Month: September 2008

Peer Pressure – A Booking Through Thursday Post

Published on by Margaret18 Comments

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Suggested by JM:

I was looking through books yesterday at the shops and saw all the Twilight books, which I know basically nothing about. What I do know is that I’™m beginning to feel like I’™m the *only* person who knows nothing about them.

Despite being almost broke and trying to save money, I almost bought the expensive book (Australian book prices are often completely nutty) just because I felt the need to be ‘˜up’™ on what everyone else was reading.

Have you ever felt pressured to read something because ‘˜everyone else’™ was reading it? Have you ever given in and read the book(s) in question or do you resist? If you are a reviewer, etc, do you feel it’™s your duty to keep up on current trends?

I have felt pressured to read a book because ‘everyone else’ is reading it, but often find that it makes me actually resist reading it. Recently this has happened to me with what I think of as ‘that potato peel book’. Its proper title is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and I’ve read several reviews full of its praise. I know that people have enjoyed it immensely, so why am I so reluctant to read it? For one thing (and this is trivial, I know) but I don’t like the title. Mainly, though, I suppose it’s because I don’t like to jump on the bandwagon and also because I have succumbed in the past and been disappointed in a book – The Thirteenth Tale, Labyrinth, and The Time-Traveller’s Wife all come to mind. All these books failed for me to live up to the hype and I don’t like to have my expectations raised in that way.

I can’t put my finger on exactly why I feel that this about some books, because I often read other bloggers’ reviews and think ‘I really must read that book’. But I don’t actually feel any need to read a book just because lots of other people are reading it – it has to appeal to me. I write about books because I want to and I don’t get paid for it so I certainly don’t feel it’s my duty to keep up on current trends. Having said that I do want to know about new books and what other people are reading – I’m just contrary I suppose.

And I expect that eventually I will pick up ‘that potato peel book’, if only to have a look at what all the fuss is about.

Secondhand Books

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

I now have a lot of old, and I mean old, secondhand books (they were my sister’s). I’m wondering what to do with them as I have no room at all for them. They’re a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, hardbacks and paperbacks, including many children’s books. So far I’ve only looked at the Enid Blyton books; some are first editions and some are later impressions of first editions, all in differing conditions. I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg – there are boxes and boxes of books. Not knowing the secondhand market I have very little idea of their value. I could see if the charity shops would like them, but my sister bought them intending to sell them. So I’m wondering if I should do that – but what would be the best way??

If anyone has any experience of selling secondhand books I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Down To a Sunless Sea by Mathias B Freese

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Mathias Freese kindly sent me Down To a Sunless Sea to review a while ago. It has taken me some time to read it, mainly because it’s a collection of fifteen short stories, covering a number of difficult topics and I have found it quite painful to read. I don’t know if I can really do justice to these stories. Mathias Freese has worked as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist for 25 years and these stories are full of dark and dangerous situations.

First of all I like the title – taken from Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan, inspired by an opium induced dream. But a sunless sea is a dreary, lifeless place in contrast to the pleasure dome in Xanadu and the sacred river Alph and as soon as I started reading the title story I realised why Freese chose that title as I was plunged into the fearful world of Adam, scared of most things and living “an intensely solitary childhood”, feeling detached and

“as though he is photographing himself behind a schizoid lens, for he is never in himself observing himself – holding the cap gun, for one. Rather he is Adam staring at Adam from afar, the nether camera-work of a dream.”

As I was reading the stories I began to wonder just what it is I expect from my reading. Sometimes I just want to be entertained and I didn’t find these stories entertaining at all. Sometimes I want to be taken out of myself and on this level they definitely work – there is one story that I could relate to a little bit and that is Little Errands in which the narrator agonises over whether or not he/she (I’ll say he from now on) has posted some letters, relating this to times when he’s not been sure if he turned off the car radio and will return to find a dead car battery. I’ve done something similar (well not the car radio) only to find that I haven’t posted a letter or I didn’t set the cooker timer and the chicken is still uncooked.

Some of the other stories are so sad and haunting, such as Alabaster – a little boy meets an old woman, a survivor of the Holocaust, and her daughter sitting on a wooden bench on a sidewalk. Clearly, they are sad – he thinks of them in later life seeing them as:

“… Egyptian statuary, totemic, to be viewed and admired, but not to be engaged, as if what they were or had been exposed to precluded any real human contact. This small family endured a strange exile.”

 The old woman frightens him a little with her strangeness and he sees the number tattoed on her arm – her arms had been beautiful as a child, like alabaster. Inside she is still that beautiful girl with alabaster arms, although now she feels as though she’s living someone else’s life.

I have to say that I found these stories quite disturbing and unsettling, which is not a bad thing, but don’t expect any cosy, comforting stories.  See here for an interview with the author.

Tuesday Thingers

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Marie’s question today is: Members who have your books. Do you ever look at this feature? Do you use it to make LT friends, or compare notes? There are three tabs- weighted, raw, and recent. “Weighted,” which means “weighted by book obscurity and library size” is probably the least self-explanatory of the three, whereas “raw” and “recent” are more so. Do you get any kind of use out of this feature?

My answer: I have looked at it, and wondered what those three tabs mean. I’m sorry Marie but I still don’t understand them apart from “recent”. What is “raw”? I don’t “cook” my books!  When you hover over the tab it reads “raw overlap” which is equally incomprehensible to me. So, no I have never used this feature – until now, just to try to work it out. When I’ve added a book and seen that there are only a few others who have copies I’ve looked a few times to see who they are and what other books they have.