"Jennie" - Paul Gallico

BLURB:

"Original, humorous, poignant, compassionate, Jennie has become a classic of its kind.

It relates the unforgettable adventures of a small boy changed into a stray cat and befriended by the indomitable Jennie, who initiates him into the lore of London's streets.

The Times Literary Supplement said: 'Jennie has the same simplicity as The Snow Goose; it is, like its forerunner, a family book, and as such deserves the same success.' "

REVIEW:

I showed this blog to a friend at uni today, and she asked me which was my favourite book. I mentioned I hadn't actually reviewed it on here (and so I decided to remedy this immediately), and then proceeded to tell her what the book was about.

Unfortunately, when you try to describe Jennie to other people, this is another example of a really great book with Stoopid Plot syndrome:

"It's about a boy called Peter who sort of turns into a cat...and he meets up with another cat...and they go on all these adventures together."

Sigh.

Even though it sounds ridiculous, this is such a gorgeous story which I have read approximately 14, 753 times. It's one of those rarities that can transcend age boundaries, in my opinion, since children can enjoy the fantastical premise and the adventures of Peter and Jennie, while adults appreciate the gentle storytelling and cat-person references.

And oh man, I am definitely one of these 'cat people'. In fact I think I'm starting to sound like an old woman. Living alone. With fifty cats.

I have a feeling non-cat-people wouldn't appreciate the majority of this book, since it focuses so directly on cat behaviour. The author was a keen cat lover and wrote quite a few books featuring felines and their foibles (other examples include Thomasina and The Silent Miaow). However for cat lovers, it's a real treat to read about Jennie's careful tutelage to the newly-transformed Peter about how to behave like a proper cat - it's full of little moments of recognition, when you realise your cat does everything Jennie describes, to the letter.

It's an older book, with some subtle humour and more than a few lines of thickly accented Scottish speech (och aye) that some people might find difficult to understand, and one particular part of the story nearly always moves me to tears. It's also one of my favourite books.

Go read it. (Unless you're a dog person.)

RATING: Incredibly sweet, warmly told, and generally just a great story. 5 STARS

"The Book Thief" - Markus Zusak

BLURB:

"It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery.

So beings a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time."

REVIEW:

I read this one in bits and pieces over a very long period (...well, a long period for me to be stuck on the same book, anyway). It wasn't because the book wasn't engaging enough, but because stupid trivial things such as university and tests and assessments and minor family mishaps kept getting in the way of progress.

But I finally finished it today, and subsequently felt rather depressed. In fact, very depressed.

Of course I know about what happened during the second world war in Nazi Germany, on a sort of 'factual' level. I've seen a movie adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, I've heard about people like Corrie ten Boom, I've read about it on Wikipedia (which of course naturally makes me an expert now), etc etc. But nothing brought home the true horror of actually living there, actually experiencing the full force of human tragedy, as The Book Thief.

At first I thought it was the weirdest book I've ever read. I mean, for starters, it's narrated by Death. Secondly, the prose is bizarre. I felt like I was swinging wildly between hating the pretentiousness and loving the richness with which Zusak describes the most ordinary things. Everything is personified and metaphoralised (..."metaphoralised"?...oh well) beyond belief. Houses "crouch nervously", for example, or pimples "gather in peer groups". Only, imagine this continuing throughout the entire book, on every page. Also, there were a couple of things that weren't explicitly spelled out, which mystified me a bit, and I wish they'd been made more obvious.

Once the book really got going, though, I quite enjoyed the reading experience as a whole. A lot of careful thought and imagination has been poured into this story, which I like. The characters were interesting, if occasionally a little unbelievable. And it definitely highlighted the despair of living in Nazi Germany.

What a horrible time in human history.

RATING: Incredibly haunting, and well worth a read - but probably only once. 4 STARS

"The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers" - Lilian Jackson Braun

BLURB:

"Times are changing in Pickax: a new senior centre is in the works and a production of CATS is set to delight Moose County residents; Polly Duncan is off to Paris, leaving Qwill without a companion for his apple barn concerts; and The Librarians Who Lunch are showing their Art Hats to help unite Pickax with their Lockmaster County neighbours.
Not to mention the conversion of the late Nathan Ledfield's mansion into a charitable museum! With Mr Ledfield's treasures being sold off to benefit needy children, the town is abuzz with excitement - that is, until a mysterious death from a bee sting leaves everyone but Cool Koko in a state of confusion.
Is it because Koko has sixty whiskers as Qwill suspects, or because Koko knows that the mysterious death was no accident?"

REVIEW:

I picked this up at random from the library, and I must admit, I just couldn't get into this one. Perhaps it's time I read and reviewed a book I didn't enjoy - there's a lot of 4 star and 5 star ratings here. While I enjoyed the descriptions of the two cats in the book, the rest of the novel (it's more of a novella than a novel, though) seemed rather dull. Constant descriptions of a cast of characters I was completely unfamiliar with, and descriptions of the places they lived, was a bit tedious for a first-time reader of this series. To me, the writing style wasn't quite engaging enough to properly complement the "quirky and cute" elements in the story. In fact, by chapter six, it was still downright boring, so I gave it a quick flick though, searching for the mystery it promised - but nothing grabbed me. Nothing intrigued me. I almost stuck with it for the sake of reading about the antics of Koko and Yum Yum (they're two Siamese cats), but unfortunately...nope.

RATING: The cats were cute, but the story was still boring one-third of the way through the book, and it just didn't appeal. 2 STARS

"The Eyre Affair" - Jasper Fforde

BLURB:

"Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or boyfriend.

There is another 1985, where London's criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave's Mr Big.

Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.

Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn't easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.

Perhaps today just isn't going to be Thursday's day. Join her on a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself. Fiction will never be the same again..."

REVIEW:

I got tonsillitis while reading this book. I don't think this was actually caused by the book though, so don't worry, you'll probably be able to read it without becoming ill. However sitting up in bed for an entire day with a crazy fever allowed me to get through quite a sizeable chunk of this book in a short amount of time, which turned out to be a good thing.

This is one of the most bizarre books I have ever read, and trying to describe it without sounding completely delirious is quite a challenge. I mean, how would the ordinary person respond to a book description like this:

"Well, it's like a futuristic story...but set in 1985, in Britain...and people have pet dodos and stuff. And there's this big hierarchial law enforcement system that's divided into groups, according to what they deal with, like terrorism and stuff...and the main character in this book is a LiteraTec, meaning she works with any kind of literary crime, like people messing with important literary works etc. Oh, and her name is Thursday Next. They all have weird names in this book. There's another character called Jack Schitt. Anyway, some people can travel in time too, and the big villain of the story is trying to alter the original manuscripts of some important works, so that by altering the originals, all the copies of that work in the rest of the world get affected too...and Thursday Next has to try and stop him...and...yeah. It's kind of strange."

I swear, the author must be either a creative genius or a raving lunatic to have come up with most of the ideas in The Eyre Affair. It's just so 'out-there' and original, and with a deep undercurrent of absurdist whimsical humour throughout (the descriptions of the pet dodos made me smile, in particular). I can see how it's one of those books that would really divide people's opinions - you either love it or hate it. I belong to the former category.

However, there were a couple of things that I didn't like quite so much. First, the title implies that the book is based on (or at least makes a lot of references to) Jane Eyre, which is why I read this straight after reading Jane Eyre. However, references to Bronte's most famous work make up just a small (albeit significant) part of the story, and it doesn't even get to the 'Jane Eyre has been kidnapped' part until the last few chapters, so it doesn't fully live up to the implications its title. Also, there seemed to be a lot of different characters, and for a while I had a bit of trouble remembering who was who and what they did, etc. The weird names didn't help in this matter, occasionally detracting from the flow of the story (eg, you'd meet another weird name, and then you'd be thinking "Huh. 'Filbert Snood'? What kind of a name is FILBERT SNOOD?" for a while, rather than concentrating on the story.)

Or maybe that's because I was feverish.

At least this book provided something interesting to do!

RATING: On the whole, it was a very enjoyable, quirky read - and certainly very unique. However, despite its charm, I don't think I'd feel like reading it again, so I'm giving it a comfortable 3 STARS

'Buttons' (video) by Sia

BLURB:
There are no words to describe this. You simply have to watch it to understand it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUkje1lw4cA

REVIEW:
Despite the fact that you can't really 'read' a video, and this is a review site for stuff I've read, this just kind of got to me. My overall response to seeing this video clip can be summed up in three letters:

WTF?

You know you must be famous when you can make a video that consists entirely of lip-synching your song while contorting your face into grotesque positions by way of clear plastic (warning: danger of suffocation. keep away from children), stockings (retired bank robber perhaps?), pegs (which made me cringe just to look at) and sticky tape (not its most productive use). It's as though the singer said 'Hey, let's see how stupid and unglamorous I can look with this put on my face!' Followed by 'Hey, let's make this into a video clip!'
One question: why? Were you out of your mind and/or drunk and/or stoned when you made this?
Sia, I'm sorry, but you look like a complete idiot. I watched an interview with you talking to someone on a bus, and you seemed like a quirky, charming sort of person. But this video clip does not "make any statements about true beauty" (as one commenter claimed), nor does it make any statement at all, apart from perhaps "I'm bored so am mucking around with various materials in front of a camera". It's painful and sometimes very, very disturbing to watch.
The song is alright though.

RATING:
Singing with a stocking over your head just makes you look like a moron. 1 STAR

Sorted Books Project

http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/languagetranslation/sortedbooks.php

BLURB:

"The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library's holdings."

REVIEW:

Admittedly, this has been reviewed quite a bit on other websites - the creative and quirky arranging of books to form a story or message when one reads the book's titles from top to bottom. (My personal favourite is shown above). Nina Katchadourian is the person responsible for starting this ingenuis project, and the combinations are always very clever - you sort of wonder how she comes up with them! The range of photographs of these 'sorted books' is really something you have to see for yourself - click the link at the start of this post.

I discovered I could make my own pile of 'sorted books' by raiding my mum's library and adding one book of my own to the stack, with the following result:

RATING:
Many combinations made me chuckle. Some were just very smartly done. Others, I could hardly read. 4 STARS for the site, but 5 STARS for the idea...guess I should give this one 4.5 STARS.

Mental Floss T-Shirts

http://www.mentalfloss.com/store/home.php?cat=254

BLURB:

"Mental Floss - feel smart again!"

REVIEW:

An online store full of T-shirts with the best slogans I've ever seen. The problem is, almost all involve geek humour. And I get almost all of them. This is just further confirmation that I am a geek. And I couldn't be more proud!

RATING:

Where else could you find a T shirt with Gregor Mendel's head on it? ("Gregor Mendel: Giving Peas a Chance since 1856!") 5 STARS

"Ella Minnow Pea" - Mark Dunn

BLURB:

"Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere."

REVIEW:

I can't quite remember how I stumbled upon this book. I think it may have been a popular one on BookMooch, and I heard about it from there. But it doesn't really matter how I found it - I did, and thanks to a Borders voucher, got 20% off, paying only $10.30 for this book! Bargain!

Thankfully, it was one of my better purchases. However strange this sounds, I don't often go out and buy books if I've never read the book or the author before. I always try and secure 'unknown' books through other means, whether it's the library or BookMooch or borrowing from friends. I hate the moment you realise that you've spent some of your hard-earned money on something you don't like, and that it was a waste (makes me feel cheated somehow). So I'm usually a very careful buyer.

This was a refreshing exception and I enjoyed this novel very much (only problem is it was over too soon!) It was incredibly clever, witty, imaginative and creative, while also telling a story with a decent plot at the same time. It was also quite amusing at times with occasional completely random comments thrown in to the letters between island inhabitants ("I got lime gelatin!"). Upon reading this book I couldn't help but marvel at the author's broad knowledge and mastery of the English language, who almost effortlessly (it seems) continued the tale even after being denied certain letters (it got interesting when 'D' was forbidden...and again when 'U' went).

RATING:

I'm glad I picked this up. It's the most unique book I've read in a long time. 5 STARS

Emotional Inanimate Objects - i can has cheezburger

BLURB:
I can has cheezburger.com is an Internet phenomenon. Many people have already heard of 'lolcat' pictures: find a funny picture (usually of a cat but can be anything really) and add a caption spelled in 'lolspeak' (a kind of pidgin English that mocks the poor spelling and grammar of many on the Internet).

REVIEW:
I love lolcats. I love cats and I like laughing, so the two go well together, and sometimes people think of the wittiest captions for pictures, turning them from "Hey, that's cute," into "Hey, that's funny!"
However, while browsing the site renowned for the creation and distribution of lolcat pictures, I discovered that the three pictures that made me laugh the most weren't of cats at all. They were inanimate objects with feelings.


more cat pictures


more cat pictures


more cat pictures

They cracked me up.

RATING:
Hilarious site if you're able to appreciate the humour of lolcats. 5 STARS.

"The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook" - Joshua Piven

BLURB:

"The worst of the worst, all in one place! This deluxe desk reference includes a hardbound volume of the most popular scenarios from all 11 Worst-Case Scenario handbooks, plus the entire contents of all the books on a fully searchable CD. Avoid the perils of mountain lions and blind dates, avalanches and teenage driving lessons, runaway golf carts and Christmas turkeys on fire a remedy for every crisis the worst-case experts have anticipated is now only a click away. The CD also contains newly created extra features: screensavers, e-cards, wallpaper, and more. Boasting more than 500 pages, this sturdy addition to the Worst-Case Scenario library could stop a bullet - just one more way to be prepared for the worst."

REVIEW:

This is a fabulous read that appeals to my love of things that are quirky and told with dry humour. The humour isn't necessarily due to the contents of the book as such, but more in how escaping the most bizarre situations are written about in clear, plainly told, logical text (sometimes with diagrams to help). My favourite was the page entitled "How to Repurpose a Fruitcake", with helpful suggestions ranging from "Use it as art by bolting to a pedestal and placing in a prominent place" to "Use as a door-stopper" and many in between. You will also learn such things as to how to escape from a swarm of killer bees, how to survive on a desert island, and how to escape dating disasters. All of the information is practical and helpful, so all jokes aside, this is a nifty reference book for the paranoid and their friends.

RATING:

I love it. It cost a bit, since it's a very sturdy volume and came with a CD, but it's well worth the money. 5 STARS