Moby Dick Week 6: Thank God It's Finally Over

Hey you guys, Hanna had a readalong and I didn't bail! This is massively ironic since the book that did bail on (War and Peace) was actually not shit and pretty enjoyable and I'd like to finish it someday. This book, however, this book that I did actually finish, is probably going to take all awards for worst/most boring/made me want to pull my own eyes out the most book of the year. Urgh. 

This post will contain a large amount of bad language and spoilers. 

So, questions. 

1) Let's start simply. Did you like this book?

To begin with I really did. I need to remember never to be optimistic about classics. It happened with The Pickwick Papers and then again with this. It started off so well, it even made me giggle, and then it swiftly descended into encyclohing pedic definitions and descriptions of whale beheadings and just fuck off, Melville. Actually I think I've probably told Melville to fuck off more than I have any other author ever except possibly Bret Easton Ellis. Urgh American Psycho. 

2) Is the ending what you expected? Was it worth the wait?

Again, I would like to tell Melville to get his head out of his arse. I just read one hundred and thirty six chapters for that?? No the ending wasn't worth the wait. Honestly I don't know how I wanted it to end, but we waited a really long time for that whale to show up and then he did and it was all over in three chapters?? Also, I hate Ishmael. Ishmael sucks. 

3) Do you think this book is rife with symbolism and metaphor... or is it just about a whale?

Oh it's just about a whale. Melville spends a whole lot of time trying really hard to make it be about more than that but no. Just the whale, and honestly it doesn't even do a very good job of that really. There's so much crap about the way boats were built and the technical properties of rope and whale biology that by the time Moby Dick finally made his appearance I had literally lost the plot and had pretty much no idea what was going on. Also Ahab's a dick. 

4) Is it likely you'll ever read this book again, or recommend it to anybody?  

See question 6

5) Did you end using the tactics you identified earlier or did you just slog through to the end? 

I did for the first few weeks and then once the going got really rough I just outright bribed myself. Like 'three chapters on the bus and then you can read something you actually like/listen to three All the Books episodes and add stuff to your wishlist'. I literally bought myself a cookie as a reward for finishing. 

6) Sum up this book in six words. 

My brain is so melted by the experience that all I can manage is this: Please don't ever read this book. 

Despite my obvious and unbridled hatred of this book I am glad that I've read it, mostly just so that I never have to read it again. Now I know how awful it is I'll never have to feel guilty that I haven't read it, just suffer the slight shivers of revulsion every time I remember the description of de-blubbering a whale being like peeling an orange. 

Fuck off, Melville.

The end. 

Simplicity and Me

This is not the post I meant to write about simplicity and its role in my life. I have a whole other post drafted out that I've actually been working on for a while now. Who knows if and when it will actually get published, but anyway this is the one you're getting.

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter you will probably have seen me giving away books this weekend. These weren't just book I've read and wanted to get rid of (I'm still attempting to sell those on eBay for Beanstalk  and if they don't sell they'll go to my Big Book Sale for the National Literacy Trust in December), they were books that have been on my 'keeper' shelf for a while - in some cases years. Books that I really really loved when I read them and always meant to get around to rereading. This weekend I've given away 35 books to fellow booklovers. I still have a few left, I'll include the pictures at the end of this post and you can let me know if you'd like any - completely free, you just pay for postage.

Recently I'm suffering from a very acute sense of overwhelm. I am overwhelmed by the media, by the amount of distractions in my life, and by the amount of stuff that we own. I'm so overwhelmed by all the things I could or should be doing that I feel like I often end up doing nothing because I don't know where to start. When it comes to books, I know I'll never be a true minimalist because I genuinely love my TBR bookcase - it's like a rainbow of potential joy and why would I want to give that up? But if the two ReReadathon's this year have taught me anything it's that I can have as much intention to reread something as I like, but if I pick it up and don't immediate feel happy at the thought of reading it again then I'm probably never going to actually do it. Many  brilliant books have left my house this weekend, many of which I have fond memories of. All that remains on my keeper shelf now are the ones that have changed my life or affected me in some way. An incomplete list:

Little Women et al by Louisa May Alcott (you're shocked, aren't you?)
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Camille Rose Garcia
Neverwhere, Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Stardust and Fortunately the Milk by Neil Gaiman
The Complete Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
Various David Gemmell books, including the Rigante (Sword in the Storm, Midnight Falcon, Ravenheart, Stormrider) and Troy (Lord of the Silver Bow, Sheild of Thunder, Fall of Kings) series
Everything I've ever owned by Terry Pratchett (not read to cull yet. May never be)
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Most of Scarlett Thomas's work
Attachments, Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, Landline by Rainbow Rowell
The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M Valente
and of course the complete Harry Potter series, because I'm not insane.

And when I look at the bookcase now it makes me happy. It sounds like a lame thing to say but each book that's there has earned its place through several reads and I know that when I'm looking for a comfort read in a time of stress, the books on that shelf will make me feel better.

Really I guess what I'm saying is that when I have too much stuff I feel stressed by it, and what I want to feel is comforted. I want to look at my bookcases and feel excited by the possibilities or reassured by the presence of old friends. I want to look at my (newly revamped, but more on that in another post) craft corner and see all the things I want to make not all the things I should have made and haven't. I don't want my house to be full of guilt and negativity. I just want the positive. I feel like I should be singing a song right now but I hope you know what I mean.

I want to be able to focus. I am so so lucky and blessed with so much in my life and I want to be able to focus on those blessings rather than being distracted by the heaps of things I have lying around the house. So yeah, that's it. My way of saying look out for more posts on my attempts to defeat the overwhelm!

Here are the free books I have left to give to you!!



Let me know in the comments, via email or twitter (in the sidebar of the blog!) what you want and we can sort out postage. I'd rather send them to a new bookish home than to the charity shops around here which are always over stocked with books and never seem to sell any!

Nonfiction November: Nontraditional Nonfiction

The topic for Nonfiction November this week was one that I initially didn't think I'd be able to write about as my thoughts originally leapt to audiobooks, but then I realised hey, I can write about graphic nonfiction. I've read a fair amount of that!

This week is hosted by Becca of I'm Lost in Books and we're talking about Nontraditional Nonfiction, so head over there to find more posts on the topic!

The first part of the post is my recommendations for some brilliant graphic nonfiction, and as ever, for the second part I'll be focusing on some titles I'm interested in reading.

I was going to write about all these titles in detail but I feel like I've mentioned them all a fair amount before on the blog so instead I'll just link the titles to whatever I've written! In case you can't tell what they are: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (growing up in Iran during the revolution), Maus by Art Spiegelman (his father's experience as a Polish Jew and in concentration camps during WW2), Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (memoir of growing up and her relationship with her father), Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh (memoir of growing up and various other things including depression. Hilarious), Naming Monsters by Hannah Eaton (memoir about coming to terms with losing her mother to cancer), and Relish* by Lucy Knisley (memoir about growing up with food). 

* this post is not really about Relish. It's about other stuff, but I mention Relish once and how I loved it and 'am going to write about it at some point'. And then I never did. 

And some that I really want to read:

I think you can see but just in case (links go to IndieBound and are affiliate):

March: Book One by John Lewis (civil rights), Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle (journalism on Burma), Thoreau at Walden by John Porcellino (a graphic interpretation of Henry David Thoreau's Walden), Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me by Ellen Forney (memoir about creativity and mental illness) and Displacement: A Travelogue by Lucy Knisley (actually any of Lucy Knisley's books will do)

Also a couple of cool lists for more recommendations for those that want them:

A Goodreads list of Popular Graphic Nonfiction
The Atlantic's Comic Books as Journalism: 10 Masterpieces of Graphic Nonfiction

I'm hoping this weeks posts (when I get a chance to catch up with them!) will help me expand my nonfiction reading horizons even more! Have you read any of these?

Things That Make Me Happy #5

This week more than ever it seemed really important from a personal point of view to write a Things That Make Me Happy post. With everything horrendous that's happened in the world in the last few days it just seems like the time to bitch and whine is over, and the time to celebrate the wonderful things, big and small, and let people know that we love them has come.

Nonfiction Book Swap

To tie in with Nonfiction November I've been organising a Nonfiction book swap again this year. I signed up for two partners but then ended up with three due to their being odd numbers signed up. I've sent off all my books (although they may be arriving in a couple of packages because Wordery is slightly weird like that so be aware, partners!) and two of my parcels arrived this week. Both were super awesome and exciting! From Heather of Based on a True Story I received Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott, about women who worked undercover during the American Civil War, and Gloria Steinem's My Life on the Road. I know not a lot about Gloria Steinem (or the American Civil War if I'm brutally honest) so I'm really excited for both of these. Thanks again Heather!

My second parcel arrived from Care of Care's Online Book Club and was super exciting as it contained Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert which I've been hearing about everywhere. The TED talk it's based on I'm actually watching/listening to right now (and by the way, the existence of TED is another thing that makes me inordinately happy). It also contained Men Explain Things to Me And Other Essays by Rebecca Solnit which a lot of people have talked about as well. I've been looking for more essay collections, particularly by women and so this will fill that gap nicely. I'm hopeful that I'll even get to it during November! Thank you so much, Care!

Nonfiction November


I think everyone knows how much I love and adore Nonfiction November. I will be writing another part of my favourite nonfiction reads ever post this week as long as I manage to find time, and I'm pretty proud of the posts I've written this year for the event. I've also added so many amazing nonfiction titles to my wishlist, it's made me aware of how little I know about but in the greatest of ways. The thing making me the most happy this week though is how many books I've actually read for it! As well as the books in this picture I've also just finished How to be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis, which I'll be reviewing soon, and I'm halfway through Finding Home: Real Stories of Migrant Britain by Emily Dugan which is just really incredibly informative and I feel like I'm actually becoming a better, more empathetic person through reading it.

Besides those, I'm also in the middle of Running Like a Girl by Alexandra Heminsley (which I recently found and dived back into!), Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson and Stuff I've Been Reading by Nick Hornby. Because why read one book when you could read four?

Basically, this month is the greatest!

#TBTBSanta

I got my partner for The Broke and the Bookish Secret Santa project today and I am so excited to start shopping! This was the original inspiration behind the Ninja Book Swap so I owe Jamie a massive debt of gratitude and I also just really love taking part in this project. It's so well run and so nice to participate in a swap that I don't have to organise! Seriously though, Jamie is amazing - she matches up a phenomenal amount of people all on her own and does a really good job. Excited!

Little House Read-Along



So I recently announced my intention to take part in the Classics Club Women's Literature Event and mentioned that I wanted to host a year long read-along of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It turned out that someone else in the club had wanted to do the same thing and she was put in touch with me and now Lynn and I are cohosting this fantastic year of comfort reading throughout 2016. If you want to join us for all or some of the books you can find all the details here, we'd love to have you!



Christmas Cake baking

We baked our Christmas Cake this week (I know we're late) and it was the first year that Benji was really old enough to help. As you can see, he was super cute and his Christmas cake wish (which it's ok to tell you because he told me) was for 'people to be happy and ....sweets'. I love baking the Christmas Cake... just the way it mixes together with that ridiculous amount of dried fruit and then how the house gradually fills up with Christmas smells. Just yum. So looking forward to eating it!

Family walks by the sea

We had an extra day of family time this week and it's been really nice spending more time together where we don't have much we need to do. We spent some time in the town we used to live in, just walking by the sea and giggling a lot. It was great. As you can see, the weather wasn't brilliant but honestly one of the greatest things about living by the coast is getting to be there in all weathers. Sometimes grey and rainy is better than summer.

Awesome new blogs 

I've discovered some brilliant new to me blogs recently and I don't highlight them enough any more so I thought I'd take the opportunity to do so!

So OK, to begin with; book blogs. I recently took part in the Travel the World in Books Readathon and discovered Guiltless Reading, and also realised that I wasn't following I'm Lost in Books or Based on a True Story. All three of these are great, eclectic blogs written by wonderful women. Becca of I'm Lost in Books also cohosts Nonfiction November, and Heather of Based on a True Story was my nonfiction swap partner as well as being a participant in the Ninja Book Swap just gone. All are worth checking out!

I'm also really getting into the whole simplicity/minimalism thing at the moment and have found a couple of 'so great I want to read their entire archive' blogs this week. Becoming Minimalist and Be More with Less are both extremely worth a browse, but do be prepared to immediately want to start getting rid of your stuff!

Also, not a blog but I am in love with Book Riot's All the Books podcast! It is such fun listening and Liberty and Rebecca read such awesome stuff. My wishlist increases every single week, and if you haven't listened yet you should!

So yeah, you can see there is a lot making me happy this week. In the aftermath of the past few days' events I'd kind of forgotten that and I needed to remember. It's important to remember.

As always thanks to Ellie for being a happiness inspiration!

Announcing the Little House Series Read-along!

You may have seen a little while back that the Classics Club announced their Women's Classic Literature event which began in October and runs all the way through next year. As soon as I heard about it I knew that I would be jumping in and that I wanted to finally read the entire of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series. I announced my intention to do so on my sign up post for the event, and was swiftly contacted by Lynn of Smoke and Mirrors who was planning on doing the same thing. We decided to pool our resources and here you have it; the Little House Series Read-along!

The way that it will work is (hopefully) thus: we will be reading one book a month, and we will take it in turns to host the months (don't worry if you only follow one of us as we'll both post to let you know that the post is up!). Each month we will do an intro post at the beginning of the month which will have a linky for you to add your posts/reviews and wrap up the month with our own review posts. 

We are going to read all eleven books and have designated December to auto/biographies. You are entirely welcome to join us for the whole year, just one book, or dip in and out and just join in with the ones you haven't read or would like to read. Whatever you want to do, we're happy to have you! If you are interested in joining us, even just for a couple of the books, then it would be fantastic if you could write a post about the readalong on your own blog to help us spread the word and then link it up below! Lynn and I will both be creating pages on our blogs for the readalong schedule and readalong associated things so you'll easily be able to check out what we're doing. For the sake of ease I'll also post the schedule here so you can see what we're planning. The books are all fairly short and for me being from the UK they're set in a historical period that I don't know much about so it will be interesting for me to do some background research/reading! 

In case you don't know, the Little House series is a set of children's novels based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood in the American Midwest during the 1870s and 80s. The last two that we'll be reading (besides the biographies) are about her adult life and marriage to her husband, whose childhood is featured in Farmer Boy. I was really excited to discover that the Little House books have their own super cool (geared at kids, but all the best stuff is) website with lots of info about the books and recipe pages. I am definitely going to be making town party lemonade and heart-shaped Christmas cakes over the course of the year! Why wouldn't you want to join us? 

Schedule

January - Little House in the Big Woods
February - Little House on the Prairie
March - Farmer Boy
April - On the Banks of Plum Creek
May - By the Shores of Silver Lake
June - The Long Winter
July - Little Town on the Prairie 
August - These Happy Golden Years
September - The First Four Years
October - On the Way Home
November - West from Home 
December - Pioneer Girl/ A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert (we are going to read one each of these and then both if we have time. You are welcome to choose either one or any other book related to Laura Ingalls Wilder) 

If you'd like to join us, link up your sign up posts here! 



I'm super excited about this and really looking forward to chatting about the series. If you'd like to chat with us on twitter please use #littlehouseRAL so we can keep up easily! There is also hopefully going to be a Facebook group - watch this space!

This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC by Charlotte Higgins

I didn't intend to read this book at all, but because of Nonfiction November I'm spending a lot of my library time browsing the nonfiction sections at the moment and honestly, the cover just reached out to me. I mean, look at it. It's gorgeous! Once I'd picked it up I was intrigued. I know next to nothing about the BBC besides that the general public pay our licence fees so they can run without advertising, so this was very interesting.

Charlotte Higgins is the chief culture writer for the Guardian newspaper, and was asked to take time out from that to write this. She starts at the beginning with the first Director General of the BBC, John Reith, back when it was radio only, and covers so much in 240 pages that I'm amazed that the page count is so low!

The book sort of goes chronologically, but she focuses mainly on personalities within the organization which keeps it really interesting. For example I had never heard of Hilda Matheson, who was the first head of talks in the 20s. She also happened to be Vita Sackville - West's lover for many years, which was an interesting kind of side note and she just sounds fascinating. Honestly I went looking for books about her life afterwards and besides her own book, Broadcasting and one biography there isn't anything. She would make such a good character in a historical novel. Plus, she was a female boss in the '20s! What's not to love?

I also found it really interesting to learn more about the controversies behind the resignation of recent (ish) Director General Greg Dyke, whose departure I heard about but wasn't really paying enough attention to get the specifics of. Turns out it was all connected to the Hutton Inquiry, which was kind of a big deal and I should have been paying more attention, but there we go.

So much has happened during the life of the BBC and it is something that I'm quite attached to. BBC documentaries were a mainstay of my childhood and I feel that I've learned a lot from them over the course of my life, so it was really great to learn more about the tensions and victories involved in the actual day to day running of the institution and the making of programmes. Also it contains pictures of really really young David Attenborough, which I found amusing.

It also doesn't only focus on the good stuff. Higgins really delves into the personality clashes and aspects of mismanagement as well as giving voice to critics of the BBC, who are relatively frequently employees or ex employees of the BBC itself. Overall I was very well immersed in This New Noise, and I finished it feeling like I'd learned a lot, which is pretty much what I want from this kind of nonfiction really!

Recommended if: you're interested in the BBC or quirky aspects of British history.

Nonfiction November: Book Pairings

This weeks topic for Nonfiction November I didn't think I'd actually be able to take part in. Leslie of Regular Rumination is asking us to pair up books which go together. It can be fiction and nonfiction, nonfiction and nonfiction, stuff you've read or stuff you haven't. Whatever, really, and the more I thought about it the more I kept coming up with things so here we are!

First up I'll cheat a little and post a pairing I've previously posted, just to get things going!

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway is his own account of his first marriage and life in Paris. Directly comparable to this is The Paris Wife by Paula McLain; a fictionalised version of the same story. I haven't read A Moveable Feast but I do own it and it is small and there is a strong possibility that I may read it this month despite it not being on any of my TBR piles. I have read The Paris Wife and very much enjoyed it.








My second pairing is a much more tenuous link, but why not? I'm linking Wild by Cheryl Strayed, one of my all time favourite nonfiction books, with Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson, purely by value of them both being focused on cross country trips where people learn lots about themselves. Both of these I have read and both I can strongly recommend.









For my final pairing I've gone for two nonfiction titles, neither of which I've read. They are both on my wishlist and they both indulge my love for all things fairytale. This pairing is Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales by Kate Bernheimer, in which 28 women writers explore the way in which fairytales shaped their imaginations, craft and our culture, and Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked by Catherine Orenstein, which talks about the many versions of Red Riding Hood and is all about the tale's sexual politics and moral ambiguities. Sounds intriguing!


I'm hoping to get to read everyone else's pairings for the week, but I'm on a reading roll at the moment so I'm off to get a bit of How to Be a Heroine (Or What I've learned from reading too much) by Samantha Ellis read. There will also be a review of This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC by Charlotte Higgins coming this week at some point!

Check out the other week two posts, the week one wrap up, or my other posts on my favourite nonfiction and my year in nonfiction by clicking the links!