Reading Me Like A Book (Or Ten)

I got tagged by the lovely Simon T of Stuck in a Book last week in a meme he had created. It’s a great idea and one that, should you wish to, you can all have a go at. You simply go to your shelves close your eyes and pull ten random books of them and then tell your readers what those ten books tell the world about you. Simon says (ha, I normally am on the receiving end of that saying) that you can cheat a bit which is what I had to do a bit as I only took books of my shelves with books I had read on and some of the titles didn’t work. Anyway on with the books which as you can see I carefully arranged on the sofa… sort of.

Blackmoor by Edward Hogan
This is the best casing point of proving that I wasn’t cheating and as soon as I had picked it I thought ‘oh no’ as I couldn’t think of anything it said about me. I then remembered that it is set in Derbyshire and that is where I am from so that tells you more about me doesn’t it.

The Mitford’s: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley
Now you probably already know I am a bit of a Mitford maniac so that’s not really something new. But I am a huge fan of letter writing. I used to write sides and sides of A4 letters to my friends but sadly it’s gone out of fashion, I am thinking I should make some new pen-pals but not sure how you go about it.

The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins
Now after my sensation season I don’t need to fill you all in on how much I love the genre or how fascinated I am by all things Victorian but its worth a mention. Did you also know that I am into all thinks ghostly and though I haven’t stayed in a haunted hotel I worked in on in Devizes and have stayed in a few haunted sites like Peterborough Museum which was once a hospital and a mansion (I even spent a while in the old morgue) I have also slept in the London Tombs a lovely bunch of plague pits for charity.

Animals People by Indra Sinha
India is one of the countries that I most want to go to, fact one. The second fact is that I have always been a big fan of pets. In fact from about 3 years old I had a duck called Rapunzel who lived indoors with us and would fly to me if I shouted her, she was one of the best pets ever. Since then though I have reverted to cats and goldfish, I only have the latter at the moment but we could be getting two little sets of whiskers in the house soon. Very excited! Ooh and thirdly I did my work experience at a vet surgery and was in the Swindon press after we helped save a dog’s life.

Spies by Michael Frayn
My fantasy job, as I soon decided I didn’t want to be a vet, is now to be a spy. It won’t happen in a million years but I would love it, apart from being terrified all the time. It is also why I am addicted to Spooks when it’s on.

The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
If I had done a degree my aim was to become a psychologist and to go onto do criminal profiling and working out why people kill and how their killings say so much about a killer. I think its fascinating and why I like crime fiction so much and need the occasionally binge.

Daphne by Justine Picardie
Good old Daphers is my favourite author and Rebecca is my favourite book, can’t say more than that can I? Ha!

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Well I am an avid reader and hopefully the books I read aren’t common. Hmmm, how do I put that better? I hope I read a diverse collection of books. Also apart from age and national treasure status I like to think I have a lot in common with Alan Bennett he’s northern, a writer etc, etc.

The Accidental by Ali Smith
I am one of the clumsiest people you could ever meet, seriously it’s ridiculous. Falling seems to be one of my specialities or bumping into things or tripping, basically anything is a health hazard.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
This was my only cheat and it’s a bit of a tenuous fact. I am a big fan of cats; in fact as a kid I wasn’t interested in dinosaurs but I wanted a sabre tooth tiger as a pet. So I think if I could be any animal it would be snow leopard or white tiger. I know that’s pushing it a bit but it’s the best I could do.

So there you have it! Who else is up for doing this? I wont tag particular people just leave it up to all of you to have a go at and if you do it do pop a link in the comments, or of course if you have already done it. Do you think these books say a lot about me; do you feel you know me a little bit better?

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Gran Needs Your Book Thoughts…

Before ‘Granny Savidge Reads’, or just Gran as she likes to be called, answers your questions later in the week (you still have today to go here and leave one or two) she has a favour to ask of you. As the year draws to a close one of the book groups that my Gran is in get to vote for the books for next year. This is one of the U3A groups not the MAD Book Group (which is named because they are in the Matlock and District… not because they are all mad, on the whole) which she founded.  There is a list of books and the members vote for favourite twelve from the list.

Gran and I thought it would be nice, as well as interesting, if you could help recommend which ones you think would be great for the group and which ones you would avoid. I have naturally already thrown in my tuppence worth, so now over to you. The ones in italics are the ones Gran has already read, but do recommend them more if you think fit.

• The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
• The Yacoubian Building – Alaa Al Aswany
• Black Diamonds – Catherine Bailey
• Border Crossing – Pat Barker
• Villette – Charlotte Bronte
• Restless – William Boyd
• Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
• The Short Stories – Anton Chekhov
• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke
• The Shieling – David Constantine  
• The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
• Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
• Alicia’s Gift – Jennifer Duchen
• Last Train from Liguria – Christine Dwyer Hickey
• Engleby – Sebastian Faulks
• Human Traces – Sebastian Faulks
• Is There Anything You Want – Margaret Forster
• The Man in the Wooden Hat – Jane Gardam
• Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
• Peeling The Onion – Gunther Grass
• The Believers – Zoe Heller
• The Beacon – Susan Hill
• The Quiet Girl – Peter Hoeg
• The True Deceiver – Tove Jansson
• Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow – Jerome K Jerome
• The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver
• The Other Side of the Bridge – Mary Lawson
• La’s Orchestra Saves the World – Alexander McCall Smith
• The Road – Cormac McCarthy
• Great Fortunes – Olivia Manning
• The Glass Room – Simon Mawer
• Things My Mother Never Told Me – Blake Morrison
• The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
• The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
• Tales from a Travellers Life – John Simpson
• Glassblower of Murano – Marianne Siorato
• The Suspicions of Mr Whicher – Kate Summerscale
• Love and Summer – William Trevor
• Miss Garnetts Angel – Salley Vickers
• The Night Watch – Sarah Waters
• They Were Sisters – Dorothy Whipple
• Proust and the Squid – Marianne Wolf

So that’s the lot. I haven’t put any pictures in today’s post as you might be swayed. I know I was when I saw some of the covers of the books that I had never heard of. Gran and I are very much looking forward to all your thoughts, so do get responding.

The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga

Now I have decided with the Man Booker Winners that as I read them I am not going to compare them to what else was long listed and short listed that year which I might have read. I don’t actually see any benefit in debating if it should have won if a) I haven’t read the whole long list and b) it doesn’t make any difference as I can’t change history… I know, I know, my mystical powers are weak! I am simply going to tell you what I think. Have I ever done a blog on how I review a book before? If not do let me know and I will do one in the coming weeks. Anyway onto the book in question…

The White Tiger is Aravind Adiga’s first novel and it is an incredibly accomplished first book which paints a vivid if slightly dark picture of ‘the real India’. We follow the story of Balram Halwai son of a rickshaw puller also known as ‘The White Tiger’ (which is of course the rarest of all the feline family) and his journey from a boy in a small village to ‘an entrepreneur’ in the big city via a life of servitude as a driver and, rather ominously, murder.

The story is undoubtedly a dark one and one in which Adiga is telling us of the corruption (which as Dovegreyreader brilliantly summed up in her review “just slimes off the page”) in India, its globalisation and how it has faired since the British moved out and American culture moved in. We see the darker sides of life out there that ‘tourists’ to India might not. Though this is a hard look at India and is very gritty for the reader, amongst the dark though there is humour thanks to such a wonderful protagonist. If you are puzzling over how a murderer could be likeable and funny then you need to read the book. Mind you there are a few other novels where I have felt that way too… oh dear, should I worry?

Balram’s personality changes as his surroundings do. He starts of as a naïve but clever school boy, and then becomes a disheartened young man in the tea shops before becoming a wry, calculating and knowing servant to his repugnant masters. He tells us; actually he isn’t telling us his story he is telling it to someone else. We read his story told in the form of letters to The Premiere of China. Which is oddly the only bit of the book that I didn’t really take to as I couldn’t work out why you would tell such a tale and admit to the things that he does if it might very well end up on the desk of someone as important as that.

Bar that one glitch I found the book incredible. It’s so readable and that was all down to Balram and his character (the font of a book helps though I find, more on that next week). I thought the way Adiga managed the plotting and story so we got to see so much of Indian life quite remarkable. We started in the villages looking at education, death, marriage and people who may be poor but make their life as rich as possible through the hard times (Balram’s Gran is a brilliantly calculating old woman – but then you would need to be). In Delhi we get the mix of the richest of the rich, the corruption of the government, the globalisation and Americanisation of the cities and all its gloss and glamour and the in contrast the prostitution, slum dwelling, and the life of those in servitude – the cockroach scenes freaked me out. All in all a great narrator, an unusual look at, and insight into, India and a highly accomplished debut novel.

I look forward to more novels by Adiga and hope that we see more novels from him. Arundhati Roy is an author I always wanted to read more works of after ‘The God of Small Things’ her Booker Winner but sadly we never did, maybe she is biding her time? One thing I will add about the book is the amount of people that I have seen reading it on the tube, I was going to do my report on that this weekend but I am going to hold off another week as am finding it quite interesting. Right I am off to read in the glorious Sunday sunshine.

Managed Many of the Man Bookers?

I was wondering how I could encorporate Harriet Devines very interesting blog on Man Booker winners into one of my blogs. Then I got a lovely parcel of books through the door yesterday which included Liver by Will Self, The Believers by Zoe Heller and The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. The later was the perfect excuse to talk about Man Booker winners you have managed.

I decided to see how many Man Booker winners I had actually read and even though its only four (one of which I need to re-read) that was two more than I thought I had read. When I started looking at the short lists and the long lists I suddenly felt a little more pleased with my reading efforts. I thought I would share them with you, I have highlighted the ones that I have enjoyed and left the other ones normal, I didnt want to steal Harriets colour co-ordinating idea though I loved it! So the ones I have read are…

Winners
The Line of Beauty – Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
The Life of Pie – Yann Martell (2002)
Amsterdam – Ian McEwan (1998)
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy (1997)

Shortlisted
Darkmans – Nicola Barker (2007)
Mister Pip – Lloyd Jones (2007)
On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan (2007)
Animals People – Indra Sinha (2007)
The Night Watch – Sarah Waters (2006)
Arthur & George – Julian Barnes (2005)
On Beauty – Zadie Smith (2005)
The Accidental – Ali Smith (2005)
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell (2004)
Notes on a Scandal – Zoe Heller (2003)
Atonement – Ian McEwan (2001)
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (1986)
An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)

Long Listed
What Was Lost – Catherine O’Flynn (2007)
The Testament of Gideon Mack – James Robertson (2006)
A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine – Marina Lewycka (2005)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke (2004)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon (2003)
Spies – Michael Frayn (2002)
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things – Jon McGregor (2002)
Dorian – Will Self (2002)

I have checked in my TBR pile and TBR boxes and I have quite a few winners, short listed and long listed books to go through so as I do I shall keep you posted. The White Tiger will be going straight to the top 5 of my TBR. I just want to read the shortlisted Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry and the longlisted Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. I will add the tag Man Booker to any that have won etc. So have I missed any great ones? Which ones would you recommend I get onto right now and which ones I should possibly avoid?