A creative week

Half term was supposed to be a chance to catch up on work, and I have done some (honest!), but I also used the week to read, create a watch tv.
Below are the creations which I have been making for the yahoo minibook group. The first is the winter fat page swaps (these were meant to be finished a month ago!). The idea is to create one page for each member in the swap, that way each member has a little book with everyones work in it, and as they are heavily embellished the book is nice and fat.
I made simple flowers (simple but time consuming) out of red felt, added an oversized button and stuck them on some patterned paper and then card. I was hoping for something wintery without being too chistmasy.

Here you can see the winterfat page book I have so far - its already getting fat and I'm still waiting for 5 more pages to arrive.


The next swaps aren't due to be completed for a few weeks so I'm actually ahead of myself for once. The first is a under-the-sea themed skinny book with a pocket containing a tag on the front of it. I really struggled to find sea themed stamps or paper which I liked, so I decided to draw my own - I really can't draw so I resorted to zentangles as they are easy for us non-artistic types. Unlike the fatpages above we are not sending these to the individual members but to one person who then divides them up (saves on postage), so I won't get to see everyone elses designs till at least the end of March.
I've included a snap shot of them all and them a close up of the pair of them, as you can see each design is individual, just hoping the recipients each like their mermaid.


I then spent this morning folding these tiny oragami birds for moo cards (the size of a business card), I had a few left over so made a couple of ATCs as well to swap with people on a different site. The birds were easy to fold, the hardest thing was tackling them and the double sided sticky tape!

Off to finish reading Annie John, then work behind the bar for a 75th birthday party - doubt I'll be finding a future husband there this evening!

Library Loot: The Well Travelled Edition

Unlike the rest of Britain, which is apparently freezing cold with heavy rain or snow, Chelmsford is blissfully warm and sunny today so I decided to take a stroll to the library to pick up my holds. I went down for 2 books and came back with 6!
As I'm trying to tackle my Olympic Challenge which is held over at bookcrossing.com and challenges people to read one book from every country (preferably by a writer from that country) taking part in the 2012 Olympics, I went for a multicultural selection of books.



Iola by Frances Allen (which isn't pictured) (For the Women Unbound challenge)
Yaraana: Gay Writing from India edited by Hoshang Merchant (For The Challenge Which Dare Not Speak its Name)
Annie John by Jamacia Kincaid (for the Olympic Challenge)
Polish Fables by Ignacy Krasicki (for the Olympic Challenge)
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (for the Olympic Challenge and because I love Isben)
Water Wars: Is the World's Water Running Out? by Marq de Villiers ( for the Social Justice Challenge)
Inca Land by Hiram Bingham (for the Olympic Challenge)

The Library Loot is over at A Striped Armchair this week.

My Thoughts: Ruins by Achy Obejas

After reading After the Dance by Danticat Edwidge I thought I'd try and complete the Caribbean section of the Olympic challenge (I have a long way to go). When Ruins arrived from the library I realised I already read a book for Cuba (The Aguero Sisters) but the premise was good and the book short so I gave it a go.
Ruins is set in Havana in 1994, in the years when many Cubans were evacuating the place in anything which they could find. Usnavy, a man loyal and law abiding watches as his friends either leave or break the law to earn dollars illegally.
The place is dirt poor, houses are falling to pieces in the rain, women are selling spice and gravy soaked pieces of blanket disguised as steak to earn a few pounds and they wash in a communal area using bottles of boiled water.
Usnavy is determined that he and his family will live above the law, until he discovers ways to make money wih the discovery of a Tiffany lamp. At first he abstains from temptation, but as his wife and daughter slowly desert him he is forced to see that his beliefs are destroying his home life.
I really enjoyed this look at Cuba, we forget just how impoverished places in the Western world really are. Obejas shows the way that immigration has affected the Cubans lives, they can see what their relatives have in America and so live always wanting more, reaching in places that they wouldn't normally as a means of achieving it.

Do you have a suggestions for a Caribbean read?

The Sunday Salon: The Fire Gospels by Michel Faber

This is my 4th Michel Faber book; perviously I've read the glorious The Crimson Petal and the White, and its follow up, The Apple a collection of short stories set in this Victorian world, and then I read the very different bizzare but fantastic dystopian novel Under the Skin. The Fire Gospels was sent free from the publishers Cannongate over a year ago and I kept meaning to get to it but for some reason puttine it off. As soon as I picked it up and was 20pages in I was shocked that yet again Faber had created a completely different style of novel.

The Fire Gospel's is a Dan Brown style novel. A young historian travels to Iraq to help them salvage museum articles after the museum had been raided. Whilst their a bimb hits the museum unearthing the discovery of 9 scrolls which had previously been sealed inside a statue. Rather than reporting his discovery he sneaks them out of the country and translates them back at home. He then decides to punbish the scrolls, which turn out to be an account by an unknown disciple of Jesus.

The scrolls reveal Jesus as a more ordinary figure, they also dispel some of the images created of his crucifixtion. The public have mixed reaction to the publication of the book, some desperate to kill the author. And so continues his plight.

This was a easily readable book, and very short and compact. However it didn't amaze me, I would probably only give it 3 stars out of 5. It isn't my usual taste in fiction and unlike Dan Brown didn't manage to have that gripping nature.

My Thoughts: Summertime by J.M Coetzee

Summertime is the third in a series by Coetzee, wheich I didn't realise when I first agreed to read this book. Summertime is a novel in which a biographer is collecting notes and interviewing people in order to write a biography of the dead John Coetzee. A strange scenario from the beginning.
Coetzee the character is a novelist who found fame late in life. This novel looks at a period in his life just before he became successful. His cousin, lovers and an acquaintance are interviewed about him, in some cases what is presented is more a story of the interviewed than of him. What we do learn is that he was a cold man, hard to love and unemotional, yet seemingly always embroilled in an affair of some sort. He teaches, yet doesn't enjoy teaching and he writes with almost a desperation.

I was surprised at how easy this was to read. The interviews I really enjoyed, but I lost interest in the last 20 pages when we are given snippets from his notebook in which he writes about himself in the third person. By then I felt enough was enough.
An biography about a character with your name who wrote the books which you have published is a strange old concept to take in, but he seems to pull it off.

Ukraine's Got Talent

Saw this today at school, its amazing she creates a story with sand see here

My Thoughts: Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai

Having sat on mount tbr for a good six months this ovel had to come top of the pile for my reads for the GLBT challenge.
Set in Sri Lanka this coming of age novel tells Anjie's story. At seven he loves playing with the girls, always the lead role in Bride-Bride their fantasy game. He loves dressing up in Saris and being made much of, until the da that he is revealed to the adults in all his glory. His father quickly blames his mother and declares if he turns out a 'funny boy' it will be all her doing.

We then follow Anjie through his childhood, much of which is dominated by the Tamil/Sinhalese conflicts. He watches family friends torn from lovers, beaten for their race, and the riots spill out. He also faces being Tamil, in school and at home, but only speaking Sinhalese as his parents desperately try to give their children a chance to make something of themselves in this country of seperation.
The politics and his identity, both sexual and social and mingled side by side in the novel which deals with serious issues but is a great read. As Anjie grows older the tone of the novel becomes more serious as he begins to understand the world around him.
I'll certainly be checking out more of Selvadurai's novels in the future.

Challenges:
GLBT: The Challenge the Dare Not Speak its Name
Twenty Ten (Who are you, again?)

Other reviews:
Book Nook