Challenge 10: A Book Set Somewhere You've Always Wanted To Visit

Donna's book: "And Then We Went Fishing: A Story of Fatherhood, Fate and Forgiveness" by Dirk Benedict (Square One Publishers 1995)

I bought this ages ago because I was going to an event where Dirk Benedict would be signing and I wanted a signed copy, but I never got round to reading it.  Half if it is set in Montana, which is one of the states in the US that I have yet to visit.  I've got a 'bucket list' goal to visit every American state (33 down, 17 to go) and so I thought this would fit nicely into Challenge 10.  Besides that, I'm going to another signing event with Dirk, and I wanted to be able to tell him that I had actually read his book this time!

Comments:

This is a truly beautiful book. I can't remember the last time that I read a book from start to finish in one sitting, but I couldn't put this down. Without giving anything away, the intertwining and juxtaposition of two momentous events in Dirk Benedict's life, builds to a climax that is breathtaking, and both heartbreaking and heart warming. Think you now Dirk Benedict? Unless you read this book, you don't, and you never can.  It's now nearly two weeks since I finished reading this, and it is still touching my soul.  I think that it always will.

Challenge 10: A Book Set Somewhere You've Always Wanted To Visit

Ida's book: "The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the last Tzar" by Robert Alexander (Penguin Books, 2004)

Originally I had wanted to read 'The Romanovs' by Simon Seberg but seeing as that book is incredibly long I decided to pick something a little lighter, given that I am supposed to be writing my MA thesis at the moment. Anyway, I've been interested in the Romanov family since I was around 10 years old, when the film Anastasia  came out: it was the first film I saw more than once in the cinema and I remember renting it on VHS so many times, before I finally got my own copy. So clearly this book had to take me pack to the Russian empire and why not do it with a murder mystery - or rather, a survival mystery. I am familiar with the narrative idea of a kitchen boy (because it was also used in the film) but other than that I didn't know much of those last few weeks; a fiction book is probably not the best informative tool, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless.

Comments:

It was incredibly slow at first, and given that I'm going on a 2 week holiday to Canada later this month, I wanted, if possible, to finish this book before then. I therefore decided to get the boring bits over with and then read one chapter each night of the (hopefully) good ones. Well, suddenly I couldn't put the book down and I just had to finish it so I did... 5 hours later I was done. I have no idea how accurate the book is with regards to the family's life in that little house, but seeing as two corpses were never found, it's always interesting to see what a writer does with that kind of set up and I was not disappointed! I thought I had it sussed, but the final twist was very good and actually quite believable. So even though the book is a bit slow, the ending more than makes up for it!

Challenge 9: A Book With A Colour In The Title

Donna's book: "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House: Humor, Blunders, and Other Oddities from the Presidential Campaign Trail" by Charles Osgood (Hachette Books, 2008)

OK, I admit that I might have cheated slightly with the theme for this challenge, but white is definitely a colour!  Given the upcoming presidential election, and all the hatred that it seems to have generated, I thought that something that put the humour back into American elections might be just the tonic!

Comments:

This was such a disappointment.  It felt like Osgood got bored half way through writing this and lost interest.  There are some funny quotes but many of them needed more context or explanation to show why they'd been included.  There was a very basic summary of the themes for each election that provided a reasonably good overview but, as I often say to students, this reads more like a final draft than the finished product.

Challenge 9: A Book With A Colour In The Title

Ida's book: "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf, 2006)

Since reading Adichie's "We Should All Be Feminist" for a reading group at my university, I wanted to read more of her writing and this book fit the bill perfectly. It's not what I would normally go for, but that's quite exiting and I can't wait to see what world the book (and author) will show me.

Comments:

Having never read anything about Nigeria or Biafra, this was an eye-opening reading experience for me! Sometimes I felt the book proceeded too slowly, but still I couldn't leave it for too long I simply had to know what would happen to the characters. It's such an amazing book I can't really do it justice, but I will definitely read more from Adichie. 

Challenge 8: A Book At The Bottom Of Your "To Be Read" Pile

Donna's Book: "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: Travels Through my Childhood" by Bill Bryson (Transworld, 2010)

I confess.  I just want to read some more Bryson.  But I got this book back in 2010 when it first came out and I've never got around to reading it, so I think it fits well enough into this challenge.  Bill Bryson writes with both intelligence and humour, and he is the perfect antidote to the madness-that-is-end-of-year-marking!

Comments:

I finished reading this ages ago, but the end-of-year-marking madness, and then the trying-to-write-as-much-as-possible-for-the-new-book-over-the-summer madness rather took over!  As always, Bill is wonderful and I recommend this to anyone who wants a nostalgic, humorous and insightful look back at the 1950s.  In telling the story of his own growing up, he also tells the story of the way that America 'grew up.'  As such, I realised that while I was reading this, I was actually 'at work.'  This will be added to the list of recommended reading for my students who study cultural changes in the US during the Cold War.  I recommend it to you too!

Challenge 8: A Book At The Bottom Of Your "To Be Read" Pile

Ida's book: "Did She Kill Him? A Victorian Tale Of Deception, Adultery, And Arsenic" by Kate Colquhoun (The Overlook Press, 2014).

I bought this book last year in the local Oxfam charity shop and it's been sitting on my shelf ever since. I don't really have any expectations of what it'll be like, so this is something of a leap of faith (as it was when I bought it on a whim) but I'm ready for a (possibly) murderous woman from the Victorian era, so bring it on!

Comments:
Okay, so this book became a bit of an obsession for me, which I hadn't actually expected! First of all, it's set in Liverpool which was nice because I knew the places described in the book. It also managed to paint a picture of the Victorian era, by piecing together letters, transcripts and the like (always in italics so you knew these were the 'facts' as they were written down in the 1880s). Finally, the fate of this young woman, Florence Maybrick just kept me coming back for more and I was genuinely angry at the shoddy police work done at the time and the incompetent judge. These books about murder cases are curious things, as it would be quite easy to just look up whether she was sentenced or not, but I managed to steel myself and read through the book without looking up the case, which really is the only way of reading this kind of book, constantly asking yourself - yeah, but did she do it? Amazing book about a time when arsenic was simply everywhere and a the worst a woman could do was to have an affair.

Challenge 7: A Book By An Author You Love

Ida's book: "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" by J.K. Rowling (Bloomsbury, 1997)

So I'm well aware this challenge simply states "a book by an author you love" and not "a book you've read before" but I see no problem in re-reading and re-discovering old favourites, so that's what I'm doing this month. The first book came out in Denmark when I was 10 or 11 so it was the perfect age for me and I just fell in love with the whole concept. It's also a relatively short and easy read and I have multiple essays to write over the next month and a half so I needed something that I could properly relax with and I knew this book would be lovely to re-read.

Comments:

No surprises here, except that it was so lovely to rediscover Harry's world, and J.K. Rowling's wonderful writing. Quidditch was, and remains, the only sport I could ever get into.