One year old

It's my first anniversary today! One year since I decided to start a second bookblog on Blogspot (my other is on Live Journal) after umming and ahhing about it for months. I wouldn't have missed it for the world, I've met such lovely people and now treat this as my main bookblog rather than a secondary one. The other thing of note to mention is that this is my 100th. post. I'm not sure whether 100 posts in exactly one year is good or bad but it's quite coincidental that they happened on the same day!

Anyhow, the book I've just finished is very worthy of this most auspicious moment - it's The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton. I first read about this book here on Robin's blog. It sounded like my kind of book and I was lucky enough to get a copy via the Devon library catalogue.



Fi is an American librarian who isn't ready to settle down yet - is not, in fact, sure that she ever will be. So she applies for a job in Africa, part of which turns out to be taking books to outlying, remote villages in the African bush. The mode of transport is Siti, a rather ornery camel, and with Fi goes Mr. Abasi, a librarian who is not as keen on spreading the word about reading as he might be and who thinks the camel is possessed by the spirit of his dead mother.

The main story takes place in a village known as Mididima; the tribe living there is nomadic but settled for the moment. The people there are split about whether the books that arrive once a fortnight are a good thing or a bad thing. The elders are afraid their way of life is threatened by too much knowledge of the outside world. Others feel the village needs to be more forward thinking. We meet Matani, the school teacher, and his straying wife, Jwahir; Neema and her grandaughter, Kanika, who wants to leave the village to become a teacher in the city - and Abayomi and his two sons one of whom is known as 'Scar Boy' because of an horrific attack by a hyaena when he was a toddler.

The books have been donated by a big American corporation and one of the strict rules is that all books *must* be returned at the end of the fortnight. But two books go missing. The boy borrowing them is 'Scar Boy' and, for some unknown reason, the boy won't give the books back. Fi goes to stay in the village hoping to help retrieve the books but somehow things don't turn out just as she thought they would...

It's for little gems like this that I religiously read other people's blogs. I would never have known about this if I hadn't seen it on Robin's blog and that would have been a terrible shame as it is delightful. The atmosphere reminded me a bit of Alexander McCall Smith's Ladies' Detective Agency books, set in Botswana. I don't think the country is ever mentioned here but there is, apparently, a Camel Bookmobile in operation in Kenya. And, although this does seem at times like a bit of a cosy read, it actually isn't. There are some valid points to be made about the effect of western civilisation upon indigenous tribes and about the role of women in these tribes in the 21st. century. And the answer to the question, 'Are books necessarily a wonderful thing?' is not as cut and dried as you might think. The unexpected ending brought a real lump to my throat and I applaud the author for not going the obvious route. A gorgeous, thought provoking read.

Three reviews

Three short reviews from me today. If I can remember how to do short. ;-) These were all quick, enjoyable reads from the last week or so. Sometimes that's all you want - quick, enjoyable, undemanding.

A poor picture - annoyingly I couldn't find a better one of my copy of Sorcery and Cecilia by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Whatever, the story concerns two cousins, Cecilia and Kate, who have been separated temporarily, the latter to enjoy a season in Regency London and the former forced to stay at home. The two corresspond and each get embroiled in various magical shenanigans with wizards both male and female. It soon becomes clear that both are involved in the same adventure.

I first heard about this book from Deslily and am very pleased I managed to find it in a charity shop for 50p! It's a fun Regency romp, written in letter form, apparently as a result of a Letter Game the two authors played one year. There are two sequels and I'm pretty certain I'll be reading both at some stage.

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The third and final book in the YA Hollow Kingdom trilogy, In the Coils of the Snake by Clare B. Dunkle. Marak the Goblin King who featured mainly in the first book is at the end of his life. He has nurtured and mentored a human girl, Miranda, to be the next wife of a Goblin king, his son, and brought her to live in his underground kingdom. After Marak's death Miranda becomes the fiance of the new king, Marak Catspaw, but a new Elf lord, Nir, suddenly appears offering the king an elf bride. He has no choice but to agree and the elf-bride takes Miranda's place. Devastated, Miranda leaves the kingdom only to find herself kidnapped by Nir and taken to live with the elves.

The plot of this one is convoluted but, as with the other two books, great fun and unputdownable. I don't know why Clare Dunkle is not better known than she is. Until recently she didn't even have an entry on Fantastic Fiction, an oversight which has now been remedied I notice. Anyway, sad to have finished this trilogy but there you go, I'm sure I'll be rereading at some stage.

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Joe and Kerry are shipped off to stay with their great-aunt in deepest Wales in The Weather Witch by Paul Stewart. They live in London and their mother is afraid they'll get into all kinds of trouble if left alone in the city over the summer holidays. Great Aunt Eleanor is a bit of a character and regales them with the story of the Elizabethan village that disappeared overnight, four hundred years ago. The children explore Eleanor's huge house and have a haunting experience and then they discover the lake which is when things *really* start to happen.

Another fun read... aimed at children aged about 12 to 15 I'd say. It's pacey and creepy, with unusual ideas and a nice sense of history as well. Paul Stewart is co-author of the well known 'Edge' Chronicles for younger children but this is one his forays into fiction for older children. I liked it.

A new challenge

Inspired by Robin at A Fondness for Reading I've decided on a new long-term challenge at last. It's The Book Awards Reading Challenge and it's being hosted by Michelle at 1more chapter.com.



The rules are:

1. Read 10 award winners from August 1, 2008 through June 1, 2009.

2. You must have at least FIVE different awards in your ten titles.

3. Overlaps with other challenges are permitted.

4. You don't have to post your choices right away, and your list can change at any time.

5. 'Award winners' is loosely defined; make the challenge fit your needs, keeping in mind Rule #2.


I had a look through my tbr mountain last night and came up with a comprehensive pool of books to choose from. It's quite likely though (knowing me), that this will alter over the months. 'Changing my mind' seems to define me somehow...

Anyway, here goes:

BOOKER

The Seige of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
The Ghost Road - Pat Barker

GOVERNOR GEN. (CANADA)

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

CARNEGIE

The Little Grey Men - 'BB'
Tom's Midnight Garden - Philippa Pearce
The Lantern Bearers - Rosemary Sutcliff

HUGO

The Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card

ALEX

The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
Year of Wonders - A novel of the plague - Geraldine Brooks

COSTA/WHITBREAD

The Tenderness of Wolves - Stef Penney

COMMONWEALTH'S WRITER'S PRIZE

Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

MYTHOPOEIC

The Ropemaker - Peter Dickinson
Tamsin - Peter S. Beagle

SUNDRY
Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve

THE NEWBERY AWARD

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

CWA GOLD/DIAMOND DAGGER AWARDS
A Fatal Inversion - Barbara Vine
The Reaper - Peter Lovesey
The Sedgemoor Strangler - Peter Lovesey
The Circle - Peter Lovesey

NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

Books by:

Rudyard Kipling
John Steinbeck
V.S. Naipaul
Doris Lessing

So that's it. It'll be interesting to see how far I get with this as it's quite a challenge, but I feel like I'm really up for it.

Last book for Heart of a Child - Minnow on the Say

Well, the Heart of a Child challenge, hosted by Becky, is almost over.



The challenge was to read 3 to 6 books that you loved as a child, from the 1st. February to the 14th. July. I've now read 4 so am considering the challenge completed.

My 4th. and final book is Minnow on the Say by Philippa Pearce, a favourite library book of mine when I was child living in Penzance, in Cornwall.



First of all I'll confess that this is not a photo of my book, it's one I found on the internet. My own copy is a lot rattier than this one.

Secondly I'll confess that I fell totally in love with this book all over again. The plot is a fairly typical one of its time - the mid 1950s - where two children are searching for a treasure that will stop a house having to be sold and save a family from poverty. The children in question are David Moss, an ordinary boy from an ordinary background whose father drives a bus, and Adam Codling who lives in huge house, but in upper-class poverty. David wakes up one morning, after a bad storm, to find a canoe floating on the river at the bottom of his garden. The river is the river Say and David, hoping to keep the boat, names it the Minnow. A day or two later he ventures upstream looking for a broken stump that might match the bit attached to the canoe, and meets Adam Codling. After some misunderstanding the two boys become friends and Adam tells David something of the history of his family and about a treasure that was lost back in the 16th century. Adam lives with his aunt Dinah and his grandfather, who fell into dementia when his son (Adam's father) was lost in the war. The family are very poor, to the point where there's hardly any furniture in the house and not enough to eat - so much so that Dinah believes she can no longer keep Adam with them and he'll have to go and live with cousins in Birmingham. Adam believes if he can only find the lost treasure he can save their little family and he won't have to go and live in Birmingham. All they have to go on is a rhyme left behind as a clue and, using The Minnow, the two boys spend their summer holidays desperately searching for the treasure.

Talk about nostalgia. This, of course, is what childhoods used to be like. 1950s and 60s style, that is. I don't know when things changed, my own girls were born in the mid-70s and, although they had a certain amount of freedom, mothers already felt it wasn't as safe as it used to be. I personally roamed all over the Cornish countryside as a child, in fields, in woods, in the local stream and, when slightly older, on the beaches. Idyllic, I suppose you'd describe it as. Even though we had little money, it didn't matter because no one else did either! No one went away on holiday. If someone had announced they were off to Majorca for a week the reaction would have been stunned disbelief. If people went anywhere it was usually to stay with relatives who might live in another part of the country. And thus, school holidays were spent as David and Adam spent their's, exploring and enjoying the local countryside. This book took me right back to that and also to a time when there was less stress, where people took the time to bake cakes or grow their own veg. and thought it was *normal* to do so.

Philippa Pearce's writing is superb. I didn't realise it but this was her very first book. She's more famous for Tom's Midnight Garden, which I haven't read, plus she was quite a prolific writer of children's books until her death in 2006. What a wonderful debut this was! I know I read Minnow on the Say several times, adoring its lazy English summer atmosphere and the excitement of the search for the treasure. Now I can see more in it of course. The fact that she has 11 and 12 year old boys spot on in their gruffness and unwillingness to explain what they mean when dealing with each other. I'm now more struck by the sadness of dementia and by the aunt not having enough money to feed Adam, a growing boy, who is consequently always hungry. David's parents quickly realise this of course and do their best to help. Despite the fact that they were working class they were actually better off than their upper-class counterparts. Things were clearly changing in the 1950s. I can't recommend this book too highly and I mustn't finish without mentioning the lovely illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. They fit the book perfectly and are mini works of art in themselves. A gorgeous, atmospheric, *summer* read.

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So, that concludes my reading for the Heart of a Child challenge.

The four books I read are:

The Valley of Adventure by Enid Blyton
The Castle of Adventure by Enid Blyton
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Minnow on the Say by Philippa Pearce

And I can say without a word of a lie that I loved them all just as much as I did when reading them as a child. Thanks to Becky for hosting this delightful challenge.

A short story

G.K. Chesterton's writing is simply taking my breath away. I'm reading an anthology of his Father Brown stories, taken from several books, and I'm reading it slowly over several months so that I can really take in what I'm reading.



' The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingers silver. In a sky of dark green-blue-like slate the stars were bleak and brilliant like splintered ice. All that thickly wooded and sparsely tenanted country-side was stiff with a brittle frost. The black hollows between the trunks of the trees looked like bottomless, black caverns of that heartless Scandinavian hell, a hell of incalculable cold. Even the square stone tower of the church looked northern to the point of heathenry, as if it were some barbaric tower among the sea rocks of Iceland. It was a queer night for anyone to explore a churchyard. But, on the other hand, perhaps it was worth exploring.'

This wonderfully atmospheric introduction comes from a short story called The Sign of the Broken Sword. Chesterton goes on to describe how Father Brown and an investigating friend, Flambeau, are taking a night-time walk, first to the church-yard to look at a war memorial and then on, through the forest, to the inn. And all the time Father Brown is relating the story of a local land-owning war-hero who had apparently distinguished himself at a particular battle in Brazil and, supposedly, died a hero. But gradually the priest reveals via various snippets of information in his own inimitable style and we realise that all is not as it seems and the truth of the matter is, in fact, truly horrible.

The story is available to read online here, along with the rest of the stories from The Innocence of Father Brown (my book actually only has seven stories from this anthology).

Chesterton does dark, brooding atmosphere very well and - a surprise to me - humour. Dry humour. I should've known this but didn't as I've never read any of his other novels and certainly not tried Father Brown, no matter how many people told me I should! I'm getting a lot better at heeding bookish advice these days - I was a fool to myself once upon a time and rarely took any notice. Not any more.

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I can no longer state that I never win anything either. I'm not sure whether to be happy about this, or sad, as us Brits love to have something to mutter and moan about. ;-) But the fact is I've just won two free books! The first is The Book of Love by Sarah Bower and that comes courtesy of Elaine at Random Jottings and the book's publisher. The second is The Savage Garden by Mark Mills and this one is courtesy of Danielle at A Work in Progress and *that* book's publisher. Thank you both for holding the book draw, I'm thrilled to bits to have won something at last!

And I see that this week is Buy a Friend a Book Week. So I shall pass on some of my bookish luck and do just that. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. ;-P

Here Be Dragons wrap-up

Time to wrap up yet another challenge. This time it's the Here Be Dragons one hosted by Love at Stray Talk. The challenge was to read 3 to 5 books between the 1st. January and the 30th. June.



I was hoping to read 5 books but in the event only managed 3. Still, I completed the challenge and am quite pleased with myself as it's 3 more books off the tbr pile. The titles I read were:

Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb
Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Eragon by Christopher Paolini

I enjoyed them all but if I were pushed for a favourite it would be Assassin's Quest due to the wonderful writing of Robin Hobb.

Thanks to Love for hosting the challenge, it's been great fun.

Ender's Game

Still busy reading challenge books! This time it was Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card for the Cardathon challenge being hosted by Becky. This one runs to the end of the year and I've read a couple of books by other authors, as the challenge includes not only books by the author but also books recommended or edited by him; I'd yet to read anything actually written by Card though so it was time to put that right.



Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin is a 'third' - meaning he was the third born child to his family in a world where there is over-population and only two children are permitted. His parents were given permission to have a third child though, this being due to the fact that his older brother and sister were extremely bright and were *almost* right for the task required of them, but not quite. It is hoped that Ender will be less vicious than his brother but not as placid as his sister.

The problem is that fifty years ago the human race was almost annihilated by an insect race of beings from another planet. Known as the 'buggers' (I think because they were 'bugs') they were defeated by a brilliant military commander. The fear is that the aliens are about to repeat their invasion attempt and the hunt is on for another such commander, but he will have to be trained from childhood. Ender fits the bill. He is six when whisked off to Battle school to join hundreds of other boys, to train, in a bid to save the world by way of brutal mock 'games'. But Ender is not popular. He is the brightest of the bright and resented by the other boys and, for some reason, the officers running the school are purposely making his life difficult. In other words he's being tested to see how much he can take. Is Ender up to the challenge?

It's not often that I'm this ambivilent about a story. On the one hand I found it to be a pageturner - Card's writing is extremely readable and the story is pacey and really quite exciting. I finished it in two days and that's pretty quick reading for me, so clearly I couldn't put it down. On the other hand I had issues with a couple of things. Mainly it was to do with the kind of dialogue and thoughts Card embued small children with. It was all too adult and, although I realise that these are supposed to be bright kids, I didn't find that aspect of it realistic. Not that Card is the only author to do this by any means - it's very common.

The other thing that struck me was that Card was writing a novel set sometime in the future. It wasn't clear how many years (a hundred?) but, whatever, I found it bizarre that a science fiction author, who would supposedly be forward thinking, did not forsee the role women would come to play in the armed forces. Even just thirty years after he wrote the book women are fighting and dying in combat zones around the world. He put one girl in his school, *one*.

Nevertheless, despite my issues with the book, I did, as I said, enjoy it a great deal. Much of the book is 'edge of the seat' stuff and it has a fantastic twist near the end which I didn't see coming at all. I must also add that it was the last few pages which intrigued me the most and because of that I plan to get a copy of the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, as soon as possible as I suspect that one might be a bit more to my taste. My husband grabbed Ender's Game off me as soon as I finished so it'll be interesting to see what he thinks.