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: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

This book was doing the blogsphere rounds last year when I signed up to recieve it as part of a bookcrossing bookring, the copy visited many people in many coutries before it arrived here with me, I'll be sending it off to the next person this weekend so it can carry on its travels.

Greg Mortenson was a mountainer who whilst attempting to climb K2 become horribly lost and stranded, he was rescued by his untrained Pakistani carrier and led safely back down the mountain. He stumbled across an tiny village in Baltisan, a place where white men never visited as it was too far off the beaten track. Whilst there Greg was nursed back to health and made to feel welcome by all. He was shocked into admiration when he saw the local boys and girls trying to educate themselves on a patch of land - they had access to a teacher just once a week, the rest of the time they taught each other. Greg, touched by this promised to build the village a school.
Back in America Greg sent out letters asking for the $12,000 he needed to build a school, no replies came back, so he set about working to save the money himself. Luckily a doner was found and Greg ploughed himself into buidling this school, he faced many problems with stolen goods, travel issues, the weather and numerous others.
Greg soon realised that this village was not the only one to need help, his doner created a charity for his as a way that Greg could create schools across the region. Greg's main focus was on educating girls as they had a greater impact on the wealth and wellbeing of a village. He also set up community working areas for women so they could create goods to trade using the skills of their communities.
And his story goes on. It was particularly moving reading about the rebuilding of schools in Afgahnistan after hearing the news of the bombings in Kabul this last few days.

This was an extremely moving book, and very open minded. The issues in Pakistan where highlighted truthfully - the warring between people to gain American help, but also the desperate need to educate these children and the rights of every child to gain an education. I would love to give a copy of this to the disengaged bright kids at school to show them what they are freely given and take for granted, and the worth that others put to it.
If ou haven't read it you should. I'll certainly be getting my own copy and lending it out, and copying sections for use in school.

Challenges:
Non-fiction 5
World Citizen Challenge
Olympic Challenge
In their shoes.

Lazy Days

This is a little card I made for a challenge here a the Easy Craft Projects site, they set a template which you interpret with your own design, for the chance of winning some crafting goodies.
If you caught my post last week I made Mr Men cards for my sister and mum, these were made from a set wheras this week I took all different bits to make it.

I'm not sure whether I'm going to blog about my crafting here or not, I might just do so once a week as this blog was meant to be about books - anyway I'm off to make some more stuff, I have 10 tags to make, so far I only have this one done. (You'll have to click on it to see it properly.

My Thoughts: The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint

Having read The Wild Woods by Charles de Lint a few months ago I was eager to read some more when I spotted The Onion Girl as a audiodownload. I've been listening to this on my long walks to town and the gym (40 mins each way) and looking the world which was created in my mind.
Fairie artist Jilly is knocked down in a hit and run and left in a coma, whilst in this coma she discovers the ability to visit the 'dreamworld', a world a few of her friends inhabit reguarly or through their own dreams. When I got to this point I thought it was going to be a cute story but then things get darker. We learn about Jilly and her sister's abuse as children and the different paths it led them through. We watch as her sister Raylene grows up living a life of crime and escaping into the dream world to hunt as a wolf. We also get to know many of Jilly's fabulous friends, they're all different and quirky in their own way.
The novel splits between different characters and places and worlds, giving us different impressions of what is going on. More Charles de Lint will soon be added to my tbr pile!
Challenges:
A-Z (Title)

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

Crafty Corner

I always read Viviens blog, she talks about both books and her scrapping, I always look at the images and wish that I could do that. On Saturday I clicked on a few links on her page and discovered the world of crafting. After looking a blogs and websites for a few hours - I'm not exaggerating, I thought I'd have a go.
Being on a budget I've brought a few bits and pieces - card, glue, sequins etc. I also went and raided my costume jewerlry box for the necklaces and bracelets that I know longer wear or are broken, I stole from them beads and buttons.
I brought a couple of magazines as well, including Lets Make Cards, I was shocked when I got to the till and discovered it cost £7.99 but when I got home and discovered the tons of Mr Men and Little Miss goodies I got with it I realised it was worth the money.
I spent a few hours today using that kit to make these two cards - one for my mum and one for my sister as I haven't been home since June.

I also used the kit and a few beads to make these book marks, which I'll probably stick in the bookcrossing books I send out.

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)