Here is an intriguing theme which I spotted on Book Forager‘s blog after she was tagged by Winged Cynic of Tomes of the Unknown.
Without further ado, then, here are my choices for the Seven Deadly Bookish Sins.
Tag: books
Tipping point
The day after midsummer’s day
Every day seems to bring new evidence of the parlous state that we and the planet are in. Microplastics in the food we eat, in the air we breathe. The sudden death of coral reefs. Glaciers melting. Species extinctions. Climate extremes. Sabre-rattling by malevolent despots. Politicians proving to be the new Neros fiddling even as Rome burns, while mobs are bribed by bread and circuses.
As the hours of daylight start to shorten (for northerners at least) have we passed the tipping point in more ways than one?
My reading this year has, in some ways, paralleled these doomsday scenarios …
The story so far
Tomorrow sees the official start of 20 Books of Summer (as announced by the redoubtable Cathy of 746books.com) and though I’ve rather jumped the gun by already finishing my first book (1) I intend to post the requisite number of book reviews before the event ends on September 3rd. If I somehow don’t get through twenty titles it’ll be 15 Books or even 10 Books of Summer that I’ll be observing.
However, as — too soon — we’ll be at the halfway point of the year in four weeks, this seems as good a time as any for a retrospective. Am I pleased with my progress? Will the quality of what I’ve completed matter more than the quantity? And, more to the point, can I make it all sound entertaining enough to keep your interest?
Hmm…
Summer sizzlers
Courtesy of blogger Cathy Brown of 746Books.com I’m planning to join in the meme of Twenty Books of Summer. All this requires is for me to draw up a list of books to read between the start of June and early September, but with the option of changing titles, the number of books read or, indeed, the period of reading: my kind of challenge in fact, infinitely malleable!
Here now is my chance to tackle and reduce my list of Classics Club titles, to read the Roddy Doyle novel I won in Cathy’s Begorrathon this year, and to finish The Deptford Trilogy for Lory’s Robertson Davies Reading Week.
The theory is that, having completed over thirty titles in the first four months of this year I can at least manage twenty in this coming three-month period, but that would require judicious choices: books that aren’t too long, for example.
So herewith is my initial pick of twenty titles to complete by summer’s end.
Fantasy library
As May is my month for reading fantasy, courtesy of Wyrd and Wonder, I thought a post combining reading and fantasy would be in order. In particular, I’d like to share with you my dream library space.
Titles in search of books
I’ve often got book titles muddled in my head before wondering what they would be like if they had really existed.
How, for example, would these presumed lost works stand up as literature, as classics?
- A Timely History of Briefs: possibly a soft-porn title to be kept under the counter?
- Shady Gifts of Feys: a fairytale of bondage and more, perhaps.
- The Unbearable Importance of Being Lightly Earnest: a lost title by Oscar Kundera — or was it Milan Wilde? I get confused.
- Noh Country for Omens: Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens adapted by Cormac McCarthy for the Japanese stage.
- You Rang, M’Lord? A lost episode of Downton ghost-written by Tolkien, originally titled The Rings of the Lord.
- Scents and Sensitivity: Jane Austen’s handbook on allergic rhinitis and other aspects of hay fever, edited by Noel Coward.
- Tender Is The Knight: prequel by Sir Walter Scott Fitzgerald in which Ivanhoe gets saddle-sore.
- A Room of One’s Own with a View: the tale of Rapunzel re-imagined by Woolf and Forster.
- The Angry Caterpillar: the diary of a butterfly larva with IBS.
- Alice threw the Working Class: how Dodgson’s heroine rose above her humble origins to graduate from Oxford debt-free.
Suggestions below, please, as to the kind of mash-ups you wouldn’t mind seeing on bookshelves.
Close encounters
We’ve not long passed May Day, the waymarker for the second third of the year. I thought I’d just do a little crystal-gazing and a quick retrospective in the lull between reviewing one book and the next.
First, the scrying. May being Wyrd & Wonder month, with a focus on fantasy, I’m firming up what I’d like to read over the thirty days. In the photo above, going left to right, you can see my final (?!) choices for High Fantasy, Low Fantasy and Grimdark, and below these, Urban Fantasy, Portal Fantasy and my take on Fairytale.
Still to be decided are Magic Realism and Myth, but I have a shortlist for both; and which titles will emerge will be as much a surprise for me as it will be for you. Will they be as mainstream as the others or rather more obscure?
