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Category: Books

  • Happy Halloween from Charlie Brown and Lucy!

    Charlie Brown and Lucy

    Great party! It’s 1:15am and the last of the guests has left. We’ve stored what leftovers we can and put the rest in the bin. It’s time for a much needed sleep… Photos when we finally get up again!

    Sixteen hours later: Okay, the photos are up! As usual, I spent too much time socializing and not enough time taking pictures of the guests. You can see more (and better) photos of the festivities at: Andrew’s site, Bex’s Flickr page. I’m sure there will be more as people get them uploaded. Incidentally, I think we set some kind of a record with this party. More than 50% of the guests were bloggers! (Links on the photo page.)

    SPECIAL THANKS to: Fiona for helping me with my dress, Emily for carving the scary jack-o-lantern, Amy for her last-minute decorating assistance, and to all of the guests that brought special treats. It’s actually very humbling that so many of you are willing to come and share in our craziness with this event every year!

  • Fiction Rule of Thumb

    Fiction Rule of Thumb, an XKCD comic that the Snook rightly predicted I would love. It also neatly encompasses Everything Kris Hates About William Gibson Novels.

  • QED

    Oh, neat! I just discovered that there’s a play about Richard Feynman currently running in Sydney. The Snook’s got his autobiography and we’ve both read it. Might be fun…

  • Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

    I just finished this fascinating book last night. It makes for an interesting companion-piece to the Antonia Fraser biography I read a few years ago (and that the recent movie was based on). The central thesis is pretty much that Marie Antoinette’s obsession with fashion was a calculated political maneuver to gain the power and influence she wasn’t able to get through the usual means (i.e. her relationship with the King and the production of royal heirs). There’s also quite a lot of discussion about the Queen’s more “shocking” costumes, such as her appropriation of mens’ riding wear and the loose peasant-style dresses she and her friends wore at the Petit Trianon. (Somehow both of those looks fed into the rumours of lesbian debauchery that continually plagued her.) It’s not the usual view of her as a pouf-obsessed idiot. I loved the details about the development of the French fashion industry, and it was fascinating to see how most of the country were falling over themselves to imitate her even as they were calling for her head. And I’d love to read a biography of this Rose Bertin woman! My only complaint about the book is a small one: the glossy colour plates in the middle seem to be misnumbered. Towards the end, a lot of the text references seemed to point to the wrong one. It’s a small quibble about an otherwise interesting read.

  • Still Sick

    I felt so crappy last night that we decided to skip the Neil Gaiman talk. I just couldn’t face the thought of standing in a crowded bookstore coughing and hacking all over everyone. Luckily, I can vicariously squee over Neil through crumpet, who saw him twice in 24 hours. What a fangirl. 🙂

  • Odd and the Frost Giants

    A few weeks ago I picked up Neil Gaiman’s new book Odd and the Frost Giants, a short little tale written for World Book Day. Then I pretty much forgot about it. Earlier this week I happened to spot it and threw it in my bag for some lunchtime reading. I was hooked! I finished it later that night. It’s a charming tale of Norse mythology, definitely suitable for younger readers. I loved the humour of the writing – especially the dialogue between the gods – and the way Gaiman created such distinct personalities. The story doesn’t shy away from “grown-up” issues though, like how Odd’s father met his mother and how Loki isn’t always a nice guy. And I really like that Odd wins not because he’s the biggest or the strongest, but because he thinks and observes and knows how to read people. It’s a really good story.

    It really put me in the mood to re-read American Gods… but my copy is missing! Did I lend it to any of you? I can’t remember.

  • Self-making bed

    “Lazy man creates bed that makes itself.” Neat. I want that. Of course, I feel compelled to point out that he didn’t invent the concept. The Moroccan house of marvels from The Twenty-One Balloons had self-making beds too (although those were steam-powered).

  • Meet Neil Gaiman

    Sweet! Just got this month’s Kinokuniya newsletter, and it looks like Neil Gaiman’s coming out in May. I just RSVPed for myself and the Snook to meet him. I suggest you do the same if you’re a fan!

  • The Westing Game

    I changed schools in 7th grade, and I can remember going to “Reading” class (in retrospect, how weird that we had a “reading” class!) on the first day. The teacher explained that the class was in the middle of a big project in which they had to read a book and then do all sorts of activities on it. Then she gave me the two choices: The Westing Game (which she’d described as “challenging”), and a novelization of Charles in Charge. I’M NOT EVEN KIDDING. I picked The Westing Game without knowing anything about it. (Later I discovered to my horror that I couldn’t see a single other person in the class reading it. And that will tell you a lot about the Lakeland school system.) Anyway, I LOVED the book. I thought Turtle was so cool, and I wanted to be just like her. I also developed a secret lasting desire to learn shorthand, because I was sure it would come in SUPER HANDY someday. I didn’t figure the mystery out ahead of time though, but then again I never do. I really need to re-read it one of these days…

  • New Books

    As I’ve finished all the books you guys recommended last winter, I figured it was time for some new reading material. Next in the queue are:

    • Atonement by Ian McEwan. I’ve been reading the film reviews with interest, and I noticed that most of them made a big deal about how it’s okay, but the book is SO MUCH better. It was Kevin‘s review that really sealed it for me though, so I headed over to Dymocks to pick up a copy. They had about 500 of them, and they all had Duck Face plastered on the cover.

      Me: Excuse me… Do you have any copies of Atonement that DON’T have Keira Knightley on the cover?
      Staff Member: Yeah, I’ve got some hidden here behind the counter.

      She really did. So now I’ve got it, but I’m finding it hard to make much headway. Not that it’s boring or anything; it’s just that every time I start reading it, I zonk out within ten minutes. I’ve heard there are some war scenes in it later, so I’m hoping it’ll pick up soon.

    • The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke. The Snook and I both enjoyed Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, so when I saw that her next book was now available in paperback, I had to get it.
    • The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. That suggestion came directly from this AskMeFi question, where someone asked for books similar to Jonathan Strange, books that are really dense with detail and often mash genres together. I don’t really know anything about this book other than it was a movie with Sean Connery (which I haven’t seen), but it was universally praised so I’m going to give it a go.

    Have you read anything good lately?