A FAVOURITE AUTHOR - PHILIPPA GREGORY

 

I'm a lover of books.

 

I like nothing better than to settle back and lose myself in a good book

 

but these days that rarely means sitting down in the daytime for a read.

 

These days  most of my reading is done

before the light goes out,

in bed,

 at night.

 

Sometimes that means I have a very late night if the book is good

and even when I catch myself nodding off I shake myself awake and think " just one more chapter "

 

( No wonder I like books that have short chapters !!)

 

It can also mean that a bit of re-reading takes place the next night !!

 

In the last year or so I have slowly been introduced to the historical fiction of Philippa Gregory and I have become quite a fan.

The first one I read was The Constant Princess and I loved it.

 

I know they are works of fiction but the historical background is wonderful and it has taught me a lot about that period of history when Henry VIII ruled England.

 

Not long after reading it we visited Ludlow Castle

 

 

 

 

 

 and while visiting the nearby church looked down where Tony was standing to find it was on top of where Prince Arthur's heart is buried!

 

 

 

  Since then I have read The Other Boleyn Girl ( and seen the film !!)

 

Next I started on the series about the Wars of the Roses. ( or the Cousins' Wars as she calls them ).

 

I've read

 

 The White Queen

and 

 

The Lady of the Rivers

 

and I'm just about to begin

 

The Red Queen.

 

Not only have these books given me hours of reading pleasure but they have helped me sort out a turbulent, confusing time in English history.

 

 

PS.

Today is
Australia Day

I've written about it before here

so I'll just sign off by saying

Happy Australia Day

If you're an Aussie anywhere in the world

I hope you're celebrating by having
a BBQ,

a picnic on the beach 

or roast lamb

 

with friends and family

 

followed by a lamington or two.

 

 

TWO GOOD READS

 

 

Woody Allen's  movie "Midnight in Paris" is not Academy Award material.

In fact I found the lead actor's whiney voice very annoying

but the scenes of my beloved Paris made the film a winner for me.

 

 

 

 Dabbling in the world of Hemmingway and Fitzgerald and those fascinating times in Paris when artists and writers gathered there, sparked an interest in Hemmingway in particular.

 

 

So when I came upon this book

 

 

 

I was eager to read it.

The writer, Paula McLain, has done her research, using personal diaries of Hadley, the wife in question, letters between Hadley and Hemmingway and also Hemmingway's own memoir "A Moveable Feast" to inform her characters.

In the final pages of Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast, about his early years in Paris. , he writes of Hadley, “I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.”

 

I highly recommend it.

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

"The Sandcastle Girls" is my most recent read.

 

It was written by Chris Bohjalian -- the grandson of  survivors of the Armenian genocide ( or ethnic cleansing ) by the Turks in 1916.

This is a story of ethnic destruction and endurance that seems to have slipped below my radar.

 

Now that I have read about it I have picked up snippets in current affairs programs but with a million and a half people killed it seems to me to have had little coverage.

 

Of course this may be because it has been denied by the Turks and therefore never managed to have been afforded the recognition it deserved.

 

I highly recommend it.

 

Cheers.

 

INTERNATIONAL BOOK WEEK

Apparently it's International  Book Week so let's try this:

Grab the book you are currently reading,

 turn to page 52,

 comment with the 5th sentence.

 Then tell us the title and the author. 

My turn first:

 "Just as it had been last night but now exposed as truth in the light of day."

 The Snow Child by  Eowyn Ivey

Cheers.

BOOK REVIEW

Here's an interesting one for you.

I don't think I've ever found a book so difficult to read but I persevered anyway.

It may have had something to do with the fact that I only read in bed, late at night when I'm tired.

It's a book about a child who has Asperger Syndrome ( I think !) - written sometimes by the child himself, sometimes by others like the boy's father and grandfather - whose father was killed in the tragic event that has come to be called simply 9/11.

It's quite difficult to know who is telling the story sometimes and it soon becomes clear that the Asperger's/ Autism is something that has been handed down through the family.

One of the reasons it is hard to read is the way it is written.

I have tried to scan some pages to show you but I'm afraid the book is quite thick so it was difficult to keep out the light and this has made the scans poor quality and difficult to see. (but clicking on them to enlarge them will improve your view tremendously ).

Do you see what I mean?

The punctuation is altered so there are no paragraphs and no new lines for a new speaker in conversations so the reader has to sort it out for themselves.

Then there are pages like the ones below.

or like this

and this.

So you can see that it a very different book but worth the challenge of reading it.

I don't know if I understood it completely.

It helps to discuss it with someone else who has read it and perhaps seeing the movie of the same name would be interesting too ( and make it easier to understand - as long as the movie stays true to the book )

but although rereading it would also probably help, it's not something I want to do.

Not exactly light entertainment but worthwhile.

I'd be very interested in your thoughts if you have read it too.

Cheers.

A LOVE OF READING

Thanks for your interesting comments about what children read.
I think my friend Jane is probably right about the fact that these days children predominantly read about  topics that they can relate to, in a setting that they know.

How things have changed from when I was young !

I grew up reading Enid Blyton from an early age.
Famous Five, Secret Seven, The Faraway Tree etc

Nothing there that related to life in Australia
and the way those children spoke was not at all familiar to an Aussie kid.

I moved on to Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, What Katy Did, Polyanna, Black Beauty and My Friend Flicka - all of them completely different to life here in Australia.

From there I finally moved to some books written by Australian authors.

My beloved Seven Little Australians and the Billabong series - both set way back before World War I in a time and social structure that was far from familiar and when Aussies still thought of England as "HOME".

There just weren't many books for children written by Australian authors and in those days literature coming out of this young country was not very plentiful or valued very highly.

Throughout high school this trend continued - all the books I studied were predominantly from the
UK - Bronte, Austen, Shakespeare - The Thirty Nine Steps, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Hamlet to name just a few.
Poetry was similar but along with Blake, Wordsworth, Lear,  Byron, Shelley etc a few Aussies made the grade - Kath Walker who goes by her Aboriginal name -  Oodgeroo Noonuccal - nowadays, the iconic Dorothea Mackellar whose  I Love a Sunburnt Country is probably the best known Australian poem ( to Aussies anyway ) as well as Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson.

Is it any wonder that I longed to see the places in England that I had spent my younger years reading about.

But today things are different.

When I left school and started to study Teaching I was enthralled by the books produced by Australian authors for Aussie children. A lovely Teacher-Librarian colleague guided my reading of some wonderful Australian authors. Books full of fun and irreverent humour, with great storylines.

Australian children still read lots of books from other countries but we are finally valuing the wonderful children's literature that comes out of our country more and more.

Cheers.

LOVE A GOOD BOOK ?

Recently, at a meeting of my Book Club, we were discussing a poll by the ABC to rate the best Australian authors and the books they have written,  most of which are well known here in Australia.

Books like :
A Fortunate Life
Gallopoli
Power Without Glory
Picnic at Hanging Rock
My Brilliant Career
The Power of One
as well as a couple of children's classics like The Magic Pudding, Seven Little Australians and more recently The Book Thief for older children.

During this discussion it came to light that some of our members who were not born in Australia had never heard of the Australian children's classic Seven Little Australians ( I think my childhood  copy had soggy pages from my tears ). At first I was surprised by this because these people are well read, and if they have never heard of this book then the book is probably not widely known overseas.

All this led me to wonder about children today and how much of their reading material is similar no matter where they live  - in New Zealand, America and the UK particularly - or if children mainly read books written by authors from their own country.
So I'm going to list a few of the titles that I have found to be popular with the children that I have taught  in the past which are written by Aussies to see if any of you know of or have read them.

Two Weeks with the Queen - Morris Gleitzman ( my personal favourite Aussie children's author )
Angie's Ankles - Gary Hurle
The Lake at the End of the World - Caroline MacDonald
Storm Boy - Colin Thiele
Wombat Stew -Joanne Coghlan
Hating Alison Ashley - Robin Klein
Space Demons - Gillian Rubinstein
Possum Magic - Mem Fox
Playing Beatie Bow - Ruth Park
Tomorrow When the War Began - John Marsden

From my experience, Australian children do read books by many authors who are not Australian and stories like Hatchet and the Harry Potter series are just some of them, but on reflection I think that, at the moment, Aussie authors may supply a large proportion of the reading material of children up to the age of 12.

Do you think British children read mainly books by Brittish authors and American children read mainly books by American authors and it is only the outstanding books that make it across the oceans?

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Cheers.

A GREAT READ

The range of fantastic Children's/ Young Adult Literature that is available these days really amazes me.

Today I finished reading a fabulous book, The Book Thief  written by Australian author Markus Zusak.

It is a book that has been marketed as an older children's book in some countries and as an adult novel in others and can be appreciated by either.

I loved it.

Set in Nazi Germany, it describes how a young girl's mother delivers her into the care of foster parents around the start of WWII. Her brother is not so lucky as he dies on the way. The girl never hears from her mother again and spends the rest of the war with these rather unlikely, generous souls who also shelter a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement for a time.

The Book Thief is written in a most unusual style, narrated throughout by Death. It was published in 2005 and has won numerous awards. It has also been listed on the New York Times' Children's Bestseller List for over 190 weeks.

 If you're like me and you haven't read this one already, I thoroughly recommend it.

Cheers.

HAVE YOU READ THIS ONE ?

I've just been reading this book.

I liked it very much.

I decided that I would like to see the movie, but when I looked to see session times it is not showing any longer.

This happened to me with The Lincoln Lawyer too.

It seems the only movies that stay around for ages are kids movies!!!!

At the moment that's all that's available because it's school holidays.

I think they lose a lot when you watch them at home on DVD but I guess that's the only alternative

unless .....

perhaps they are showing on the inflight movies on long haul flights .....

to  Paris ... or   Zurich .... or   Rome   for instance.

I'd better start my research.

Cheers.

HOOKED

Oh my, I'm hooked !

I've just finished reading these two and all I can think of is "who do I know who has the third one?"

The second one in the series finished on such a knife edge that I am desperate to start the next one !

Don't you love a good book?

Cheers.