The Sunday Salon: January's Reads

A freezing but super bright day today. I'll be at the gym, marking, baking and getting a stack of reading in.
January hasn't been the best reading month to start the year although it may be ending on a high point as I'm hopefully going to finish Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai later this afternoon. My reading list of the month is below, only 6 books finished :( My favourite was The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters closely followed by The Forset of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan.
What is your faourite read of this month?

2010 Reads:
JANUARY
1. Doctor Zhivargo
2. The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
3. Alice in Wonderland by CS Lewis
4. Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
5. After the Dance by Edwidge Danticat (Non Fict)
6. Sorrow Mountain by Ani Prachen (Non Fict)


visited 5 states (2.22%)
Create your own visited map of The World

Americas:
Haiti
After the Dance by Edwidge Danticat
USA
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
Asia:
Russia
Dr Zhivargo by Boris Pasternik
Tibet
Sorrow Mountain by Ani Prachen
Europe:
UK
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Alice in Wonderland by C.S Lewis

Sorrow Mountain by Ani Pachen and Adelaide Donnelley

I must be on a roll today finishing two part read books in one afternoon :D

I read Sorrow Mountain for the Social Justice challenge, this month was focused on Religious Freedom. This memoir is written by Ani Pachen a Tibetan nun. Growing up the only child in the family Ani is expected to follow the conventions of a woman and also be ready to take over from her fathers estate. Early on we realise her determination and strength when she refuses an arrange marriage and runsaway from the family until her parents bend to her will. She then spends 6 months in a monastry with her mother, a place that she feels she belongs, until her father insists on her return.
Soon after her return Tibet is engulfed by the Chinese. Life changes as the Chinese try to take control of the country enforcing laws and new ways of life. The Tibetans fight back. Ani is taken along with her fathers people to fight the Chinese. Saying the she loves Tibet so much she will kill for it she is given a gun and travels through the Tibetan landscape trying to escape from the hands of the Chinese.
As the years pass Ani's father is killed and she spends 21 years in prison. Despite all of her suffering, the butality and starvation she sees and experiences in the prison one thing remains stable and that is her faith. This faith pulls her through and allows her to help others, even if all she can do is keep them alive for a few days longer.
I found that this book also fit in perfectly for the Woman Unbound challenge as Ani Prachen not only fights and overcomes the limits placed on women but also fights to save and help others.

Challenges
Social Justice Challenge
Twenty Ten Challenge
Woman Unbound

After the Dance by Edwidge Danticat

I felt particularly poignant reading After the Dance: A Walk through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti after the recent atrocities in the country. But I already had it out from the library before the earthquake had struck and thought this may give me a better picture of a place that I know little of other than the images which filled our newspapers for days.

Edwidge Danticat lived in Haiti as a child with her religious uncle whilst her parents had emigrated to America in search of a better life for them and their child. Throughout her childhood she was warned of the dangers of carnival and never allowed to attend. As as adult she returns to her home town to experience the carnival which fills the street.
As well as looking at the carnival, which she seems to experience as an outsider with inside knowlegde, we also are give a wealth of other information. Danticat talks to various locals, threading their talk of the carnival and her sights with a brief histroy of the town. History, politics, legend and myth are layered between the glimpses of the preperation for and eventually the actuall day of the carnival.
A great little read at only 152 pages, yet one which gives a lot. I saw this on one of Eva's great challenge lists and grabbed a copy for myself.

Read for the Twenty Ten Challenge (Bad Bloggers category)

My Thoughts: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

I picked up The Little Stranger with trepidation on Saturday, I had seen bad reviews in blogland and a friend had told me that she thought it was awful (she normally love Sarah Waters). After 50 pages I was pleasantly surprised that I was enjoying it.

The Little Stranger is set in post-war England in the small village of Lidcote. The novel starts with a childs visit to a grand house where his mother had previously worked as a nursery nurse. In awe of the house he breaks part of a display down. I didn't realise that our narrator was a boy for many pages.

30 odd years later the boy visits the house again but this time as a doctor. The house is not as he remembered, not as big and grand, many of its rooms are shut up and old age and a lack of finances are clearly seen in the decoration and condition of the place. Living there is just the mother and a son and daughter, plus a young helpless maid. Gradually the doctor builds up a friendship with the members of the household, and visits them as both a doctor and a friend on a regular basis. Thats when things become strange.

The son, damaged by the war, keeps hearing noises and injuring himself, fires start and a placid dog attacks. Suddenly we are unsure if there is a spirit in the house or if one of the members of the household is out to cause havoc.

I enjoyed this read, and raced through the 500 pages in just two reading session. However, I would certainly not say this was Sarah Waters best, no Victorian underworlds splayed out in my imagination, no fancy narrative structure, no loveable illicit lesbians or crooks. This was just a ghost story, not highly original, and probably in need of a good editing. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but if I was writing her a school style report I would have scrawled 'Could do better' on the page.

There is a great discussion of the book here, the 'ghost' and Caroline's sexuality are discussed amongst other things.

Salon Sunday: Finally found my book mojo and Reading in Colour

It's been a strange old beginning to the year. Snow. Ofsted. Disappointment (I'm not going to China, and the boy I like didn't ask me on a date, grrrr!). And I've also lost my reading and studying mojo.
So far this year I've finished just three books (1 was YA and one children's fction) and we are 24 days into the year, (I normall average 2 books a week). I'm wasting time on the net, watching dvd's and tv and generally feeling under the weather.
But, last night I finally found a book I could curl up with. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters had me hooked. I'm 200 pages in and could quite happily have picked it up as soon as I got up and spent all day reading it. As it is I had marking to do, all complete, and the next section of A Suitable Boy to read for my read-a-long, which is what I'm off to do next. I'm then off to the cinema and out for Indian food. But, I'm looking forward to curling back up with my book before I go to sleep.

Oh, and so I don't double post today here is my Reading in Colour pledge. Eva, over at A Striped Armchair blogged a wonderful post about white priviledge and our reading habbits, checking it out is a must. I do read quite a few authors from other countries but I'm nowhere near as diverse in my reading habbits as I'd like to be. I've decided to try to make at least a third of my fiction reads by POC. And half of my non-fiction reads by POC.

Crafty Corner: Felt Flowers

I vowed that I would try and learn something new every week or so this year, mainly focusing on crafty goodness. So last weekend I made my first felt flowers, in fact the orange one in the picture above. I've since made a few more. At the moment I'm sticking to using them on ATCs, but I have a plan to make a few cushions with them on (well buy the cushions and attach the handmade flowers) for a friends birthday.
Today I mastered paper flowers, and used them to make my own gift wrap, as shown above.

The ATC above is for my sister's birthday, on the reverse side her birthday message is stiched on. Unfortunatley my camera has run out of batteries so this is taken on my camera phone and has come out a far brighter orange and white than the real thing, which is far more mellow. I hope that she likes it as she is the arty one in the family. Along with this she is getting a copy of The Arrival by Shaun Tan, and I'm in the process of making her a scrapbooking kit as I think her artistic skills and eye, plus her photography skills would work wonderfully together in a scrapbook. She'll be recieving this late though as January is turning out to be an expensive month.

Tomorrow I'll go to my mums to see her and have dinner with the family. Monday I find out if school are going to let me go to Southern China over Easter with as part of the school trip. My fingers are crossed and double crossed.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend x

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Today was the first time I picked up a book since Sunday! I don't think that has ever happened before. Our school was told early Monday morning Ofsted (evil school inspectors) were coming to visit for 2 days. I planned, marked, prepared and pretty much lost my brain in the last few days, and I ended up only being watched once! Thankfully that is now over, and also my class got there exam results today and everyone did well, so now I get to rest for a few days.

As soon as I was home I curled up with The Forest of Hands and Teeth, which I had started on Sunday. And I've polished it off this evening. When this first came out I quickly dismissed it when I saw the word zombie attached to it, luckily I came to my senses and waited in the library reservation list (40 odd people before me) for it.

The book is set is a small enclosed village, run by the Sisterhood. Beyond the fence lie the Unconsecrated, zombies waiting to attack. The village practice drills, teach cildren how to kill, and teach you to think of number one. As with all utopian worlds life is supposedly perfect, yet below the surface danger and secrets lie.

Mary has been brought up with her mother's stories, stories of the ocean, of tall buildings, of a world that exists beyond the forest. She longs to escape. Orphaned and abandoned by her mother she is taken into the Sisterhood, a place which soon confirms that there are secrets and knowledge which are hidden by the villagers, and that it is those who are supposed to protect who are actually deciving the village. When she is forced into marriage her world seems to be falling apart but she has seen nothing yet. She is soon fighting for her existance.

The novel, although far from original in its storyline - deceptive authority, a world beyond the castle walls, kept me engaged and entertained. If you want something simple a bit of a break from literature this one could be a good book to get lost in.

The picture above is of the American cover as I have a huge issue with the English cover which replicates the style of the Twilight books.