My Thoughts: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

I brought this book when it very first was released and was a feature of many reviews, it then sat on the shelves looking lonely since.
The book is a journal of a Chinese student, Z during her year long visit to England. As the book starts she is entering England and is shocked by the things around her - the expense, the food, the lack of friendliness. One night sitting alone in the cinema she is smiled at by a man, by the end of the evening she has falle in love and she has invited herself to live with him. This relationship then adds to her mix of emotions, not only does she have to fit into a new country but also a new relationship in which nothing is certain, for she has fallen in love with a drifter, a man who can make no commitment.
The language starts off in very stark broken English, but as the book progresses her English improves vastly with only a few mistakes popping up. She also has a dictionary definition at the start of each chapter and it becomes apparent how words we use everyday are not clearly defined in a dictionary - they have nuances which cannot or have not been defined.
A great read.
Challenges:
Orbis Terrarum
999 (TBR)
Rescue Challenge

Two Non-Fiction Books

I seem to be soaking up my Non-Fiction at the momnet, and I even read one which wasn't a memoir!

Normal by Amy Bloom
Eva of The Striped Armchair wrote a fantastic review of this a few weeks back, if it hadn't been for her review I wouldn't ever have thought to read a book like this.
Normal is a collection of essays written by Amy Bloom, I couldn't believe how readable they were, and how interesting.
The first chapter focuses on transexuals, particularly male to female transexuals. It discusses the details and forms of surgery and hormonal treatment available, and boy does it sound painful. Alongside this Amy Bloom speaks to many people who are either in the process of or have had some form of surgery to change their appearance to a person of the opposite gender. As well as the stories of these men Bloom is open with us about the way she is looking at people trying to figure out if they had had a sex change or not.
The second section is about crossdressing men and their wives. She describes the men's need to dress as woman as a compulsion, something they absolutely have to do and have no control of. As she talks to the men they all come across as really conservative, they have socially upstanding jobs like Ministers and Managers, they have families and strong moral values. Many of the wives, presented in the book, don't find out abaout their husbands until way down the line and when they do they feel they have to stay and be supportive.
The third chapter about Hermaphrodites was fair more descriptive of the surgery and didn't have the same level of personal stories in it, as a result I wasn't as interested in this chapter. I had studied hermaphrodites as part of my sociology course in uni so I knew about some of the stuff which was discussed.
Challenges:
World Citizen Challenge
Non-Fiction 5
999 Non-Fiction




Night by Elie Wiesel

I had this on audiobook to listen to, it is one of the 1001 books to read before you die so when I saw the audiobook was part of a bookring I snapped it up.
Night is a memoir about Elie Wiessel experienced in the concentration camps.
As a young boy he is an extremely devout Jew, he visits the synagoge every day and begs a neighbour to educate him about his religion as his father refuses to.
As the war looms the town are warned by a local man of the persecution of the Jewish, but they refuse to listen to him. Snatched away during the night they soon find that his unbelieveable story was all true. 15 year old Elie is seperated from his mother and sister and goes with his father into the male side of the camp. For a long time they are not called to work or moved to other camps because they claim they are unskilled labourers. When they finally get chosen to move to another camp they know that their time is running out.
Elie's father is hospitalised in the final days of the war, begging for hos sons help in his final moments, Elie finds he is unable o help his father, he has to help himself instead.
The book is very short and very powerful, however as I'd read Primo Levi's If This is a Man many years ago I wasn't as shocked by the memoir as I may have been, the story is very similar to that of Levi, and tells of less shocking details in the camps.
Challenges:
World Citizen Challenge
Non-Fiction 5
In Their Shoes
999 (Non Fiction)

Sunday Salon: Travelling from the Sofa

Africa - Sudan
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

A young man returns to his village after many years and finds that a stranger has moved into town and managed to work his way into the tightly knit community who are normally wary of strangers. In this place where each persons heritage is known the stranger is a rarity, it isn't even known from which village he comes from.
When he finally meets the stranger he becomes obsessed, the stranger suddenly talks to him in well-spoken English,revealing at first a small part of his past.
The past is revealed in more detail when we discover that the stranger had been taken to court and held on the charge of murdering his own wife, and being the named cause of the suicide of many of English women. When the stranger suddenly disappears into the floods one night, feared dead, the obsession doesn't end it only becomes stronger.
Challenges:
999 (tbr + Arfican reads)
Orbis


Japan
Crossing Midnight by Mike Carey, Jim Fern and Mark Pennington
This fantastic graphic novel tells the story of twins Kai and Toshi. During the mothers pregnancy the father promised a sacrifice in payment for the birth of a healthy child. Unknown to him (and the doctors) his wife was expecting twins.
Boisterous children they quickly learn that Toshi is incapable of coming to harm through knifes and sharp objects. This knowledge leads her to be brave, disobedient and confident unlike her brother Kai.
One night Toshi wakes up to find a large man, surrounded by hovering knives leaning over her, he demands that she is his, the payment for the sacrifice her father made. When she refuses to go with him her dog is dismembered into tons of pieces. The creatures keep returning and the payments for refusal get higher, Kai ends up fighting to save the whole family from the instrusion of these mythical creatures.
This is my first violent graphic novel, I tend to stick to memoirs, and I really enjoyed it. At the back of the book the author writes about Japanese mythology and folklore which has made me want to discover more.
Challenges:
Graphic Novel
Japanese Literature Challenge
Orbis Terrarum


America (and the spiritual world)
A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

I picked up this book because the cover resembled the fantastic Siobhan Dowd novel
A Pure Swift Cry, I had no idea what the book was going to be about as the synopsis is written in a pale blue against a moss green background making it hard to read.
The ovel starts with Helen, a Light, a ghost trapped on earth. She is doomed to walk the earth following a host - a person she has chosen as a life line, if she moves away from this person she feels herself being pulled into hell.
Helen follows after Mr Brown, an English teacher and is always present in his life, unbeknown to him, until she realises that a pupil can see her. The pupil James, was also a light until he learnt how to inhabit the body of a dead soul.
The pair join up and quickly become tied to each other, they struggle with their own lives plus the lives of the host body they have come to inhabit.
I haven't done this justice at all, this is a great read - its intense, gripping and your pulled right into their world. (YA for older teens).
Challenges:
YA 2009
A-Z (Name)

My Thoughts: Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

I've been in a real reading slump since the weekend, I've picked up books but not had the concentration to read more than a few pages at a time. I was about 80 pages into Lost in a Good Book so today I decided I had to make myself read it. I managed it, but did get distracted any numeber of times so it took me longer than it normally would. Hopefully now I'll go back to reading like a normal person!

Lost in a Good Book is the second book in the series, I read The Jane Eyre Affair bout a year ago and loved it, but its taken me ages to get around to this next book. The series is set in a parallel universe to our own. Thursday Next is a literary detective in SpecOps, she previously rescued the story of Jane Eyre from the evil Archon Hayes but in doing so changed the ending (to the one that we have). She also trapped an evil, terrorist inside Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven'.
Now that she is back she is something of a celebrity and also the subject of a muderous plot. Thursday had to deal with her new husband being erased from life, her timetravelling father, tv appearances and a series of coincidences which leave her in the path of death. She also learns how to escape into books, discoevers Shakespeare's missing play and has a dodo as a pet.
The books are funny, and far more silly than anything I would normally read, but they do assume that you know something about the major classics as their characters turn up all over the place.
A great read, even if I did struggle.
Challenges:
The Genre Challenge - detective
999 - Fantasy

My Thoughts:A Year in Green Tea and Tuk Tuks: My Unlikely Year Creating an Eco Farm in Sri Lanka by Rory Spowers

Sri Lanaka is always one of the top places that I'd just love to visit - if I could ever get the money together - so I love reading about it, rather than another fiction book I thought I'd try some non-fiction.
Rory Spowers is a determined bloke, he travels the world to discover new ways to save the planet and reduce his families carbon footprint. He also reads a stack of books gathering ideas for living without the pollutants of modern life.
As a teenager he walks through Africa and then again through India, knowing that to live the life he wants he will need to live abroad. He and his wife first visit Barbados, a place they consider living until they see the devestation caused by tourism and the Western world. But in Barbados they meet Doc Man, the creator of an eco garden which provides for his family but is also used as an educational tool to teach local children about the local plants and fruits. From this his dream to create an eco farm unfolds.
Rory and his wife and two small children move to Sri Lanka and start searching out a new home and a place to build the eco farm, they consider many enviromental issues in their search for the perfect place. Eventually they discover the '60 acres' an old tea farm which had laid empty for years.
Work then starts to transform this place into a 'bio-versity' a place not only to cultivate local and rare fruits and wildlife, but also a place to teach others about this form of farming. Rory recounts not only the farming of this land and the creation of Samakanda, but also the trials and tribultions with the local people. He is honest about his moods, his families struggles in this new country.
In the middle of his creation the tsunami arrives, impacting on everyone he knows in Sri Lanka and he is quickly involved in working with friends to create new homes for those who lost theres.
This book was a great read, Samakanda is now open to visitors and looks great, he also is a founder of The Web of HopeChallenges:
Non-Fiction 5
World Citizen Challenge
999 (non-fiction)

My Thoughts: The Swarm by Frank Schatzing

I've just finished this mamouth book, its taken all week! The Swarm is a 900 (fairly small text) sci-fi, end of the world novel - not my normal type of read.
The novel starts with a series of small boating accidents, then shoals of jellyfish invading the coast, then Whales battling ships and then the discovery of a mysterious hydrate eating worm. Taking us across the world we see the sea turn around and attack human kind, the events start of small - a few missing fishermen then esculate to tsunami's and plate shifts.
As it becomes clear that the events aren't just coincidences and that a war is taking place in the sea scientists from across the world come together to try and figure out what is happening.
I put off starting this novel for a few weeks because of its hefty size but when I got started I was pulled along by all the individual stories which start the novel running parrallel to each other. I reckon they could cut out a good 200 pages, some of the science explanations went on to long and although I understood the basic premise much of it went over my head. Also the religious element was overdone, American CIA agents the president were way too assured that God would save them as they where the better race. I'm also sure some American citizens would feel that they were criticised unfairly. The ending had a preachy feel to it and the barely disguised criticism of the Bush presidency wasn't needed - we've heard it all before. Having said all that it was a good read - although I'm not sure it deserved its position on the 1001 BTRBYD list.
Anyone else read this? What did you think?

Challenges:
999 (1001)
Lost in Translation
The Chunkster Challenge
End of the World
1001 BTBYD
1% Well Read Challenge

My Thoughts: Mudbound by Hliary Jordan

I finally got around to my first Southern book for the 2009 Southern Reading Challenge, I've only got a few weeks letf to read the other two!

Mudbound has been reviewed a lot in the blogsphere, so I 'm probably repeating what you've heard before with this review, so I'll keep it short.
Laura marries Henry unaware that he plans to spend his life as a farmer. When he buys land and a farm without her knowing her whole life is turned upside down. They settle on to the mud-bath of a farm alongside her cantankerous, racist father-in-law and the brother-in-law that she loves. Problems arise when her fathers racism is agitated.

I loved the way that this novel has different chapters narrated by different characters, not only does it give you different perspectives on the events but also you hear the different voices of each character.
I finished this in two sittings, looking forward to more from this author.

Challenges:
The Southern Reading Challenge
A-Z (Author)
999 (New Fiction)

p.s I started and abandoned Cold Mountain - so will be finding an alternative Southern book to read.

My Thoughts: The Long Way Down by Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor

Having previously read The Long Way Round where this pair motorbiked from the UK overland to New York I was egar to get this book as soon as it came out, and so I did. A christmas present back in 2007 yet I've only just read it (I haven't read any of the other books I recieved that year or any of the ones I recieved this year - despite wanting to read them all!).
In the Long Way Down the pair motorbike from Scotland, through Europe and then through Africa right o Cape town. The book is told from both of the men's perspectives, each talking about their experiences and emotions of both riding and the sights, history and people that they meet.
Having read this I'm now itching to get out and find out more about Africa, its somewhere I'd love to go and teach for a month or so (China and Canada are on my list too). Its good to read a book that highlights the problems but also presents a positive picture from those haunting images I remember of Ethiopia from my childhood.

Challenges:
Non-fiction 5
999 (tbr pile)

The Sunday Salon: Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd

One more week of school left before the holidays start - lets hope that this week my patience goes back up to its normal high level, the kids were made last week, swine flu arrived in school and the teachers were all on a short fuse.
This week I have to be observed teaching my weakest class, last week they became unbearable - they scwabble, answer back and cry at the slightest thing. I've also taught them all of the curriculum so have no idea what I will be teaching them in 13hours! Wednesday I'm off to a theme park with 300+ kids lets hope the weather improves!

I had a lazy afternoon finishing Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child, a book I was asked to read as the resisdent YA/Childrens book reader in the department - we're looking for new books to teach, I made my recommendations and then was given this to consider.
The Republic of Ireland is at a pinnacle moment in its history, bombs are going of and the political prisioners are on a hunger strike.
18 year old Fergus' brother is in prison on political charges, his mum is praying for his release and his safety, his Dad is busy drinking the town on the edge of the border is in turmoil as more and more of its young men are caught up in the troubles. Fergus has a lot going on, he is in the middle of his A Level exams and then while digging illegally on the other side of the border he discovers the Bog Child, Mel. Her body has been preserved by the marshy ground. Cora and her mother tun up to determine Mel's origins and the cause of her death and love errupts for Fergus.
I loved this novel, there does seem to be way too much going on in this boys life though, I'm not sure how he managess to stay sane. Alongside the story of Fergus Mel's voice creeps through into his sub-conscious and we discover more and more about her life.
This book just like Dowd's A Swift Pure Cry is well worth a read for both adults and teenagers.

Challenges:
YA 2009
Orbis Terrarum
999 (New Fiction)

My Thoughts: The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

After saying yesterday that my reading had slowed down I polished of The Whale Rider in an hour last night. This kids book focuses on Maori New Zealanders, living between the traditions of their cultures and the fast paced world around them.
Kahu came into the world a girl, a fact that greatly disappointed her grandfather, he desired a male grandchild to keep the Maori language and beliefs alive with the new generations. Kahu, desperate for her grandfather's attention sneaks into the lessons he gives deliving cultural knowledge and langauge to the local boys. Despite being always under his feet her grandfather doesn't see the power Kahu inside her until fate intervenes and she is forced to act.
A great read for kids, made me want to learn more about the Maori culture
Challenges:
A-Z (Author)
999 (YA)
Young Adults 2009
Orbis Terrarum

The Sunday Salon: Heart Shaped Box

I'm not sure what's happening with my reading at the moment, but I seem to be slowing down dramatically, which was not helped by working 2 extra shifts in a pub this weekend. Hopefully things will be back on track next week.
I spent last night at a local festival, loads of live mucis, a storytelling tent, live oral poets (who were amazing), face painting, a silent disco and much more. It was a great evening, finishing off the night dancing to a The Specials coverband.
The weather here has been amazing all week, although too hot at night to sleep comfortably.

I've somehow managed to draw out reading Heart Shaped Box over the whole week, and this is a book which would normally require a evening or twos reading.
Heart-Shaped Box isn't my normal type of read but I heard great things about it in the blogging world and thought I'd give it a try. When my Mum read it and said it made her scared, I laughed, no book has scared me since I was a kid, but this one left me unsettled on many occassions.
Heart Shaped Box features a rock star, a goth and a hypnotising ghost. The ghost is the step-father of the rock star's ex, a girl with many problems who was found dead in the bath. Through a plan the rockstar purchases a ghost for a laugh not knowing the trouble it will cause him. Suddenly he is acting at the ghosts will, and trying his hardest to fight against this force.
It certainly isn't well written but I was hooked in within a few pages.
Challenges:
The Genre Challenge (Horror)
999 (New Fiction)

My Thoughts: Goodbye Mr Chips by James Hilton

This has been my bath read for the last week: perfect for soaking after a 2 hour session in the gym as its short, has short chapters and is a good easy read.
Goodbye Mr Chips tells the quaint English tale of an old school teacher with a love and passion for the school he teaches in and the boys who board there. Despite being well past retirement age, Mr Chips still meets new pupils, lunches with the staff and at times gets called in in an emergency. The boys see him as a representative of the school.
If you fancy tackling a classic but want an easy read this is the one for you.
Challenges:
999 (tbr)
The Rescue Challenge
a-z (title)

My Thoughts: So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid

I'm trying to push my non-fiction reading by reading stuff which isn't just memoirs, my comfort zone. However I have been pretty unsuccessful as they seem to get pushed to the bottom of the pile, then get returned to the library.
This book is the first of the books I borrowed that are about books or words - I'm studying an English Language course at the moment so this is fairly safe ground for me.
So Many Books is a tiny book with just 146 pages, the premise of the book is based on the fact there is a surplus of books which far exceed demand. Zaid discusses whether publishers should print more titles a year than there are babies born, and what the effect is.
The book discusses supply and demand, publishing costs verses losses and whether a book can be seen as a piece of media, all of which seem quite heavy but you are never lost. The book also touches briefly on the history of printing, which is interesting as my next book is about the publication and printing of the first dictionary.
An easy and interesting little read.
Challenges:
Non-fiction 5
999 (non-fiction)

The Sunday Salon: The Absolutely True Diaries of a Part-Time Indian by Alexie Sherman

If you haven't read it grab a copy! Or even better download the audio version!

This YA novel deals with some pretty tough issues: death, racism, alcoholism and even masturbation. You shouldn't let you put you off.
The narrator grows up with a dysfunctional family on an Indian Reservation, despite having brain damage as a child he is determined not to follow the same path as his parents so he travels 25 miles a day (often having to hitch-hike) to attend a better funded state school. His life is cmplicated by his race, what others see as the 'abandonment' of the 'rez and all the normal teenage boy/girl stuff.

The audio book is read by the author and is fantastically done, I was hooked immediately and loved every minute of it. Apparently the novel is has loads of cool pictures so I'll have to grab a copy to look at at some point.
I'll be searching out more of his books in the future.

Challenges:
YA 2009
999
My Year of reading dangerously (banned in Oregan)

My Thoughts: The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant

This book continues my reads of last years Booker Nominee list, so far I have read four: one ok (The Sea of Poppies), one good (Northern Clemency) and one I abandoned early on (The Lost Dog). So I wasn't sure what I was going to get with this one.

The novel is told from the view point of Vivian Kovacs, a child of immigrant Polish parents. Her parents, thankful for their rescue from Poland during the war stay hidden away in the house, they go to work, come home and watch the tv. She grows up 'a mouse' told to respect England and never to do anything wrong so that England regrets the choice to house the family.
Hidden away in the closet is an uncle with a rather different view of England, he came to the country and exploited immigrants and women. Vivian is drawn to this man, a man who can reveal to her her parents past and a life she has never known.

The book was a good read, I finished in in just two sittings, it was an easy read with colourful characters. However, I never felt this was a Booker Nominee, it doesn't fit in with the other Bookers that I have read over the years. I'm starting to wonder what the next one shall be like - The White Tiger - the winner, lets hope it makes the grade.
Challenges:
999 (New Books)
Booker

My Thoughts: The Wild Wood by Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint is an author I've heard much about through the blogging world and this was my first experience with his work.
In The Wild Wood Eithnie, an artist lives surrounded by her beloved woods yet her art and her feeling of serenity in the woods is fading. She feels like she is watched, like someone or something is haunting her.
Eventually she is visited by the Faeries who have a special favour to ask of her.
I liked the simple language in this book and that the Faeries were part of a very real and recognisable world. I wouldn't give it 5 stars but I definately want to read more of Charles de Lint's work in the future.
Challenges:
Once Upon a Time
999 (Fantasy)

My Thoughts: The Bonesetter's Daughter

Synopsis: Ruth is struggling in America with her life, her ungrateful step kids and boyfriend, a busy life and her mothers constant put downs. Gradually Ruth realises that her mother is becoming more and more forgetful, and a doctor diagnoses Altzimers. Whilst searching her mother's house she discovers a manuscript her mother had written in Chinese about her childhood, the husband and mother her own daughter had never known she had.

What I liked: I prefered the section in China, discovering how mothers of illegitimate children were treated and the simple tone of this section of the novel.

What I didn't like: The rushed simplistic ending, felt like everything suddenly was fixed and perfect which seemed unrealistic in the situation.

Challenges:
Orbis Terrarum
999 (tbr)

My Thoughts: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

With just 5 days to go till the end of the Once Upon a Time Challenge I still have 2 books to read!!!! Life has been chaotic and I haven't been getting in my normal amount of reads, last week we had an open door week at school - any teacher can go and walk in and observe another teachers lesson (stressful), I had to organise and take 200 kids on a trip and write 26 reports on pupils in my form group (I see them for 15 mins a day and only teach 2 of them). Plus I uped the amount of time I'm spending at the gym.

I have the biggest book pile to tackle, the 6 weeks summer holiday is going to be a book a day mission to try and control the ever growing stack of books.

Over the weekend I finished Inkheart, and boy it was great.
Synopsis: Meggie is wokeon one night to find a strange man standing outside her bedroom window. Awakening her day he invites the man in and they go off for a private chat.
After that night Meggie's life makes a massive change, her and bookloving bookbinding father go off to an book obsessed aunt in the country. Meggie discovers her father can read characters out of a book, and he is hunted down and kidnapped by the very creatures he once read out of a book. And then the adventure begins...

What I liked: The fairy tale style, made me feel like a kid again. It also has a really positive approach to reading.

What I didn't like: It made my mental tbr pile grow, each chapter starts with a quote from another novel, it made me want to read Peter Pan again, The Princess Bride, and The Jungle Book. Seriously, I enjoyed it all.

Challenges:
Once Upon a Time
YA 2009
A-Z (Title)
999 (YA)

My Thoughts: Blindness by Jose Saramago

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This is the first novel that I have read by this Nobel winning author and I'll definately be keeping my eye out for more.
As Blindness opens we are on a busy main road witing for the lights to change from red to green. As soon as the lights flicker to green all the lanes start moving except one. The car at the front of the lane is stopped still, as people go to find out why they notice the man inside screaming. Someone opens the door and the sound of his screams, 'I'm blind' echo around the streets.
Gradually as the days pass more and more people become blind, first only those who came into contact with the first blind man and then those who come into contact with them.
As a method of controlling the spreading of the blindness, those who have gone blind and those who are known to have had contact with them are entered into an empty mental asylum. No one exchanges names, as more people enter the institution they announce their proffession but all instinctively keep their names, and thus their try identities hidden.
Unbeknown to anyone except her husband a woman who hasn't lost her sight is living amongst the blind. She keeps an eye out for people, helps the sick and injured. As the days pass less and less food or sanitation is provided, inevitably things in the wards go from bad to worse and the situation spirals out of control.

This novel is so full and degfinately worth the read, clearly allegorical, looking at the 'blindness' of society, the selfish and helpless people we have become.
My only hangup with this book was the layout. There is no punctuation for speech, when someone speaks there was just a comma followed by a capital letter. And when another person replied this was simply shown by the capitalisation of their forst word. As a result the paragraphs are extremely long, after a few pages I got used to the layout and it didn't bother me so much, but made this book hard to read when I was tired.
Challenges:
A-Z (Author)
999 (Award Winners)
Lost in Translation

Book Awards III


Book Awards II finished on June 1st and I failed miserably reading only 5 books when I needed to read 10. I read:
1. The Gathering by Anne Enright - Booker (2007)
2. The Famished Road by Ben Okri - Booker (1991)
3. The Hours, Cunningham
4. Fugitive Pieces, Michaels
5. Gould's Book of Fish, Flanagan

My favourite would definately be Fugitive Pieces with The Gathering being runner up.
Despite, or probably because of my failure I'm going to be giving this challenge another go.I still have many books on my original list that I'd like to read.
This 3rd version starts on July 1st and runs untill December 1st and requires 5 books to be read. This is my pool which I will chose from (and hopefully complete this time).

The Sea by John Banville - Booker (2005)
Wild Swans - Chang - British Book Award (1994)
Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy - Commonwealth Writers' Prize (1994)
Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang -Commonwealth Writers' Prize (2001)
Andrea Levy, Small Island -Commonwealth Writers' Prize (2005) Costa (2004)
Charles Frazier Cold Mountain - National Book Award (1997)
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson - Pulitzer (2005)
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami - World Fantasy Award (2006)
Alice Munro — Runaway -Giller Prize (2004)
Mal Peet, Tamar -Carnegie 2005
Mary Norton, The Borrowers - Carnegie 1952
Spell of Winter - Dunmore -Orange 1996
Sunshine, Robin McKinley (Mythopoeic)
The Fair Folk, Marvin Kaye, World Fantasy

The 5 books have to come from 5 different awards, for more details go to the challenges blog here

My Thoughts: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Shaffer and Annie Barrows

My second audiobook finished this week (can you tell its the holidays and I've had lots of spare time!), this one was as great as Sabriel although very different.
You've probably read and seen hundreds of posts for this book so I'll keep it short and sweet.
I loved it. I fell in love with the characters and place. I would happinly go live in that book.

A quick synopsis: Juliette, a war-time writer starts a correspondence with a reader in Guernsey, a small island. The correspondence develops and she form a friendship with many of the members of the reading society. It doesn't sound exciting but it is.

The audiobook was read by a single woman who gave each character a different voice which enhanced their personality.

Read it if: Your looking for something quaint and English

Challenges:
999 (New Fiction)
War through the Generations: WWII
Notable Books