Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy

I'm rubbish at writing about poetry collections unless I'm writing an essay and have a specific question to answer, so this will be short and sweet. I'm going to use the interview style as I'm hoping it'll prompt more from my head.

Why this author and this collection? I've read and loved three previous collections by Duffy (The World's Wife, Rapture and Feminine Gospels) plus we use Duffy's poetry in school a lot. I always love the way she expresses herself, her raw emotions and recurring themes. I'm hoping to read a lot more poetry this year and thought adding a Duffy book to my Christmas list might spur me on. This one was simply the first collection I hadn't read of hers on the amazon page.

How would you describe the poems in 'Mean Time'?The poems in this collection seem to centre largely around the teenage period in her life. They are often about school, especially early on in the collection. Moving through the collection she grows up and reflects on love affairs and relationships. Having said that, some of them don't seem to fit, for example the poem 'Havisham' which I've taught for years and always assumed come from The World's Wife.

Any favourite poems or lines?
I think my favourite poems were 'Brothers', 'Before you Were Mine' (which I love to teach), 'First Love' and 'Small Female Skull'.
This collection also features the poem 'Valentine' the antithesis to today and all the heart shape cookies and teddies. I love the opening:
'Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper,
It promises light
Like the careful undressing of love.'
Click on the link above to read the rest.

Will this become a favourite collection?
I don't think that this will replace The World's Wife which I love but there are certainly poems in the collection I will return to again and again. The collection will sit on the shelves and be pulled out and browsed through many times.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammet

My first non tbr read of the year, this one was allowed as it was a bookgroup read however I fear that my journey to and from New York is going to be my downfall as I've been sent and given books that look like ideal plane ride books.

The Maltese Falcon is a detective novel from 1929. The book follows Sam Spade, who starts an investigation to discover a missing sister, which soon involves the death of his partner, him being stitched up for murder and the search for the Maltese Falcon, a prized ornament.
Spade is a typical detenctive, women falling for him all over the place and a criminal himself with many dodgy police helping his cause. I can't tell you anymore of the story without giving away too much.

I raced through the first 100 pages, the style was easy to read and there was plenty happening, then I really slowed down and stretched the next 100 pages over 4 nights. I lost interest as more and more people became involved, and there was so many people double crossing one another. Also, I disliked the way the women fawned over Spade; he was clearly sleeping with his secutary even though she knew he was also with many other women, yet she bowed to his every request. I suppose it's a product of its time yet it still bothered me.

In My Mailbox

I don't normally participate in IMM as I rarely have many books arriving to the house each week, but last week was a week of deliveries ahoy! So I thought I'd show you my new editions to the house.

First up were these beautiful ATC (artist trading cards), I participated in a group swap were we had to send a card to each member of the group, there were 13 members in total so I should be recieving more of these in the coming weeks. We each had to create a card (credit card size) which used just one colour. My favourite is the yellow butterfly design. When these have all arrived I'll create a little book of them or find some way to display them in the house.


This picture is kind of a lie. I actually recieved a box with 19 books in it, I then had to select those I wanted to read and replace them with the same number of books I removed (not too bad for the tbr stacks). This box contained only books from the 1001 bookcrossing library - books that are in the 1001 books to read before you die list. The other 11 books were those I'd read previously. These bookboxes seem expensive to post, this will cost me about £10, but then I'm getting 8 books and a book averages at £7 if brought new, so its good in its way.
I took out:
Angus Wilson, No Laughing Matter
Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
E.M Forster, A Room With a View
Jack London, The Call of the Wild and White Fang
Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors
Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man
Murial Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

With the exception of Forster these are all new to me authors so I may find a new fav.

This pile are the other books which arrived in the post.
Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's
Cees Nooteboom, Rituals
Antonio Tabucchi, Pereria Maintains
All from bookcrossings 1001 virtual bookbox (the same idea as before but the 'box' is sent via email to save postage.
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (my bookgroup read for the month - allowed as one of my exceptions to the TBR Dare)

Not pictured:
H.G Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau (a bookring - another exception to the TBR Dare)
Gray's Anatomy: Season One (I love this show so much and have been hiring the DVDs through a postal service. I'm on season 4 now and have to say my crush on Dr Sheppard just grows, but I'm also starting to find George attractive!)

Did you get anything good through the post this week?

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.