No Reading in Paris

I spent last week in Paris watching tennis at Roland Garros. In addition to most of my favorite players on the women's side I was lucky enough to have a ticket for the main stadium for one of Roger Federer's matches. :) Now I'm back home and back to work -and hoping to have more time for reading in the weeks to come!

This is my May wrap up:

Books read: 4

Books read in English: 1

Books read in Finnish: 3

Finnish books read: 0

Fiction: 4

Nonfiction: 0

Books reviewed: 1

List of books read in May:

-Dorrestein, Renate: Pojallani on seksielämä ja minä luen äidille Punahilkkaa (originally written in Dutch, not available in English as far as I know)

-Morgan, Terence: The Master of Bruges

- Shields, Carol: Ellei (Unless) (reread)

- Neville, Katherine: Kahdeksan (The Eight)

What a meagre list of books read I have for May! :( But there is also some books I started in May but am still reading that did not quite make this list. After many years I felt I wanted to read some Agatha Christie and am half way through Miss Marple's Final Cases now. I'm also reading Middlemarch by George Eliot for the first time, and I finally got into reading An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah, but have only had time to read the two first stories this far.

Well, I'll leave you today with a photo taken on a bit rainy day in Paris. And yes, that is Roger Federer sitting on the player's chair there on the right. :)

The Master of Bruges

I love making book lists for challenges, but the funny thing is that I actually seldom follow my lists. More often than not at least some of the books I read for a particular challenge have not been on my list and very often I have just kind of tumbled on them somewhere on the way. One such book is Terence Morgan's debut novel The Master of Bruges. I saw the book at work, loved the cover picture, found the cover text interesting, and decided to borrow it, and it was not until I had started reading the book, I might have even been already half way through it, before I realised that I could use this novel in a challenge. 

The Master of Bruges takes place in the latter half of the 15th-century in mainly Burgundy and in England. The master in question is painter Hans Memling. The novel, which mixes real life events & people and fiction, follows Memling's life from a painter's apprentice to a revered old master. The Duke of Burgundy takes young Memling under his wing and later Memling falls in love with the Duke's daughter Princess Marie. While an ordinary Marie could marry Hans, Burgundy cannot marry a painter and Hans Memling is to be dissapointed in his love of Marie, who marries Maximilian of Austria and rules Burgundy with him after the death of her father. However, the lives of Hans and Marie weave together quite dramatically all the way till the death of Marie.

At one point Hans, now a succesful painter of both religious pictures and portraits, gives shelter to some refugee Englishmen. Only after a while does he realise that the Dick and Ned he has been sheltering in his house are the dethroned King of England and his brother. It is the time of the War of the Roses. When the fortunes of war change King Edward IV returns to power and later Memling travels to England to finish a painting for an English customer, but he also gets invited into the court and becomes involved with what happenes to the sons of Edvard IV, the so called Princes in the Tower.

The Master of Bruges is an easy book to read. It is a thrilling historical novel, where the author has used his imagination and created a plausible story mixing facts and fiction. I enjoyed reading this book a lot. I only wish that I had used either the net or a book of Memling's art as a reference while reading. It would have been fun to take a look at the paintings mentioned in the book.

I read The Master of Bruges for the What's in the Name 3 -Challenge. The book's name has a place in it, thus this is my PLACE-book for the challenge.

One Long Overdue Review and a Wrap Up

Yes, yes, I know April is long gone :), and I am totally behind with my reviews, but unfortunately I had no time for posting these past few weeks (been happily busy with my dancing). I read one challenge book for the GLBT Challenge in April. So, here comes a short review:

The Others by Siba Al-Harez

I read this book for the GLBT Challenge and had very high hopes for it. It is a novel written by a young Saudi woman and set in the largely Shi'ite eastern province of Saudi Arabia. The novel tells the story of a young nameless woman at a girls' school who is seduced by one of her classmates. The glimpse into a culture and society so very different from my own was interesting, but the unhealthy, violent aspects of many of the relationships whether straight or gay in the novel alienated me from the story as did the odd figures of speech all over the text. The book was originally written in Arabic (it is described in the dust jacket as having been a bestseller in Arabic). I don't know Arabic, but I have an idea that it is a very poetic language full of great figures of speech. If that is true, then maybe the oddities were Arabic sayings translated all too literally into English. Anyway I found the text really difficult (as in heavy going) to read. Of course English is not my native tongue, so maybe that played a role, too. Actually it would be really interesting to hear what a native English speaker would say about the translation. All in all The Others was a dissapointment for me. I did not feel any sympathy towards the characters and I had to struggle to get to the last page.

This was my 5/12 read for the GLBT Challenge.

April Wrap Up:

Books read: 5

Books read in English:5

Books read in Finnish: 0

Finnish books read: 0

Fiction: 5

Nonfiction: 0

Books reviewed: 2

List of books I read in April:

-Al-Harez, Siba: The Others (see review above)
-Carroll, Lewis: Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
-Heyer, Georgette: The Reluctant Widow
-Laski, Marghanita: Little Boy Lost
-Shields, Carol: Happenstance

The Book List: 3 Favorite Eras to Read About

 

This week the Book List- meme asks us to name our three favorite eras to read about. My three favorite eras to read fiction about are:

1. Late 19th -early 20th century ca. 1860/1880-to WWI. This is simply my favorite historical period. I love the history, the fashions, the architecture, the optimism of the era -and I love to read novels, especially mysteries, set in this time period.
Some of my favorites mysteries set in this era include the Amelia Peabody -series by Elizabeth Peters and the Dr. Max Liebermann -series by Frank Tallis, but there are many others, too.

Sarah Waters books set in Victorian England are great, though my least favorite of them is the favorite of many, namely Fingersmith. Tipping the Velvet is my favorite.

2. Late 18th- early 19th century ca. 1790-1830. The French Revolution, the revolutionary wars, the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Russian conquest of Finland and the birth of the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland all make for interesting topics for novels. And then of course this was the time when Jane Austen wrote her books.
My favorites include anything by Austen, Désiréé by Annemarie Selinko, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and a novel by Mika Waltari that is not available in English.

3. This was a tough one! I could have chosen for example Ancient Egypt, but when it comes to Egypt I really enjoy reading non-fiction more than fiction. I was spoilt with The Egyptian by Mika Waltari when still quite young and no other novel about Ancient Egypt compares to The Egyptian! I could have chosen the Middle Ages or Ancient Rome or the 16th century with the Reformation, WWII and after, or, or... But after pondering this for a while my choice for my third favorite era to read about is...the future.
I love space opera! :) Elizabeth Moon is one of my favorite science fiction writers. I also love alternative history set in the future. My favorite alternative history novels are Sophie McDougall's Romanitas-trilogy (the third part is not yet published) where Rome never fell and Jon Courtenay Grimwood's books, especially the Pashazade-trilogy.

Visit Lost in Books for Rebecca's post on this subject and to add your own post to Linky Tools.

The past few days I have been reading my first ever Persephone book Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski and tonight I finished it. It is simply my favorite of all the books I have read this year this far! What a brilliant novel!:)

Two Little Reviews and One Little Wrap-Up

I've been in kind of a reading slump for since beginning of March thanks to one (really good) junkster that took quite a few days to read, some not so succesful attempts on novels and non-fiction that ended up not being as good and/or interesting as I had hoped for, and for being generally busy with work and dancing. During Easter I actually spent a few lovely days in Sitges, Spain (near Barcelona) where we participated in two dance competitions. It was strictly a competition trip, so I only saw Barcelona from the plane window and the lights of the city from afar on our way to Sitges & my only shopping was done at the airport on my way home! :) But it was wonderful. Everything was very well organised, we did well in the competitions, food was great, weather was nice. :)

But, back to books... My wrap-up for March is long overdue and quite short, but here comes:

Books read:6

Books read in English:3

Books read in Finnish: 3

Books by Finnish writers read: 0

Fiction:6 of which 2 GN

Nonfiction: 0

Books reviewed: 3 (the third review is below)

List of books read in March with links to my reviews:

-Gaiman, Neil: Death: The Time of Your Life

-Grenville, Kate: The Lieutenant (see the review below)

-Love Letters of Great Women ed. by Ursula Doyle 

-Marani, Diego: Viimeinen vostjakki

-Molina, Antonio Muñoz: Sefarad

-Satrapi, Marjane: Pistoja (Embroideries)

The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville was my Australia read for the Reading the World Challenge. I had wanted to read something by Grenville for a long time and had also thought to start with The Lieutenant. Now I finally did read the book.

The Lieutenant tells about a young British navy officer and astronomer Daniel Rooke, who is among those reaching Australia in 1788 with the First Fleet. In New South Wales Rooke separates himself from his comrades, setting up his observatory on a secluded hill. On his own he succeeds in what the other settlers fail: he befriends a group of aboriginals, especially a young girl named Tagaran, and tries to learn their language and to really understand them. Unfortunately there is no happy ending for his attempts for understanding and peaceful co-existance. Something happens that causes the governor to send a group of soldiers, Rooke among them, on an expedition to punish the aboriginals. Rooke manages to warn Tagaran, but after the expedition he himself must make some hard choices.

I liked Grenville's writing, and I especially liked the refreshing view of the friendship between Rooke and Tagaran. The novel is a work of fiction, but it's based on the diaries of navy officer William Dawes. If only there had been more men like Rooke/Dawes! I will definitely read more Grenville in the future.

My North America read for the Reading the World Challenge was Happenstance by Carol Shields. Shields draws an interesting picture of an American marriage in 1978 telling the story first from tha point of view of the husband then changing to the point of view of the wife. Jack and Brenda Bowman are a happily married fortysomething couple with two children who have never really been apart until Brenda, a quiltmaker, now travels to Philadelphia for an arts and crafts conference. During the following days both Jack and Brenda and their marriage face some unexpected trials and tribulations.

I had read Unless by Shields some years ago, so this was my second Shields novel. I love her eye for detail. I actually read this book for a book club meeting and what was really interesting was that all the participients that were about my age liked the book a lot, but those that were older, those who had actually been in their forties in the 1970-80 thought the book was too ordinary and too full of petty little details. It was clearly a generation thing!

The Book List: 3 Books I Should Love, But Actually Hate

I just recently found Rebecca's blog Lost in Books. She hosts a short and fun weekly meme The Book List. This is the first time I'm participating. This week's topic is: 3 books I should love, but actually hate. Well, hate is a bit strong word here, but these three I do not especially like:

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
This I really feel I should love, but just don't. I love Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, but Emily's masterpiece really leaves me cold, leaves me shivering with disgust really! I find the story rather sick. I have tried to read the novel a number of times, but have always had to put it aside as I simply could not continue. I did watch a movie version once, but that just confirmed my view that this simply is not a book for me. Still, I have every intention of reading Wuthering Heights one day. I kind of feel that it is a book I should read.

2. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Another novel loved by many, another one I thought I would love, but didn't. I found this Dracula story really boring.

3. What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt

Did not love this one. Maybe I expected too much or something different or it was just not the right time to read this book.  Before reading the book I thought I would love the fact that there were so much about art in the story, but no, this, too, was a boring read.

Visit Lost in Books for Rebecca's post on this subject or this Linky Tools page for others participating in this meme.

GLBT Mini-Challenge 3: Graphic Novels

I do not read graphic novels in any way regularly, but every now and then a GN catches my eye in the library and I end up borrowing it. Most often I enjoy my graphic reads. When I realised that the March mini-challenge over at the Challenge That Dare Not Speak Its Name aka the GLBT Challenge was graphic novels I was somewhat at a loss. I knew about Alison Bechdel's graphic novels, had even read two of them, but that was it. My knowledge of GLBT graphic novels was very limited, to say the least. And even though I had loved Bechdel's books I wanted to read something else this time. Thanks to the wonderful lists available at the GLBT Challenge page I found out that Neil Gaiman had written a GN with a lesbian couple as main characters. I have not read a lot of Gaiman, but ever since I heard him speak at the Finncon here in Helsinki in 2000 I have been interested in his work. Luckily, my library had the graphic novel in question.

Death: The Time of Your Life tells about Foxglove, a successful young singer with a girlfriend Hazel, who for the outside world is her secretary. Foxglove wants to come out and finally her manager Larry agrees to it, but then he dies. This far the story seems more or less realistic, but now it moves to more mythical and magical dimensions. Larry appears to Foxglove after his death and makes her promise that even if Hazel says something that sounds grazy, Foxglove should listen to her. Well, I think I shall leave telling the plot here. ;) I'll just say that something has happened to Foxglove and Hazel's little baby boy and that Death is a gorgeous goth girl who loves everybody!

I really liked this graphic novel. The story was gripping and the illustrations were beautiful. An added bonus was a foreword by Claire Danes, one of my favorite actresses. She, by the way, stars in Stardust, a film based on Gaiman's book with the same name. Hmm, maybe I should watch that film again... :)