Non - Fiction Five Challenge

Trish's Reading Nook is hosting the Non-Fiction Five challenge this year. Now I wasn't supposed to be joining anymore challenges but I have a stack of non-fiction in my TBR pile that needs to be read so hopefully this will help that.
I'm not creating a list, but the one book that I'm going to make myself read is The Short History of Everything by Bill Bryson. This book is completely different from everything I read which is why it has been lurking on the tbr pile for a good two years. The others will probably be memoirs or travel writing.

My Thoughts: Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan

Before you even start reading this I'm going to let you know that I'm still thinking WHAT?!?! about this book, I finished it an hour ago and have read what a few of the papers had to say about it.
Gould's Book of Fish is set in Tasmania, Australia. An 'antique' dealer (faker) finds this book in a junk shop and becomes obsessed with proving that it is geuine. The little book is described as containing paintings of fish, with dense script surrounding the images and trapped on scraps of paper tucked into the book, the handwriting is crabbed and a mix of colours as the writer has had to make ink from whatever he can find around him.
Up untill then everything is clear, then you get to actually read 'The Book of Fish'. Gould is a convict, imprisoned on the island. He is sent each day to work for one of the wealthy men of the island, a scientist who claims he wants to categorise the fish in the area, with a limited ability to paint Gould sets to work. We then hear Gould talkig about his paintings and his growing obsession with fish, as well as his afairs with a local black woman, the murder of aboriginies, and the treatment of the convicts among many things far more confusing.

Challenges:
A-Z (Author)
999 (Award Winners)
Book Awards 2

My Thoughts: Mr Toppit by Charles Elton

Published this year, Charles Elton has taken the tale of Christopher Robin - the real one, not the fictional character, who felt trapped and suffered after his father created a character is his name who's fame would haunt him and cause him to become seperated from his family. Elton takes this idea and modernises it, gives it a spin.
Mr Toppit is about a dysfuntional family who come under the media spotlight years after their father's death. He dies in an accident with an American radio presenter at his side. After ambushing the family home in the days after his death, the radio presenter Laurie Clow is given copies of the Hayseed Chronicles.
The father's novels, The Hayseed Chronicles are a fairly unknown children's collection, in which the father creates a tale out of his family home, the woods behind them and names his central character after his son. Laurie Clow becomes obsessed with the family and the books and ends up reading them on her radio show once she return to the States. Eventually the books become well known, films are made, readers visit the real Darkwoods looking for Mr Toppit, a dictorial figure who's identity is never revealed in the children's books.
The popularity of the books creates problems for Luke - people assume the books are actually about him, and his elder sister who is missing from the books yet becomes obsessed with having a kind of ownership over them.
I enjoyed the book, but I think I would have enjoyed The Hayseed Chronicles more.

Challenges
2009 Pub Challenge 1/9
A-Z (Authors)
999 (New Fiction)

My Thoughts: Witch Child by Celia Rees

After saying my reading has slowed down I then realed of two books in two days. This is another YA read but of a very different kind to City of Embers.
Witch Child is a collection of diary entries by a girl girl called Mary, who states that she is a witch in the opening lines of the novel.
As the diary entries start Mary's grandmother has been hunted out as a witch, her powers were tested when she was thrown into a lake to see if she floated - the conformation that a woman was a witch, and then dreagged out for a public hanging.
As Mary's abilities are dubious with the locals Mary is sent across the Atlantic to the newly discovered Americas. Mary travels with Puritans and becomes one of the community, one who is always held on the outside of the community but allowed to join in and travel with them.
America was meant to be an escape, a chance to start again with a fresh slate yet it seems that the rumours are following Mary.

Challenges:
999 (YA)
2009 YA Challenge
What's in a Name? (Profession)

My Thoughts: The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

I came across this novel when I read Raidergirls review and quickly added it to the reservation list at the local library. I seem to be slowing down with my reading at the moment and have a rather large book on the go at the moment, so needed something easy to read to give me a sense of achievement, and this was just the thing.

The City of Ember is a post-apoclyptic novel, set in a largely recongnisable world. The city is a city of darkness, there is no moon or sun, and the electricity across the city is turned out each night at the same time. The food is largely tinned vegetables as there appears to be no animals except for bugs. Once this was a prosperous city, yet the stocks are now depleted, a tin of peaches is now something that can only be savoured in the minds of the elderly, and scraps of paper are saved and deemed as precious.
Doon and Lina, two teens who have just entered the workforce are concerned about the depleted stocks and the power cuts which are becoming more and more recent.
In Lina's flat, a damanged set of instructions are found and the pari set out to discover a new world for the inhabitants of the city.

The City of Ember is written for a 9+ audience, and it is important to remember that whilst reading, as many things seem a little to easy. I will be checking out the next book to see how their lives pan out.

Challenges:
A-Z (Author)
2009 Young Adult Book Challenge
End of the World II

Challenge Update: Its all looking scary

A-Z Challenge (Authors) 6/27
A-Z Challenge (Titles) 12/27
In Their Shoes 3/4
The Dream King 2/12
1% Well Read Challenge 2/13
Orbis Terrarum 4/10
The Genre Challenge 6/10
The Decades Challenge 4/10
The Carribean Challenge 0/6
My Year of Reading Dangerously 2/12
The World Citizen Challenge 0/3
Y.A Challenge 2/12
Deweys Book Reading Challenge 0/6
100 Shots of Short 53/100
The 2009 Pub Challenge 0/9
Themed Challenge 2/4
999 Challenge 17/81
Book Awards 2 4/10
2nd Canadian Challenge 1/13 ABANDONING - WILL NEVER COMPLETE
Latin American Challenge 1/4
The Rescue Challenge 0/6
The Graphic Novel Challenge 6/12
Manga Challenge 1/4
War Through the Generations: WWII 1/5
Lost in Translation 5/6
Notable Challenge 1/6
What's in a Name? 13/6
The Well Seasoned Reader 3/3 COMPLETED!
The Chunkster Challenge 3/6
The Guardian 100 novels 1/10
Banned Book Challege 1/4
Once Upon a Time III Challenge 1/5
Herding Cats 0/2
Its the End of the World 0/4


I'm off for the next two weeks so hope to finish the Latin American Challenge and make a dent in the Award Winners as they both finish soonish

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.