Layer Cake or more like an Onion cos it makes your eyes water.

Disgrace by J.M.Coetzee can be read in many ways. It could just be a book about an ageing man learning to let go of his youth, it can be about a whole Country falling apart, it can be about human bondage and it can be about race relations. While it can be any or all of those things the one that it definitely is, is well written.

http://www.randomhouse.com.au/Books/Default.aspx?Page=Book&ID=9780099526834

I seem totally unable to write about this book. So all I will say is, it is beautifully written, it will reflect any number of scenarios back at you and will open your eyes to a world you want to think does not exist. It could be Australia, and if we don't look at ourselves and how we live with others here, it could be our future.


P.S I would like to know how my South African Friends feel about this book.

Sarah Waters The Little Stranger

I love a good ghost story, the paranormal, and mysteries. But I very rarely find authors that I like who write in that field. Sarah Waters is a difficult writer, her writing is wonderful and always draws me in, but sometimes I don't like what she does to her people!

The Little Stranger is like that, I sat down to read and 7 hours later I was finished. I love the book, but was so unhappy with the outcome. It was just like I felt when I finished her other book Affinity. She really is someone I want to sit down with and ask her "what the hell?" Why the outcomes?

The Little Stranger is set in an old English manor house after WWII, the locale Doctor is drawn to Hundreds Hall and the Ayres family. As Dr Faraday gets to know the family better he learns they are living under a threat, it's source unknown.

The book is creepy good. It made me a little jumpy and made me wish I had not started it at night time. I liked the people in the book and I liked that the minor players where well rounded even if they where only in it for a short time.

If you want to think and get a thrill give Sarah Waters a go.

http://www.sarahwaters.com/

A bit of Magic

When I lived in London I was fascinated by the Ghost Stations of the London Underground and by the Wild Apple Trees that you would see all along the way. Why where the Stations empty and how did the Apple Tree grow where it did? Where did the little doors go and the random staircases lead too?

These where the thoughts I followed every work day for two years. They where the thoughts that took me away from the over crowed Tube, the smell of too many damp people and not enough ventilation.

London is a magic place, it is so old, and it's little by ways can still lead you places. This is the London that Neil Gaiman brings to life in his lovely book Neverwhere. I have been in a book funk recently and thought that my reading 3 books a week since I was 11 had finally brought me to a place where the might not be anymore surprises for me. Maybe I had read every version of every story there was to tell.

With that in mind I took my time at work and drove my Josiegirl mad with my constant cry of "Which Book"

Neverwhere won and I am so happy it did. It is a wonderful modern fairytale and I love it. After seeing the movie Stardust I should have known he was different, that he had something new to give.

So if you are feeling a bit sick of the everyday, and want to see your world in a new way give him and read and then work your own magic into every day.

http://underground-history.co.uk/front.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/24/traditional-orchards-biodiversityhttp://

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-global/w-news/w-latest_news/w-news-orchardwindfall.htmhttp://

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/g/neil-gaiman/