The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I read this the way it was meant to be read. As a little girl, on holiday in the Ardennes, with rumours of a child kidnapper in the air. No, I don't think that is the way it was meant to be read ... be patient! Anyway, we were in a big, rambling farmhouse. The owner remembered that he had some old magazines in English in the attic somewhere. So off he went - and returned with two or three bound folders, full of original copies of The Strand. A very interesting magazine, I was soon devouring every page of it ... and more so when I started reading the serialised account of The Hound of the Baskervilles! It was a beautifully hot and sunny Belgian summer, and I could hear my parents looking for me, to go outside for a walk down to the bridge or to play outside, but there I was, lying upstairs on my bed, head in dusty old magazines, and imagination far away on English moors.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

No, I haven't read this one recently. But I had started this list by wanting to write about the books that I have read on the 1001 Books list, and then recently I have been adding the books that I have been reading at the moment. Well, at the moment I am reading "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang, and since we also have a visitor this week, and are waiting to be inspected at school, I am a bit behind with that. So I thought I'd use this opportunity to catch up with a few more of the books on the list that I have read. Dracula is the 37th book on my original list (which consisted of 91 books - I am pleased to report that I have read a few more books since then, so my total is a bit higher - those books have already been written about on here, though!)

So, Dracula. We watched a film a couple of months ago which was a variation on the theme. In it, Arthur Holmwood had contacted syphillis, so when married Lucy, he could not sleep with her without passing on this illness. The non-consummation of the marriage upset Lucy, who confides in her friend Mina that she is sad, but does not explain precisely why. In the meantime, and unbeknownst to Lucy, Arthur has contacted some strange characters who have said that they can cure him of this disease by giving him a blood transfusion. Mina's fiance, Jonathan Harker, is sent by his solicitor's firm to Transylvania. Mina does not hear of him again, so she is very sad too. Dracula eventually comes to England ... and finally bites Lucy etc etc. So it was Dracula with a twist. But I suppose that is one way to interpret Dracula - an STI that causes people to die, but not before they have passed it on. Very topical ...

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

Hmm. This was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Hmm. An interesting book, certainly, and I did not know about the Ukrainian famine and the hardships faced by Eastern European families as described here ... but, I feel there has to be a but! Perhaps there was too much hype surrounding the book. I couldn't say that I didn't enjoy the book, but compared to the feeling I have when a book has to be devoured, or the exquisiteness of Cold Comfort Farm, or the romanticness of Jane Austen, or the magic of Jostein Gaarder ... well, I suppose it's like comparing a kebab to a gourmet three course meal. Perhaps I just didn't "feel it", as my pupils would say.

I had wanted to read this for a while, and eventually bought the book in a motorway service station shop as part of a "buy one, get one half price" offer, when my husband was buying another book.

Right. The next one will be on the 1001 Books list ...

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

An exquisite book.

What was the "something nasty" Aunt Ada Doom saw in the woodshed?

(I feel that I should also add that much of this was read on the tube recently, and when we went to the cinema I carried on reading until the lights went down. Very funny, very unusual. A funny/strange feature: it is said "in the near future" - it was written in 1932, and at one point a character refers back to a 1942 war. What is funny is that you are not conscious of this normally - if anything, it has a real twenties/thirties feel about it - but every so often there's a strange anachronistic feature, such as "he dwiddled the dial on his picturephone" (that's not an actual quote, by the way!) or the "airpost". Anyway, other than that, this is a great book. Not bad for £2.49 at Oxfam ... As I said - exquisite.)

Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho always writes interesting books. I love The Alchemist, which was for me, like many others, the first of Coelho's books that I encountered.

This book is a collection of reflections, often less than a page in length. Many of them are very moving. Some are funny. There are quite a lot of "life's like that" ideas, which I suppose in shorter form could grace the pages of the Reader's Digest magazine, although that seems quite flippant when writing about Coelho!

One of my favourite images was that of comparing a pupil to a pencil: 1) the pencil is guided by a hand, as we are by God; 2) sometimes the pencil needs to be sharpened - this brings suffering, but makes the pencil sharper, and better; 3) we can rub out the mistakes a pencil makes - correcting a mistake is a good thing; 4) what matters is not the wood outside but the graphite within; 5) the pencil always leaves a mark - so do we. We should consider what that mark is ...

A Christmas present from Mum, I will probably dip back into this ... I'm sure there are some assembly ideas in there!

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

I have finally finished the first book of the year. And what a moving, great book it has been. Set in the South Africa of the 1940s, two men meet in sadness and despair but part in reconciliation and hope.

I love the way this book is written, from a variety of viewpoints and voices, breaking off from the main plot occasionally to touch upon other issues that matter. Very poetic.

Highly recommended. And only £1.49 from Oxfam ... A bargain.

Aesop's Fables

I have already included a post on Aesop's Fables a while ago. However, I recently finished a longer, more adult collection which I enjoyed. So I can definitely include them on my list now!

Another List of Great Books

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,711520,00.html

This is another list of great books of all time ... it's an old list, from 2002, but since most of the books are a bit older than that, I don't suppose it matters!

Wednesday May 8, 2002Guardian Unlimited

Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930), Things Fall Apart
Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875), Fairy Tales and Stories
Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice
Honore de Balzac, France, (1799-1850), Old Goriot
Samuel Beckett, Ireland, (1906-1989), Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375), Decameron
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899-1986), Collected Fictions
Emily Bronte, England, (1818-1848), Wuthering Heights
Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960), The Stranger
Paul Celan, Romania/France, (1920-1970), Poems.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France, (1894-1961), Journey to the End of the Night
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616), Don Quixote
Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400), Canterbury Tales
Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected Stories
Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924), Nostromo
Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321), The Divine Comedy
Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870), Great Expectations
Denis Diderot, France, (1713-1784), Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
Alfred Doblin, Germany, (1878-1957), Berlin Alexanderplatz
Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881), Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Possessed; The Brothers Karamazov
George Eliot, England, (1819-1880), Middlemarch
Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994), Invisible Man
Euripides, Greece, (c 480-406 BC), Medea
William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962), Absalom, Absalom; The Sound and the Fury
Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880), Madame Bovary; A Sentimental Education
Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936), Gypsy Ballads
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Colombia, (b. 1928), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera
Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia (c 1800 BC).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832), Faust
Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852), Dead Souls
Gunter Grass, Germany, (b.1927), The Tin Drum
Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil, (1880-1967), The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859-1952), Hunger.
Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961), The Old Man and the Sea
Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC), The Iliad and The Odyssey
Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll's House
The Book of Job, Israel. (600-400 BC).
James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941), Ulysses
Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924), The Complete Stories; The Trial; The Castle
Bohemia Kalidasa, India, (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala
Yasunari Kawabata, Japan, (1899-1972), The Sound of the Mountain
Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece, (1883-1957), Zorba the Greek
DH Lawrence, England, (1885-1930), Sons and Lovers
Halldor K Laxness, Iceland, (1902-1998), Independent People
Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837), Complete Poems
Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919), The Golden Notebook
Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907-2002), Pippi Longstocking
Lu Xun, China, (1881-1936), Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC).
Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, (b. 1911), Children of Gebelawi
Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955), Buddenbrook; The Magic Mountain
Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891), Moby Dick
Michel de Montaigne, France, (1533-1592), Essays.
Elsa Morante, Italy, (1918-1985), History
Toni Morrison, United States, (b. 1931), Beloved
Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (N/A), The Tale of Genji Genji
Robert Musil, Austria, (1880-1942), The Man Without Qualities
Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States, (1899-1977), Lolita
Njaals Saga, Iceland, (c 1300).
George Orwell, England, (1903-1950), 1984
Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC), Metamorphoses
Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, (1888-1935), The Book of Disquiet
Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849), The Complete Tales
Marcel Proust, France, (1871-1922), Remembrance of Things Past
Francois Rabelais, France, (1495-1553), Gargantua and Pantagruel
Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918-1986), Pedro Paramo
Jalal ad-din Rumi, Afghanistan, (1207-1273), Mathnawi
Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947), Midnight's Children
Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran, (c 1200-1292), The Orchard
Tayeb Salih, Sudan, (b. 1929), Season of Migration to the North
Jose Saramago, Portugal, (b. 1922), Blindness
William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616), Hamlet; King Lear; Othello
Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC), Oedipus the King
Stendhal, France, (1783-1842), The Red and the Black
Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713-1768), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
Italo Svevo, Italy, (1861-1928), Confessions of Zeno
Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745), Gulliver's Travels
Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910), War and Peace; Anna Karenina; The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500).
Mark Twain, United States, (1835-1910), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC), Ramayana
Virgil, Italy, (70-19 BC), The Aeneid
Walt Whitman, United States, (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass
Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941), Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse
Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987), Memoirs of Hadrian

So that's 22 then ... Think I'll stick to the 1001 Books list for the moment! Although at least this list is more international, and my Classics study has paid off! (Have just discovered that my husband has read 23, and is just about to start the 24th, Tristram Shandy ...)

Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis

Hmm. I'll need to check the spelling of his name ...

I actually finished this on Saturday, but with all the excitement of Christmas I haven't got round to reviewing this one yet!

I found this book in a second hand shop, reduced a number of times until I eventually bought it for 50p. I actually had a friend in mind when I bought it, and still hope to pass it on to him. This book is all about competitive, professional Scrabble, and since our friend plays competitively I thought he might also enjoy it. I play living room Scrabble occasionally with my husband, and I have found this a very insightful book. However, I wouldn't let my husband play some of these words, and I wouldn't expect him to let me play them either! It's quite amazing, thinking about how people memorise so many words and anagrams.

I played against my husband again tonight. If he had opened the game and played an R, I could have got a bingo with CREDITOR. But I had started ... Later I had ErOTICA, but again, nowhere to put it. Two bingos but no cigar. My husband won. 297-218. Not the sort of score that is mentioned much in this book ... !

Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud

I started this last night and finished it today; an easy read, then, and an enjoyable one. The narrator obviously had an eventful, eccentric and seemingly enjoyable childhood, with her bohemian mother taking her and her sister to North Africa, where she met interesting people. Something I noticed was that Freud writes in quite an adult way about herself as a child; I kept having to remind myself that she must have only been about four or five when the events were taking place. This did not distract from the book, I just find it curious. I'm not sure how easy it would be to write as a five year old girl, though.

I wonder what happened next to Esther?

The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

I have just finished rereading this magical nativity tale by the author of Sophie's World. Since I was opening up my advent calendar, I decided to read about Joachim and his parents opening up their advent calendar, and finding out the story of Elisabet, the little Norwegian girl who had gone missing over fifty years ago. The trace the story of another little Elisabet back in time and across the world to Bethlehem, and the birth of the Christ child. A simply told, reflective story for Advent.

The Heart of a Woman

I suppose I first heard of Maya Angelou from my husband, who for some time now has had the first three volumes of her autobiography on the shelves. However, it wasn't until I saw her famous opening volume, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" in the 1001 Books list that I actually got round to reading her.

I was captured straightaway. She writes with a vividness and urgency that carries you along, reading and reading, devouring the book until you come to the end ... and since her autobiography covers six volumes, each volume ends with you wanting to know what happens next.

In this fourth volume, which I started on Saturday and finished just now, Maya meets Sidney Poitier, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Among others. They are just thrown into the mix ... on each occasion when one of these characters appeared for the first time, I turned to my husband to say, "You'll never guess whom she's met now!" However, the main theme of the story covers Maya's "marriage" to an African man, Vus, and her moving to Cairo and then to Ghana, where she resides as the book closes. It's frustrating watching her change from being an independent woman to being a housekeeper who stays home and doesn't work, when she obviously wants to. And interesting to see how she is able to move on.

Maya Angelou has faced many battles in her life, and has overcome many interesting challenges. I am keen to read her penultimate volume ... I'll let you know when I'm done!