the shop*, and is actually the third or fourth part of his memoirs, but but but! It's an old, linen-bound Faber&Faber edition, so there.)

Then I felt the need for trash, so I swapped myself two Mills&Boons from the 1970s and two Regency Romances, the title of all of them elude me, but I wanted to mention them.

And obviously Blyton, Enid: "Malory Towers" & "Back to Malory Towers" (currently the cheapest editions to get all six books used on the internet) but you saw that already.

* I should really say The Shop. I think it's my cities only Used Book Shop for English Books only. It was brilliant for a time, all stuffed with books and you had to really work to find what you wanted, then the balance tipped and it got gross and untidy and just dingy, but when I returned to get Siegfried, they had hired a new girl who was sorting and dusting and everything seemed to be going back on track, so there's hope for them. I want her job.

How can the spell check of an online blog not know the words "blog" and "online". How? 

Book Title: "Babycakes"
Author: Armistead Maupin
Page Count: 316
First Published: 1986
Summary: Fourth installment in the "Tales of the City" series. 
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

Firstly, wow. Maupin just killed a character between books. I hate him for that. Secondly, oh my goodness. Christopher Isherwood is a fan of these. He says so on the back, so it must be true. I hadn't even known Isherwood lived into the eighties. Go figure. Thirdly, this book is not as suspense-ridden as the last two, and I think this is a good thing, because it was starting to get unrealistic. The characters are still close to my heart, the new characters grew on me quickly, and well, he sends Michael to London shortly after Charles and Diana got married, so what could go wrong.

33)-38) Blyton, Enid: "Malory Towers" ******
39) Douglas, Sarah: "Darkness at Fairwinds" ******
40) Wedekind, Frank: "Frühlings Erwachen" ***
41) Hoerschelmann, Fred von: "Das Schiff Esperanza" ******
42) Preston, William: "AMOK AM YUKON" *
43) Priestley, J.B.: "An Inspector Calls" ****
44) Barker, Pat: "Regeneration" ******
45) Herriott, James: "Vet in Harness" ******

Book Title: "Vet in Harness"
Author: James Herriot
Page Count: 250
First Published: 1974
Summary: Fourth installment of Herriot's autobiographical writings about being a vet in 1930s Yorkshire.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

Well. Now that he married Helen, I guess I can't go on about how I want to marry him. He's also quite traditionally chauvinistic, so I don't think we would have made the best couple (I would never lay out my husbands clothes for the next day and would prefer one that doesn't need me to, to be honest). Still. His stories go straight to the heart, I don't care how corny it sounds.

Book Title: "Malory Towers"
Author: Enid Blyton
Page Count: 906
First Published: 1946-1951
Summary: Six terms from six years of boarding school life in the 1940s in Blytonland.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

So after I read the first one earlier, I had to get all of them, obviously. And I loved them. They didn't get boring as quickly as the Famous Five did, so I finished all six pretty quickly. Of course Blyton repeats herself, and they're schematic, and there's the usual stereotyping, but on the whole, the characters are a lot more believable, and I actually got invested in their fates.
Now, as you may know if you read me at all, in Germany, there are a few more books about Darrell available, following her well into adulthood, marriage and motherhood. Blyton stops before university. But, what I did not know: The six original novels were significantly cut for the German market. Whole episodes, whole characters were new to me. Now where is the sense in that?
I also learned that what I thought were books the library didn't have are books that don't actually exist, because Blyton has a lot of stuff happening between books that she presents to the reader in one or two sentences (new girls, or girls leaving, for example).

Book Title: "Regeneration"
Author: Pat Barker
Page Count: 252
First Published: 1991
Summary: I'm sort of stumped finding the right words, as I always am when a novel impresses me a lot. So I will have to keep it simple: 1917, WWI, mental hospital. In treatment are, among others, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen (who Barker totally ships, btw), and Billy Prior, the only fictional main character. Their psychiatrist is William Rivers, who becomes a father figure for most. Throughout the book we see Sassoon's protest against the war, his turn to pacifism, Rivers reaction to it, and Sassoon coming to terms with his position in the war. We also see Prior, of a working-class background as a parallel to Sassoon's rather genteel upbringing, trying for normalcy, love, a life, in this difficult situation.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

I can't even begin to say how much I love this book. I will hopefully be able to find words once I've read the third part of the trilogy.
I think I already mentioned that I did not enjoy it as much when I had to read it for university. I don't know what changed. It obviously helps that I am now interested in Sassoon and Owen and the War poets in general, and it probably also helps that I have the most embarrassing literary crush on Billy Prior, who just kills me with his humour and his fragility and his hard-assedness (there's a word I think I just made up...), and on Sassoon, who is all thoughtful and genteel, but the descriptions of life in the trenches, in the hospital, of the psychiatric methods of the time are what makes this book interesting. And when you think it can't get any better, there's the most gruesome and cruel description of electric shock treatment. I had tears in my eyes, even though Barker (wisely!) chose to apply it on a character the reader had not got invested in before.

Side note: Due to this book, I am currently reading a biography of Ottoline Morell (please spare me comments about her first name) and will have to read all of Sassoon's novels as well. I don't know why people have trouble finding books they want to read, I really don't.

Book Title: "An Inspector Calls"
Author: J.B. Priestley
Page Count: 78
First Published: 1946
Summary: A family celebration is rudely interrupted when a self-proclaimed inspector arrives and accused every single member of the family of having a part in a girl's suicide.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

Actually, I listened to a radioplay of this... but I did read the annotations, so.
I could imagine this being really rewarding in Uni, actually. You could do a segment on the strikes, and the fall of the upper classes, things like that. But as I just listened to it for fun while walking the woods, I have to say it lacked in entertainment. Not as bad as "Look Back in Anger" or something like that, but still, a lot of people talking a lot.

Book Title: "Amok am Yukon"
Author: William Preston
Page Count: 164
First Published: 1965
Summary: It's the time of the gold rush, and people are going crazy all over. A man kills three others, and Allan Walker, the most famous Sergeant of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, has to investigate.
Rating: superfunk - golden - sweet - blah - superblah - blergh

a) My backlog of entries is getting ridiculous
b) I just messed with the actual html of this entry and not the rich text editor thing and am now scared
c) this book.
This book was pretty terrible. It promises suspense and crime (AMOK!!!), and well. The murders happen on the first ten pages or so, then it's 140 pages of two men riding through the country, talking about wildlife, and doing occasional good deeds, and then it's another 5 or so pages conclusion of the "introduce new character in the last few pages SURPRISE!" kind. And it contained pages and pages of dialogue that explained the facts of the Yukon territory. You know  "Did you know, person who also lived in this country all his life, that the yukonian washbeaver has 24 teeth and lives mostly on the tails of dead possums in winter?" sort of dialogue. Very trying. I think there is a certain potential if you like homoerotic tension though. Walker and his Deputy constantly compliment each others looks, for one, and there's nudity, too. Still... if not for the awesome title, I'd give this book straight to the goats.