Summer Reading Project: London

In February, I read London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets by Peter Ackroyd and really enjoyed it. It's a brief book that explores the past and present of the rivers and tunnels beneath London. It was something that I knew very little about and it definitely whet my appetite for the subject. But then, as frequently happens, I got distracted by other books and briefly forgot about the interest.

Then, last week, I was already missing the quirky Bryant and amiable May so I picked up the second book in Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit series, The Water Room. Coincidentally, some of the plot is about the rivers beneath London (the rest is about the damp above ground) and it renewed my interest. Therefore, I've decided to take a bit of a literary journey into London this summer and all it has to offer, both above and below.

The base of my project is going to be Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography. Funnily, the first chapter was about ... the rivers of London! Once I finish The Water Room, I'm going to re-read Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere to continue the underground theme. I'm not sure yet where I'll go from there but, since The Biography is over 700 pages long and will take at least the summer to read, I'll have plenty of time to pair fiction reads with it.

Do you have a favorite book about London?

Heading over the pond,
K

Wrap Up Post: Once Upon A Time VII

At the beginning of April, I pledged to read five books that were either fantasy, folklore, fairy tale, or mythology for Once Upon a Time VII and then promptly started sucking at blogging. I haven't been reviewing all of my reads or keeping track of where I am with this challenge so let's refer to my (thankfully) up-to-date spreadsheet and see how I did ...

On April 2, I finished Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (fantasy, science fiction) and wrote about it for The Estella Society.
Also in April was a Stardust (re-)Read-Along (part one and part two -- fantasy and fairy tale). This was my first Gaiman of the season.
At the end of April, I read The Looking Glass Wars (fantasy).
In May I read, The Blood Binding (fantasy), Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures (not reviewed yet -- fantasy, mythology) and The Clockwork Princess (fantasy, steampunk).
June was enjoyable because of a re-read of The Last Dragonslayer (fantasy) and a first read of The Song of the Quarkbeast (also not yet reviewed -- fantasy) and, of course, an early read of The Ocean at the End of the Lane (fantasy, folklore, mythology and probably some fairy tale in there too ... I need to reread it to be sure).

So it looks like I managed to read nine fantastical books. Yay! Another successful season, especially with two Gaimans and two Ffordes.

What was your best OUaT read? Are there any of these that are on your TBR?

Charmed by these reads,
K

New Release: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Best. Book. Of. Ever. The End.

You are going to see a lot of reviews like this over the next few days and weeks and months about The Ocean at The End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman and here are some of the reasons.

• It's got a gorgeous cover and a mysterious title which hopefully means lots of readers will pick it up and give it a try. If they do, they're probably going to love it.
• It isn't a long book, only 178 pages, so it's easy to get through in an afternoon or evening. Many readers will do just that. I finished it less than twelve hours after it landed on my door step. It would have been sooner if I hadn't had to eat or take care of my child.
• It's a perfectly-paced, imaginative, slightly-dark tale full of beauty and wonder, sadness and love. Pretty much, it's a perfect Neil Gaiman story. It's also just a perfect story.
• It's a great entry novel for readers who haven't tried Gaiman before. It's easy but incredibly deep -- kind of like Lettie Hempstock's ocean (which you'll have to read the book to find out about).

I could go on about characters without names, opals, kittens, water and shadows but those are just details, bits of the story. The perfection of the tale is how Gaiman brings it all together, holding the reader's hand through nostalgia, comfort, sadness, fear and forgetfulness. So when you see the positive, gushing reviews, let them lead you to your local indie bookstore where you can pick up a copy.

Starting back at the beginning,

K

TBR Cull Completed!

another random photo by k

I really appreciate the great advice you all gave me on my TBR cull and thought you might be interested in my progress. After a couple of days of tedious back-and-forth shifting and lots of dust exposure, I was able to remove over 50 books from my TBR! LibraryThing now says I have 181 unread books, down from 234. Of course, that wasn't really accurate since I found eleven books in my stacks that weren't even on the list. Oops! And I was hoping to get the TBR down closer to 100 but I guess I am just going to have to do that through reading. How long until the next readathon?!?

I was going to take pictures of the books I'm getting rid of, post them here, and ask you to tell me if I was inadvertently getting rid of any gems. However, as I thought more about it, I had a bit of a revelation. Many of these books were on the TBR because other readers loved them and I thought I should read them. But there they sat, gathering dust because I didn't actually want to read them. And this is when I decided to change my reading philosophy.

From now on, I am choosing to read what I want. I am not going to feel pressure to read what everyone else is reading unless I am truly interested in it. There is no one author that fits every reader's tastes so there is nothing wrong with skipping one, no matter how popular he or she is with my blogging peers. I may still end up picking up some duds but I can squarely place the blame on myself for that -- which should make it easier to quit a book I'm not enjoying. I am going to fully own my reading from start to finish (or not).

Feeling light and positive,
K

Discussion: Weeding the TBR

random photo by k

Recently I have become overwhelmed enough by my TBR to choose to undertake a major cull. LibraryThing tells me that I have 234 unread books and that doesn't even count the childrens' books that I plan to read with Z. I've decided I need to reduce this because a) I'll never get to all of these books and b) there are other books that I want to buy and read and I feel guilty getting them because of my existing TBR.

The next step is, of course, deciding how to choose which books to pass on to new readers. It's easy when it comes time to pare down Z's books because there are ones that he simply outgrows or has never been interested in. We pack away beloved books and pass on the rest. But it's much harder to know what to do with books that I haven't even read yet. So my question to all of you is have you ever done a TBR cull? What criteria did you use? Because obviously at some point we thought we wanted to read these books, right? How do you let go of a book that you paid for (or received as a gift) without feeling terribly guilty?

Doing a bit of housekeeping,
K

Catching Up 2: Adult Series

I haven't been good at remembering to post here each time but I am still writing at The Estella Society for the 100 Best Chapter Book Project, with posts going up on the 15th and the last day of each month. My most recent read was Harriet the Spy. I would love to get more comments over there!

As for books I've read recently but neglected to write about, here are a couple more --

The Mapping of Love and Death is the seventh of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs books. The series, while remaining quite good since the beginning, had started to stagnate just a little bit but happily this one took Maisie's character in a bold new direction. The mystery itself was interesting -- tracking down the wartime love of an American cartographer who joined the British forces during The Great War. But the changes to Maisie and her lifestyle really stole the story. There were moments of great sadness and also of satisfaction and joy. I'm definitely looking forward to getting the next book in the series -- A Lesson in Secrets. There are now all new aspects of Maisie's life and circumstances to explore.

I finally started the Peculiar Crimes Unit Mysteries by Christopher Fowler (which is a good thing since I already own five of the books in the series ... damn you, Half Price Books). The first book, Full Dark House, alternates between present day and WWII-era stories. In the present, John May is both mourning and investigating after a bomb decimates the offices of the Peculiar Crimes Unit and, presumably, his investigative partner of decades, Arthur Bryant, who was working there alone. Because the clues from the modern day explosion point back to Bryant and May's first case together, the reader is taken back to see how that unfolded. The writing was a little uneven in this book but I'm assuming that it's because it was a first outing for these unusual men. I definitely intend to continue with the series. The past case was quite unique and the period details of the Blitz were very well done while the emotions of the present were also believable and touching.

Quite a while ago, I got an ARC of the third book in this trilogy (which I obviously couldn't just read on its own, right?) but luckily another blogger was offloading the first two books. And then the size of the three books (this one is 544 pages and the others are similar) caused me to stick them in the TBR pile for a while. But I've been in the mood for chunksters lately so I finally picked up The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly. This was the straight-forward but compelling story of a young woman from very modest means who made her way in the world despite constant setbacks and tragedies, all because of her own strength of spirit and her special talent for identifying tea. I really enjoyed this story. It's been a while since I read a nice big saga and I had forgotten how much I like working my way through a character's entire life. As our main character is only about 30 at the end of this book, I am assuming that the next book is still about her but I'm not sure. I will definitely be finding out sooner than later though! I've (hopefully) learned my lesson about leaving books on my TBR for too long.

Finding mystery and romance in the past,

K