Booking Through Thursdsay – Interview Part 2

Checking out today’s Booking Through Thursday question I was intrigued and excited. Today’s post is titled Interview Part2 and is quite simply a series of provoking and interesting question created by the Deb at BTT aimed at other bloggers and readers.Looking down the list of questions I realized my participation in this task might give me the opportunity to let the readers of my blog know a little more about me. So without further ado here are my answers;

1. What’s your favorite time of the day to read? – Well if I had my way it would be all day but work and other commitments make sure that doesn’t happen. So for me my favorite time to read is during those stolen unexpected moments when I get five minutes to myself and I can pull my book out and have a little bit of me time. Bliss.

2. Do you read during your breakfast? (Assuming you eat breakfast.) – I don’t usually have breakfast, I’m in the habit of getting up five minutes before I need to leave the house, ops. I guess the equivalent would be the five minutes of reading I manage to do in the lift on the way to work. That’s all the morning reading I get.

3. What’s your favorite breakfast food? (Noting that breakfast foods can be eaten any time of the day.) – Like I said I don’t really eat much breakfast but if I had the time and it didn’t make me pile on the pounds then it would definitely be fried eggs, baked beans and bacon….mm this is making me hungry.

4. How many hours a day would you say you read? – Answering this question is really depressing because I want to say ten or fifteen hours and instead it’s a meager one hour a day during the week when I’m really busy, an hour and a half to two when I have less on. And maybe two or three hours a day on a Saturday and Sunday. I used to have so much more time on my hands to dedicate to reading but with work, college, and friends my time is really limited.

5. Do you read more or less now than you did, say, 10 years ago? – I definitely read more now than I did ten years ago. I would have been sixteen then and I had just joined college. Despite studying A level English Literature I was embarrassingly far more interested in boys and going out than reading books. I know I exasperated my teacher who wanted me to knuckle down and pay attention but like most teenagers my mind was else where. However it was the year I first read and loved nineteen eighty-four so not all bad.

6. Do you consider yourself a speed reader? – Definitely, definitely not! As much as I would love to put myself in this category (imagine how many more books I would read?) I am quite a slow reader I think. On average I’ll read a book a week which isn’t too bad considering I don’t have much time to read. I’ve tried speed reading but I find I don’t enjoy it as much. Rushing a book seems to equal missing big chunks out and losing some of the atmosphere. What do speedier readers think?

7. If you could have any superpower what would it be? – Easy I would fly. I always dream that I can, I dream it so vividly I wake up sure I should be able to fly. In fact I even remember a disastrous incident as a child waking up from said dream on the top of a bunk bed and trying to put my theory to the test. Result? Bad idea!

8. Do you carry a book with you everywhere you go? Absolutely. I feel lost and panicky without a book as my companion, I even take on when I go to the supermarket so I can read in the queue.

9. What KIND of book? – Ah how do I answer that question? I really don’t have a type. I’ll read any genre in any format, hardback, paper back. Contemporary, classic, crime…pretty much anything but I’m not a huge chic lit fan.

10. How old were you when you got your first library card? – Mm I don’t really know the answer to that question. It was a long, long time ago. Maybe eight? My mam took me to the local library called The Green in our local village. It’s still there and it’s a charming, homely little place. It’s only small but the children’s section used to enthrall me. I remember being taken as a little girl and being enchanted by all the pictures and words and colors. It was one of my favorite places.

11. What’s the oldest book you have in your collection? (Oldest physical copy? Longest in the collection? Oldest Copyright?) – Ah tough question, I really don’t know. I don’t really look at copyright dates etc. I guess I’ll go with the book that has being in my collection longest and that would be George’s Marvelous medicine which I’ve had from childhood and which has survived years of my mam’s big clean outs.

12. Do you read in bed? – Definitely, bedtime is one of the few times I get to read uninterrupted. I do quickly get sleepy but even so I rarely go to sleep without reading a few lines in bed.

 13. Do you write in your books? – What a great question! I thought I was the only one who did this. I’m an old English lit student so writing in my books comes quite naturally from the days when I would write essays and need a point of reference. I don’t do it in every book but certainly one I’m reading for book group or just one I want to understand better.

14. If you had one piece of advice to a new reader, what would it be? – Give everything a try, don’t discriminate because you might not yet know what you like! If you read something you don’t like don’t let it put you off, that happens to all readers. Take some time to go to your local library or book shop and just pursue the shelves. Something is bound to catch your eye, I believe books can take you on a magical journey and there’s a perfect book out there for everyone.

Thanks BTT for the brilliant questions.

Booking Through Thursday – Perfume; The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

I’m a little late but when I saw last weeks Booking Through Thursday question my attention was instantly grabbed. I couldn’t resist getting involved in the question;

What’s the oddest book you’ve ever read? Did you like it? Hate it? Did it make you think?

Straight away Perfume; The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind came to my mind. A story about an abysmal young man with an extraordinary and almost animal like sense of smell who fuses his talents with revolting violence when he sets out to create a scent that is the epitome of purity by murdering 13 virgin girls. I told you it was odd.

The story begins in 18^th century France when Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born to poverty, enters into the world with a gruesome and vividly depicted birth. Instantly people seem to either take an aversion to Grenouille or completely fail to ignore him. One lady describes her revulsion to the baby who instead of smelling like a normal baby has no smell at all.

From birth Grenouille is an outcast, shunned or isolated from society he lives on the fringes of life developing into one of the strangest characters I have encountered in a work of fiction.

Greouille, with his own keen sense of smell comes to realize that he is in fact himself born without a sense. His own personal identity is hindered and he feels an even greater outcast from society, almost as though he does not fully exist.

When he goes to work with Master perfumer Baldini, a once successful and affluent business man, his flare for smells enable Grenouille to help renew Baldini’s flailing business.

Grenouille discovers that his strength of smell is such that he can seek out smells from miles away that others would not detect and he can pick out the most complex and hidden notes from any scent.

He creates his own perfume that once worn instantly makes people notice him. He discovers that whilst once people passed him as though he did not exist, now they suddenly notice him. In short Grenouille understand that he can hold a great and insurmountable power through his skilled manipulation of smells and scent.

But Grenouille also discovers that he does not like the new-found attention he has earned and wishes to once again disappear.

The novel follows Grenouille on his remote and strange life, becoming intimately acquainted with the thoughts and motivations of a serial killer. When he realizes his desire to create the perfect scent of a virgin and goes on a murder spree killing local virgins he creates panic amongst the local towns people who soon realize that the killer is targeting pure, innocent girls.

PLOT SPOILER…

Grenouille eventually succeeds in creating his perfume which draws people to him and inspires immense feelings of love and reverence in the those around him. When they discover that he is responsible for the multitude of deaths he is sentenced to death. However on the day of his execution he wears the scent and subsequently people are so drawn to him that they profess love for him and are driven to have a mass orgy. I told you this book was a little different.

Grenouille, finally achieving a sense of identity realizes it’s fickleness and the reality that people only love a false sense of himself and he abandons the village where he is revered. Upon wearing the scent again in Paris his scent is so attractive that he is devoured and torn apart piece by piece by a group of people who are at once disgusted by their act but also left with a sense of blissful happiness.

But did I enjoy this book? Well despite this being one of the darkest and possibly most disturbing books that I’ve read to date, I actually loved it. I’ve read very mixed reviews of this book but I actually believe it is the perfect portrayal of how humanity can be driven by its most base human instincts and how universally even the most so-called civilised people can be reduced to mass hysteria when their own innate instincts are stirred.

It shows the depths of Grenouille’s isolation and the extremes that his keen sense of smell and desperation for identity will drive him.

The novel is off course extreme and Suskind’s means of telling his story is extravagant and unlike anything I’ve read before. But the story is daring, it is bold, Suskind is unafraid of creating repugnant characters and portraying a truly ugly side of human nature.

So this is by far the oddest book I have read but it greatly inspired me and left me wondering at just how far people can and will be inspired and motivated by their animal instincts.

So what is the oddest book you’ve read? And did you like or dislike it. I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you do decide to leave your own answer on your blog then remember to leave your link here and at Booking Through Thursday.

Booking Through Thursday – Replay

It’s been a while since I joined in with the wonderful Booking Through Thursday and their weekly Meme so when I saw this weeks post titled Replay I couldn’t resist getting involved.

The topic this week is;

Have you ever finished a book and loved it so much you went right back and started re-reading it again?

Now this is a concept on which I have strong feelings, not because I am a serial re reader, actually far from it. But because I have never been able to re read a book straight after reading it. In fact I would be hard pressed to find a book I would want to read again even a year later.

That isn’t to say I chastise anyone who does, quite on the contrary I admire people who can and do re-read books, but I’ll be honest I rarely even consider re reading a book  and hadn’t though of doing so until I saw this post on BTT.

What about you? Can you re read a book straight after finishing it? Do you like to? Or do you prefer to re read a book after a lengthy time has passed?

I know I’m not the only one who struggles with re-reading books and I’m not entirely sure where the problem for me lies. All I do know is that whenever I pick up a previously read book (no matter how much I loved it the first time round) I can never get back into it.

Perhaps its because I am impatient and my TBR list is so high, the thought of reading old books just seems so time-consuming that I can’t bring myself to it. In the back of my mind I can permanently see a list of other appealing and un reads books vying for my attention, the demand is too much to really soak up an old read.

I have always felt a pang of jealousy though when a fellow reader expressed the comfort they received from re reading again and again a classic favourite. Perhaps I jut need to try harder?

The last book I read and really adored was The Girls by Lori Lansen, and even though I finished it in the airport and only had a collection of short stories to keep me going I favoured those because for me the book was far too fresh in mind. To start the book again so soon would be to re read words, phrases and ideas that I had only just devoured, my attention would never be strong enough for that.

All of that said I have managed to re-read the His Dark Material Trilogy by Philip Pullman but for me these books contain so much magic and so many characters and other worlds that a re read only allows me to re discover events and details previously missed. And I don’t think I could ever re read them straight after putting them down.

I can re-read a short story, although I’ve never tried re reading it again straight after reading it but I’ll now give that a go. Off course short stories are not so consuming and therefore I am not plagued by the other books on my TBR that this rereading is preventing me from enjoying.

There is though one book that I can and will read and read and that is Disaster With The Fiend…but that is a children’s book and therefore not the greatest of challenges. I’ve never re read it again after just finishing it but I’m also going to give that a go, and who know’s I might just like it.

I adore this book because it transports me back to my childhood where I would read it with my Grandfather at the kitchen table. If, for me any book is worthy of an immediate re read then this is the one.

So what about everyone else? Please do let me know your feelings on Replaying books and your experiences of doing so.

Don’t forget to leave your comments at BBT too or even better re post this question with your own answers on your blog.

Booking Through Thursday – A book Rut

I recently made a great new blogging discovery courtesy of one The Book Jotter’s latest posts and link to the blog Booking through Thursday.

Maybe you’ve already discovered this blog and are a regular viewer? if not check it out. Its great fun and very thought-provoking.

Each Thursday they post a new question, for example last week the question was;

Do you ever feel like you’re in a reading rut? That you don’t read enough variety? That you need to branch out, spread your literary wings and explore other styles?

And they ask people to either leave a response in the comments section, or for fellow bloggers to post their own thoughts on their blog. So that’s what I’m doing, albeit a little late as I have been away this past week.

So inspired by this, here are my thought on getting into a reading rut and needing to try new things.

Having read since I was tiny and having always loved and devoured books I’ve had my fair share of reading ruts. As I now firmly know my literary tastes, and the genres I like, I often fall into the habit of sticking to one or two syles and excluding myself from other great works of fiction.

It’s all well and good knowing what I like when I’m on a reading mission, chomping through books at a ridiculous speed.  But every now and then I get myself in a reading funk where no matter if I’m reading a book that I would usually devour and adore, I just can’t get into the book. I indeed need to spread my literary wings and explore other styles.

This has happened with several books and when I ‘ve gone back to read them another time I’ve loved them like I knew I eventually would.

So this for me is a reading rut, when I need to read something else, something totally different to the usual genres I chose. I need to mix up my reading habits, have a break from my repetitive selections. This is all in order to go back to the styles I usually read so perhaps it’s a little ironic really?

But it certainly highlights to me that I don’t have enough variety in my reading life and that I do occasionally need to branch out.

When in a rut I’ll usually chose a style of book that I normally shy away from, like a crime thriller or auto biography, and if I’m really stuck a chic lit book. I’ll also always try to read something completely different to anything I’ve tried before in order to get out of my self-imposed rut. And I usually enjoy trying new books and styles so why I always go back to my fail safes without keeping up the variety I’ll never know.

This is how I discovered the wonderful No time for Goodbye by Linwood Barcaly and loved it, so reading ruts aren’t always bad things.

So in answer I definitely get in a reading rut, but like I said it’s usually my own fault.

Actually you kind readers might be able to help me, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been in a reading rut recently, more because I’ve just been reading nothing but books by female authors. This isn’t intentional and certainly not a good thing,I need that type of variety at leat. So can anyone tell me of some great books that I must read by male authors? Any suggestions would be very welcome.