One Whole Year of An Armchair by the Sea!

I am a terrible procrastinator. I am also one of those people who gets wildly excited about a project, and for about a month will live and breathe that project and then totally lose interest. When I first started this blog, that's what everybody (myself included) thought it would be, but it's been a year and I'm still going strong!

I know, my graphic skills are brilliant...

Originally started back in January 2011 as a response to my frustration with never being able to remember what I'd read when people asked me to recommend something brilliant, An Armchair by the Sea (originally entitled The Tangled Web We Weave - what was I thinking?!) has been awesome in so many unexpected ways. Always an avid listmaker, I've discovered reading challenges with a vengeance, and have expanded my reading comfort zone beyond all recognition in 2011! I am hosting my first reading challenge in 2012, and I've learned lots (and still have LOTS to learn) about the babble that is HTML. In a year where I've relocated to a completely new part of the country, started a new job, moved house again, and got married, it's been amazing to have a place that's entirely my own where I can just immerse myself in books and related things and forget about the world for a while. Also, living in a rented flat, we can't paint the walls (a horror to my former self - as a teenager I changed the colour of my room approximately every six months to coincide with my mood!), so I substitute changing my blog design around and it stops me from going white-wall crazy.

By now I hope you can tell that I'm going to make a MASSIVE deal of this whole blogoversary thing. I know it's probably not that exciting to lots of people, but in lots of ways I feel like this blog has helped save me this year. 2011 has been tough in many ways and having a focus has helped immeasurably. I just want to give a shout-out to some awesome people (some of whom will have no idea who I am but hey) who helped inspire the blog and have made me smile a lot this year! Firstly Sam, whose blog, Tiny Library, was the first I ever read I think, and who was the first follower I had who wasn't related to me! Her comments back when I wasn't getting any were a big motivation, so thank you! Also, Hanna, who I think I probably mention too much but oh well. She's pretty much my reading twin - reads all the things I've been wanting to read for years, sends me unexpected presents, writes hilarious reviews, understands the mania of car boot sales, and is generally awesome! Go and read her blog and thank me later :-) Then to the blogs (other than the two already mentioned, of course) which are my favourites. These are the ones I know will inspire me to make my own blog better. They are all brilliantly well written, inspiring, and always manage to make me add to my TBR! A Literary Odyssey, Sophisticated Dorkiness, Amused, Bemused and Confused, A Room of One's Own, Dead White Guys, English Major's Narrative, Estella's Revenge, Musings of a Bookshop Girl, Roof Beam Reader, The Book Ladys Blog, Your Move, Dickens, and a couple of recent additions, Delaisse and Reading Fuelled by Tea.

Just to demonstrate the kind of effect blogging has had on my reading, these are the books I read in the past year because of blogger hype/recommendations from bloggers/RAK/Review Copies:

1. Of No Consequence by Sonia Rumzi
2. Olga: A Daughter's Tale by Marie- Therese Browne
3. The Annotated Peter Pan: The Centennial Edition by J.M Barrie
4. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
5. The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, & Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
6. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
7. You Are Next by Katia Lief
8. The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
9. Coming Up For Air by Patti Callahan Henry
10. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
11. The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek
12. The Art of Forgetting by Camille Noe Pagan
13. Delirium by Lauren Oliver
14. Black Swan Rising by Lee Carroll
15. The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
16. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
17. The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark
18. How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
19. Bake Sale by Sara Varon
20. Happily Ever After by John Klima
21. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
22. Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, Legends in Exile, and Animal Farm by Bill Willingham
23. The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
24. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
25. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
26. Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
27. An Autumn Crush by Milly Johnson
28. The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory
29. Jane Austen Made Me Do It by Laurel Ann Natress
30. Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Out of these books, ten have ended up on my 'best of 2011' list and are up for grabs (I HATE that expression!) in my giveaway!

Now I shall stop, except to say thank you to everybody who reads An Armchair by the Sea, whether you comment or not! You are very much appreciated, as demonstrated by my Blogoversary Giveaway! :-)

First Blogoversary Giveaway Extravaganza!

 

Tomorrow An Armchair by the Sea celebrates its first blogoversary. A suitably gushing and emotional post will be going up then, but as some of you will know, I love to give people bookish presents, so I thought I'd host an awesome giveaway for all you lovely people. Between now and  January 15th you can enter to win one of two amazing prizes! 

For those of you in the UK: 

A book of your choice from my Top Ten Books of 2011 list, just leave a comment with your choice of book, your email and a link to your blog if you have one below and I'll draw a winner on the 15th. 

For International readers:

A choice of either:

 Two Waldo Pancake magnetic bookmarks - I know how it ends and Read this instead of book. I got one for christmas, and they're brilliant.

An Oscar Wilde magnet - Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. 

Your choice of colour of a Go Away I'm Reading cotton tote bag. 

All of these are from my new love, Something Literary, which you should definitely go and check out! To win, just leave a comment with your choice of prize, your email and a link to your blog and I'll draw a winner on the 15th. 

Please remember to leave your email address, as if you don't I won't be able to contact you if you win!

The Telling Tales Challenge - January Review Link Up

Hello all! I'm not too sure how to go about this whole linking reviews thing, but I'm going to give it a go. I hope you're all as excited about the Telling Tales Challenge as I am!

I'm going to try to put up a review link-up post at the beginning of every month and leave a link to it at the top of the blog somewhere so you can just stop by as and when and link up your stuff for the challenge! Basically, if you've read anything for the challenge that you've reviewed on your blog, Goodreads, LibraryThing or anywhere else online, leave a link here! If you want to sign up for the challenge, you can still do so here! Happy Reading!

Review: - Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad and Life Was a Catch 22 by Erica Heller

 

Straight up I will say, just so nobody is under any delusions, I have not yet read Catch 22. I started it once, when I was about fifteen, but I got bored and gave up and all I remember about it now is that there was a guy with several of the same name. Many people assure me that it is worth the effort though, and I am hoping to get to it later on this year as part of the Books I Should Have Read Challenge. 

Now that's out the way, the next thing that I did wonder halfway through Yossarian Slept Here was if I've not read any Joseph Heller, why bother reading his biography? There are several answers. The first is that Rebecca at The Book Ladys Blog mentioned this book in several places (Twitter, her blog, Bookrageous to name a few) in a very positive way, and apparently I'm lately reading a lot of things she recommends and being disappointed by none of them, I may add. Also, they had it in the library on the shiny and exciting 'New Releases' stand. I love the books on this stand, because it feels (and probably is in some cases) like nobody else has ever read them before me - it's kind of like getting a brand new book for free, and who doesn't love a free book?? And then finally the fact that by the time I wondered about the reasons why I was reading the book, I was entirely absorbed by the book and it was impossible and unthinkable to stop reading it. 

Erica Heller’s writing is very enjoyable; she managed to lull me into really enjoying  Yossarian Slept Here before I’d realised that I was. Joseph Heller's life was in many ways completely ordinary, and Yossarian Slept Here is in the most part a chronicle of the life of a normal family, but with the addition of things like visits from Mario Puzo and invitations to parties at Woody Allen's house. Having said that, I generally enjoy books which focus on the family dynamic, coming from a big mad one myself, I find other peoples' unendingly fascinating. I was worried that I would feel left out of the loop having not read any of Heller the elder’s work, but in actual fact it is barely mentioned, except as a catalyst for things (i.e. because of Catch 22’s success there was enough money for the family to move apartment/take holidays etc), but to be honest, considering that I have never met a person who hasn’t heard of Catch 22 even if not a lot of them have actually read it, I would have thought the money would have featured more in the Heller family’s lives.

The thing that Erica Heller does brilliantly is that she keeps it personal, while at the same time being detached about it. While a lot of ‘celebrity’ memoirs are all about the shock factor – terrible abuse or drastic surgery – the only shocker in Yossarian Slept Here is that Joseph Heller was a contradiction; an unpredictable and often not very nice man. I have to say, though, that I didn’t really expect him to be lovely, it’s just not the image my brain associated with him. His relationship with his daughter is painted as being a fairly difficult one – while I got the impression that there was a lot of love in it, Joseph Heller seemed to have a pretty hard time interacting with children, and often comes across as fairly self absorbed. I guess if you are a writer then you must need a certain degree of self – absorption,  if only to put up with doing a job that requires you to be solitary so much of the time, but to be one of those writers who deliberates over a novel for years – who literally ends up eating sleeping and breathing the novel they are attempting to write, must make you even more so.

In the end the impression of Joseph Heller I was left with is of a man intensely conflicted – who was at once caring and cold, detached and incredibly involved, emotional and emotionless. A man who basically ended up destroying his family for a while with his own distortions of the truth, and lost the love of his life from which he never seemed to have fully recovered. The story of Hellers’ parents romance, marriage, divorce and its’ aftermath was very poignant and really touching in all its’ intricacies. I just found it incredibly sad to read about the destruction of a couple who were once so much in love.

 The day before I turned eighteen my then boyfriend was rushed to hospital almost totally out of the blue because all the nerves in the left side of his body had randomly stopped working properly. We were freaked. He had to be transferred from our local hospital to a specialist neurology place where they ran tests on him. All. Night. I got about two hours of sleep and rang him on the hospital phone at the crack of dawn before going to college, sitting an exam, then getting on a bus for an hour to get to the hospital where they told me that he had Guillain- Barre Syndrome, which is basically a post-viral disorder affecting the nervous and immune systems. It can be really terrible, and in cases, fatal. Thankfully in this case it wasn’t, but it was about a month in hospital followed by some intensive physio and probably about a year to pretty much full recovery. The reason I tell you this is that during the time I spent sitting in the hospital, somebody mentioned to me that Joseph Heller had had GBS, and that he had written a book about it. The book, No Laughing Matter, proved really difficult to get hold of at that time, and so I have still never read it, but having read Yossarian Slept Here , I’ve added it to my wishlist and am really interested to read it. Although it probably wouldn’t be too interesting to somebody without experience of GBS, to me it would be brilliant to read about how somebody else coped with the experiences we went through. Also, to make a full recovery from an incredibly debilitating disorder shows incredible strength of character and determination, which only strengthened Erica Heller’s picture of her father as a giant character.

Basically, if there is a biography that you can read and enjoy without knowing anything at all about the person on whom it is based, then Yossarian Slept Here is it. It’s pacy, well-written, and the chapters have awesome titles. It was the first book I finished in 2012 and was a brilliant way to start the year!

Norwegian Wood Readalong - Intro Post

During the month of January, Reading Rambo is hosting a readalong of Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. It's been on all of my lists for everything for ages, so I thought I'd join in..

I must admit to being more of a Haruki Murakami fan in theory than actually in practice. I have very grand intentions regarding his work, but so far all I've managed to get through is Kafka on the Shore, which I loved, but which was weeeeird... From talking to people I know that weird is probably what I should be expecting going into Norwegian Wood (which I have had on my shelf for well over a year now), and I have no problem with that. Weird is good. Weird is challenging. Weird is, generally, awesome. Also, I love the whole white and black theme of his covers - so basic, so distinctive. They are the kind of books I want to collect primarily because they would look awesome. Yes, I know that's shallow, but sometimes I do like to judge books by their covers..

Because I like to know a bit about the author I am reading, I did some 'research' (and by research I mean I googled him...). Here is what I found out: (from www.murakami.ch):

• Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kyoto, Japan

• In 1974 he opened the Jazz Bar in Tokyo
• In 1979 his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing was published
• In 1981 he started to write for a living
• In 1991 he became an Associate Researcher at Princeton University
• According to Wikipedia, which seems to be weirdly more accurate on this than his own website, he has published twelve novels, plus short stories and essays. 1Q84 is also on my January reading list. I feel I may be overwhelming myself, but ah well. 

So that's basically it. A lot of people were talking about the film of Norwegian Wood last year. Apparently it is brilliant, and I think that I will have to attempt to see it this month as part of the readalong greatness. Here is a synopsis of the book from Goodreads:

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before.  Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable.  As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love .

I'm excited about the book! Hopefully I will finish my current read, Yossarian Slept Here by Erica Heller today and be able to start...

2012 Goals & Resolutions..

Happy New Year everybody! This is the first year I have started as a 'blogger' proper, and I thought I'd mark the occassion by making myself some goals for this year.

• Firstly, as of yesterday I'm back on my book buying ban. Although ideally I'd go the whole year without buying a book, I don't think this is particularly feasible and so I'm just going to try to go longer than I did last year which was three months and a week. I think this is manageable. I'm limiting myself to one swap a month as well, and hopefully it will encourage me to use the library tons more. 
• I'm also planning to go the whole of 2012 without using Amazon to buy anything. For reasons why, see this post.
• Make a list every month of what I intend to read and one at the end tracking the books I've managed to complete. 
• Continue to read more non-fiction that I did last year 
• Complete all of the challenges that I sign up for, and remember to post a link-up every month for the Telling Tales Challenge.
• Comment on blogs and make an active attempt to discover new blogs. I did this a lot until about half way through the year, at which point I inexplicably stopped and I think it's time to start up again!
• Schedule posts for the week on Sunday nights. I started doing this a little while back, and while I've been better at it some weeks than others, I find it really helps me keep my momentum.
• In 2011 I read 151 books. Of these, I didn't get round to reviewing 58 of them. Although this is gigantically better than I thought, my goal this year is to review 75% of what I read, and to review all my five star reads which I failed dismally at this year.
• Participate in RAK every month. It's a fantastic event, and I love that I can make people happy by giving books, and as they're gifts they don't count for my ban so it's like I'm buying them but without them actually accumulating in my house. It's a win-win situation!
• Get over my illogical aversion to reading YA. I get really annoyed when people read only YA, and for some reason this means that anybody recommending me any YA will just get sighs and eye -rolling. Having said that, when I caved in a did read some this year, it was incredible! The Hunger Games trilogy, When You Reach Me, An Abundance of Katherines... Clearly, I've inherited a view of what all YA will be from somewhere and am refusing to rethink despite evidence to the contrary. Help me! All you people who read YA, I am appealing to you for recommendations of the best you've read!
• I want to re-vamp the blog a bit, but I'm totally crap with design type stuff. If anybody knows anybody/is willing to give me a hand I'd be eternally grateful!

I'm really pleased with how 2011 went in terms of blogging. After almost a year of blogging I feel like I'm finally starting to find my place in the blogging community and hit my stride with what I want the blog to be. In a few days the blog will be one, and there will be an awesome giveaway so watch out, as well as a suitably sappy post about the awesome people I've 'met' in the past year! Happy 2012!

Books I Plan to Read in January

Happy New Year, everybody! It's a brand new year full of brand new books to be read and new challenges and excitement. As I'm starting the year from a more experienced point of view, I'm going to try something a bit different to try to help me to complete some of the tasks I've set myself for 2012. The first thing I will be doing is listing the books I am planning to read each month. Then at the end of the month I will do a summary of how many of them I've actually achieved! I don't know if this will actually have any effect but I shall give it a go and see!

January Reading List:

• A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (for Reading Rambo's readalong the Mount TBR challenge)
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (for Mount TBR challenge & The Graphic Novel Challenge)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (for 50 States Reading Challenge)
• The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobsen (for the Mixing It Up Challenge)
• First part of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• 1Q84 Books 1 & 2 by Haruki Murakami (for the Book Addicts Book Group on Goodreads)
• The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen (for the 50 States Reading Challenge)

 I'm going to use this like a checklist and come back and link up reviews as I finish them, then at the end of the year I'll be able to see where my most focused months were :-)