I’m grateful for……a great book!
23 Jul 2011 3 Comments
in Books, I'm Grateful for Tags: 50 Books in 2011, Books, grateful, Reading
This week Maxabella is on a road trip and BabyMac is hosting.
As part of my mission to read 50 books this year I have been keeping an eye out for interesting books to read and new authors to try. When I was at the movies with my Mum & friend to watch Bridesmaids we saw the trailer for The Help, which looked like an interesting movie. And then to discover it was adapted from a novel gave me something to hunt for.
I couldn’t find it on book depository, but on a late night shopping trip to the most amazing bookstore in Manuka I stumbled upon it.
And I was so very pleased. I have been reading a lot of books lately, but this has been the first one in a while I lost myself in. One I wanted to take everywhere & so desperately wanted to know what was going to happen to the characters.
The book is primarily about the white Miss Skeeter and two black maids, Aibileen & Minnie. It is set in 1962 Mississippi, a town without integration and a very strong divide between black & white. Miss Skeeter has come home from college to discover the maid she grew up with has disappeared. She begins to grow uncomfortable with the way the maids are treated and as part of her desire for a writing career she suggests to a New York publisher that she would write a book about how the maids feel about the white women they work for. Miss Skeeter then has a huge amount of convincing to do, but ends up with the story being told.
It is well written and enthralling. At first I was aghast at how women could treat other women so rudely, and in such an inhumane fashion, but as I began to feel like I was in 1960′s deep south I began to understand.
One of my favourite lines of the book sums it all up to me:
“Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”
I was very grateful to stumble across this book, and grateful that I had found a book so wonderful I could read it again straight away.
And now to wait for the movie!
Hop on over to BabyMac to see what everyone else is gratefule for this week!
Book 22 – Sing You Home
13 Jun 2011 1 Comment
in Books Tags: 50 Books in 2011, Books, Reading
Middle of June & I have just finished book no 22 of my 50 for 2011. Starting to worry that I may not hit the 50 this year, so maybe I need to go find some quick books to read, or read instead of wasting time on the internet.
Book no 22 was by one of my favourite authors, Jodi Picoult. Each of her books raises a different ethical dilemma and makes you question your own feelings. I think my favourite book of hers would be seventeen minutes, about a high school shooting. Odd to have that subject matter as my favourite, but it was a book that gripped me from start to finish. I even have a least favourite – songs of a humpback whale. One of the very very few books I have ever started and not finished.
Sing you home started me to think about my beliefs. This book is about a lesbian couple trying to have children utilising embryos which had been frozen & left over from IVF cycles that one of the women had been through in her marriage. To make things more difficult, the ex alcoholic ex husband had joined a charasmatic fundamentalist church after his divorce and wanted to give the embryos to his brother and wife, who had introduced him to the church.
As I read this book I really didn’t know whose side I was on, who I wanted to end up with the embryos. I understood the woman’s (Zoe) desperate need to have her own biological child. I could also appreciate how the ex husband (Max) was struggling with his faith in allowing the embryos to be given to the women. And also his desire to be able to help out his brother for the first time ever. Unlike in many of Jodi Picoult’s books the ending is a bit happily ever after, but up until then I really enjoyed the book.
There is also music specially written to go with each passage of the book which is downloadable from the authors website. I haven’t listened to it yet, but it does link into the book as Zoe is a singer & music therapist.
An interesting topic & a book I was glad to read. I am now looking forward to Jodi’s next novel.
And now onto book 23….
An ethical quandry
28 May 2011 1 Comment
in Books Tags: 50 Books in 2011, Books, Reading
I love to read. I really really love to read. I love to buy books, I love holding a new book in my hand, smelling that new book smell & imagine all the delights I will find in reading this book. I love to handle the book, gauge its weight & whether it is long enough for me to be able to be totally immersed in the story. I love to roam the aisles of the book store, finding hidden treasures and picking up books I would never have chosen to read without picking them up & reading inside the covers first.
I enjoy supporting Australian bookstores, especially the ones with an instore coffee shop. I do love our local Borders, and especially the Dymocks store at my closest big shopping centre. The staff are helpful & will offer suggestions of books to try, particularly when you are trying to extend the genres your primary school aged son reads – I do want him to know there are many more amazing books then just Harry Potter. And they did a brilliant job helping my grandparents find suitable books that their great grandchildren would love for Christmas – picked their very favourite authors and series.
But, the price of books in Australia is scary. Tonight I made my first foray into shopping at the Book Depository – for less than the price of one book in an Australian store I have purchased two books I wanted to read & they are being shipped for free…..I feel like a traitor.
It is very difficult for our bookstores to compete with this, hence the very sad closures of so many Angus & Robertson & Borders stores – and our local A&R used to be pretty helpful too. And it is even more difficult for the wonderful small independent retailers.
I would be devastated to see our bookstores disappear, but as long as the strict import rules apply to books in this country, and book prices continue to be so expensive I believe it will be a struggle for them to survive against the might of Amazon and other online booksellers.
So I am left with a choice – save some money or support our local businesses….what to do?
Book No. 16 – People of the Book
23 Apr 2011 4 Comments
in Books Tags: 50 Books in 2011, Books, Reading
I am still on track to reach my goal of 50 books in 2011. This morning I finished book no 16 & I would have to say it is my favourite book of the year (so far).
People of the Book is the 3rd Geraldine Brooks book I have read. Earlier this year I read Years of Wonder & last year read March, which I wrote about here. And today I purchased her new book Calebs Crossing (is it cheating to read lots of books by the same author to reach my 50?).
People of the Book is about the Sarajevo Haggadah – its history, it being lost & then found. Whilst the story is based on some fact, the author has taken literary licence to create a novel surrounding the facts and to imagine the story surrounding its creation. The story moves back & forward in time. Hanna, who is a conservator and restorer of ancient literature, is given the opportunity to examine the Haggadah and finds various items in the book – a painted cat hair, sea salt, a butterfly wing and a wine stain mixed with blood. As she finds out about these items the story flicks back to expand on how the item came to be in the book.
I found this to be a book I could not put down – I loved feeling part of the history of this very ancient book and the characters were believable & likeable. Well worth the time to read!
Kelli
PS have just been watching Eat Pray Love and found it to be a boring & insipid movie. I read the book at a difficult time in my life and found I could relate to a lot of what the author was struggling with – but the movie seems to have missed the point!
Freedom
28 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in Books Tags: 50 Books in 2011, Books, Reading
I’ve just finished reading this. It is one of those books that you “should” read – popular culture literature. And it is an Oprah Bookclub book. So I thought it would be interesting to read – after all Oprah is the leader on pop culture.
I can’t say I especially enjoyed it. I kept on reading in case I found the point of the story. Apart from the collapse of a nuclear family I couldn’t find the point. I didn’t feel any empathy or liked any of the characters in the book. I just found it all to be a bit blah really.
I see books as friends – I like to be wrapped up in the story and feel like I am missing the characters when the book finished. Didn’t feel that here. Glad to have finished and to be able to move onto the next book.
Kelli
A Good Read
23 Jan 2011 3 Comments
in Books Tags: 50 Books in 2011, Books, Reading
Have just finished this. Was a fairly hefty read, but a good one. I adore historical fiction & particularly love Ken Follett – Pillars of the Earth & World Without End are some of the most enjoyable books I have read in recent years.
This is set immediately before WW1 up until the immediate years after. It blends real life historical figures with the 5 families dreamed up by the author. The fact that the characters cross paths continually throughout the story does seem a bit cheesy, but if you take the book for what it is, and aren’t looking for a completely factual retell of the time surrounding WW1, it is an entertaining, light summer read.
I don’t define a book by its literary worth, but how it draws me in & involves me in the characters. And also once the book is finished, whether I miss the characters. This book is part of the Century Trilogy and so I am now desperately awaiting the next book – I really want to know what happens to the Williams siblings and all of the babies born during this first book.
But for now I am immersing myself back into a story of the Lancasters, the Yorks & the Tudors.
Oh, and have also just signed up for round 1 of 12WBT or 2011 – looking forward to starting this journey again.
50 Books in 2011
07 Jan 2011 7 Comments
in Books Tags: Books, Loo, Reading
I read a lot of books. I have no idea how many I read in the year, but I think it would be a fairly hefty number. I was doing a little bit of blog surfing and came across this post from Kayscha and loved the idea. So this year I am going to set a goal to read 50 books. I am also going to cheat a little and start my year from our week at the coast – a week where reading was the main activity undertaken by nearly all. Even Loo was in on the act – he managed to finish the third Harry Potter novel & refused to go to the beach so he could keep reading!
If I find a great book that I love over the year I will tell you about it. Otherwise I will merrily keep adding to the list, with regular updates.
50 Books in 2011
1. The Ape house – Sara Gruen
2. The Distant Hours – Kate Morton
3. The White Queen – Phillipa Gregory
4. Minding Frankie – Maeve Binchy
5. The Heavenly Man - Brother Yun
Have thoroughly enjoyed all these books, especially Phillipa Gregory & the always reliable Maeve Binchy.
If you’ve read any great books lately, please let me know!
Thanks for the idea Kayscha.
Kelli
A Fear of cooking
21 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Family, Home Tags: baking, Books, Cooking, home, Loo, Noos
I enjoy cooking and I enjoy eating the results of my labour. I have a cupboard full of cookbooks and keep buying more, always looking for that elusive book that will turn me into a great cook.
I buy a new cookbook filled with enthusiasm to try out new recipes and seem to find lots of recipes I want to try. And then I bring the book home and it sits in my cupboard. I pull the book out, flick through and it all seems too hard or will take too long, or have too many ingredients, or ingredients I don’t have, or it seems to be something the boys won’t eat. And so the book goes back in the cupboard.
I have a fear – if something looks to hard I won’t even try it. If the recipe seems complicated I get scared of it. If I see things like egg whites (what if yolk gets into the white?), knead dough (what if it sticks to everything and makes a big mess), blind bake (what if I don’t put enough rice in? The rice will make a huge mess and end up everywhere or burn) or sautee, reduce or any other tricky things I convince myself I won’t be capable of doing this. I roasted my first ever chicken earlier this year – the first one worked OK and the boys enjoyed it. The second one wasn’t so successful. And I did not like doing it at all – handling a chicken carcasse was not appealing, nor was breaking up a hot chickem to eat. Think I will stick to buying them!
At the end of a working day I also want to make things quick and easy. On weekends I also want quick & easy as I generally have the “can’t be bothereds”. I love having dinner over and done with & being able to sit down with a clean kitchen to veg in front of the tv or collapse on the floor to read the paper. Spending hours cooking & preparing for the 3 of us all seems too hard. Hence tonight we are having hot dogs for dinner.
But Noos has informed me he would like a pavlova for his birthday cake. And I really don’t want to just buy a prepared base. So this afternoon I have started making my first ever pavlova. I am really really hoping it works. He is having his birthday dinner next weekend, but I figure a practice run won’t hurt. So fingers are crossed that the sticky blob I have put in the oven will somehow resemble an edible pavlova base.
He has also informed me that he needs 26 small cakes for school on Monday and that everyone brings cakes in for their birthdays! So tomorrow afternoon I am going to have to conjure something up – I have suggested meringues or mini muffins. So far not a terribly overenthusiastic response. He would like me to make cupcakes, but they are yet another thing I am scared of making. I have no idea why, but suspect creaming butter & sugar turns me off. And icing them too. Luckily Loo has told me that as he is not a baby he doesn’t want to take cakes to school for his birthday – going to keep him to this!
So I think I need to challenge myself to make something new once a week. Expand the recipes the boys will eat and build my cooking confidence. Also use some of those books. Will report back on how I go with this.
Some Reading
24 Jul 2010 2 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: Books, home, Reading
I generally don’t like spin off books much, especially if they are by a different author to the author of the original favourite. There is a lot at stake and I worry about what this interloper will do to my much beloved characters. I am also suspicious of movies of favourite books – thinking of the Anne of Green Gables series, have never ever seen a movie of these beautiful books that has come close to how wonderful the pictures in my imagination are, and there is no actor that could fulfill my idea of Gilbert Blythe.
So I have been putting off reading March for a very long time. I loved Little Women, it would be right up the top of my list with my very precious Anne books. So it was with some trepidation, and also a complete lack of anything else to read, that I picked it up. The other offputting factor to me was that it had one a big prize – so many of those books are horribly boring or heavy reading, not something to relax and enjoy at bedtime.
I was wrong. March was a fantastic book and put a whole new spin on Little Women, and put the story so much more in context for me. Marmee was no longer the perfect mother and March himself now had some substance. I think the reason it was so terrific and did not damage the original story was due to taking a completely different viewpoint, and not trying to rewrite pieces of the original story. It was also one of the few books I have read which take the northern side of the US Civil War, as opposed to the story of the Glorious South.
Interestingly, the book I read before this was Rhett Butlers People – again a spin off and again a book I read with some trepidation, especially after the disaster that was Scarlett. I enjoyed Rhett Butlers People, and it also took a slightly different angle to the original Gone with the Wind. Not a book to take too seriously, but a nice light before bed read.
So after 2 books about the US Civil War, I am now reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and am enjoying that one too…..and then have plans to jump into the future with John Birmingham’s latest book after that.
Does anyone have any other reading suggestions?
And sorry for the dreadful photography!
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