Bear Bahoochie

Get Fuzzy

Well this past two weeks I’ve had some dread disease (possibly the common cold) anyway it put a stop to reading much with a epic plot or hard words (well at least a lot o f hard words) so instead I decided to catch up on my favourite comic strip – Get Fuzzy. You can catch it here at comics.com. Get Fuzzy is the simple tale of a man and his dog and cat. It becomes less simple because the cat is really evil (at least he tries to be). It is hard to explain why I love it so much. I love the homage to poetry, movies, music etc. that litter the strips, I love the monkey obsession held by Bucky but mostly I love the drawings.

Anyway I read ‘Ignorance Thy Name is Bucky’ and ‘Dumbheart’ this past week between nose blowing and they cheered me up. Read it, love it, share it!

Holiday Reading part 4

Y: The Last Man is a series of comic books by Brian K. Vaughan which was recommended to me by a man dressed as Clark Kent (I was dressed as Barbara Gordon at the time). Often a tad sweary, certainly full frontal female nudity and a fair bit of gore but also full of pop culture and a really good bit of story telling. The premise is simple – a plague wipes out all the men but one (Yorick) and his male pet monkey (Ampersand) and they then try and get somewhere else and meet a wide range of crazy ladies on the way.

Excellent well worth reading and -point of interest -a popular title to steal from the library. Today saw me read volume 3 and 4 which saw a nice development of the story and a fair bit of drama.

…and another book!

The latest book the be completed is ‘And another thing…’ by Eoin Colfer. This was another very enjoyable book. If it hadn’t been I’d have been most disappointed as 1) I’m a big fan of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and 2)I’m a big fan of Artemis Fowl. Not only that but it was a Christmas present and the only book for ages I wanted to buy new.

It was great fun with the old gang re-united despite the apparent destruction of at least three of them and the Earth (again) at the end of ‘Mostly Harmless’. Warning – the Earth again fails to do well in this book – some things are just not meant to be.

All the classic characters are either in the book or given a nod to and the style is very much in keeping with the Douglas Adams originals. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Holiday Reading Part 2

Another of the read by World Book Day books – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Now this one I can enthuse about. I was worried at first that it would be similar in disappointment to Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights – neither managed to draw me in. At no point did I fall for our leading man but I did find myself caring a great deal too much for the nameless narrator. I could see how the events of the ball would unfold but I still found myself wishing it could be otherwise. However, the big revelation when it came, came as a complete shock. The final third was a brilliant – tense and very much ‘edge of seat’ stuff. I’m not sure I’d rush to buy my own copy (borrowed this one from the library) since a re-read is unlikely to be as exciting since I know the story but it was excellent first time round.

Holiday Reading

The Christmas holidays are a time of family, food and reading for me. So the first two books for the holiday were Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and Blood Red Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick.

Blood Red Snow White I’ve had lying around for a wee while. It drew me in as it mixed fairy tales and Russian history. It’s printed on paper that’s off white and designed to look old and is written as part fairy tale, part history and part biography. Done from the perspective of Arthur Ransome (of Amazon and Swallows fame) it cover the period just before the Russian revolution until the Bolshevists are set in place. It’s written for a teen audience so it’s easy to read but high in interest.

Lucky Jim is on my list of 10 books to read by World Book Day. It was easy enough to read but not much happens it’s one of those development of character books the English department love so much. James is a lecturer who kind of fell into the post and hates lots of things about it. By the end he’s fallen into another phase of his life. It was good, I enjoyed it – I wanted to know how it ended, I even cared for James. I’m not sure I’d agree with the great comic genius of it all, Jeeves and Wooster it isn’t but it was amusing. It’s a three out of five – worth reading, enjoyable but probably not going to stay on my book shelf.

Janet Evanovich

The latest Janet Evanovich is ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’. Now these are simple fluff but very enjoyable fluff. The end even had me laughing out loud in the middle of a silent reading reading english class!

Stephanie Plum once again is split between two steamin’ hot men, more people try and kill them and there is some serious attempts at BBQ (as you would expect these are not hugely successful).

Not much character development, complex scene setting or advanced language but what it does have is a whole lot of fun and a decent crime mystery – exactly the stuff for lazy Sunday reading!

How to talk about books you haven’t read

Pierre Bayard has written a book called ‘How to talk about books you haven’t read’. It’s classed under humour and he spends a lot of the time in the book showing how you don’t need to read a book to know about a book or to be able to discuss it. I don’t think it was particularly funny, rather it raised some excellent points – not least that it would be impossible to ever read all the books in the world – even all the ones we are ’supposed’ to. Instead we should start to think about reading in a new way.

From my take on it (though he did point out that once you’ve read a book you only have your flawed memory of what it was about) was that you can become aware of books in a range of ways and all are just as viable as reading it cover to cover. Even just knowing the context of a book can allow you to make a judgement without cracking the spine.

In the interests of honesty I should point out I gave up reading this book when it got to the ‘how to section’. Mainly because a skim of the book showed that I already applied most of it!

Oscar Wilde continued

Well I continued with my Oscar Wilde pre-occupation (though totally failed to see Dorian Gray in the cinema). I listened to Dorian Gray in the car on the way to work – though I remembered it was excellent, I had forgotten just how good the  story was.

I also read the first of Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde mysteries – Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders. Having read the second one first I found this one wasn’t as good – though this was probably because this one does more background and scene setting. Useful if you aren’t in the middle of a Wilde obsession.

I’d say well worth a read if you are interested in Wilde as it is full of useful background and scene setting – plus a pretty interesting murder mystery.

Devil in a Blue Dress

Speed Hallowe’en Costume and cunning literary joke in one.

I read Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress this week. Loved it. Lots of good stuff for Higher kids doing personal studies but much more excitingly a really good story and I love the character of Easy Rawlins. I admit that the main reason I read it was so I could wear devil horns and a long felt devil tail and a blue dress for Hallowe’en but it was well worth it.

In the Bath…

In the Bath by Tim Fitzhingham – see the promo trailer here

The second book of this week was a true story – albeit a silly one. Tim Fitzhingham (a stand up comedian and Flanders and Swann peformer) decided to row across the channel for Sports Relief in a bath tub.

However the silly  bit of the bet was where a friend bet him a pint that he could row the bath from Dover to Tower Bridge. As you might guess it turned out to be a very big challenge – albeit eventually worth it.

The book is great very funny and full of interesting people, events and bath facts at the end.

I’ve seen Tim Fitzhingham in stand up plus doing Flanders and Swann so was keen to read the book and wasn’t disappointed. It’s an eccentric Englishman at his best!