Scarlet Reads

Last Weeks Book Buys & Borrows

It was a poor week last week, just 4 books bought and only 4 books from the library! This week is shaping up to be much better already :D

The bottom two are obviously for my "Stuff Not Fluff" challenge!

Library books were -

The Ghost's Child - Sonya Hartnett

Fall On Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald

The Other Hand - Chris Cleave

The Owl Killers - Karen Maitland

Eyes Like Stars - Lisa Mantchev

Eyes Like Stars - Lisa Mantchev 5/5

Blurb from FF -

All her world's a stage.

Bertie Shakespeare Smith is not an actress, yet she lives in a theatre. She's not an orphan, but she has no parents. She knows every part, but she has no lines of her own. That is, until now.

Enter Stage Right

NATE. Dashing pirate. Will do anything to protect Bertie.

COBWEB, MOTH, MUSTARD SEED, and PEASEBLOSSOM. Four tiny and incredibly annoying fairies. BERTIE'S sidekicks.

Ariel. Seductive air spirit and Bertie's weakness. The symbol of impending doom.

Bertie. Our heroine.

Welcome to the Theatre Illuminata, where the actors of every play ever written can be found behind the curtain. They were born to play their parts, and are bound to the Theatre by The Book - an ancient and magical tome of scripts. Bertie is not one of them, but they are her family - and she is about to lose them all and the only home she has ever known.

Not much to say except I love this! It's an original idea with some quirky plotlines - I love the occasional passage written as a script rather than prose. The writing sometimes seems a bit simplistic but it is YA. Bertie is a fantastic character, even down to her blue hair and is the star of the show so to speak. We start out with Bertie narrowly averting yet another disaster and being asked to leave the theatre where she has spent her entire life. In order for her to stay she needs to come up with something that proves she is vital to the existence of the theatre. Throw in two love interests - Nate the pirate and Ariel the tempremental element - mayhem & destruction with the fairies, my favourite characters throughout the book, some very bad ideas, Mrs Edith the wardrobe mistress and a very bad situation involving The Book (basically the essence of the theatre) and you have a great story. I've already pre-ordered the next book, Perchance To Dream, which comes out in May

New challenge

Having been rumbled in my currently fluffy reading habits some of my fellow readers over at BCF have taken it upon themselves to find me some more challenging reads. They've started off great, the first 3 books in my Stuff Not Fluff Challenge are -

Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

Reading Lolita In Tehran - Azar Nafisi

Look for more titles coming soon!

Comfort Food - Kate Jacobs

Comfort Food - Kate Jacobs 2/5

Blurb from Fantastic Fiction

"Shortly before turning the big 5-0, boisterous party planner and Cooking with Gusto! personality Augusta 'Gus' Simpson finds herself planning a birthday party she'd rather not - her own. She's getting tired of being the hostess, the mother hen, the woman who has to plan her own birthday party. What she needs is time on her own with enough distance to give her loved ones the ingredients to put together successful lives without her.

Assisted by a handsome up-and-coming chef, Oliver, Gus invites a select group to take an on-air cooking class. But instead of just preaching to the foodie masses, she will teach regular people how to make rich, sensuous meals - real people making real food. Gus decides to bring a vibrant cast of friends and family on the program: Sabrina, her fickle daughter; Troy, Sabrina's ex-boyfriend; Hannah, Gus's timid neighbor; and Carmen, Gus's pompous and beautiful competitor at the Cooking Channel. And when she begins to have more than collegial feelings for her sous-chef, Gus realizes that she might be able to rejuvenate not just her professional life, but her personal life as well. . . ."

This was a birthday present from someone who really should know what sort of books I like to read by now but as I didn't want to seem ungrateful I started (and finished) this today.

I've previously read The Friday Night Knitting Club by Jacobs which I thought was okay but I'm thinking I won't be rushing out to get any of her other books. I really struggled to enjoy this book, I didn't really "get" any of the characters and it all just seemed a bit too convenient - especially the ending where everything got tied up with a neat, pretty bow. It's a nice, light read but not my cup of tea and all too predictable in parts.

Birthday Spends

I was lucky enough to get a few gift certificates from Amazon for my birthday and i've spent the last 6 hours trying to decide what to get! In the end I went with the following titles -

Meridian - Amber Kizer

Midnight Never Come - Marie Brennan

In Ashes Lie - Marie Brennan

The Rapture - Liz Jansen

Eyes Like Stars - Lisa Mantchev

Nightfall - Stephen Leather

The Ladies Of Grace Adieu & Other Stories - Susanna Clarke

They've all been on my wish-list for a while and I went with pot luck, picking one title from the first 7 pages of said wish-list! I'm a bit hesitant about the Liz Jensen book now as it's going to be featured on the TV Book Club on More4 and I'm afraid not even the divine presence of Nathaniel Parker can make that show even half decent for me. I've sat through 2 shows now and quite frankly, I'm not sure why half the so-called presenters are actually there.

More Book Buys

It's a sickness I tell you! I am definitely addicted to books and I'm rapidly running out of room for any more

I got a nice big box this morning containing -

The Castle Omnibus by Steph Swainston
Powers by Ursula le Guin
Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Fallen by Lauren Kate
Ruined by Paula Morris
Fantasy In Death by J D Robb
Shades Of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Happy, happy happy!!! And very grateful for Christmas gift certificates

The Magicians - Lev Grossman

The Magicians - Lev Grossman 4/5

Blurb from Fantastic Fiction -

Quentin Coldwater's life is changed forever by an apparently chance encounter: when he turns up for his entrance interview to Princeton he finds his interviewer dead - but a strange envelope bearing Quentin's name leads him down a very different path to any he'd ever imagined. The envelope, and the mysterious manuscript it contains, leads to a secret world of obsession and privilege, a world of freedom and power and, for a while, it's a world that seems to answer all Quentin's desires. But the idyll cannot last - and when it's finally shattered, Quentin is drawn into something darker and far more dangerous than anything he could ever have expected...

I quite enjoyed this one, not the best written book in the world but it was a little bit different to all the other adult Potter-esque books available out there!

One minute Quentin - depressed, obsessed with his best friends girlfriend and the Fillory books by Christopher Plover - is on his way to an interview for Princeton and the next he's at Brakebills College of Magical Pedagogy wondering what on earth he's going to do in the real world after graduation. The first 2 parts of the book are fantastic, following his progress through college and the trials they all go through. I loved the special fourth year project where they all had to fly to Antarctica and the surly professor waiting for them at the other end (and yes, you find out why he's like that) It's once Quentin and his friends Eliot, Alice Janet, Josh and Penny are in the real world that things seem to start going spectacularly wrong and also where the book goes off the rails a bit. The group end up in Fillory on a quest but this section seemed rushed and there was sometimes too much detail crammed into certain sections. The ending was quite obvious really but still left things complete.

Thumbs up for The Magicians, as long as you're not expecting anything highbrow and a big improvement on his last book

Nightlife by Rob Thurman

Nightlife - Rob Thurman 4/5

Blurb from Fantastic Fiction

In New York, there's a troll under the Brooklyn Bridge, a boggle in Central Park, and a beautiful vampire in a penthouse on the Upper East Side. Of course, most humans are oblivious to this, but Cal Leandros is only half-human. His father's dark lineage is the stuff of nightmares - and he and his entire otherworldly race are after Cal.

He and his half-brother Niko have managed to stay a step ahead for three years, but now Cal's dad has found them again. And Cal is about to learn why they want him, why they've always wanted him...

This has been on my wishlist for a while so I'm glad that it didn't turn out to be a disappointment. Mention boggles, trolls & vampires all in one book and I'm usually sold so this book was a bit of a hidden gem. It started off a bit slow and I almost put it down for something else however I didn't, which turned out to be a good decision. Lots of fairly original ideas which can be hard to achieve these days and one of the starring characters is Robin Goodfellow. What's not to like about this book? Actually all the characters were likeable in good & bad ways and I enjoyed how they developed over the course of the book. Can't really say much more without giving major spoilers as to what Cal's big secret is!

Despite being on a book diet I've bought books 2, 3 & 4 and pre-ordered no. 5 - oops I've also ordered his standalone (so far) novel, Trick Of The Light

Book Buys In January 2010

The Castle Omnibus - Steph Swainston
Moonshine - Rob Thurman
Madhouse - Rob Thurman
Deathwish - Rob Thurman
Trick Of The Light - Rob Thurman

Rory Book Challenge M - Y

Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Marathon Man by William Goldman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken's Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It's Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
Myra Waldo's Travel and Motoring Guide to Europe, 1978 by Myra Waldo
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Night by Elie Wiesel
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Of Mice & Men - John Steinbeck
Old School by Tobias Wolff
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by Shakespeare
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
The Outsiders - S E Hinton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind
Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
Property by Valerie Martin
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento by James Mckean
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth - Stephen King
Robert's Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Holiday by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room With A view - E M Forster
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
The Rough Guide to Europe, 2003 Edition
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller by Henry James
The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Hotels of Europe
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
Sense & Sensibility - Jane Austen
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
Sexus by Henry Miller
The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruis Zafon
Shane by Jack Shaefer
The Shining - Stephen King
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Songbook by Nick Hornby
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Story Of My Life - Helen Keller
A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams
Stuart Little by E. B. White
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Unless - Carol Shields
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney's Bambi by Felix Salten
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
The Wizard Of Oz - L Frank Baum
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion