Ray Bradbury is dead.

His books meant a great deal to me when I was a teenager. I've re-read them sporadically, but only blogged the once. Neil Gaiman has something nice up on his blog though, worth looking at.

Nurse Ratched.

That's who the train conductor reminds me of! Beautiful but stiff like.

What? It's a literary comment!

What did I get for my sister then?

Since I had to write about it here? Well, Jenny Lawson's book of almost course, Let's Pretend This Never Happened. Don't come here and accuse me of not being au courant with the blogging world. (But I'm really not.) Bonus: I get to read it later too.

She's not very quick, is she?

My sister, that is. Who clearly doesn't have my blog on a feed because no comment as of yet on the parcel that has arrived. Lordy lord.

The last exclamation brings me to the Sookie Stackhouse novel Living Dead in Dallas, which was part of my last library haul. This is the one where Sookie infiltrates the church belonging to The Fellowship of the Sun, also the one that finds Lafayette dead. The tv series really does a better job of that (I like Lafayette). No. 2 in the series.

Happy birthday little sister!

The other day I wrote a post on my phone...

... but the phone sorta ate it. You have to get it just right when blogging via the Blogger app, I'll have you know. It breaks down and just keeps asking you to switch accounts. Useless thing. Anyway, the post is gone, but what I wanted to tell you was that I went to a second-hand book shop and saw these super-darling paperback editions:

But at 50 kr apiece I'm not buying them, since I'm not, after all, very keen on Agatha Christie. But they were sweet. The next day I went to the Red Cross and checked out their selection and they had NOTHING. I was utterly disappointed.

I've read the new hit fantasy novel Cirkeln (it's being translated and will probably be called The Circle, right?) by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren - it's a breath of fresh air on the Swedish fantasy scene, but mostly for doing a great job on describing the kids that make up the coven of witches. The actual witchy bits are so-so really. But worth a read! Very exotic to foreigners I'm sure. Then for the book discussion club we read Sommarboken by Tove Jansson. It was okay. Didn't sing to me. Then I know I've read some other things that I've forgotten now. A shame that. Today I went to the library and I got a heap of paper-back crime fiction I hadn't read - I'll be back.

Bigamy

So I read Jane Eyre, and then The Nine Tailors because I felt like it, and I was reminded that I hadn't blogged about my new Victorian discovery - Wilkie Collins. I downloaded some ebooks because I kept reading that his novels were examples of early detective fiction; and not only that, he wrote about social injustices. Which I felt might be interesting. Oh, and bigamy: Jane Eyre - Mr Rochester wants to be a bigamist, in The Nine Tailors a woman is an unintentional bigamist and her presumed dead husband an intentional one, which is an important part of the plot (the woman is religious and doesn't want her daughters to be bastards for one), shich leads us to Collins's novel No Name from 1862, about a gentleman's daughters who discover, to their shock and surprise, that their parents were not married and that they have no right to their father's anything, including his name. Do you follow my train of thought? Bigamy?

So I'm re-reading Jane Eyre

And there is always something new to discover in good books isn't there? It hasn't been that long ago since I read Bryson's At Home,  and there he writes about how dark life was before electricity. Literally. Whole big rooms lit only by a fire,  a passage from someone's letter or journal describing a dining room dazzlingly illuminated by four candles. For some reason, now, I'm seeing this all through Jane Eyre. So many winter evenings spent in the dark indoors with only firelight. Getting dressed with only the last rays of moonlight to see the buttons by. It's so very specifically described: the school rooms at Lowood with long tables crammed full of girls of all ages, lit by a pair of candles per table. That scene where she meets Mr Rochester at the stile - it's almost dark then; my memory has been fooled by films I think into remembering it as daylight. When Jane returns to Thornfield she goes into Mrs Fairfax's room and sees Pilot by the light of only the fire. Everything so shadowy, always. She needs a candle, and rings for the servant. A candle. To walk upstairs with and change by.

The Farseer Trilogy

My colleague, who is totally into fantasy and science fiction (more Star Wars than Star Trek, sadly), said I should read Robin Hobb. So why not, I said, borrowed the first Farseer book (Assassin's Apprentice) and really liked it. Then I wanted to read the rest, and they were lost in the library. Sigh. My little sister had them though, so I made her bring them to me. Win! Exstatic review can be found here. Myself, I shall confess to becoming a little bored. It went on and on towards the end. Props for a sad, melancholy ending, but it took longer than it should have. I lost the magic. I made my sister bring me the other books set in that universe, and now I'm not feeling so inclined to read them, which makes me feel bad. I'm a selfish, bad person. I'll make it up to her with chocolate pie on Easter Monday.

When in doubt...

... re-read Jane Eyre.

Dr Thorndyke

This has been my Ebook reading project, y'all. I spent my winter commutes reading Thorndyke novels like crazy. Everything Aldiko had to give me, I believe. Let's make a list first.

Three books in three days. Or maybe it was closer to five. And other stuff.

I am, at a guess, thirty books or so behind. It's so much it isn't even funny. I should just write the title and the author in a post, and leave it at that, instead of saving it and thinking I'll catch up - how can I? I also have a few on the draft list actually, so maybe it's more like forty. I honestly find this very depressing. I have no internet persona at all these days, apart from a Facebook account. And let's face it (hardehar), no internet persona is more boring than the Facebook persona. It's not cool at all.

My husband told me once that I moaned too much on my blog about how bad it was and how I never had time to blog. Well let's face that too - he's right, yet the heart must say what the heart is full of to paraphrase a Swedish saying. Where the bloody hell else am I to give out about this? I've been really grumpy these past few days and snapped today with Maxima, telling her how I never got any computer time at home and she lost patience with me and said I should stop being such a martyr and just ask instead. But I don't want to have to ask. Feels like I have to ask to do everything, I can't just do stuff. Need to sort this out.

Right, Livejournal part over. Good Friday today. Mr Bani is watching the Scorsese film, The Last Temptation of  Christ. Minima is sitting in the armchair next to him with headphones in her ears. Watching but not listening, I suppose. I have not given up the internet for Good Friday. I can't find the post where I did.

The last three books I read where three paperbacks I picked up in Myrornas, where you can still on occasion find second-hand paperbacks at a decent price (which means no more than ten crowns, thankyouverymuch. Fecking Stadsmissionen think they can get away with thirty. I'm all for charity, but I'm not buying Lee Child for more than ten crowns.) So one of them was a Lee Child, one was a Charlaine Harris, and one - oh joy! was an Ellis Peters.

I want to read some of these alright

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/07/lloyd-shepherd-top-10-weird-histories

The Mortal Engines series

Let's save some time and assume I'll read all of these eventually, although now I've only read the first two. I got Maxima the first one for Christmas and she liked it so much she used her Christmas gift vouchers to buy the next two. I'd have read the third except she's plodding through them slowly herself. In an hilarious aside, we learnt yesterday that Minima has struggled through book one when she was in Tunisia last summer - you could've knocked us over with something quite light when she told us. She's normally so anti-fantasy and science-fiction. But she had nothing else to read when her friend had dropped off for the night, so she succumbed. And hated it.

I'm not completely sold either. It reminds me of a bunch of other stuff, ideas slightly cobbled together, and it lacks a little bit of that character depth you need in books of this sort, otherwise it's just cool imagery. Cool here means, like, steampunk. Which is so wow. Second book gets better though. Bonus points for author not being afraid to kill characters. And of course for concept, which is municipal darwinism in extremis and literally so.

It's being filmed, apparently - what isn't, these days? It'll probably end up loud and annoying. 

2 x Diana Wynne Jones

Borrowed two children's books to read during my Christmas holidays - The Magicians of Caprona and Eight Days of Luke. Alright. The former could make a great film in the right hands. It would have to be in Italian, and it would be so much fun with a good Italian fantasy film for kids wouldn't it? Make a change from the anglocentricity of the genre. The latter was amusing with its take on Norse mythology. I liked the open, slightly ambiguous ending.

End of the world

What better way to start 2012, after such a long hiatus, than with the myth of Cthulhu? Apparently (I read this somewhere) the alleged Armageddon of this year as "foretold" by the ancient Mayans has been linked by some to the entirely fictional Cthulhu monster. Who'd have thunk.

So, The Call of Cthulhu by Howard Phillips Lovecraft then. I'd never read this before, and I must say that I expected more given how influential the concept became in popular culture. The short story is written in that sort of documentary fashion of somebody piecing together notes and snippets of information. I think it workable in say Dracula, but it's not very scary here. Didn't grab me, didn't scare me. A little dull, in fact. Also, don't really see why the freed Cthulhu should so easily be re-imprisoned by a mere earthquake. Hrmpf.

Squeeee!

Very excited about new Hunger Games trailer! Although it looks a bit average really. Not like it's going to be Kubrick taking on The Shining or anything. But I'm so going to see it. Win win win.

Terry Pratchett: Pyramids

I'd written a post about this on my phone - pics and everything - but the Blogger app for Android is very unstable and completely melted down when I tried to publish. I had to forcibly restart and do all kinds of things to even erase the faulty post. Piece of rubbish.

So I'm just going to note that I read this and well it's a Pratchett and I enjoyed it. This is the one where the heir to the Faraonic throne is educated as an assassin before having to return to be king. Pyramids - cosmic energy - time - kaboom. There.

Patti Smith: Just Kids

I'm writing on my way from work to my book club, ergo am tapping away on the phone, ergo no deep thoughts today. Sadly not even a picture of the book in question on my lap; the rental has been returned to the library. ("Rental"  because it was overdue and I'll have to pay for my forgetfulness. Oops.)  Couldn't get hold of it in English, so read the translation - btw, it's a bit annoying when they don't translate the title, because if you're not up to speed on your library codes you can't tell which search result is the English one and which is the Swedish one. Translation ok, possibly brought out certain repetitions and mannerisms on Smith's writing for the worse. Hard to be sure without reading both obviously. 

The book is about Patti Smith's relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, how they met in the late 60s and how their careers got started in the following decade. Everyone seems to love this book, I've heard no-one gripe about it yet. Me - not sure. A lot of names in it I don't know, especially towards the end. The first half is the best and feels genuine, moving and heart-warming. I feel a great deal of sympathy for these kids and their dreams. I lose interest as the book progresses though. Despite professing to be The Story, honest and true, she seems to be writing more about surfaces. A lot of talk about how artists are special and not like other people - without really explaining the art to me. A lot of talk about how they're all about their inner lives, yet all the time telling me what they're wearing. It starts to feel - horror of horrors - pretentious. And I really don't think she is.

Be interesting to hear the others.

Charlie Higson: The Fear

Not read so much as skimmed. Can't quite stand all the dying, but I have to know how it all turns out. He ties up some loose ends in this one, bringing different characters together (and then killing them off). "St George's" zombie army is on the march now and becoming a real threat, just as megalomaniac David plants spies to destroy the nerds at the Museum of Natural History from within. It's still bloody terrifying, thank you very much Mr Higson. I think I even dreamt about it tonight.