Topic: What are you reading?

[lorna]

Cotwoldlass.My boss (just before we both retired) gave me 15 books titled The Greatest Marpeices of Russian Literature. 8 of the books are by Dostoevsky. I don't know if this is a complete set Would be interesting to find out. Maybe I will Google.

[Merry Tiller]

What am I reading?
In order of preference

1. Thud a novel by Terry Pratchett

2. Farm & Horticultural Equipment Collector magazine

3. Kitchen Garden magazine

4. The Daily Express

5. This message board

[TULIP-23]

[1]  Kitchen Garden   November Issue ;D

[2]  Kitchen Garden  in Waiting January Issue ;D

[3]  Articles Downloaded from the Net [Subject]
       Pumpkins and Squashes   8)

[chriszog]

Just started a book I got for Christmas.
"Close to the Veg" by Michael Rand. A book of Allotment tales.
It looks and has started quite well.
Regards
Chris

[katynewbie]

Am reading Karin Slaughter "Indelible"
Next it will be Lynn Truss "Talk to the hand"
After that Richard Craze "Out of your townie mind" this to convince myself that a smallholding will be a Bad Idea!!

Also have every seed catalogue available next to my bed to encourage dreams of the up and coming season!!

[Juliet]

Defining books? - goodness, how long have you got?!  My favourite book when I was very small was A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett  :-[ - then at 7 I read Watership Down & became addicted - read it about 20 times in the following 10 years.  At about the same age I read Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy - I was probably too young for them but they made a big impression & I have loved fantasy novels ever since.  Read The Lord of the Rings when I was 11 and Tolkein is still one of my favourite authors.  I also read The Bible when I was 15, & it's probably overtaken Watership Down as most read book now, though I'm no longer counting!  In my late teens I did French lit. A-Level & thought Annouilh, Gide, & Sartre were wonderful - then did a degree in English & European Thought & Literature & discovered Pascal, Rousseau, Voltaire, Stendhal, Alain-Fournier ... and even a few non-French authors like Beckett, Ibsen, & TS Elliot.

I have trouble reading my more literary books now because of concentration problems  :'( - also tend to re-read old favourites more than I read books which are new to me for the same reason.  The ones I read over & again include lots of fantasy - as well as Tolkein & Le Guin, there are Jasper Fforde's wonderfully funny Thursday Next novels  :D, Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Douglas Adams - my favourite is The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - and JK Rowling's Harry Potter books (yes, do read them, Heldi, they are wonderful - though Stephen Fry reads them aloud brilliantly too - audio version not cheating, but much more expensive!  The films miss out a lot of the best bits).  Non-fantasy favourites include Catherine Fox's Angels and Men (& its sequels), the Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy Sayers, anything by Caryl Brahms & SJ Simon but especially No Bed for Bacon (the book Shakespeare In Love is plagiarised from), and Georgette Heyer's regency novels for some mindless escapism.

R reads a lot more than I do now & unlike Cotswold Lass we don't have a brilliant library, and have to think about second mortgages to restrain ourselves a bit every time we visit a second hand bookshop  ::)

[Heldi]

Shakespeare! Juliet I love A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelth Night.

I absolutely think Stephen Fry is fab and I knew he did the Harry Potter audios. I'm tottering on the edge of buying one. I don't even know which is the first novel.

I was in a little book shop today..you go through it to get to the post office. I kept my eyes front and didn't look...then I went up the street and spent £125 on a little Dutch dresser that I fell in love with on the spot. Oops.  :o  :)  It does have shelves book lovers!

[Delilah]

I always have quite a few books on the go :

- Love Lives, Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees ( thats my bit of escapism) :)

- Herbs and Healing Plants, Dieter Podlech

- The Book of Chakra Healing, Liz Simpson

- Jamies Italy

- Tips from the Old Gardeners, Duncan Crosbie

- Mystical and Sacred Sites, John and Ann Spencer

- Kitchen Garden magazine Ofcourse

Have got a copy of Lovely Bones, not read it yet, think I'm plucking up the courage coz I'm not sure what I'll make of it! :-\

[Robert_Brenchley]

Defining books? Tolkien, the Earthsea series, Dune, Moby Dick, H P Lovecraft. Not the Bible, that's a study not a read.

[Juliet]

Shakespeare! Juliet I love A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelth Night.

I absolutely think Stephen Fry is fab and I knew he did the Harry Potter audios. I'm tottering on the edge of buying one. I don't even know which is the first novel.

I was in a little book shop today..you go through it to get to the post office. I kept my eyes front and didn't look...then I went up the street and spent £125 on a little Dutch dresser that I fell in love with on the spot. Oops.  :o  :)  It does have shelves book lovers!

Shakespeare was one of the long list of authors I left out on the grounds that my post was getting too long.  I've been in Midsummer Night's Dream twice, but Hamlet is my favourite - have read it so many times & seen so many different versions & read so many books about it I could probably do it on Mastermind (except for the whole 2 minutes under pressure thing which would mean my mind went completely blank & I forgot my own name).

The first Harry Potter is The Philosopher's Stone - do make sure you read/listen to them in the right order.  Maybe you could find the audio tapes in the library (& save some of the money you spent on the dresser!)?  We have managed to buy most of the books second hand from library sales (about the only thing our village library is good for!).

Have most of our books packed into boxes in the garage at the moment as we thought the sheer volume of them might put off house hunters who wanted to actually see the walls - will have to buy some more bookcases when we've moved  ::).

[Hot_Potato]

What a question......the easy answer is

Reading now - bedtime only -

'Driving Over Lemons' - An Optimist in Andalucia' by Chris Stewart - retired (at 17) drummer of Genesis to become & sheep shearer & travel writer.

thumbing thru at night also G.Y.O. mag & K.G.mag

Reading during the day

St. Kilda Portraits by David Quine
and I regularly 'thumb thru' 'The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden - just to compare the weather mainly but always get 'sidetracked' into reading more! - it's so fascinating and I love the nostalgia

as a child, also enjoyed Edith Blyton (met her once at The Ideal Home Exhibition and acquired her autograph in one of her books) not got it now tho :'(

can remember reading 'Water Babies' too and crying also the 'What Katy Did' books.

Have especially loved reading Derek Tangkye and his wonderful books about the flower farm he and his wife used to care for on the Cornish Coast - have read all of his.

Enjoyed & was 'moved' by Maisie Moscow's 'Out of the Ashes' series.

Love books by Dick Francis, Maeve Binchy and enjoyed 'Chocolat' by Joanne Harris....have 'Five Quarters of the Orange' by the same author waiting to be read!!

Others recently read - 'The Christmas Train' by David Baldacci - just loved it - would sooo like to do that journey!!
'Games' by Frances Edmonds

also recently enjoyed but listened to on audio tape:
Hidden Talents by Erica James
Restoring Grace by Katie Fforde
Paper Money by Ken Follet
The Tea House on Mulberry St. by Sharon Owens and many, many others....I 'listen' to books while preparing meals, making chutneys and ironing - it's like listening to a play.

sorry the list is so long - got carried away ::)

H.P.

[flowerlady]

'Driving Over Lemons' - An Optimist in Andalucia' by Chris Stewart - retired (at 17) drummer of Genesis to become & sheep shearer & travel writer.

Great book that.  HP did you know there was a sequel?

My bedtime book at the moment just starting is "The Luberon Garden" by Alex Dingwall-Main - adventures of a Provencal gardener.

[Merry Tiller]

Shakespeare = Tudor propagandist IMHO

[Yellow Petals]

First book that I ever read was Treasure Island

First book I ever read - The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier.  Bought it and re-read it last year and still a great read.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Shakespeare was always a propagandist for whoever was in power. But I always did like Macbeth.

[Obelixx]

HI Heldi & everyone,

Just been catching up on the books thread having been otherwise engaged for a few weeks.   I can thoroughly recommend the Harry Potter books and CD versions.  We have them all.  OH and I have read the lot and Possum - for whom English is a second language - has read one and started on the second but got diverted by Pippi Longstocking.  She likes all the HP films and we're off to see the latest on Saturday having located the last cinema showing the original version and not dubbed in French.

We always have the CDs in the car for long journeys such as UK visits and skiing and beach hols.  They pass the time brilliantly with everyone engrossed and no-one fretting about being bored and "are we nearly there?".

The first one (for Heldi) is the Philosopher's Stone, then Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix and then Half Blood Prince.    They're a good yarn on many levels and suit all ages and have many classical references.   For more philosophical stuff with a good yarn though, I would recommend Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy starting with the Northern Lights.

As for me, I read voraciously as a child - all the usual suspects - loved things like Swallows and Amazons but never could bear Dickens and Brontes but still love Jane Austen - such dry wit and excellent character drawing.   It's not so easy to get books here as I have to trawl the annual charity sale - usually thrillers which are fine or soppy romances which I avoid.    There are a couple of English language bookshops in Brussels but then you have to pay VAT and exchange rate premiums on new ones.   

Currently reading the last three issue of Gardener's world and the Garden and am about to start the new PD James which I bought on a recent lightening visit to the UK.

[robkb]

...am about to start the new PD James which I bought on a recent lightening visit to the UK.

Really excellent book, IMHO! And so is "End In Tears" by Ruth Rendell if you can get hold of it.

Cheers,
Rob ;)

[Larkspur]

Always reading several books at once. Currently on the go Urban Gardener by Elspeth Thompson, a collection of articles from her newspaper column; In the Moon of Red Ponies by James Lee Burke an auther I would recommend to anyone who hasn't come accross him. I don't read many biogaphies but an currently deeply into Man on the Run by Manuela Ranchi, a biog. of Marco Pantani, a racing cyclist.
Someone mentioned favourite authers earlier but I have too many to list though in the several times mentioned fantasy genre they would include Guy Gavriel Kay and Stephen Donaldson's Illearth series in addition to Tolkien.

[kentishchloe]

As a child i loved The Borrowers, Swallow & Amazons, Enid Blyton and Peter & Wendy (Finding Neverland is current fave film)

Before Christmas I read Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori trilogy - outstanding.

Am currently reading: Eragon - Christopher Paolini
                                  Pompeii - Robert Harris
                                  Jamie's Italy
                                  Eyewitness guide to Paris

Hot_Potato - I read Driving over Lemons and the sequel Parrot in a Pepper Tree every year on holiday - i love them.

[Heldi]

Sold !!  It was the "Are we there yet? " that did it!

I once observed a mum reading Harry Potter in an Ikea restaurant whilst her two kids  perused the catalogue.  :)