Moving House

I'm moving house this week so I expect to be missing an internet connection for between 2-4 weeks will still keep reading for the challenges, although I will be abandoning the banned books challenge and spring reading thing, there is no way I will have a chance to tackle the last few book in the next couple of weeks.

The Tenderness of Wolves - Peney

This was a read for a Real Life Reading Group, it had been sitting on my TBR pile for a good six months so was an excellent prompt to get me reading it.

This book follows in particular Mrs Ross, a mother who's son has gone missing and is now suspected of the murder of a local man, her only choice is to set off across the Canadian wilderness in deep winter to find him and the truth. The book also focuses on many other characters who become involved in the mystery.

For me, it was too long, too many characters and subplots happening, that said it was a book I enjoyed. Yet I am still left with far too many questions...........

Other Bloggers thoughts:

from Reading Adventures:

As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Canada’s Dove River in
1867, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year-old boy disappears. Tracks
leaving the dead man’s cabin head north toward the forest and the tundra
beyond.In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the
township—journalists, Hudson Bay Company men, trappers, traders—but do they want
to solve the crime or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out
from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to
wild animals, madmen, and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two
missing sisters, a forgotten Native culture, and a fortune in stolen furs.In an
astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney weaves adventure, suspense, revelation,
and humour into a gripping historical tale, an exhilarating thriller, a keen
murder mystery, and ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her
storytelling, one of the best books of the year.

This book is being sold in the bookstores here with a "Good Reading Guarantee", and that if you didn't enjoy it you could get your money back. If I had of bought it, for the first couple of hundred pages I would have been seriously considered taking advantage of that guarantee. It's not that it wasn't a good read, because it was...eventually. Maybe it was just the way that I was feeling, but every time I opened this book and read a few pages I just wanted to go to sleep. Once I got past a couple of hundred pages it was okay, and I no longer felt the need to sleep through the book but it did take me a very long time to get to that point.Part of the issue for me was the sheer number of characters there were and how the action followed so many of them. We started out with the people who lived in the town of Dove River, particularly those who were directly affected by the murder of a French trapper. Then, the chief investigators enter the story - a couple of the upstanding gentlemen from the next town over, plus several men from the Hudson Bay Trading Company. Then a couple of other people vaguely connected to the case come into town as well. And then, everyone starts leaving again, in groups of ones and twos, ostensibly to try and track down the young boy who may or may not have killed the trapper. No one knows why he would do this, but still he has disappeared and that would make him appear guilty.As many of the characters leave Dove River, they enter the wilderness in the middle of winter making travelling hazardous and drawing unlikely travelling companions closer together. Eventually the travellers arrive at a small religious settlement, where yet more characters and subplots are introduced to the book, and then again when they travel on to a small company outpost a little further on.With the narrative following all the different characters as they arrive in Dove River and then leave in groups of two or three, the story switched too many times even within single chapters.In the end this was an okay read. I think that there were probably a couple too many strands of the story than there really needed to be and therefore it was difficult to draw them all back into a cohesive finish, but there was certainly a good story to be told in there, and definitely signs of a good writer.

If you have read this book feel free to comment or leave a link to your own review.

Another week. Another Challenge! The Book Awards Reading Challenge is being hosted by 3M. You have to pledge to read 12 prize winning books between July 1st 2007 till June 30th 2008. Over at the site there is a list of eligible books.
My List:
1.) True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey (Booker)
2.) A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth (Common Wealth)
3.) Gould's Book of Fish, Flanagan (Common Wealth)
4.)Small Island, Levy (Commeon Wealth)
5.) The Secret River, Grenville (Common Wealth)
6.) A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, Block (Edgar)
7.) Alias Grace, Atwood (Giller)
8.) Anil's Ghost, Ondaatje (Giller)
9.) American God's, Gaiman (Hugo)
10.) The Echo Maker, Powers (National)
11.) Cold Mountain, Frazier (National)
12.) Fugitive Pieces, Micheals (Orange Prize)

The Law of Dreams - Peter Behrens

This novel tells the young life of Fergus. Fergus is a young man running to escape the famine in Ireland to a place of hope, dreams and food. Yet Fergus doesn't know where England is yet alone America.Through the novel we travel across rural Ireland, the dark streets of Liverpool and across the sea to the land of hope, America. The novel is filled with fanastically vivid descriptions. In a few places I found that I was losing interest, yet then I was pulled back.In my opinion it should have been shorter, it went on for just that bit too long.


If you have read this book feel free to comment or leave a link to your own review.

Summer Reading Challenge

I decided to join yet another challenge the Summer Reading Challenge this runs from June 1st till August 1st. I'm pledging to read at least 4 books that I have purchased this year and I have also added some spares if things go well - as its the 6 weeks summer hols for me it could be easy.
My List:
My Book of Lost Things
The Book Thief
Water for Elephants
The Testement of Gideon Mack

Spares:
Gould's Book of Fish
The Poison Wood Bible
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
The Peacock Throne

Flowers for Algernon, Keyes

I read this for the Banned Books challenge and absolutely loved it. Certainly a book I would never have thought about picking up myself. This is about a boy with an IQ of just 68, untill science starts tryig to 'improve' him. His intellect increases dramatically but then Algernon, the test mouse for this operation dies and Charlie's future hangs in the balance.

WARNING: A real tear jerker!

If you have read this book feel free to comment or leave a link to your own review.

Dystopian Challenge.

I'm joining in with the Dystopian Challenge hosted byBooks.Lists.Life. I'm pledging to read 3 of these books by November the 6th and set myself an extra 2 to tackle if all is going really well.

The Books:
Cloud Atlas, Mitchell
Z for Zachaiah, O'Brein
The Road, Cormac McCarthy

Extras:
Do Androids Dream of Sheep, Dick
Naked Lunch, Burroughs