Read something you hate

It's good to get out of your reading comfort zone occasionally and try something new or difficult or surprising. If you don't already have some one in your book club making these kinds of annoying conscience opening choices you might like to try a reading challenge this year.  They're for people who like their fun planned and well organised.

Chunkster Reading Challenge 2011 (for books of 450 pages or more)

Shakespeare Reading Challenge

Australian authors reading challenge

Historical Fiction Challenge 2011

Foodie's Reading Challenge

Science Book Challenge 2011

Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge 2011

Mental Illness Advocacy (MIA) Reading Challenge 2011 
2011 Librarian's Reading Challenge 

Mystery and suspense reading challenge 

2011 Young Adult Reading Challenge

ZOMBIES! Satisfy Your Undying Hunger! Challenge

I feel Infinite

The Perks of Being a Wallflower would be in my top 10 books of all time. It's the only book I've ever read where I went straight from the last page right back to the first page and started reading it again. Also for my 30th birthday my friend Bec recreated a scene from the book when she bought me a typewriter as a gift (the page from the novel where this same situation took place was typed up and placed in the spool). It was like one of those pictures within a picture within a picture. Best gift ever.

Of course Perks of Being a Wallflower isn't for everyone and there are plenty of haters who think it's a bit lame but I think those people don't have souls. It's a super basic teen narrative where an outsider struggles to be accepted by his peers but the charcters are quirky and dark and smart and they have excellent taste in music. It's not your average suburban story and there is a huge twist at the end.

Author Stephen Chbosky has written the screenplay (which means it's bound to be good) and he will direct the movie as well (that could be questionable). I'm really happy that Emma Watson has signed on to play  role because I love her. Lady knows how to make teenage hearts swoon. 

Book Club: Rabbit, Run

I liken reading John Updike to ordering a salad for lunch. You know it's the right thing to do, the healthy thing to do, the righteous and rewarding thing to do. But really you'd rather be eating a pasta. Rabbit Run is the story of a unlikeable, irresponsible, misogynist called Rabbit who peaked too early in high school as a basketball star and wakes up one day with a toddler and another baby on the way and decides he's not happy. So, like the title suggests, Rabbit runs. He jumps in his car and drives with no map and no plan. Eventually he returns home were he bunks down with a prositute who he projects love on to briefly before returning to his wife as she goes in to labor. I can appreciate that this is classic, quality American fiction and I'm really glad to have read it but I won't be reading the three other books in the series. I just don't care about what ends up happening to Rabbit, and if there's any justice in the world it won't be anything good. Most of the Book Clubbers were disappointed with our first foray in to Updike. I have higher hopes for next month's choice, graphic novel, Maus by Art Spiegelman.

Based on the novel of the same name

I'm just super glad to see Adam Brody on screen again, even if my view is being blocked by Suri's Mom.

Radioactive

A beautiful new graphic novel about the life of the amazing Marie Curie. 

Classic material

A good month for Steve Buscemi. A Golden Globe for Boardwalk Empire last night and this cool cover of Esquire.

Written on the body

A US publisher is offering free books to anyone who brands themselves in tribute to one of their books. I'm thinking you should already own a copy if you love it enough to have a passage permanently inked on yourself. Here's some people who are already ahead of the game via Contrariwise

 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The VFD slogan from Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Jack Kerouac, On The Road

 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

From  Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll 

 From Sharon Olds poem “I Go Back to May 1937.”

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five
(Friends if you are considering this tattoo I feel it's my duty to tell you it's featured 116 times on this blog alone. I think it's the "Chinese symbol for happiness" of the literary tattoo world.) 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

paper vs pad

During the holidays I did a little interview with Radio National for a segment they ran on the future of books. I am the lone person in this segment holding out hope that the demise of the printed word isn't just around the corner. Well of course I am. Because when that does happen it means I'll be pretty much unemployable. Next book on my reading list is a manual on how to write html code. 


Listen to the segment here if you fancy: The future of books

Wildwood

Hispter parents are in for a treat!  They can now force feed their offspring some light fiction by The Decemberists lead singer Colin Meloy. His pre-teen novel is a fantasy described as taking place "in his hometown of Portland where adventure and magic have replaced flannel and independent coffee houses."  Obama, Meloy, who's next? I'm hoping for David Portner. 

Under the tree

Unlike the poor cutie below I was happy and grateful to score a couple of book related Christmas gifts this year. My Mum made me this adorable card. In case the hipstamatic photo renders it illegible - the authors names make a Christmas tree. That's Paul Auster at the top. Lovely!

My brother and his wife gave me this beautiful compendium of 100 Penguin book cover postcards. So beautiful.

My friend Rob gave me this book mark made from a copy of Still as a Stranger by Marjorie Villiers.

And then there were some pretty books from my family.

Spoilt.