Just In Case by Meg Rosoff

Another book from the school library. What do you do if you think Fate's out to get you? If you're David Case, then you decide to outwit Fate by changing your personality. David becomes Justin, he changes his clothes, his hobbies, his outlook on life. His little brother tries to communicate with him using his building bricks - Jstn Case What? - and his friend gets on well with his imaginary dog. A slightly surreal book ... very interesting. Who or what is Fate? Are some people unlucky? Or, if they have survived a number of near misses, are they not, in fact, very lucky?

Dangerous Reality by Malorie Blackman

I am still waiting, and looking forward to, reading the final book in the Noughts and Crosses trilogy. However, in the meantime, I was happy to borrow another of Malorie Blackman's books for children from the school library.

Dangerous Reality tells the story of Dominic, whose Mum has designed a Virtual Interactive Mobile System - VIMS for short. There is action in this book, but it also shows Dominic finding out more about himself.

This book is definitely written for younger readers (and younger than those that Noughts and Crosses is aimed at), but it's still nice to have a quick read that still has elements of suspense - I guessed at some of the twists, but not the biggest one, so that was good.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang

I've finally finished it! Wild Swans was recently on a list of books that are started but not finished ... well, after about three months, I've finally finished it!

I think it's a case of "history being written by the victors", or at least history being retold by the literate. As she came towards the end of the book, with the descriptions of illiteracy being praised or prized, it seemed surprising that she was getting all the breaks, being able to go to school, to university, to get a job at the uni, to win the scholarship to the UK. But, of course, the reason she is able to write this book is precisely because it is her story.

I knew very little about Mao and Communist China before I read this book. I know a little more now ... it sounds a very harsh political climate, full of torture, thought police and lack of individuality. Chang is very descriptive, and many passages are very interesting.

But above all, it is a long book, that feels long.

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

What a treat! This has been one of those books that has been non-put-downable. I've followed H around DIY shops with my nose in a book, sat reading it in the car, been up late into the night, and lain in bed in the morning in order to finish it! With a touch of magic realism, a touch of humour, a touch of romance, a touch of travel ... it's been a great read, and I highly commend it!

It's a much longer book than Fear of Flying, but as you can see, it read it much more quickly ... and not even any tube journeys with it!

Fevvers is a woman with wings ... only a bird in a gilded cage ... Jack Walser is a journalist trying to find out if it's all a big con trick ... and when she goes off travelling with the circus, he goes too. Lots of interesting characters ... clowns, tiger tamers, a strong man, a prophetic pig, clever apes ... What's not to love?!

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

Jewishness, psychoanalysis, sex. Those three words pretty much sum up this book. And boring. She writes better, I think, about "her" (the narrator's) past than present. Not really my cup of tea ... a bit too "so what?" Shame. I'd been quite looking forward to it ... before I realised what it was about! The prose style was fine, readable, but the storyline was a bit inconsequential. I would therefore disgree with John Updike's description of it: 'Unihibited, erotic, delicious ... a winner'. Apparently it was the "modern classic that changed the way we thought about sex". Hmmm. Nice cover, though.

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami

I finished this small book of short stories this morning. Each tale tells the story of someone who, in some way, was affected by the Kobe earthquake of 1995. Other than that, the stories are very different ... They deal with love, death, friendship, and some are fantastical. I hadn't realised it was a book of short stories when I began, so turned the page to find out what happened next, at the end of the first story, and got quite confused! An enjoyable little book, though. I do enjoy short stories, and the sense of completeness and incompleteness you get at the end ... what happened next?

The Breast by Philip Roth

A lecturer in Kafka and Gogol wakes up one morning to discover that he has turned into a six foot high mammary gland. What more can be said?!

Silk by Alessandro Baricco

I'm still ploughing through Wild Swans by Jung Chan, so this little novella by Alessandro Baricco, about silk, made a welcome retreat while I had my lunch. A short book, a short tale, a bittersweet tale. I'm glad that the list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die is opening my eyes to a different sort of literature, to books I would not have chosen by myself.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

I really enjoyed studying this at uni. My favourite passage was the hellfire sermon. I have drawn on it many a time since to demonstrate Medieval religion to little Year 7s.

I've just looked it up. The sermon is about seven pages long.

"Consider then what must be the foulness of the air of hell. Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jellylike mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseus loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions and millions of fetid carcasses massed together in this reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell."

And that's just the smell! The sermon goes on to describe the horrors, the tortures that would be faced by those in hell. And then the pupils at Stephen Dedalus' school are reminded of the sins they might commit that could send them to hell. No wonder this sermon sparked off Stephen's questioning.

The Rainbow by DH Lawrence

Again, it's been some time since I read this ... It was part of the course at uni.

Here is the opening paragraph.

"The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire. Two miles away, a church- tower stood on a hill, the houses of the little country town climbing assiduously up to it. Whenever one of the Brangwens in the fields lifted his head from his work, he saw the church-tower at Ilkeston in the empty sky. So that as he turned again to the horizontal land, he was aware of something standing above him and beyond him in the distance."

Our lecturer began. "Many would say that the church tower is a phallic symbol, that it represents sex, and power ... I say that it represents that there was a church in the village."

Well, it got a laugh out of we first year students, who were used to having obscure symbolism pointed out to us in the literary texts that we studied, and having had English teachers who had seemed more than usually preoccupied with sex. In fact, my choice of personal essay in my Higher had been based on the fact that my English teacher seemed preoccupied with sex, and funnily enough that was about another, more well known, Lawrence novel.

It's interesting re-reading that paragraph now ... I used to live near there. But would never have expected that at the time I studied it!

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

It's been some time since I read this. I had watched and enjoyed the film first, and at some point got round to reading an old, second hand, blue and black copy of the book. Enjoyed it, but can't remember much about it ... I remember the couple crossing the moor, handcuffed together, in the film, but then I've read articles since then that point out that the romantic interest was added for the film and was not present in the book, but I can't remember, so maybe I ought to read it again sometime. But there are still so many more to read ... I think I will keep plodding on.

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

What a coincidence that this one should come next! We watched Apocalypse Now again a few nights ago, and it continues to amaze me that I was foolish to pass up on the opportunity to watch this at uni while I was studying the novel. I suppose loud, violent war movies didn't appeal to me then, even if they would have added a slant on the literature I had to study.

My favourite line?

`The last word he pronounced was - your name.'

Marlow to Kurtz' fiancee.

When he had actually said ... "The horror! the horror!" I always thought that was full of meaning. I mean, obviously "the horror" is full of meaning, but the implication that his Intended could also have been part of that horror. I've just been reading some interpretations, about how Marlow has managed to lie in order to protect the woman, but I've always thought it was an indictment on her. The Heart of darkness.