World Book Night 2012

The 25 books that have been picked at the 2012 World Book Night titles were announced today and I am trying to decide if I will attempt to read all 25 by the time 23rd April rolls round.


The list this year reads:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Player of Games by Iain M Banks
Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Take by Martina Cole
Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell
Someone Like You by Roald Dahl
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Room by Emma Donoghue
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Misery by Stephen King
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Let the Right One In by John Ajvde Lindqvist
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
The Damned Utd by David Peace
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak

Reading them all by April would be easier - there is a lot more time for the challenge this year, and I've already read 10 of the titles...

but...

the list doesn't excite me at all this year. Perhaps making myself read them would be good but if I read these will I miss better, newer books?

I think I'll sleep on it for a while, after all there 6 months until WBN 2012...

A bit quiet

I almost read myself to a standstill during February and March and so consequently don't have a lot of books to blog about at the moment.

In addition to this I was reading a lot of more academic books about All Quiet on the Western Front in preparation for the April meeting of the International Fiction group. It was a great meeting and I discovered that some of my reactions to All Quiet when I read it for World Book Night might have been because when I read the book before it was actually a different translation...
I'd purposely saved a few copies of my WBN version of the book to give to group members and they went down really well. The main consensus of the meeting was that you can't call the book 'good' per se but it really is one that everybody should read.

The main reason for not having a lot to write about is that I am reading in preparation for this year's Writer's Centre Norwich Summer Read campaign. The WCN kindly let me have the six books in advance and I am reading them ready to be able to talk/blog about them as soon as the promotion starts on May 3rd. Details for now can be found here but there is so much more to announce. 3 whole months dedicated to good books and authors - I can't wait.

And I'm even reading another poetry book!

Last World Book Night post

Well I've had over a week now to think about all the books I've read during my (insane?) challenge.

I'm not sure what conclusions that I have come to, and my thoughts on the whole WBN project are muddled - I think Sam, and the people who have commented on his blog post sum it up best so head over there for thoughts on that.

My thoughts on my challenge are clearer. I can't say I've loved every moment of the time I've spent reading, I've been repeatedly challenged, disappointed and amazed. My horizons are far wider now than they were back in December, and to my amazement (and family disgust) I've discovered that there is some poetry out there that I like.

I always thought I was a broadminded reader but in forcing myself to read so many varied books I've discovered that while I am broadminded about subject matter when it comes to genre I am a bit of a snob. I do read widely but in a limited manner!

The 25 books chosen were all varied, I think on reflection I am a little disappointed that more fantasy and science fiction didn't make the list but there were a nice mixture of fiction/non fiction and popular/literary titles.

1. Half of a Yellow Sun
2. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
3. A Life Like Other People's
4. All Quiet on the Western Front
5. Stuart: A Life Backwards
6. Dissolution
7. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
8. Agent Zigzag
9. Toast
10. Rachel's Holiday
11. The World's Wife
12. Case Histories
13. Life of Pi
14. Cloud Atlas
15. A Fine Balance
16. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
17. Northern Lights
18. One Day
19. Seamus Heaney's Selected Poems
20. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
21. Love in the Time of Cholera
22. The Blind Assassin
23. Fingersmith
24. The Killing Floor
25. Beloved

I've surprised myself with this list - I certainly never expected the top 2 and I thought I would like some of the bottom placed books a lot more.

It has already been announced that there will be a World Book Night in 2012 and if there is a list of books again I will plan on reading them all - in the mean time all of the books I've been neglecting for the past 3 months are calling, plus the write up of my holiday reading.

World Book Night Challenge 25/25

Agent Zigzag - Ben Macintyre

I decided to read this book last in the challenge for 3 reasons:

1)Mr Bookworm also wanted to read it so saving it for holiday made sense.
2)Mr Macintyre was the guest at the library's World Book Night celebrations and as I couldn't be there on the night I thought I would make sure I was there in spirit
3)I loved Operation Mincemeat and hoped that this would be as good.

All three reasons were perfectly sound and this made a nice way to end my challenge reading. It was an interesting tale well told. Lots of detail but never so much that the story is lost. I think it helped that there was a lot of local setting in the book.

Even after reading the whole book I don't know which side Eddie Chapman was on - and to be honest I'm not sure that he knew either.

The story was, for me , not quite as fascinating as that told in Operation Mincemeat but I loved it none the less.
It was a gripping spy tale about a fascinating man and I will rush to read anything else that Macintyre writes - in fact I wonder if my dad still has a copy of In A Foreign Field that I can borrow...

A great book to end the challenge

World Book Night Challenge 24/25

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

This was a book I'd left until towards the end because I was really looking forward to reading it, but as so has often happened with my WBN reading that wasn't quite how it happened!

I was so disappointed in this book, the characters failed to hold my attention, the plot was (IMNSHO) silly and I discovered the downside of my Kindle - skipping the dull bits is really hard.

I don't know what it was about this that made it so not my cup of tea, a historical novel really should have captured me but the whole thing left me cold. Now I am back at home and can look through my past reading diaries I see that I had a similar reaction to the last Sarah Waters book I read (Nightwatch) so perhaps it is just her style of writing I don't like. It is strange as she came with good recommendations, including my grandmother...

World Book Night Challenge 23/25

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

I think that this was the book that I was least looking forward too, I've avoided it since publication for some reason and then after hearing several radio programmes about it really dreaded reading it.

Well how wrong could I have been?

It was fantastic. Again set in a time and place that I knew nothing about, Nigeria in the last 1960s at the time of the Biafran War, but from page one I was hooked. I read this in eBook form on the plane and the 4 hour journey just vanished, I was so engrossed that getting off the plane and starting the holiday was a wrench!

It isn't an easy book, the characters are not always nice but they are real. Every single one leaps out of the page and exists as you read and Adichie is so good at description that I could smell Nigeria as I was reading.

This book isn't for the fainthearted, it spares the reader nothing but at the same time is utterly wonderful. This book was a great treat and one that I could have overlooked for many years without World Book Night and a personal challenge.

World Book Night Challenge update

I suppose that it is all a bit passe now - after all WBN was nearly a week ago - however I do still have 3 book reviews to go and a quick update on my progress.

I finished the 25th book at 11.20pm on Saturday 5th March.

Since the 25 titles were announced I have read 22 of the novels. 1 I gave up with over half way through (Beloved), one I am still slowly reading (A Fine Balance) and one I didn't reread (Blind Assassin).

I will post my thoughts and reviews of the last three books - Agent Zigzag, Half of a Yellow Sun and Fingersmith - in the next few days, along with a final post on my thoughts of the whole project and a list of the books in the order that I most liked them.

Then I will go back to reading whatever and whenever I feel like it.

Mr Bookworm and I have had a lovely week away - we've done nothing but eat, sleep and read - 15 books in 7 days isn't too excessive is it?

World Book Night Challenge 20/25

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

This book leads me to another confession. I haven't actually re-read this one for World Book Night.

I only read this one last summer and I found it such a struggle then that I just couldn't face reading it again.

I'm not sure why I found it so hard going, usually I find Atwood's historical novels gripping - Alias Grace is a book I have read more than once and Cat's Eye is a book I had to replace as my copy fell apart.

This one was just long and turgid and I didn't like any of the characters particularly. Also I dislike this book because it made me feel bad - it should have been just my sort of book, but it wasn't, thus there was something wrong with me not the book. Irrational I know.

I did think about giving the book another go, just to see if I read it at the wrong time before but as it was less than 8 months since I read it and because the 5th of March is coming every closer I decided to skip it. It would take event me a long time to read 656 pages and there are still 5 books I've not read before to get through.

World Book Night Challenge 19/25

Northern Lights - Philip Pullman

This was one of the books that I wasn't really looking forward to (re)reading. It is a book that I have read before, and heard as an audio book, but that has always left me a little cold.

I'm not sure why this should be, I like a lot of fantasy and science fiction novels and I like Mr Pullman immensely.

This time around I did enjoy the book more. I remembered the broad plot so I found myself concentrating on the smaller details. Pullman is a very good storyteller as I did lose myself in the book several times, it just doesn't stand out to me as a great book and certainly not one I'd want to take to a desert island.

I'm pleased I read it again but I still have no interest in reading the 2 follow ups.

Mr Norfolkbookworm on the other hand read the trilogy some years ago and did enjoy it.

World Book Night Challenge 18/25

Dissolution - C J Sansom

I wasn't sure what to expect with this one at all. I like historical fiction but dislike crime fiction - which stall would this fall in to?

To my great delight I found this brilliant. I've read a lot of fiction set in Elizabethan age but not so much from the time of Henry VIII and this made a great introduction.

Set at the time of the Dissolution Mathew Shardlake, a favourite of Cromwell, is sent to investigate the murderous happenings at one of the Monasteries that is about to be closed down. Sadly he doesn't prevent more deaths from happening but the way the story unfolds is gripping, the twists and turns keep the story moving without creating too much confusion and each time I thought I guessed 'who dunnit' more story unravelled.

I think that what I liked the most is the growth of the main characters, Shardlake and his apprentice. During the course of the story they learn more about the world around them and about themselves and in many ways I found their development just as gripping as the main plot.

This was a really pleasant surprise from the list, one I'd left until late on because I thought I'd find it a struggle but in the end one I raced through. Oh and I've treated myself to the sequel to read very soon.

World Book Night Challenge 17/25

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

I read this book when it was first published back in 2003 and while I remember it being an okay book I was surprised when it won so many awards.
9 years on that remains my main thought about this book.

I admire the way that Haddon seems to create the world of a young adult male with autism but neither being male nor (fortunately) suffering from autism I just found that the book frustrated me.

Being a literate person the sign posting of important events seemed too obvious to me and I was frustrated that the book really was that simple for me to understand. I think I was reading it expecting another layer to the story that just wasn't there.

In fact the main emotion I feel on finishing this book is anger.
I am about to read The Hound of the Baskervilles - it is top of my to read pile once I finish the WBN challenge - and Haddon gives away the whole plot without warning.

I can see that this is a brave attempt to explain the world of a young adult with autism who doesn't see the world in the same way as I do but my cynical side kept asking me how realistic it was, how can Haddon write this book while not suffering from the condition himself?
Realistically I know that this is the sign of a good author, being able to create a world like this, but knowing some people with autism and how hard they find it to explain the world I wonder if it is how Haddon imagines.

I can't coherently express my thoughts for this book. It isn't a book I enjoyed and to be honest I can't see why it won as many awards as it did, however with my perverse hat on I can see that it is a brave book and why it won as many plaudits as it did.

A book I'm glad I read as a library book, probably not one I will read again but ultimately a thought provoking read. All I have to do now is forget the spoilers for Hound of the Baskervilles...

World Book Night Challenge 16/25

Case Histories - Kate Atkinson

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book at all, blind prejudice on my part for this thought - my library book came with the letters CRI on the spine saying that this was a crime fiction novel. One of my least favourite genres.

Happily my first impressions were wrong. Or perhaps the classification is wrong?

The novel opens with three crimes that have taken place in and around Cambridge over the past few decades. Each of the cases is somewhat unresolved and family members have turned to Jackson Brodie, an ex policeman turned Private Investigator, to find out exactly what happened.

The book isn't really about the solving of the crimes, it is a study into people and how crimes have an effect for decades on the people left behind.

It was a great read, but for me not a perfect book.
There were too many strands to the story and either the book wasn't long enough or the resolution to the stories was too abrupt for my liking. There are more books featuring Jackson Brodie but I won't be in a hurry to look them out but on the other hand I won't be avoiding them either.

World Book Night Challenge 15/25

Beloved - Toni Morrison

I have to admit my first failure in the challenge with this title.
This isn't the first time I've tried and failed with the book. Back last autumn this was one of the 10 books we featured at the library's Banned Book event. I got to about page 60 that time.

I've had a copy out of the library now for the maximum time possible (3 renewals or 9 weeks) and this time I've made it to page 200. I
'm just not enjoying the book at all. I can't follow the plot and what I am following I'm not really understanding or taking in. I've tried reading it during the day and in bed at night but it makes no difference I just can't get on with the book.

As I am on a tight schedule for trying to read all of the books by World Book Night I am going to admit defeat on this one and the moment and return it to the library so someone else can enjoy it. I don't like being defeated by a book so I will go back to it after the challenge and try again, or I might do the unthinkable and just watch the film.

World Book Night Challenge 14/25

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

This was another eBook read, in fact at Christmas my mobile phone provider gave away lots of free gifts and a copy of this was one of them (in fact it was the only one I took advantage of) but due to format it was a book I read on the iPhone and not the Kindle.

I'm sure that we have a physical copy of this somewhere around the house and I know that Mr Bookworm read it many years ago, for some reason I'd avoided it until now.

I don't know what I thought the book was about but it certainly wasn't anything like I imagined. I loved the bits about life in India, the comparisons of religion and the epic journey. I felt like I was living life alongside Pi, and later on Richard Parker. The writing was so good and evocative that I felt seasick along with characters- I could smell India and the zoo.

And then it lost me.

A cannibalistic island and the idea that Richard Parker was in fact a human...? The transition jarred me out of the happy reading place I was in. To me it was like Martel had suddenly taken some mind altering substance but not stopped writing.

I might have missed the point, but I could believe the bit about surviving with a tiger on a lifeboat but it was the rest that broke my brain. The notes for reading groups at the end didn't help either.

World Book Night Challenge 13/25

Killing Floor - Lee Child

Lee Child came to give a talk at the Library last April and he was a very nice guy. He was entertaining and when he read from his books he really sold them to me. In short this was a book that I'd never normally even look at but when I saw it was on the list I was pleased.

Oh dear. I really must stop having these expectations. I came very close to not finishing this one, and to physically throwing it across the room in disgust. Friends said it would be fine to give up - after all I'd read over 200 pages, but Mr Norfolkbookworm pointed out that it would mean I'd fail the whole challenge if I gave up.

The book doesn't have a sentence with more than 15 words in it. The only punctuation appears to be the full stop. It is like being shouted at. Some sentences don't have verbs. The violent scenes (eye gouging, throat slitting...) had the longest sentences and these made my stomach turn. I also spotted the 'twist' as soon as the character appeared. The sex scenes are certainly contenders for the bad sex award.

I'm not normally so negative about books but I can't say I'm glad I read this one, in fact I think that it ranks very close to being one of the worst books I've finished of all time. I'd rather read a Mills and Boon novel than another Lee Child book. Which is a shame as he was a nice guy and when he read from his books they sounded okay.

World Book Night Challenge 12/25

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

This is a book that I've picked up, looked at and then put down again on many occasions but I wish I had read it a long time ago. It blew me away.

The story telling style is so intimate, two men sitting in a restaurant in Lahore as one tells his life story to the other. One is a native Pakistani who has lived, studied and worked in America. The other is a nervous American who is uneasy in the other's company and country.

The story unfolds beautifully, it is wonderfully understated and totally enthralling. The protagonist doesn't hide his less savoury activities but they aren't extraneous to the tale, they are just what makes him the character that he is.

I'm being deliberately vague here because it is the gentle unfolding of this tale that spoke to me the most and I want everyone to have the chance to discover it for themselves. I realise that calling about a book about a religious fundamentalist 'gentle' sounds odd but it really is the best way I can think of to describe the book.

I've not been chosen as a Book Giver on World Book Night but if I had to apply again now this would be one of the books I want to share with everyone.

World Book Night Challenge 11/25

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

I feel that my challenge reading may now slow down as the books left are either ones that I've avoided for years or ones that I've started in the past and not enjoyed. I know for certain that without this one being a World Book Night title there is no chance that I would have persevered with it.

I'm not sure if I found the book clever or pretentious. It is comprised of six short stories that are all interlinked. Story one is a diary that stops mid sentence but is then 'found' in story two. One of the characters from story two reappears in three and so on. All of strand 6 is told in one go and then we count down again and end up finding out the end of story one at the very end.

I read this in eBook form on the Kindle (the first modern novel I'd read on the device) and I do wonder that if I'd had this in paper form I would have read it in a different way.

That is would I have read all of story one, then two etc rather than in the way it was written? I quite like short stories and so I would have just read the strands that appealed to me rather than slogging through some tales which really didn't appeal just to make sure I didn't miss a connecting strand.

Another book I'm pleased I've read but I'm not in a hurry to look out for any more novels by Mitchell.

World Book Night Challenge 10/25

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque.

This was another re-read for me but it has been a very long time since I last picked a copy of this up and apart from the bare bones of the story I had forgotten what an incredible piece of literature that it is.

I have read many novels set in the First World War, some for adults and some for children but it is this one that really emphasises for me just how bloody and pointless the conflict was.

Written by a German and focusing on the German experience of the trenches the book really brings home that the PBI really were the same on both sides, that neither side wanted to be there and that very few fighting in the trenches really knew exactly what the war was about and why they were there.

All Quiet follows one class of students who have been encouraged to join up by their class teacher. We learn about their training and the battles they have fought as slowly, one by one, they fall.

Remarque pulls no punches when he is describing both the day to day and combat experience, and it may not be for the faint hearted because of this. For me if I could only keep one novel about the First World War it would have to be this one. There is no glamourising of the conflict, it is brutal, stark and uncompromising. So honest in fact that it was banned in the 1930s in Nazi Germany for being defeatist and anti-German.

Of the 25 on the World Book Night list it was this one that I knew I had to apply for to be my give away. Even now having stretched myself and having tried lots of new styles and authors I don't regret this choice. It is a book that I feel everyone should read as a teenager, and then again as an adult.

World Book Night challenge 1/25

Alan Bennett - A Life Like Other People's

This wasn't the first book from the 25 that I intended to read, but when I got to work yesterday I realised that I had forgotten the book that I was actually half way through. No problems as I work in a library but it was serendipitous to find this one on the returns trolley just as my break started.

I've long admired Bennett for his plays and screen plays, and I found his Uncommon Reader a pleasant little story but I'd not read any of his longer or autobiographical works before nor, if I'm honest, had I any inclination to.

This was a real treat. It isn't a happy book by any means but there is such humour amongst the poignancy that it isn't depressing. Bennett comes from a family of genteel eccentrics and his love for them is what shines through this piece of writing. Mental health is not an easy topic to write about either as a witness or sufferer but I found the balance to be struck perfectly in this volume. Bennett neither glamourises it, nor demonises it and appears to be totally honest in writing his reactions to it.

As ever an eloquent review of this book is not forthcoming all I want to do is run around and tell everyone how wonderful it is. Oh and read more of Bennett's autobiography, which won't help my challenge at all as there two volumes of over 600 pages each!

It is a great pick for World Book Night as it is an autobiography by one of our National Treasures TM it isn't overly long and even if you can't relate to the exact issues in Bennett's history his style of writing draws you in regardless.

I hope the next 24 are as good, but this one is going to be hard to beat.