TSS: Bleak House by Charles Dickens

It looks like I'm getting good at read-a-longs, another one finished :D
I started reading Bleak House back in November, we read a section each Sunday following the sections that Dickens had them published originally in the perodicals.

A quick summary: Bleak House focuses on the main heroine Esther, she starts her life as a orphan, with a childhood of misery. When her aunt dies she finds that she is taken by a new guardian along with two other teenagers to live in Bleak House. The three all share a link in a long legal debate over a will, which has been being debated longer than the three have lived.
Esther's a kind hearted a generous central character, formaing relationships with many along the way, from orphaned children to the aristocracy. The novel explores the power of greed, the unravelling of secrets and friendships.

Dickens is one of those authors who I'm never 100% sure of, I have loved some of his works (Great Expectations in particular) and really disliked others (Nicholas Nickelby). This novel held me unsure of my feelings for it over a number of months. Split into two narratives, Esther's and a unknown narrators, we view all manner of peoples lives, many who are only barely linked to Esther's story. And while I loved her narrative, which focused on just the few people she met, I dislike the other narrative which introduced too many characters and was hard to follow.
I think that as a read-a-long we should have read more each week, the sections were about 30 pages in length and varied in enjoyment. Sometimes you finished a Sunday reading glad to have spent 30minutes with Esther and other weeks the reading left me bored and wondering what was happening to Esther.
The BBC adaptation of this is supposed to be brilliant, I'm hoping to hire this and watch it in the coming weeks.

Jezebel by Irene Nemirovsky

I finally finished another book! My reading time seems to be being zapped at the moment, school work is filling up my spare hours, plus I've discovered some new TV shows and DVD boxsets so my spare time is being eaten into.

Jezebel starts with the court case of an older woman accused of killing her much younger lover. The court watches in awe and fascination, not because the death of a 21 year old man, but because of the beauty and poise of the accused.
From then on the novel recounts moments from her life, showing her growth, relationships and leading to the murder.

For me this novel just didn't work, which is frustrating because the idea behind it really sounds like it should be a good read. The main character was simply hideous, one of those obnoxious girls at school who I would have simply hated. Other characters flit in and out so that we never get to form an attachment to them.

I think if the book had been much longer than its 190 pages, of fairly big font, I would have given it up and started something new.

Island Madness by Tim Binding

Island Madness is set on the tiny island of Guernsey, a British Island that is actually right off the tip of France. This book is set during the German occupation of the island during WWII. Used as a vantage point for the Germans, as well as a prime smuggling location the locals and the occupiers live side-by-side with the enemy.

As the book started I thought that this novel was going to be about the changes to the society caused by the occupation; the French prostitues brought over to service the men, with lines of men running up the street, the young local women whose parents turn a blind-eye to their daughters affairs with the enemy, knowing that this will keep their daughters well fed, the local men and women breaking the law just for real butter or BirdsEye Custard Powder. But soon a local girl is murdered and a who-done-it unravels.

The pace of the book, the twists and turns and tangled relationships kept me well entertained for the day, but I was never enthralled by the novel. It was of overly long paragraphs and a setting and people I just couldn't picture. This is the dark side of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.


I'm carrying on with the TBR Dare I'm now up to book 7 of the 25 that I pledged to read. I have to say that it is making me look at my TBR pile in a new light. One of my friends - with a much much smaller pile than me - has put hers in order of the date they were written, she takes one from the top of the pile then the next one from the bottom, ensuring that some of the others get read. I'm still trying to work out how to tackle mine, I'm trying a world tour idea at the moment but I'm not sure how successful this will be. Having said that you may see a few French books popping up in the next few weeks!
Have you a way to tackle your tbr pile? Or do you just read as you please?

The Sunday Salon: If I wasn't being a good girl...

I'd have brought the following books this week.

The Idiot by Dostoevsky. I'm reading two Russian books at the moment, and quite fancy a Russian theme running through the year but only have one on the tbr stacks. This one caught my eye not just as its one of those that if you're doing the Russians (sorry for the bad English, I've been watching and reading Educating Rita at school), you should have tackled; but also because it's translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky whose translation of W&P I'm loving.


The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy. As above, because I'm loving W&P and want to read the Russians. But also because of the Oh-so-pretty cover. The Penguin Great Loves series all have lush covers.

And finally,

Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie, because I want a good YA to take with me for the flight to New York (4 weeks today I'll be there!!!), I have many on my shelves already so I should read those, and rely on the Alexie audiobook that I have on my trusty old iPod.

Youth by J.M Coetzee

Only my second 1001 book of the year (with an aim of 40 I should be aiming for one every second or third read not leaving 5 books in between).
Coetzee is one of those authors I have a mixed relationship with, I hated Disgrace and disliked Amsterdamn but then really enjoyed Waiting for the Barbarians, and Elizabeth Costello I think I've read but I'm not 100% sure, so I went into Youth with some trepidation.
Youth is actually the second in a semi-autobiographical trilogy, but I didn't know that till I was half way through. However, I didn't feel like I was missing out too much as a rough sketch of his childhood was provided as I read through.

Youth follows John, a mathmatics student with more interest in poetry and saving up enough money to escape South Africa. When he finally escapes to England life is not what he imagines, the long hours, cold people and cold weather lead him to a life of seclusion. As well as his life in England and his love of poetry, we learn much about his desire for a woman. He seems to pick up along the way a number of unsuitable women (who all drop their pants immediately), he barely gets them back to his room before he and they have decided that it's all a bad idea, but it continues.

The novel had a really mellow feel to it, despite dramas, upsets and loneliness he accepts the world and the tension never builds. And, this creates a nice easy read, but one that is likely to leave me not remembering much, if any of the novel in a months time.

The Sunday Salon

At the moment I'm participating in two read-a-longs both of which have Sunday reading goals, so my Sunday's have changed and are no longer wallowing in laziness with one novel but trying to have read the right amount of pages and make some type of constructive comment.
This morning - after marking and housework - I finished off the section of War and Peace I needed to get read and later on I'll be reading the next 3 chapters of Bleak House.
I'm enjoying both books, and really enjoy the discussion that entails - especially in the War and Peace group as people pick up on funny things (Tolstoy's obssession with female lip hair!) but also discuss the historical and social context.
Do you participte in read-a-longs? Know of any good read-a-longs coming up?

I'm not a New Years Resolution kinda girl, mainly because I'm always setting myself resolutions throughout the year, and secondly because January is a bad time of year for starting stuff - the weather is rubbish, and I don't want to eat healthy/excercise/learn new things - I just want to hibernate.
However I did set myself a goal of 15 books that I wanted off my TBR mountain before the end of 2011. 10 fiction and 5 non-fiction.
Fiction:
1. Court on the Air (a book I requested through bookcrossing ages ago and still haven't read).
2. Tender is the Night
3. The Sound and the Fury
4. Arthur and George
5. The Tapestries
6. Les Miserables (All five have been on mount tbr for over 3 years)
7. Tsotsi (the kids study it at school yet I still haven't read it).
8. David Copperfield (a non-reading ex read this while travelling and made me promise to read it asap - that was a year ago)
9. Jude the Obscure
10. Don Quixote (both books I feel as a lit graduate I should have read, and both have lingered for 3+ years on the pile).

Non-fiction:
1. Wild Swans (a bookcrossing book I've had since 20070
2. Wall and Piece (I love Banksy and should do more than just look at the pretty pictures)
3. An Age of Wonder (brought not this christmas but the one before, it looks good, so should have been read ages ago).
4. A Human Being Died That Night (I loved Eva's review and keep saying I should read more non-fitcion, plus it's real skinny).
5. The Shory History of Nearly Everything (because my knowledge of pretty much everything is teeny or non-existant, and the only way I'm going to understand the Big Bang Theory - plus others - is if Bill Bryson explains it nice and simple).

Hopefully in the next year these will be ticked off the pile, reviewed and some sent to other readers.

The Duppy by Anthony C. Winkler

My first read for the Caribbean Reads Challenge was The Duppy. This novel set in Jamaica tells the tale of Baps a character who dies in the first line of the novel. This starts off well with a funny episode where he watches his housemaid and gardener stealling his money from his body while he watches (he was a harsh boss and starts getting really miffed when they take Christmas, Easter, New Years etc bonuses, bonuses he would never have paid in his lifetime) then the maid props her sticky feet upon his head while she waits for the doctor to arrive.
After this he travels to a Jamaican heaven, with no fluffy clouds and laziness but plenty of sex, food and gossip. Gradually he becomes friends with God.
This book is meant to be a tongue in cheek look at heaven, Jamaican men and their opinions, and started off well, in fact I enjoyed a good 120 pages of the book. Then, I'd just had enough; the joke had gone on too long and I started feeling that it was just simply silly. I scanned the last 50 pages just to get it finished. Having said that on goodreads this book is rated four stars, where I would only give it one.
For a positive review of this book please see here