2007 reading list

I am moving this post here as more relevant for the end of the year:-)).

Fat Is a Feminist Issue- by Susie Orbach- 400 pages
History of Love by Nicola Kraus- 266 pages
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver- 500 pages
Shipwrecks by Akira Yoshimura- 160 pages
I`m a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson- 304 pages
The White Masai by Corine Hoffmann- 375 pages
The Black Box by Alek Popov- 344 pages
Mozart`s Last Year- (forgot writer`s name)- 200 pages
Plan B : Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott- 336 pages
RING by Kodji Suzuki- good- 900 pages
„Visible Worlds“ by Marilyn Bowering- very good- 304 pages
„The Cure of Dead by Lightning“ by Gail Anderson- Dargatz- very good- 304 pages
„The Love of Stones“ by Tobias Hill- bad- 400 pages
„Layer Cake“ by J.J.Connelly- good, funny- 400 pages
Memoirs of Kasanova – good- 512 pages
The Name of Rose by Umberto Ecco-re-reading, excellent book!- 460 pages
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey- good, interesing- 600 pages
Born`s Identity by Robert Ludlum-awful- 510 pages
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier- good- 350 pages
Lost and Found by Siegfried Lenz- good- 240 pages
A Story of a German man- 1914-1933г. by Sebastian Haffner- very good- 180 pages
Correction by Thomas Bernhard- 448 pages
Me and Kaminski by Daniel Kelman- not bad- 120 pages
Life and How To Survive It by Robin Skinner,John Cleese- excellent- 432 pages
Number9dream by David Michell- very good- 416 pages
Goodnight Nobody by Jeniffer Weiner-very good- 448 pages
Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank-average- 300 pages
Facing The Light by Adele Geras- 503 pages
The Maestro Myth: Great Conductors in Pursuit of Power by Norman Lebrecht- 416 pages
Saturday by Ian McEwan- 304 pages
Refuge- An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams- 336 pages
Two Lives by Vikram Seth- 512 pages
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton- 320 pages
Suite Francese by Irene Nemirovsky- 448 pages
The Memory Keeper`s Daughter by Kim Edwards- 432 pages
Revolutions by J.M.G, Clesio- 392 pages
Harry Potter and The Deadly Hallows by J.K.Rowling- 605 pages

38 books. 14 477 pages.

Last update- 30/12/2007:
one more book: The Book of Eve by Constance Beresfor-Hewe
170 pages

Total pages- 14 677
39 books

BC Challenges- 2008

I`ll be joining those challenges on Bookcrossing.com:

"Keep Them Moving" Release Challenge- challenge for reading and forwarding books, received by other bookcrossers

2008 Pages Read Challenge- I have set a goal of 30 000 pages for 2008.

How-To-Read-More

Disappointed as I`m with the number of finished books for 2007, I invented a new reading rule- that I will read about 100 pages at least 5 days per week. I`m going to pick up the book before picking up the laptop.:-)) I tried my new technique on Harry Potter`s last book and it works just great for the moment- I`m only 100 pages away.

Reading challenges failure:-((

2007 is coming to an end and a recapitulation of reading is unevitable.
I did very poorly with reading this year.
The number of finished titles significantly dropped to only 37.
The reason is the new laptop I bought at the beginning of 2007.
I am very much pleased with it, as now I enjoy a unlimited surfing but the effect on my reading time is evident.
My new resolution will be to try to read 100 pages per day 4-5 days a week.
I`m not going to set up other challenges.

I participated in the following release challenges:

Around the World Release Challenge

2007 International Secret Santa

2007 Worldwide "Remember Me" Release Challenge

20 wild releases.
11 controlled releases (books, sent as RABCK or swap to bookcrossers, bookrings excluded)
37 finished books.

Reducing Mountain TBR :-))

My reading went very well while I was on vacation which gave me some hope about reducing my TBR pile... So I`m gonna try to organise the list of TBR books and keep some track of how I`m doing.

1. A Good- Looking Man
2. American Pastoral
3. Angela`s Ashes
4. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
5. Bronte Myth, The
6. Drowning Ruth
7. Earthly Possessions
8. Everything Is Illuminated
9. In The Shadow of The Arc
10. Into The Wilderness
11. Roots
12. Spies
13. The Coffee-House
14. The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith
15. True history of Kelly`s Gang
16. Waiting
17. Wild Swans

Well, I`ve listed only part of my TBR- those with highest probability of be picked up soon, LOL!

Goodreads.com

Upon a recommendation from the BookcrossingUK Yahoo group, I registered with Goodreads.com and already find it very entertaining, useful and very well organised. This is a perfect site for people who read much and care enough to keep track of the books they read. Also, it can serve as a good source of reading recommendations.

Books I finished on my vacation

Here is the list of books I read during my summer holidays:

RING by Kodji Suzuki- good
„Visible Worlds“ by Marilyn Bowering- very good
„The Cure of Dead by Lightning“ by Gail Anderson- Dargatz- very good
„The Love of Stones“ by Tobias Hill- bad
„Layer Cake“ by J.J.Connelly- good, funny
Memoirs of Kasanova - good
The Name of Rose by Umberto Ecco-re-reading, excellent book!
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey- good, interesing
Born`s Identity by Robert Ludlum-awful
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier- good
Lost and Found by Siegfried Lenz- good
A Story of a German man- 1914-1933г. by Sebastian Haffner- very good
Me and Kaminski by Daniel Kelman- not bad
Life and How To Survive It by Robin Skinner,John Cleese- excellent
Number9dream by David Michell- very good
Goodnight Nobody by Jeniffer Weiner-very good
Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank-average

18 books in 6 1/2 weeks.
14 wild releases from June to September.

Summer readings

Books I`m taking for reading on vacation:

Good Night, Nobody by Jennifer Weiner
Memoirs of Giacomo Casanova
Correction by Thomas Bernhard
Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank
The Layer Cake by J.J.Connolly
Tales of The City by Armistead Maupin
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz
The Soloist by Mark Salzman
The Love of Stones by Tobias Hill
Number9Dream by David Mitchell
„Visible Worlds“ by Marilyn Bowering
„The Cure of Dead by Lightning“ by Gail Anderson- Dargatz
RING by Kodji Suzuki

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Books I bought on vacation:

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Born`s Identity, Born`s Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum (couldn`t finish, the writing is awful)
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier
Lost and Found by Siegfried Lenz
Me and Kaminski by Daniel Kelman

Lionel Shriver (We Need To Talk About Kevin) on Victoria Tech massacre

Ironically enough, shortly after finishing Shriver`s novel "We Need To Talk About Kevin", its story emboddied itself once again in the brutal reality of Victoria Tech massacre. Writer`s comments on the tragedy were published by "The Guardian":

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'These are all copycat crimes'In the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech, familiar questions are being asked: why does this keep happening? And why does it happen so often in America? Lionel Shriver offers some answers Wednesday April 18, 2007

The campus shooting phenomenon in the US would have lost much of its power to shock by now if it weren't for the fact that the perpetrators keep ingeniously introducing new twists. Last October, it was an Amish school, of all places; in 2005 it was a school on a Native American reservation. On what was almost exactly the eighth anniversary of Columbine - hitherto a one-word thumbnail for this whole family of atrocities - the 32-body-count shooting at Virginia Tech has an uncomfortably competitive flavour. The man who killed himself all too late in the day in Blacksburg, Virginia, claimed more than twice as many victims as Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did at Columbine high school in 1999. Though "Virginia Tech" doesn't have the same ring as the punchier "Columbine", you wonder if this new shooter wasn't making a bid to update the cultural lexicon - to coin the new byword for random campus violence.
While the killers continue to improvise, the media aftermath is numbingly ritualistic. We ask: why do these rampages keep happening, why primarily in the United States, and what is to be done? The answers vary, but they are universally unsatisfactory.
Why do they happen? If it does not sound too tautological, campus shootings keep happening because they keep happening. Every time one of these stories breaks, every time the pictures flash round the world, it increases the chances that another massacre will follow. In the main, all of these events are copycat crimes. Campus shootings are now a genre, much as, in literature, campus-shooting novels are a genre, one of whose entries I am guilty of writing myself. They are part of the cultural vocabulary, and any disgruntled, despairing or vengeful character - of any age of late, since grown-ups now want in on the act - now has the idea of shooting up a campus firmly lodged in his brain.
I do not believe that the choice of schools or colleges for the pursuit of grievance or, often, for the staging of what I call "extroverted suicide", is arbitrary. For most of us, school and university are the seats of profound and formative emotional experiences, and the psychological power of these locales does not necessarily abate with age. Only last month I had reason to walk down the hallway of an elementary school in the US, and the lockers, lino and acrid chalk-dust smell sent my head spinning with memories, not all of which were pleasant. I felt claustrophobic, smothered, actively grateful to be spared the tyrannies of Mrs Townsend's home room, and relieved to get out. In fact, I couldn't believe I was allowed out of the door without a pass.
For a lucky few, school and college are where we first distinguish ourselves. But for the majority, they are the site of first humiliation, subjugation and injury. They are almost always our first introduction to brutal social hierarchies, as they may also sponsor our first romantic devastation. What better stage on which to act out primitive retribution?
As for why America in particular sponsors these killings ... as I write, relatively little has been made public about the shooter in Virginia, but that won't be the case for long, which is probably as he would have wanted it. Anonymity is the last thing most of his fellow campus shooters have sought.
Time was that appearing in the newspaper for doing something dreadful was a fearful prospect. But Americans appear to have lost touch with the concept of shame. Now that my compatriots have eschewed the old distinction between fame and infamy for the all-embracing concept of "celebrity", all that counts is being noticed. Even posthumous attention beats being ignored.
I would far prefer that this new killer remained anonymous. Were all such culprits to remain utterly and eternally unknown, the chips on their shoulders interred with their bones, their grudges for ever private, surely the frequency of these grotesquely gratuitous sprees would plummet. One of the driving forces for most of these killers is not just to be noticed, but, however perversely, to be understood.
But you can't outlaw being disaffected or artificially force a culture to re-embrace the concept of shame. Nor do we want educational institutions to engender the paranoid, dread-steeped ethos of modern airports. Surely the only effective preventative measure is logistical. Make it harder to get guns.
How many mass killings does the American public have to witness before its government gets serious about gun control? While the source of armaments in Monday's shooting has yet to be disclosed as I write, Virginia has some of the most lax gun laws in the country. You can buy "only" one handgun per month, and criminal-background checks are not required to buy weapons at gun shows.
Nevertheless, American versions of strict gun control are so farcical that many campus shooters would still have had no problem acquiring weapons while playing by the most stringent of rules likely to be applied. Who is to say that campus shooters of the future won't be perfectly content to bide their time as a required "waiting period" between purchase and acquisition ticks by?
For America's federal government to take gun control seriously, nothing less than mass armed insurrection is required. Were the public ever to act on the principles of their own Declaration of Independence, for example - "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive ... it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government" - Congress would shut down the gun industry in a heartbeat.

· Lionel Shriver is the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, a novel about an American school shooting. Her new novel The Post-Birthday World will be published by HarperCollins in May.
The article online
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We Need To Talk About Kevin

Very disturbing book,which gives a lot of food for thought. From time to time I was thinking if writing such a book as a fiction was moral at all. The writer walks deeply into the dark side of parenting. She confronts the socially accepted notions of motherhood and leads us into the nightmare of depression and troubled parenting.The novel unfolds in the form of daily letters written by Kevin`s mother to her husband. Many may find the style overloaded with too many words and expressions.At some points I had the feeling that Eva was repeating herself.Well,this was not contributing to the good literary style but made the letters seem more genuine as I can imagine a person in her place repeating over and over the painful moments she wants to share and being not very precise.

This story places the great question about evil, and doesn`t answer it: is the evil natural/inborn, or caused by the family and upbringing? Eva tends to picture her son as strange and weird from the day of his birth. This may be her perception as well,as she is uncapable of connecting to him. The baby seems alien to her,and the strangeness she feels,reflects in his behaviour as in a mirror. Kevin seems to have picked up her deficiency of mother feelings from the start,and he explores and puts her on trial until the very end of the book. From one side,it is clear,that Eva is not capable of improving their relationship but he also turns to be a quite difficult baby. In the best seeling and wonderful book "Families and How To Survive Them" by Skinner and Cleese,the authors speak about the other side of mother-child relationship which often stays in the shadow- the responce of the baby itself. In general,babies tend to be a lovable creatures-it is in their nature to make parents love them and care for them. Babies have a natural tendency to evoke compassion and attention to their needs.They also are capable of giving an emotional "gratification" which is important for the parents as it is their "compensation" for the hard work in the first months.However,a small percent of the babies seem to have difficulties with bonding.They are more shut in themselves and emotionally reserved.When a mother has problems connecting to the baby, such a baby may make the things even more difficult for her.I think that`s the case with Kevin.

It was very sad observing how Eva`s marriage deteriorated after the birth of Kevin. It seemed like her husband,Franklin,fell into the predefined family model and could not relate to Eva`s feelings.It was painful to read how many times she tried to tell him about her problems but every time he would just avoid the subject,or find it her fault,or suggest that she is simply "a bit tired". Of course,I was angry with him all the time,including his blindness to Kevin`s strange and weird behaviour.

Although as a person who has suffered from postnatal depression,I could relate to Eva in many aspects,still I couldn`t relate emotionally to her.There was a lot of hate and coldness in her. I think she actually doesn`t stop hating Kevin through the whole book.

The main question,of course, was why Kevin did what he did. Why did he grow so alienated,so cold,so weird? Did he enjoy hurting the others? Little doubt.Did he love her mother? I think,yes. Perhaps he was a hypersensitive child and he choose this kind of behaviour as a responce to her hatred. He seems quite alert at not allowing her any sense of gratification as a parent.He played very skilfully with her sense of guilt. He struggled for her attention by turning off all attention from him. Although he plays as self-confident and untouched,in fact he is terribly unsecure. He felt himself as being of no importance at home while paradoxically,at the same time,he was the constant center of attention.

Why he did it? I think part of him wanted really to enter the news,to make something significant,to turn the attention to himself. This was also a way to make her mother hurt a lot and to disrupt her social position.It is worth noting that Kevin hates her mother`s job and social status probably because hs feels that he is viewed as a hindrance in her career,and also because her job robs him of her attention and presence.So he should have really enjoyed seeing her humiliated.

The second thing is that in my view,Kevin was a terribly spoiled child. It is not a paradox. Eva tries all the time to make up for her lack of love. Franklin plays the good father and secretly competes with her wife,eager to show her how much she fails in being a good parent.This is a very dangerous game,because it fails to install any respect in Kevin and fails to build in him moral boundaries.With a mother who hates you,and a father who stupidly overlooks all your mischievings,how it would be possible to grow as a responsible person?

But inspite of the grave mistakes of his parents,I still think that they cannot be totally responsible for his brutal act. He choose to act like this,and most of his behaviour was a personal choice.I know that many would argue and doubt if a child can make personal choices when he/she is totally dependant on his/her upbringing,but in my view there is still a room open for personal choice. Kevin choose how to respond to his mother.
The transformation at the very end of the book seemed as a less probable outcome and also hard to believe. But when Eva says that she finally loves her child,it may as well be true as he is the only one left for her to love.She feels bound to him by his terrible childhood and loving him is like a sentence she deserves.

I may say I don`t regret reading this book.I am not sure that I am going to search for another one by the same writer but it was an interesting read and made me think over the moral dilemmas.

2007- books, goals,expectations

Well, the new 2007 is already here! Time to make a recapitulation of the reading 2006!
2006 wasn`t the best reading year for me, although I did a lot of reading during the summer and managed to finish 16 books in 40 days but after that I considerably slowed the pace and finished the year with 65 books- 12 books less than in 2005.

I discovered some nice books this year and of course, I have a top ten:

"Kafka On The Shore" by Haruki Murakami
Inkheart" by Cornelia Funke
"The Little Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov "
Africa Trek: 14 000 km on foot" by Alexandre and Sonia Poussin
"You Are Not Like Other Mothers" by Angelica Schobsdorff
Moon Palace" by Paul Auster
"The Queen`s Fool" by Philippa Gregory
"The Names of Things" by Susan Brind Morrow
"Iron&Silk" by Mark Salzman
"History of Reading" by Alberto Manguel

Besides, I re-read three of my most favorite books- "Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov, "Lila" by Persig, and "My Name Is Red" by Orhan Pamuk.

I did more wild releases in 2006 but would not say I diminished the TBR mountain as much as I would like to....

For 2007, my goals would be to try to reach 100 books; to participate more in BCUK Yahoo group, to write my Bookcrossing Newsletter more often (I`m sending it from my Bulgarian BC site), to try to improve my German, to maintain the first Bookcrossing Zone in Sofia...and etc....