Thanks to Kelly for sending this link to Slate, where there's a podcast discussion of our April book Room by Emma Donoghue.
Or you can play it on the site. - the link again!
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Links for the next meeting - One Day by David Nicholls
The site for the book:
(Including Emma's mix tape for Dexter, for anyone who has Spotify)
A reader's guide from the American website
"3. In his unsent letter Dexter writes, “I think you’re scared of being happy. . . . that you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it’s easier. . . .”[p. 42]. How do Dexter’s insights into Emma compare to her own? Is he more perceptive about her than he is about himself? Does Emma underestimate her talents and potential? Despite its carefree tone, does Dexter’s letter betray certain doubts or misgivings about himself?"
A review from The Guardian, at the time of publication:
"But the most noticeable feature of these protagonists and their friendship is their extraordinarily high laughs-per-page ratio. Nicholls's first novel, Starter for Ten, was gagtastic and, in a couple of its setpieces, successfully invited comparison with Lucky Jim. His second, The Understudy, was very, very funny. But One Day is funnier still: the headmaster's beard that becomes a balaclava, Dexter's bubbly co-presenter who talks in capitals and who "would start a letter of condolence with the word 'Wahey!'", Ian's "tracky botts", Ian's ring-in-the-calamari proposal, Ian's relentless patter - indeed, just about every sentence involving Ian."
A 5 Star review on Amazon:
"One of the best novels I`ve ever read. The characters are likeable and you can`t help yourself willing them to get together. The concept is fantastic; You never really know what happens immediately after the end of each chapter, as the next one takes place exactly one year later. I`m not entirely sure whether this should be classed as a romantic comedy; It`s a novel about relationships that should appeal to both men and women. Sure, Emma Mayhew comes out with a lot of amusing one-liners, but that`s not really what One Day is about. There`s no sloppy romanticism here either, no sex scenes described in elaborate euphemisms. This book is about realistic characters feeling the sort of emotions we have all felt. All human life is here in this novel and it`s utterly compelling.
I`m not usually one to get emotional over books and films, but I found myself close to tears at some points in One Day. One page in particular, I had to go back and re-read several times, it affected me so much."
A 1 Star review on Amazon
"I'm flabbergasted by the glowing reviews - the book is not that good. The main strength of the book is its stucture - truly innovative whereby the characters are revisited on the same date every year. However, that's the most interesting/exciting thing about the book. The characters themselves are two-dimensional bores. Emma is snippy and wet, while Dexter is a caricature of arrogance and privilege. And they don't even have very exciting lives to sustain any reader interest. My main objection to the book is the idleness of the writer. Once he had the structure in place, he appeared to just spew out lazy scenes and put very little effort into developing tension or character. At times, the writing was very sloppy and I nearly threw the book across the room at several things that a good editor should have spotted: eg, who wears a moleskin suit in July? Why on July 15 would Dexter be catching up on the latest news from Wimbledon, when the tournament usually ends at least a week earlier? And why the constant references to Mayhem plc - if the company had been a plc (ie a listed company), then Dexter would have been considerably richer and certainly wouldn't have been able to just wind up the company on a whim without a nasty backlash from shareholders (which is what a plc has). No doubt the author is a fine scriptwriter, but the limits of his craft show time and again on the printed page. I'm sure the story will make an amusing mini-series/film, but I suspect the main enjoyment will be derived from the visuals of the transformation from late 80s to present day rather than any engagement in the story."
& finally - the cast for the film, coming out later this year.
Anne Hathaway as Emma? Jim Sturgess as Dexter? Rafe Spall as Ian?
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Copycat Covers
The covers of books say so much (for example the 'Dragon Tattoo' books, or 'One Day', which we're reading this month, but more and more books seem to be using similar pictures and themes on the covers - for example these two, which use the same stock photo, but cropped and coloured differently:
You can see a bigger collection of similar examples here, and here is link to other examples where the picture is different, but the theme is very similar (a spade in the ground, a chair in an empty room). Just how little time to publishers take over the cover design,,?
Monday, 24 January 2011
Links for the next meeting - Oz, Gulliver & Watership Down
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Wikipedia
Influences:
"Another influence lay in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books. Although Baum found their plots incoherent, he identified their source of popularity as Alice herself, a child with whom the child readers could identify; this influenced his choice of a protagonist.[9] Baum was also influenced by Carroll's belief that children's books should have many pictures and be pleasurable reads. Carroll rejected the Victorian-era ideology that children's books should be saturated with morals, instead believing that children should be allowed to be children. Building on Carroll's style of numerous images accompanying the text, Baum amalgamated the conventional features of a fairy tale (witches and wizards) with the well-known things in his readers' lives (scarecrows and cornfields)."
Plus - quite a strange site for everything Oz
Gulliver's Travels in Wikipedia
Major themes:
"Published seven years after Daniel Defoe's wildly successful Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels may be read as a systematic rebuttal of Defoe's optimistic account of human capability. In The Unthinkable Swift: The Spontaneous Philosophy of a Church of England Man Warren Montag argues that Swift was concerned to refute the notion that the individual precedes society, as Defoe's novel seems to suggest. Swift regarded such thought as a dangerous endorsement of Thomas Hobbes' radical political philosophy and for this reason Gulliver repeatedly encounters established societies rather than desolate islands. The captain who invites Gulliver to serve as a surgeon aboard his ship on the disastrous third voyage is named Robinson.
Possibly one of the reasons for the book's classic status is that it can be seen as many things to many different people. Broadly, the book has three themes:
- a satirical view of the state of European government, and of petty differences between religions.
- an inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or whether they become corrupted.
- a restatement of the older "ancients versus moderns" controversy previously addressed by Swift in The Battle of the Books."
Watership Down in Wikipedia
Comparisons with Greek mythology
"The book explores the themes of exile, survival, heroism, political responsibility, and the "making of a hero and a community".[13] Joan Bridgman's analysis of Adams's works in The Contemporary Review identifies the community and hero motifs: "[T]he hero's journey into a realm of terrors to bring back some boon to save himself and his people" is a powerful element in Adams's tale. This theme derives from the author's exposure to the works of mythologist Joseph Campbell, especially his study of comparative mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), and in particular, Campbell's "monomyth" theory, also based on Carl Jung's view of the unconscious mind, that "all the stories in the world are really one story.".
The concept of the hero has invited comparisons between Watership Down's characters and those in Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid. Hazel's courage, Bigwig's strength, Blackberry's ingenuity and craftiness, and Dandelion's and Bluebell's poetry and storytelling all have parallels in the epic poem Odyssey. Kenneth Kitchell declared, "Hazel stands in the tradition of Odysseus, Aeneas, and others". Tolkien scholar John Rateliff calls Adams's novel an Aeneid "what-if" book: what if the seer Cassandra (Fiver) had been believed and she and a company had fled Troy (Sandleford Warren) before its destruction? What if Hazel and his companions, like Aeneas, encounter a seductive home at Cowslip's Warren (Land of the Lotus Eaters)? Rateliff goes on to compare the rabbits' battle with Woundwort's Efrafans to Aeneas's fight with Turnus's Latins. "By basing his story on one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Adams taps into a very old myth: the flight from disaster, the heroic refugee in search of a new home, a story that was already over a thousand years old when Vergil told it in 19 BC.""
A very old Watership Down site, explaining the significance of the different warrens:
E.g. Sandleford:
"The religion of this warren was the Lapine religion. According to the Lapine religion, Lord Frith, the Sun God, created the Earth and all the stars from his droppings. El-ahrairah was the prince of rabbits. The stories of El-ahrairah teach the rabbits why certain things in the world are the way they are, such as why rabbits have strong hind legs and cottony tail"
An interview with Roald Dahl
Found on the net - an interview with Roald Dahl from 1988, when RD was 71.
Extract:
"HOW DO YOU GET THE IDEAS FOR YOUR STORIES?
It starts always with a tiny little seed of an idea, a little germ, and that even doesn’t come very easily. You can be mooching around for a year or so before you get a good one. When I do get a good one, mind you, I quickly write it down so that I won’t forget it, because it disappears otherwise rather like a dream. But when I get it, I don’t dash up here and start to write it. I’m very careful. I walk around it and look at it and sniff it and then see if I think it will go. Because once you start, you’re embarked on a year’s work and so it’s a big decision."
Monday, 10 January 2011
Friday, 3 December 2010
World Book Night book give-away
This is a very strange (but completely real) promotion.
As part of World Book Night on 5th March next year, British publishers are providing books for people to give away.
They've produced a list of 25 titles, ranging from poetry to fiction. Anyone can apply to receive a package of 48 copies of 1 title, and then give them away.
The titles include 6 of our previous reads - All Quiet On The Western Front, Beloved, Cloud Atlas, Life of Pi, Stuart - A Life Backwards, and Curious Case of the Dog in the Night Time, and one of our futures - One Day.
You need to fill in the application and say why you want the books, and who you'd give them to.
20,000 people will get to give away 48 books each.
See the books here
Apply to be a giver here
More background in this article in the Guardian
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