BTT is a long running bookish meme. To join in pop over and read the 100's of interesting comments. This week's question ...

Which is worse?
Finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or
Reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?

I don't mind hating everything else I try by an author after one good read. I am well able to put the book down after giving it a fair go and moving on to another (there’s not enough time to be wasting it on a book I don’t enjoy as my good friend Renae says). If a second or third book disappoints too then I may try one more or I may just put the one good read down to a fluke and consider myself lucky to have had one good read.

On the other hand I'm devastated if a loved author has an off day, to the point that I might not actually admit it, even to myself. I had this disaster with Mary Stewart. At the risk of offending her many fans I must admit that Stormy Petrel and Rose Cottage offered only vestiges of her former glory. I know she was in her 80s when she wrote them and I tried so very hard to like them but to be honest they were feathers compared to the gold of her Merlin series and earlier romance/crime fiction.

I read them with my Mum, we were both fans, out of loyalty but we decided if there were any more to come from Stewart's pen we'd probably not read them - it was like loosing a friend.

p.s. Hello Emily this is for you

Drop Dead Gorgeous

Well here goes, thanks to your encouragement and this fantastic book, which I can't stop talking about, here is my first review...

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Attwood

What did you do this morning? Hit the snooze button for just five more minutes? Shower? Shave? Make-up? Did you fit breakfast in or did you just poor a cup of strong coffee in your thermal travel mug and hit the road? When you read Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, all the little drudgeries of life suddenly become pleasures.

That’s when you know you’ve got a powerful story in your hands – when it impacts your daily life.

When I skipped breakfast I actually felt privileged, because Offred couldn’t do that. In her world, the world of Gilead so delicately drawn by Attwood, everyone has their set role with its own clearly defined freedoms and restrictions. Offred is a Handmaid and as such cannot decide to skip a meal, she must stay healthy in order to bare children in a world of extreme negative population growth.

Offred does not say ‘mine’ anymore. She has a room, clothes, plenty of food but no life beyond her assigned task of pregnancy. This she has been schooled to accept, as the ‘possession’ of Fred and his wife. She does not have her own name she is simply Of Fred. She cannot choose what she will wear her red summer dress will be replaced by her red winter dress on a certain date and not before. This task will be undertaken by the Marthas – the group of women designated ‘help’. As a handmaid Offred does have certain freedoms; she can walk in the open air to do the household shopping, albeit with the company of another handmaid, they can choose which route to take. She has the freedom of her thoughts and this gives her some control.

‘If this is a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending.’ P49

This self-reflexive extremely close first person point of view colours and constructs the unsettling nature of The Handmaid’s Tale.

From the safety of inside her own head we have her story. We follow her thoughts, although not strictly speaking stream-of-consciousness, as she tells us what she sees, feels and remembers. We jump from distant past, recent past and present with no warning, dropped as we are unprepared into Gilead. It’s disconcerting but purposeful. Our confusion mirrors Offred’s own.

Piece by artful piece we hoard clues in an effort to make sense of this anarchic place and post nuclear devastation time. It is a place of no relationships/friendships/trust. A place tightly controlled where fear and lack of information is used to create and maintain that control. I’ve just watched a doco on North Korea and there were some really scary similarities.

It is broken into 15 sections, the titles of which are a wonderfully clever clue to Offred’s world.
1. Night
2. Shopping
3. Night
4. Waiting Room
5. Nap

These clipped concise words reflect the abruptness of a world reduced to the bare necessities.

World building is an essential part of Speculative Fiction – for this is most certainly the genre. Attwood’s world building is subtle and ingenious. Using form to reflect meaning she at once unsettles and entices the reader. I could not wait to find out how the world got this way, but I had to wait to chapter 28/46, almost half way through the book. With its Anthropological appendix it is an innovative and compulsive read.

The Handmaid’s Tale, like it’s forerunners; Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, Huxley’s Brave New World, Wells’ The Shape of things To Come, presents a dystopian future for our race, one that is eerily plausible. As we watch our civil liberties disappear in a myopia of protectionism, as THEY become ever present in our news-casts, as we become more entangled in the ‘grid’ of surveillance, places like Gilead seem not at all farfetched – which is not good because, as knowledge is power, books are banned there.


my rating: DDG (Drop dead Gorgeous! Go out and get it, put some time aside, you won't be disappointed)

An Award - Yippee!

The Guru said I'd love blogging and she was right to a point becasue I LOVE blogging (I can be so subtle when I want to be). I've said it before but how nice is it to meet other book-lovers, reading fanatics, list-makers, opinion holders! and then you get an award for sharing in this great community!

Thanks Wanda, this award means a lot to me and thanks to all the wonderful people who visit WeRead and inspire me with your comments and your own awesome blogs.

Viva la blogging!

Musing Monday is a weekly meme, hosted by based-on-fact Becca of Just One More Page. Want to join in?...leave a link to your Musing in my comments or pop on over to Just One More Page and muse along with many other clever musers.

This week's question is courtesy of Dianne.


Do you read non-fiction regularly? Do you read it in a different way or place than you read fiction?

If you'd asked me this question last year I'd have answered; yes, I read it regularly; yes, in a different, more task oriented, way. My last six years have been devoted to study and I loved every minute of reading non-fiction. Well actually it’s more a retrospective love of reading non-fiction ... now that I don’t have to read it I love it!

An awful lot of it was esoteric and I used it regularly as a cure for insomnia but I’m very appreciative of the experience and the knowledge it gave me. And that’s the root of my love of non-fiction – I want to know.

When I was away last week I purchased two books; one was a collection of short stories and the other was a history of the development of the English language. It’s a sign of the times that I’ve read the first short story but haven’t dipped into the history yet. I also have and extensive collection of books on functional grammar and literary criticism that are sitting in prim abandonment on my study shelves as I lose myself in fiction.

For me, as for many others I suspect, fiction offers an escape that non-fiction doesn’t. Take yesterday for example, whilst waiting with my father in a medical centre (for 90 minutes) I used fiction to escape an uncomfortable environment. I’m not a good nursemaid and geriatric nursing is a real struggle – whilst not diminishing Dad’s suffering, emphysema is a stomach turning ailment to witness.

We both had our books and I think it’s safe to say we could not have sat with such calm for 90 minutes without the escape they offered.

Top 3 by the c

Remember our recent discussion about blog comments? Well it got me thinking...I'd like to share my favourite responses from those who comment on my blog, so here are my

top 3 by the c(ommenters)

this week.

1. Becca You're the only one who calls me The Guru, you dork :)
This made me laugh out loud. I am a dork but the guru thing is taking off so ha ha to you Becca.

2. Matt's First line "Rose MacGregor laughed and shouldn't have." From Rose Variations by Marisha Chamberlain, made me think of that awkwardly supressed giggling I was inclined towards in Church when I was a little lass. Actually I still laugh at the most inappropriate moments, like when a loved-one walks into (& bounces off of) a very clean glass door holding a plate on newly cooked BBQ (which gets smooshed all down the front of his shirt - poor MGM).

3. Layla Wright of 2009 Read with kids Challenge who asked me to get the word out about this challenge which aims to get kids reading – goal 5 million minutes! – and offers a Disneyland Vacation prize too boot! I’m in Australia so I can’t say I’ll participate but I recomend these type of challenges to get your kids motivated. My kids participated in our Premier's Reading Challenge & enjoyed the competitiveness (it also makes reading a cool thing to talk about at school). My son was one a few top readers selected to have afternnon-tea with the Premier the year he participated. Any school library I've worked at has promoted it and reaped the rewards of readers asking for 'more books please.' It's great catalyst for getting kids and books together.

First-to-hand firsts

* Copy/paste the question & button.

* leave a comment and link to your post, include author/title.

* There'll a puzzle, sometimes, answers next Friday. Most consistant first correct answer will get a prize (after the Guru shows me how I can do that).

*Lastly let me know what you think... got ideas for improvements?

cheers

This is sort of like Teaser Tuesday, I saw this somewhere in blogosphere sorry I can't tell you where but if it's your idea ...thanks (from a self-confessed copier).

Reach out and pick up the nearest book to you right now (don't go the bookshelf and pull off War and peace). What's the first line...

Mine is:

'Billy Weaver had travelled down from London on the slow afternoon train, with a change at Swindon on the way, and by the time he got to Bath it was about nine o'clock in the evening and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky over the houses opposite the station entrance.'

From Kiss, Kiss by Roald Dahl

Puzzle: who thought she's get the flowers herself?

BTT is a long running bookish meme. To join in pop over and read the 100's of interesting comments. This week's question courtesy of Barbara

It does seem like modern fiction just “tells the story” without much symbolism. Is symbolism an older literary device, like excessive description, that is not used much any more? Do you think there was as much symbolism as English teachers seemed to think? What are some examples of symbolism from your reading?

This is a really interesting question (BTT's always are). It might be one of those right brain vs left brain things, some readers just don't see the multiple layers that language offers; there's nothing wrong with that at all. The problem develops when one type of reader says 'my way or the highway', as criticism for either seeing too much or too little in any given narrative.

Reading is a subjective contextual experience. There's no harm in reading reading Aniaml Farm as a commentary on Stalin and WWII, or as prophecy, or as a great romp where pork is king. As to the question of whether symbolism is an older device - nup I don't think so. As long as words are set to paper there'll be readers looking beneath them for the hidden/symbolic. A psychoanalytical reading, for example, of any text will reveal hidden symbolism of even the most modern text.

Readers will find whatever they need to find (whether it was intended by the author or not). I agree with Roland Barthes - the author is dead - the miunte s/he writes "The "end".