My Thoughts: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

I finished my last book for the Once Upon a Time III challenge!
I had kept The Invention of Hugo Cabret for this challenge, and then had a tough time finding an evening to sit down and devour it.
For those of you who haven't read it (you should go add it to a wish list now! ;0 )
the book is told through a large number of sketches and words, it looks chunky but can be read in a few hours tops. The tale follows Hugo an orphaned mechanical genius as he fights to restore an automaton - a machine which can write or draw. He discovers many new people along the way.
I loved the pictures they were so serene, I'll be going back to this book again and again. I also loved using this book at school with a class of kids who all have either dyslexia or literacy difficulties. They could 'read' the pictures fantastically and it was a book that was easily accesible. I'm trying to convince the department to buy a set as I only had my copy and 15 kids.


Other Once Upon a Time III reads:
The Wild Woods, Charles de Lint
Inkheart, Cornelia Funke
Beauty Sleep, Cameron Dokey
Lady Cottingham's Pressed Fairy Letters, Brian Froud
Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire

4 of these books were out of my pool of 8, which I'm very impressed with as I normally go off on a tangent. If I really had to pick a favourite I'd pick Beauty Sleep, but all of the books were great.
I should be joining in reading a version of A Midsummer Night's Dream on Sunday but not sure if I'll be managing the play or a fairytale version I discovered in the school library

Exploration: Latin American Fiction Challenge Round Up

I've had a hectice week so this is later than expected (by a couple of days!)
I fiished my last couple of books for the Latin American Challenge this week. Firstly I read Love in the Time of Cholera, I brought this book about 8 or 9 years ago after I first read and loved One Hundred Years of Solitude. I then read a few pages of this, thought it wasn't might type of thing and it got relegated onto the bookshelves to gather dust.
This time I picked it up willing to give it more of a chance and loved it. The book starts with the death of two elderly men, both in perculiar circumstances. One of the men is the husband of the main character of the novel. As a young girl she sent countless love letters to a young man, whom she secretly agreed to marry. After her father found out about the proposal he banned them from seeing each other forever and see eventually married another. He on the other hand swore to marry her when her husband died. The love story and all that happens in their lives in between is mesmerising. I really must read more of Marquez.
Also used as a challenge book for:
A-Z (Title)
1%
1001 Challenge
Orbis Terrarum
999 (1001)
What's in a Name (Medical Condidtion)
Guardian 1000


Then I read The Aguero Sisters by Cristina Garcia. This book started off slowly but picked up after 70 odd pages. The novel tells the story of two sisters brought up seperately - because the elder child kept trying to kill her younger sibling, as her mother had emotionally abandoned her in favour of a new life. The sisters are brought together again during their mid-life crisis. One lives in poverty striken Cuba, in the middle of the revoluionary campaign whilst the other lives in New York. Their mothers mysterious death, followed by their father's suicide leaves them both unstable. Full of magical realism this is definately a good example of Latin American Fiction.
Also Used for these challenges:
Orbis Terrarum
999 (TBR)

I also read Bel Canto and The House of Spirits, I loved 3 of them and enjoyed the other - The Aguero Sisters.

Other Challengers Books:
Ex Libris
Malinche by Laura Esquivel Reviewed by Ex Libris
In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alveraz, Reviewed by Richard
Battles in the Desert by Jose Emillio Pacheco
Amulet by Roberto Bolana
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis


Anyone else with reviews or wrap up posts please comment here and I'll add it to the page.

My Thoughts: The Bagdhad Diaries and The Well Seasoned Reader

I was expecting a lot from The Bagdhad Diaries by Nuha Al-Radi and was very disappointed. I had seen this book talked about a lot a few years ago and was expecting a moving account of life in the war. The diaries are written by a female Iraqi artist, she is fairly wealthy and lives a life of freedom for a woman from this area, she travels widely, is widely read and had a varied social life. Her accounts of the war generally feature what she did each day, many days describing listening to bombs falling whilst sitting in her garden typing away. Yes she does also describe the lack of food, the extreme poverty and the increase in cancer as a result of the war but I never really felt for her. I read about two thirds then skim read the rest.

This was my final book for my first complete challenge of the year, The Well-Seasoned Reader. I also read Pyongyang a graphic novel about a French artists time in North Korea and The Narrative of the Life of a Slave. Both were okay but not great.
I actually didn't end up reading any of the books on my original list, if I had I may have found more books that I enjoyed.