Books in Bed

Carry Me Down

2006, Books in Bed, Fiction, Reading Lists /

Down, down, down and down some more. This book was properly named.

Carry Me Down took close to a week to read and not because I wanted to savor every word. Everytime I picked it up I would hope something good would happen and everytime I put it down I just felt depressed and hopeless.

I am very glad this did not win the Booker. It was well-written. It was interesting. It was depressing in what I’ve begun to think of as the “Irish way”. Angela’s Ashes-like. Aren’t there any uplifting Irish novels?

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The Booker Prize

3 Comments / Favorites, Fiction, Reading Lists /

Well, as suspected, Inheritance of Loss is the 2006 Booker Prize winner. I haven’t read it yet and now that it has won I have some irrational desire NOT to read it. Weird, eh? Ah well, it is on my shelf waiting patiently so I will give it a go… after I finish Carry Me Down. (In the Company of Men is still on my reserve list at the library and I will read that too, eventually.)


I would like to thank the folks who blogged about the short listed books on the Man Booker Prize Blog. I really enjoyed reading their thoughts about each of the books and following their progress through the stacks.

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Mother’s Milk

1 Comment / 2006, Books in Bed, Fiction /

Mother’s Milk, from the Booker short list, was good but not winning material.

I found Robert interesting, his parents a complete bore and Thomas a little annoying. Maybe if I had read the “Some Hope” trilogy, I’d have more compassion or interest in Patrick (and Mary) but I didn’t and I don’t. If St Aubyn continues writing about this family, I hope he focuses on the boys and leaves their parents (and grandmothers) out of it.

Onto the next Booker? Or should I take a break and read something else, instead?

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Marlon Brando? Fan-Tan!

2006, Books in Bed, Fiction /

The most interesting thing about Fan-Tan was the “afterword” (if you get this book, read that first!)

The second most interesting thing about Fan-Tan was the cover.

The third most interesting thing about Fan-Tan was really only interesting after I read the “afterword”. The story itself. Interesting. But not really interesting until you put the whole Brando/Cammell thing together.

It wasn’t a bad book but not a great one either. I think it would have been a good Brando movie, too bad it didn’t work out that way. Nice pulp fiction feel. One good sex scene. (Good as in well written and interesting and not run of the mill sex.)

Check this one out at your library. Or if you are a Brando fan (are there any Cammell fans?) buy it. I think you’ll be glad – but read the “afterword” first.

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Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

2 Comments / 2006, Books in Bed, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams is a bit like Hitchhiker’s Guide with a little Christopher Moore thrown in for good measure. As TW says, “So you recommend it, then?” Well duh. I’m a Hitchhiker fan and a huge Chris Moore fan. What’s not to like?

Quirky characters. Weird science. Unbelievable made totally believable. Tons of snark and sarcasm. Yea, I recommend it.

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Snapshots of Bloomsbury

2 Comments / 2006, Art, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

When I read a blog or a magazine or a newspaper and see a book recommended (or when TW does this) I will do one of two things. I’ll either save the name of the book in an Evernote folder to reserve at the library when our book stash gets low. Or, I’ll head to Amazon, find the book and then use a library bookmarklet to instantly find it at my library and reserve it. Occasionally, our library won’t have the book so I immediately save it to my Amazon wish list. I’ll go back a few months later, to my wishlist, and try again to reserve it at my library. Sometimes I am successful, other times not so much.

A few weeks ago, I really cleaned out my Amazon wishlist. If my library still didn’t have the book, I used the online inter-library loan request form and then happily deleted the book from my wishlist. Nice, eh?

One of the books that arrived from the nice folks at University of South Florida was Snapshots of Bloomsbury. Surprisingly interesting.

Thinking about how Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell took photos and organized their albums, and as an extension, how women did such things in the late 1800s when photography and photo albums were just becoming popular. Family photo albums were women’s art.

Really interesting glimpse, visual glimpse, into that world through photography.

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Historical Science Fiction Romance?

3 Comments / 2006, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

Whoever heard of historical romance science fiction? Imagine a Harlequin crossed with some cheese sci fi paperback. Weird. But. It. Worked. Sort of. It being The Sun and the Moon.

Once I got into the idea and I got comfortable keeping all of the characters straight, it was a little bit interesting. The King of France (who would be Louis XIV) gets a “sea monster” which is of course a mermaid courtesy of his Jesuit Natural Philosopher. The Jesuit has a sister who is not a typical woman, of course, and discovers the sea monster is not a monster or an animal but a WOMAN and she needs to stop the King from eating the mermaid and thus risking his eternal soul through cannibalism. Seriously. I’m not making this up. Vonda Mcintyre made it up.

Also, there’s romance. The Jesuit’s sister, she has many suitors even though she has no money or title. There’s the gay guy. A music composer. A prince (or was that the bastard prince, umm whatever). A dwarf. And the king himself.

Fun and mindless stuff. Oddly compelling about half-way through it.

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