Monday 16 May 2011
Wednesday 4 May 2011
When you hear the chimes please turn the page...
It has been a while since I updated this site... I have been a bit slack about it, but on the plus side of things I have been updating my other blog... one which I just concentrate on blogging about uninteresting details about my twin pregnancy. As yes, I am pregnant...with twins! Go here if you want to keep up to date with my pregnancy going ons: http://susiemcbeth.blogspot.com
So a while ago I watched a series of programmes called ‘My life in books’ and it made me think about some of the key books that I have read over the years and how they acted as kind of marker points in my life. So I have decided to share them:
Childhood
Jessica and the Crocodile Knight by David Osborn – A tale about a little girl who follows a Crocodile Knight into a whirl pool at the end of a garden and ends up in alternate world filled with pirates, mermaids, dodo’s and a very kind talking hippopotamus and embarks on a wild adventure to save a princess from an evil sorceress.
This book was given to me as a present when I was 8 and from the first moment I read it I was hooked. I loved the element of adventure and the weird and wonderful friends that Jessica got to make and her cute little duckling Gribit. The story was not too sentimental and the exploits that Jessica and Alfred the Crocodile Knight shared seemed like just the kind of adventures I would have loved to have happened to 8 year old me. I spent a whole summer hoping a whirl pool would spring up at the end of my garden.
Teenagerdom
Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder – A book about 14-year-old Sophie who encounters a mysterious mentor who introduces her to philosophy. The book focuses on Sophie’s education into philosophy through mysterious letters whilst mysteries deepen in her own life. Why does she keep getting postcards addressed to another girl? Who is the other girl? And who, for that matter, is Sophie herself? To solve the riddle, she uses her new knowledge of philosophy, but the truth is far stranger than she could have imagined.
The first time I read this book I spent 2 days in the library in Brighton reading about philosophy and then spent time thinking about what philosophy meant to me. This book sparked an interest in me that I never thought would exist and to this day my interest in this subject is still very much alive, from a historical viewpoint and a current one. I loved the bite sized lessons inside the letters and I really feel that this book helped to enrich my life.
My 20’s
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami – A book about a guy called Toru whose cat disappears and whose wife fails to come home from work and his journey into finding them and understanding the strange things that keep happening to him. His search brings him into contact with many bizarre characters such as psychic sisters, an unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed massacres on the Chinese mainland back at the beginning of the 1st World War and a very menacing politician. All of these characters impact on Toru’s life and drag him into their worlds by telling him their life stories.
I could not put this book down. The story cut me to the core, and stayed with me for months after. I loved the prose; it was all at once dark, humorous, haunting, graphic, and simple. The story itself was disturbing and whimsical and unusual. It highlighted the thin line between reality and the unknown and I enjoyed reading about Toru’s tightrope walk between the two worlds he was caught up in. It also has one of the most disturbing scenes I have ever read (part of the soldier’s story) which has made sure that I will never look at a peach the same way again.
Other books that are very important to me and that have influenced my life so far...
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick (in fact pretty much anything written by him), The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ender and Bean series by Orson Scott Card, The Unbearable Lightness of being by Milan Kundera, Henry and June by Anais Nin, Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Well I have rambled on enough. Later, lovely people!
Scott Pilgrim: When I'm around you, I kind of feel like I'm on drugs. Not that I do drugs. Unless you do drugs, in which case I do them all the time. All of them.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
So a while ago I watched a series of programmes called ‘My life in books’ and it made me think about some of the key books that I have read over the years and how they acted as kind of marker points in my life. So I have decided to share them:
Childhood
Jessica and the Crocodile Knight by David Osborn – A tale about a little girl who follows a Crocodile Knight into a whirl pool at the end of a garden and ends up in alternate world filled with pirates, mermaids, dodo’s and a very kind talking hippopotamus and embarks on a wild adventure to save a princess from an evil sorceress.
This book was given to me as a present when I was 8 and from the first moment I read it I was hooked. I loved the element of adventure and the weird and wonderful friends that Jessica got to make and her cute little duckling Gribit. The story was not too sentimental and the exploits that Jessica and Alfred the Crocodile Knight shared seemed like just the kind of adventures I would have loved to have happened to 8 year old me. I spent a whole summer hoping a whirl pool would spring up at the end of my garden.
Teenagerdom
Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder – A book about 14-year-old Sophie who encounters a mysterious mentor who introduces her to philosophy. The book focuses on Sophie’s education into philosophy through mysterious letters whilst mysteries deepen in her own life. Why does she keep getting postcards addressed to another girl? Who is the other girl? And who, for that matter, is Sophie herself? To solve the riddle, she uses her new knowledge of philosophy, but the truth is far stranger than she could have imagined.
The first time I read this book I spent 2 days in the library in Brighton reading about philosophy and then spent time thinking about what philosophy meant to me. This book sparked an interest in me that I never thought would exist and to this day my interest in this subject is still very much alive, from a historical viewpoint and a current one. I loved the bite sized lessons inside the letters and I really feel that this book helped to enrich my life.
My 20’s
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami – A book about a guy called Toru whose cat disappears and whose wife fails to come home from work and his journey into finding them and understanding the strange things that keep happening to him. His search brings him into contact with many bizarre characters such as psychic sisters, an unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed massacres on the Chinese mainland back at the beginning of the 1st World War and a very menacing politician. All of these characters impact on Toru’s life and drag him into their worlds by telling him their life stories.
I could not put this book down. The story cut me to the core, and stayed with me for months after. I loved the prose; it was all at once dark, humorous, haunting, graphic, and simple. The story itself was disturbing and whimsical and unusual. It highlighted the thin line between reality and the unknown and I enjoyed reading about Toru’s tightrope walk between the two worlds he was caught up in. It also has one of the most disturbing scenes I have ever read (part of the soldier’s story) which has made sure that I will never look at a peach the same way again.
Other books that are very important to me and that have influenced my life so far...
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick (in fact pretty much anything written by him), The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ender and Bean series by Orson Scott Card, The Unbearable Lightness of being by Milan Kundera, Henry and June by Anais Nin, Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Well I have rambled on enough. Later, lovely people!
Scott Pilgrim: When I'm around you, I kind of feel like I'm on drugs. Not that I do drugs. Unless you do drugs, in which case I do them all the time. All of them.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
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