Category: LibraryThing

a Leap

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy of a Leap by Anna Enquist, translated by Jeannette K Ringold from LibraryThing Early Reviewer’s Program. It’s a very short book (80 pages), to be published in April 2009, made up of six monologues. Overall they are sad, even tragic stories.

The first one, Alma, was commissioned by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival and its performance preceded a performance of Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. I liked the fact that it’s based on historical facts taken from letters and diaries. Alma was Gustav’s wife and she reflects on her life, having given up her own music to support him. It seems he forced her to do so and she is at once repelled and intoxicated by him, but she is torn between her love for him and Alex, a former lover. This is my favourite of the monologues.

The second story, Mendel Bronstein, shocked me. It’s about a Jewish tailor who decides to leave Rotterdam in 1912 to make a new life in America. He is desperate not to forget his own language, with disastrous consequences. This story actually made me squirm.

Cato and Leendert, form the interlinked monologues three and four. Set again in Rotterdam in the spring of 1940 they are a pair of young lovers. Cato first waits in the kitchen for Leendert as the bombs drop on the city and then goes out to search for him as the Germans take control. Meanwhile Leendert is still working at the zoo and ordered to kill the dangerous animals, including his favourite lion, Alexander. I thought this was a touching story full of pathos. It was also based on historical sources and together with Mendel Bronstein was written for the production of Lazarus as part of Rotterdam Cultural Capital of Europe in 2001.

The Doctor is a very short monologue also set in Rotterdam during World War II from a doctor who saves the life of a wounded German general. He wonders if he has done the right thing. This was commissioned by the Bonheur theater company in 2005 for the commemoration of the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940.

The final monologue is  …and I am Sara. Sara is alone in her parents house. She is twenty seven and so far her life has not turned out how she wanted. So much has gone wrong, but now it seems life is set to improve but then disaster overtakes her.

In all these stories fate or circumstances take control, no matter how the characters have struggled in their lives. Anna Enquist is a musician, and a psychoanalyst as well as a poet and novelist. Her writing is clear bringing the people and places to life. I particularly liked the stage directions in first and last monologues and the insights into the characters’ thoughts.

LibraryThing – “Will I Like It?”

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

a-leap001I was nicely surprised the other day when I had a new comment on my LibraryThing Profile page telling me I’d snagged a copy of A Leap by Anna Enquist. Surprised because the closing date for requesting books hadn’t even ended. I’ve snagged a few books from Early Reviewers before but only received them months later. In fact, Sue Guiney’s Tangled Roots never arrived at all via LT  – I’ve now received a copy thanks to Sue, herself!  So I was even more surprised and delighted when A Leap popped through my letterbox this morning (it’s a slim book of 84 pages).

When I added it in to my library I found a new feature, well I’ve only just noticed it at any rate. It’s on each book’s Main Page headed “Will you like  it?” –  a bar sliding from “won’t like”, “will probably not like”  “will probably like” “will like”, “ will love”. So now I’ve been checking it out to see if it really can tell whether I’ll like a book or not.

I checked The Hidden by Tobias Hill, which I write about here. LT thinks I’ll “love it” – actually I liked it, well not far wrong there. So I then looked at Death of a Gossip, which found rather disappointing (I wrote about it here). I wouldn’t go as far as saying I don’t like it, but in LT’s terms I’d rate it “will probably not like”, but LT thinks I “will probably like it” – wrong!

Currently I’m reading Tartan Tragedy by Antonia Fraser and I’m thinking of giving up on it. It’s set in the Scottish Highlands where Jemima Shore is on holiday caught up with the mystery of Charles Beauregard’s death. Allegedly he was descended from Bonnie Prince Charlie.  I should be “loving it” according to LT but I’m not – it just seems to be so long winded and far-fetched. Part of my problem is that I’m fed up reading what all the characters are wearing. I don’t like to give up on a book (think of the time I’ve wasted but it’s a library book, so no cost involved).

Well, I suppose “Will I like it?” is just a guide and for fun really, but I hope it’s right about A Leap because it predicts that I “will like it”, maybe I’ll even love it..

Tuesday Thingers

Published on by Margaret11 Comments
Marie’s question today is:
Popular this Month on LibraryThing: Do you look at this list? Do you get ideas on what to read from it? Have you read any of the books on the list right now? Feel free to link to any reviews you’ve done as well.

Until today I’d never looked at the list so I’ve never used it at all. I haven’t read any of the books on the list, I don’t own any of them and I haven’t read anything by any of these authors. Some of them look interesting and certainly they have been reviewed many times on LT – is that the measure for their popularity or is it the number of people who’ve entered them in LT?

  1. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – I’m tempted to read this.
  2. Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron – cats and libraries, may give this one a go sometime.
  3. Nation by Terry Pratchett – I think I should maybe have a look it this.
  4. Brisingr by Christopher Paolini – I don’t think so.
  5. Anathem by Neal Stephenson – this looks interesting but I’m not sure if I’m up to reading “esoteric mathematical philosophy” as one reviewer on LT describes it.
  6. American Wife: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld – not for me!
  7. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer – I’ve written about my reluctance to read this one, but if I see it in the library I’ll have a look.
  8. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel by David Wroblewski – described by one LT reviewer as a “coming-of-age novel, set in rural Wisconsin”, ” a modern take on Hamlet” – tempting.
  9. Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland – I don’t think so.
  10. Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3) by Stephenie Meyer – definitely not for me.

I’ve found it interesting to look at this feature but I shan’t be using it to get ideas on what to read. Reading tastes are very subjective and I prefer to choose books by reading reviews, mainly on book bloggers’s blogs and by picking up books off the shelves in lbraries and bookshops. The books on this list have varying reviews on LT anyway – some good and some not so good.

Tags – Tuesday Thingers

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Today’s Tuesday Thingers question is about tags- do you tag? How do you tag? How do you feel about tagging- do you think it would be better to have standardized tags, like libraries have standardized subject headings, or do you like the individualized nature of tagging? What are your top 5 tags and what do they say about your collection or your reading habits?

My answer:

I’ve been thinking about tags recently, both on LibraryThing and on my blog because I’m not very good at doing either. On LT I tag by genre and roughly by subject, but it’s very general eg Fiction, Biography, Cookery etc. I also use TBR, although LT has a tick box for status – Currently Reading or To Read and D Read (my husband).  Most of my books are tagged as I try to remember to include a tag when I add a book. I’ve not been very consistent with tags and looking at them now I see I’ve used Non-Fiction for just one book! I would like to go through my catalogue and be more specific, but then I think I’d end up reading the books to decide what to tag them and really I’d rather spend the time reading them anyway. 

I wouldn’t like to have standardized subject headings as these might not match what I think of as the subject of the book, nor where I would look for it. I like seeing all the different variations other people have chosen to tag a book, so I wouldn’t want the tags to be assigned automatically.

Not counting the TBR or D Read tags (which are in the top five) my top five tags are:
Fiction (424), Cookery (64), Christianity (40), Biography (30), History (29). That’s not really representative of my books as most of the non-fiction is not in LT yet!

LibraryThing Early Reviewers Group

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

LibraryThing Early Reviewers

I’ve just added a new widget to the sidebar to the left but I’m putting it in this post as well because I like the image and I’m so pleased that there are now some books available to us in the UK. LibraryThing in conjunction with publishers provide advance copies of books, in exchange for reviews.

I didn’t expect to be lucky enough to get a copy as there many more people applying for copies than are available. So I was so pleased when I had a message that I had snagged an Early Reviewers copy of Our Longest Days edited by Sandra Koa Wing – it arrived in the post yesterday.

It looks fascinating and fits in so well with my reading interests as it’s full of extracts from diaries written during the Second World War. I’ll be writing more about this book!