Review: Cold Comfort Farm

by Stella Gibbons

What a wacky book! Where old ladies are traumatised by 'something nasty in the woodshed', and cows go around losing essential parts of themselves (eg. legs etc.)....sounds bizarre I know!

But it’s actually great fun and even though I really had to push myself through the first bit in order to fully get what Ms Gibbons was about with this book, I found it very enjoyable once I let go a bit and let the book take me where it would! With Cold Comfort Farm its important to just go with the flow and believe, like Flora, that its not really so very outrageous once you think about it.

Cold Comfort Farm is a delightful parody on those dreadful rural tragedies (see Mary Webb) that portray farm life so pessimistically. The heroine is hard to like in the beginning, and throughout the novel she had me quite puzzled as she’s quite the snob and this is hard to take, but it really was a case of reluctant admiration for a character that could see the positive in everything and had a real ‘can do’ attitude.

The story follows the journey of newly-orphaned Flora Poste as she moves to the country in the hope of being taken in by her relatives, the Starkadders of Starkadder Farm. There she finds a mixture of characters, each with their own problems of which Flora is determined to fix – which she does to mixed success. Although it is, as I said, wacky – I do recommend this book, its fun and a really good book for a grey-day to make you laugh.

For those that like movies made from books, the 2003 version with Kate Beckinsale is very good too!

Teaser Tuesday ~ 18 Jan 11

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read.
2. Open to a random page.
3. Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.
4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

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For my very first Teaser Tuesday I'm going to pick randomly from two of the books I'm reading now:

From Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue:
'Before 1400, it was possible to tell with some precision where in Britain a letter or manuscript was written just from the spellings. By 1500, this had become all but impossible.'

I've really been enjoying this book. Bryson has a very engaging writing style - and its just so interesting!




And from Jane Austen's Persuasion:

'The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year...'

What can I say!? I just love Austen.

Review: The Complete Persepolis

by Marjane Satrapi

This volume comprises two of Satrapi's memoir-in-comic books:

Persepolis 1 details her childhood during and after the Iranian Revolution. I had not previously read much on this time in Iran and I found Marjane's account of the dramatic change in Iranian society to be quite thought-provoking. Her connection with her parents and Grandmother is lovely, and her account provides great insights into Iranian homelife. I really enjoyed this book and zoomed right through it. I thought the comic-style worked well for a memoir of childhood.

Persepolis 2 continues where No. 1 left off, with Marjane on her own in Austria after being sent there following the Revolution. The story progresses through her teenage years in Vienna and goes full-circle to her eventual return home to Iran. I found this story more confronting than the first as it addresses such issues as drugs, homelessness and racism. Quite frankly, I did not like it as much and thought that the comic-style did not work as well as with this different content compared to the first book. I am, however, glad that I continued with it as Marjane's journey through adolescence is very candid and because of that, special.

Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

A successful trip to Guernsey...

This is a great read. I must admit that prior to reading this book I was skeptical of correspondence-based novels as I always thought that the potential depth of both plot and character suffered as a result. However - the writing immediately caught me, and although some people have described it as being a bit slow to begin, I found it enjoyable right from the start.

Set in post-WWII, we first meet Juliet, the bubbly heroine, as she is in the process of completing a UK book tour. Through a series of letters that take place between Juliet and the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, we learn about life under German rule on the island of Guernsey during the Second World War. Through their letters, readers get to know the varied cast of characters of the Society, and their individual stories are one of the real strengths of this novel. 

A truly wonderful story, I highly recommend it.

Book groups...

I love book groups! I admit that I have only recently been introduced to the phenomena, but so far, so good. Sometimes you can get blown away by a story that must be shared with like-minded friends. Book groups are the answer to the lonely bibliofile! Brilliant.

I am a member of two bookgroups, one with friends, the other with work mates. I have added these books to my long list of books to read this year. The intention is for this blog to (hopefully) remind me to read them as well as my great hoard! I will indicate as I go along which ones are book group books.
I love good intentions and New Years resolutions, don't you?

This month we are reading:

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and
• Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran

The last two are for one bookgroup (apparently there's more time to be had in January than in other months!) I've finished the Guernsey book (an absolute joy, will post more later) and am onto the Mehran read. See later for more.
Happy readings!

To begin with the beginning...

Bookstores love me. When I step inside they rub their metaphorical hands, lick their metaphorical chops and eagerly follow my progress throughout the store. They watch as I randomly pick up books and make my way to the cash register, thinking ‘here she is again!’. My progress round the store always takes the same course - to begin with the new releases, moving on to crime, then fiction, followed up with fantasy, romance, young adult and finally (glory be) the non-fiction section. I just can’t resist a good book!

To point out one minor difference from some other bookaholics, however, I tend to hoard books with the intention of ‘one day’ reading them, and never quite getting there. My ‘one day’ pile has grown steadily over the last few years, so much so that with the purchase of yet another bookcase I have decided that the time has come to act! One can safely say that the motive behind establishing this blog is a mercy mission to save these forgotten books from their life of gathering dust on my shelf, and for them to (finally) perform their intended purpose and be read.

In the coming days, I will endeavor to put up a list of the books I have on my shelf waiting to be read with the aim of making my way through them - hopefully within this coming year (2011). Wish me luck!