| Reading Diary
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| 2004-09-20: Not on The Label - Felicity Lawrence.
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| 2004-09-01: Fr�ken Smillas K�nsla F�r Sn� - Peter Hoeg. Not bad, but slow.
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| 2004-08-25: A Sweet Obscurity - Patrick Gale. One of Gale's best. I've been looking forward to reading this since it came out and I'm not disappointed.
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| 2004-08-21: Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling. I don't like this one much. It never really picks up.
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| 2004-08-12: Angels - Marian Keyes. Because you should give everything a chance, I am reading this freebie I got with a magazine... and it's really much better than I thought. Chick lit, yes, but good chick lit.
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| 2004-08-06: Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling. I like this one. It's quite scary and pacey.
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| 2004-07-14: The 13 � Lives of Captain Bluebear - Walter Moers. This is completely insane. Really. But it's a great, imaginative adventure story.
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| 2004-06-12: Behaving Badly - Isabel Wolff. This really isn't very good. But I guess there's nothing wrong with a bit of chick lit.
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| 2004-05-15: The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis. Just catching up with the classics. I got the most beautiful complete edition from work.
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| 2004-05-03: The English - Jeremy Paxman.
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| 2004-04-28: 100 Shades of White - Preethi Nair. I grabbed a proof copy of this at work expecting chick lit. I'm glad now I wasn't too prejudiced to pick it up. Nothing to do with chick lit. It's the story of an Indian girl growing up in England. It's very perceptive and you can just smell the pickles.
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| 2004-04-20: Fast-Food Nation - Eric Schlosser. This angers the blood. The way fast-food companies treat their workers, suppliers and food. This is when I wish I ate at those places so I could start boycotting them... but I don't.
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| 2004-04-14: Maid Of The Mist - Colin Bateman. I really like Colin Bateman. This is completely nuts. No one writes crime novels quite lke him.
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| 2004-04-05: Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides. I got this free as a proof copy from work. It's reeeeaaaally good. It's exotic even though it's set in the USA. It's got an original starting point, the life story of a hermaphrodite, and it taught me so much even though it's not heavy-going at all. V. good. really.
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| 2004-04-02: Vad G�r Alla Superok�nda M�nniskor Hela Dagarna - Fredrik Lindstr�m. This is such a Swedish book. It has this tone of melancholy and stalemate while showing us that it's the same for everybody, really. Life's a boring bitch and then you die. And it's not even depressing. Quite an achievement, really.
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| 2004-03-26: The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time - Mark Haddon. I normally shun heavily publicized books like the plague. I'm glad I gave this one a go. This is really good. It's about an autistic boy who decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog and in the process discovers and has to deal with family secrets, in his own way of dealing with things. It was really educational as it gave me a proper picture of what having Asperger's Syndrome is like. Most people need to read it. What normally scares us in autistic people just makes so much sense afterwards. That's the definition of educational.
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| 2004-03-24: Tree Surgery For Beginners - Patrick Gale. This is another great Gale. It's about a tree surgeon who is accused of killing his wife (he didn't - she turns up again) and how the family evolves into one of those modern UFO things (like mine, a bit, and probably half the world's really) after that. It's really beautifully written, with Gale's eye for detail.
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| 2004-03-21: The Scheme For Full Employment - Magnus Mills. This is kind of impossible to describe. Well it's about some scheme devised so that no one is idle in the country, a pointless system of driving van parts from one depot to another that eventually goes wrong because of a strike. It's a bit like 1984 in spirit. I enjoyed it though.
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| 2004-03-15: The English - Jeremy Paxman. I couldn't really get into it so I gave it up. WIll try again though as I enjoyed what I did get into.
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| 2004-03-12: Ett UFO G�r Entr� - Jonas Gardell. Critics have said this is his best so far. I could easily agree, although I did miss some of the complexity of things like Passionsspelet. It was great to read more about the gang from En Komikers Uppv�xt though.
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| 2004-03-09: Story Of My Life - Jay McInerney. Me, I like Jay McInerney. I know it doesn't get more New York than him and that it makes no sense but I do. This reads so quickly, but it's ferociously funny and a great testimony to what it means to stop being a teenage brat and start being a grown-up. If you're 22, read.
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| 2004-03-06: The Bride Stripped Bare - Anonymous. This is the best thing I've read for quite some time now. I missed the hyoe when it first came out so I didn't have any preconceived ideas about it, which is just as well since a lot of the early criticism is totally off target. It makes it sound like porn. Yes it is about sex but not that kind of sex, really. It's about being unfulfilled within a marriage and exploring and growing as a woman. It's spot on so often no man should read it for fear of being totally put off women.
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| 2004-03-01: Dude Where's My Country? - Michael Moore. I appreciated this a lot more than Stupid White Men. It was a lot less preachy and pseudo-intellectual, and it actually taught me I didn't already know. Which the other one didn't. I would definitely recommend this one out of the two.
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| 2004-02-16: The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman. Last one of the trilogy. Never really got into it. I like the second one better.
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| 2004-02-11: The Mermaids Singing - Val McDermid. This book was a freebie. It originally came with some women's mag and because customers pull them apart we had a spare one at work. It's quite scary for a ladies' read. But it does at times feel like she's trying too hard to be creepy.
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| 2004-02-09: Kalle Ankas Pocket #something. Kalle never lets me down either.
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| 2004-01-30: A random Nemi comic. Nemi never lets me down.
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| 2004-01-21: Turbulent Priests - Colin Bateman. I really liked this. It's insane. Have bought another one of his books since, altough have yet to read it. Turbulent Priests is about a journalist sent to a tiny island off the coast of Ireland with wife and child to investigate the Second Coming. It all goes horribly wrong. V. entertaining.
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| 2004-01-18: Popul�rmusik Fr�n Vittula - Mikael Niemi. I'm sick. I can't seem to get into it. I'll have to try again later. I know it's good.
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| 2004-01-13: Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About - Mil Millington. Not what I expected, but as funny as I expected. About how a guy with a short-tempered German girlfriend gets caught up in highly illegal dealings at work. Great stuff.
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| 2004-01-05: The Night Listener - Armistead Maupin. Yes. I still love it.
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| 2003-12-29: The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman. It was easier to get into than the first one. Really quite cool. Only one to go now.
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| 2003-12-18: The Adventure Of English - Melvyn Bragg. Just like being back at Uni.
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| 2003-12-13: Vill G� Hem - Jonas Gardell. Well annoyed that I didn't buy all his books when I was still in Sweden. There's no way I can get my hands on them now. Then again I didn't have the money.
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| 2003-12-01: Northern Lights - Philip Pullman. Another book I've been meaning to read since it came out ages ago. I'm liking it so far, I like the fact that like in Lord Of The Rings a lot of the fantasy world and language is based on Scandinavian countries and languages, I was well impressed to see he used some Finnish as well, which is v. original, and I had a shock last night when it mentioned Uppsala. I've got the whole trilogy to plough through now.
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| 2003-11-20: The Wind In The Willows - Kenneth Grahame. Tis surreal - he must have been on something. But I like surreal.
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| 2003-11-17: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy - Greg Palast. Not uninteresting, but quite reactionary.
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| 2003-10-20: The Pillars Of The Earth - Ken Follett. I have been meaning to read this book since it came out, and that's a good 6-7 years ago. It's massive - about 1000 pages of fine print, but don't let that scare you. It's a great journey. It's about building a cathedral in Kingsbridge in the 11th century - decades in the lives of fascinating characters. I loved it.
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| 2003-10-12: Shanghai Baby - Wei Hui. Amazingly well written, and opened my eyes to what modern Chinese youth is like. Would definitely recommmend it.
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| 2003-10-06: Glamourpuss - Christian McLaughlin. Good old gay lit. I was well impressed to see we stock that. It was good stuff. Witty.
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| 2003-10-05: Stupid White Men - Michael Moore. Another case of What's the big fuss about? While I do agree with Moore about a lot of things, he isn't telling me anything I didn't already know, plus I dislike the way he sometimes goes for the cheap shot. Either you're a comic or you're an intellectual.
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| 2003-09-28: Behaving Badly - Isabel Wolff. The thing with Wolff is that all her books are the same. They all follow the same pattern. Girl meets boy. Falls in love with boy. Has major row with boy. Makes up with boy. The end. All very Meg Ryan. Not badly done, but it's getting repetitive.
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| 2003-09-22: Six Reasons To Stay A Virgin - Louise Harwood. Is one of this summer's major best-sellers in the bookstore I work for. So I figured I should read it. I hated it. Now I don't know what to say when a customer asks me if it's any good. Can't bloody well go "Nah it's rubbish" can I? Not good sales skills. Basically the way it's written annoyed me infinitely.
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| 2003-08-23: The Impressionist - Hari Kunzru. I saw him being interviewed on TV and he was very funny. He has a surprisingly classic style. Not a quick read by any means.
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| 2003-08-17: Don't try this at home - Katie Pearson. Written in e-mails. It's the future of the letter novel I'm sure. A bit like Rodi's latest in form, then. Entertaining enough but I'm not sure about the ending. It felt like a viewers' committee disagreed with the original ending.
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| 2003-08-07: The Public Confessions of a Middle-aged Woman - Sue Townsend. Sometimes very funny, sometimes very boring. Life in a nutshell :op Sorry. I'll shut up now.
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| 2003-08-02: The Cat Who Smelled a Rat - Lilian Jackson Braun. God old Koko. You can always count on him for a bit of entertaining reading.
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| 2003-07-31: Wavewalker - Stella Duffy. Me like Stella Duffy. Her crime novels are great.
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| 2003-07-25: Girls' Night Out / Boys' Night In - Collective. Fun enough for summer reading. Obviously the good thing about it is the variety of tones.
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| 2003-07-10: Hello Darling, Are You Working? - Rupert Everett. Isn't this one already in the archive somewhere?
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| 2003-06-23: The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien. Nice adventure story, with the classic writing style though. It's a bit like the first book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and that's my favourite of the lot. So overall, enjoyable.
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| 2003-06-07: Bleak House - Charles Dickens. I did actually give up halfway through. I don't do that very often. I'll give it another go. I firmly believe that reading those big classic novels presupposes that you are in the mood for it. Unless of course you're doing it to impress people.
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| Announcement: this section was gone... well as of today it's back! In all its glorious uselessness.
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| 2002-11-01: The Beauty of the Husband - Anne Carson. Me? Read a whole book of postmodern poetry?! The things they make you do at school... Geesh.
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| 2002-10-26: Benito Cereno - Melville. Yes. Again. Too.
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| 2002-10-18: The Autobiography of my Mother - Jamaica Kincaid. Yes. Again.
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| 2002-10-01: To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf. Bleh. Kind of.
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| 2002-09-27: En Solskenshistoria - Kalle Ankas Pocket 276. Oooh that was a good one.
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| 2002-09-21: The Autobiography of my Mother - Jamaica Kincaid. Rather depressing but really quite strong. The main character is probably one of the most interesting people I've ever heard about, figures she ain't real... Blah.
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| 2002-09-16: Praisesong for the Widow - Paule Marshall. I'll be writing a massive paper on that this term.
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| 2002-09-14: Benito Cereno - Melville. I'm sure I can guess what's up on that ship.
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Reading Archive
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