I just tried The Book Seer, a neat little tool that recommends a book for you to read, based on what you've been reading.
I like the styling on it - a distinguished, whiskered gentleman appears on your screen - complete with a speech bubble, saying something along the lines of 'Salutations. I've just finished...... by......What should I read next?' You fill in your details and the Book Seer makes its recommendations.
I put in Wide Sargasso Sea, and among others, it came up with Jane Eyre, (which I was going to read next anyway) Things Fall Apart, Foe, Midnight's Children & Heart of Darkness - I've read all of them, which I thought was quite impressive!
I'll definitely have to give it a try next time I can't think of what to read next.
Showing posts with label book list. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book list. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 June 2009
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Experiments with Google Squared
I've been playing around with Google Squared today, the new offering from Google Labs which they describe like this - 'Google Squared takes a category and creates a starter 'square' of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web.
I thought I'd share my findings with you - I thought they were kind of interesting and pretty funny in places.
So, let's start simple - I'll enter 'books'....
OK 1984, Naked Lunch, Ulysses not bad....bu
t Little Black Sambo? Jesus Christ Google! That's appalling.
And what about the director and cast categories - nonsense! Sometimes a book is just a book, not a film too...
I thought I'd share my findings with you - I thought they were kind of interesting and pretty funny in places.
So, let's start simple - I'll enter 'books'....
OK 1984, Naked Lunch, Ulysses not bad....but Little Black Sambo? Jesus Christ Google! That's appalling.And what about the director and cast categories - nonsense! Sometimes a book is just a book, not a film too...
Next, I'll try 'great books'....
Absolutely amazing - we've got Homer...accompanied by an image of Lenny, Homer's friend from the Simpsons, but not Homer himself. Fantastic.
And why do we have all those Greeks and one solitary Roman? Surely there's been a great author since the year 180?
Absolutely amazing - we've got Homer...accompanied by an image of Lenny, Homer's friend from the Simpsons, but not Homer himself. Fantastic.And why do we have all those Greeks and one solitary Roman? Surely there's been a great author since the year 180?
Next, an issue dear to my heart, 'Salman Rushdie'...
Now here's where I think Google Square starts to come into its own - the list is pretty standard, nothing I don't know and haven't read before, except for the last entry 'In Good Faith' an essay which I've never even heard of before. I gues what's its really intended for is compiling statistics and making comparisons, but I think that using it against the grain could potentially be interesting too...
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Things Fall Apart reading - Fabrica gallery
Last Friday I went to a reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart by Rounke Williams at Fabrica in Brighton.
If you haven't read Things Fall Apart I'd definitely recommend it - it's one of the seminal texts in the postcolonial canon (if there can really be said to be such a thing) and an unassuming, but very powerful, look at colonial relations.
Rounke Williams' bio on the Fabrica site says - 'Born of mixed parentage (Nigerian/British), Rounke grew up in Lagos and studied Achebe's novels at school. As her father was one of the newly educated classes that took over after independence in 1960, these books held more than an objective fascination for her. The fact that her mother was from the country of the colonisers, provided extra depth to her reading of these classics. Rounke came to the UK in 1978 to finish her formal education. From 2000, she facilitated the development of resources for Brighton and Hove local authority on cultural diversity for school children.' She is also a writer, and has stories published in African Love Stories: An Anthology and The Map of Me: True Tales of Mixed Heritage Experience. Rounke's passion for Nigerian literature as a whole, not just Achebe, was really energising - she prepared a brilliant reading list (which I'll repeat in brief below) which has provided me with a load more books to look out for and also reminded me of how many authors go out of print or fail to make it to print in this country.
Being fairly familiar with the text already, it was was great to discuss it and share ideas - something I hadn't realised that I'd missed since I finished university last year. However, what I enjoyed most was listening to it being read aloud. Rounke proved to be a great storyteller, which is a rare thing - I think I could have listened to her read the whole novel. Some texts seem to just blossom when you hear them - I always read poetry out loud (or mutter it under my breath, depending on where I am!) and I'm wondering now why I don't do it with novels more often. Someone at the reading also alerted me to a great resource called LibriVox - which provides free audiobooks to download, as read by enthusiastic volunteers. I haven't given it try yet, but I'll report back when I have.
Anyway, here's Rounke's (non-exhaustive) Nigerian literature reading list - I've tried to include relevant links where possible.
If you haven't read Things Fall Apart I'd definitely recommend it - it's one of the seminal texts in the postcolonial canon (if there can really be said to be such a thing) and an unassuming, but very powerful, look at colonial relations.
Rounke Williams' bio on the Fabrica site says - 'Born of mixed parentage (Nigerian/British), Rounke grew up in Lagos and studied Achebe's novels at school. As her father was one of the newly educated classes that took over after independence in 1960, these books held more than an objective fascination for her. The fact that her mother was from the country of the colonisers, provided extra depth to her reading of these classics. Rounke came to the UK in 1978 to finish her formal education. From 2000, she facilitated the development of resources for Brighton and Hove local authority on cultural diversity for school children.' She is also a writer, and has stories published in African Love Stories: An Anthology and The Map of Me: True Tales of Mixed Heritage Experience. Rounke's passion for Nigerian literature as a whole, not just Achebe, was really energising - she prepared a brilliant reading list (which I'll repeat in brief below) which has provided me with a load more books to look out for and also reminded me of how many authors go out of print or fail to make it to print in this country.
Being fairly familiar with the text already, it was was great to discuss it and share ideas - something I hadn't realised that I'd missed since I finished university last year. However, what I enjoyed most was listening to it being read aloud. Rounke proved to be a great storyteller, which is a rare thing - I think I could have listened to her read the whole novel. Some texts seem to just blossom when you hear them - I always read poetry out loud (or mutter it under my breath, depending on where I am!) and I'm wondering now why I don't do it with novels more often. Someone at the reading also alerted me to a great resource called LibriVox - which provides free audiobooks to download, as read by enthusiastic volunteers. I haven't given it try yet, but I'll report back when I have.
Anyway, here's Rounke's (non-exhaustive) Nigerian literature reading list - I've tried to include relevant links where possible.
- Chris Abani, Masters of the Board
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus & Half of a Yellow Sun
- TM Aluko, One Man, One Wife & One Man, One Matchet
- Malum Amadu, Amadu's Bundle: Fulani tales of Love and Djins
- John Pepper Clark
- Cyprian Ekwensi
, People of the City & Jagua Nana
- Buchi Emecheta, In the Ditch & Second Class Citizen
- Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike, The Potter's Wheel
- Festus Iyayi, Heroes
- Ali Mazrui, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo
- Nkem Nwankwo, My Mercedes is Bigger Than Yours
- Flora Nwapa, Efuru & Idu
- Christopher Okigbo, The Lament of the Masks
- Kole Omotosho, Just Before Dawn
- Wole Soyinka
- Amos Tutuola
(I'll try and add to and improve these links when I've got a bit more time)
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Something topical...the G20
I spent most of the day not working and watching the protests on Sky and BBC news today, and remembering a time when I would have been there myself, before the Stop the War marches in 2003, when I saw that despite millions of people turning up to protest peacefully about something that was so obviously wrong nothing changed and nothing ever would.
Rowena Mason, blogging for the Telegraph put together a reading list for G20 leaders - books that she thought could have 'helped to prevent this crisis - exposing greed, financial carelessness, complacent over-consumption and others qualities that went towards creating economic busts of the past'.
Rowena Mason, blogging for the Telegraph put together a reading list for G20 leaders - books that she thought could have 'helped to prevent this crisis - exposing greed, financial carelessness, complacent over-consumption and others qualities that went towards creating economic busts of the past'.
- Money: a Suicide Note, by Martin Amis
- Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
- Tulip Fever, by Deborah Moggach
- American Pscyho, by Brett Easton Ellis (love, love, love Christian Bale in the film of this as it goes)
- The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald
- The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
- Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens
- Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe
- L'Argent, by Emile Zola
Sunday, 22 February 2009
Forget Slumdog Millionaire & Revolutionary Road, it's all about Baboon Metaphysics.
It's that time we've all ben waiting for, forget the Oscars, the shortlist for the Bookseller's Diagram prize for odd book titles is out.
The nominees are Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy Dorothy L Cheney and Robert M Seyfarth (University of Chicago Press), Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D Cash (SLACK Incorporated), The Large Sieve and its Applications by Emmanuel Kowalski (Cambridge University Press) Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski (C&T), Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang (Woodhead) and last but not least, the spectacularly named The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Professor Philip M Parker (Icon Group International).
These six made the shortlist, beating of competion from the likes of F**k It, (which I'm actually going to try and read at some point), All Dogs Have ADHD, The Industrial Vagina, Excrement in the Late Middle Ages, Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings and my personal favourite, Malformed Frogs.
The nominees are Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy Dorothy L Cheney and Robert M Seyfarth (University of Chicago Press), Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D Cash (SLACK Incorporated), The Large Sieve and its Applications by Emmanuel Kowalski (Cambridge University Press) Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski (C&T), Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang (Woodhead) and last but not least, the spectacularly named The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Professor Philip M Parker (Icon Group International).
These six made the shortlist, beating of competion from the likes of F**k It, (which I'm actually going to try and read at some point), All Dogs Have ADHD, The Industrial Vagina, Excrement in the Late Middle Ages, Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings and my personal favourite, Malformed Frogs.
You can vote for your favourite on the Bookseller's website and read more about the prize here
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Tell the truth
Apparently most people will have only read 6 of the 'classic' 100 books in this list...so its time for some literary one-up-manship, and tell the truth!
Instructions
1) Look at the list and add an 'x' those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you love.
3) Add a '*' if you tried to read it and failed.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
5) Feel smug if your score is higher than that of your friends.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2. The Lord of the Rings x
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x+
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x+
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x+
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller x
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Has anyone read all of them? Really?)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x+
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen x
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini *
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres x
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x (Yes, I've read. No I'm not proud. Yes, I felt dirty afterwards.)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x+
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving *
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan x
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel x +
52. Dune - Frank Herbert* (I tried to read this for a course at uni)
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen *
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I'm sitting next to the DVD, does that count?)
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov x
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt x (Why do people think this is a classic, I don't get it, I thought it was more or less the most mediocre thing I'v ever read)
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac x+ (yes, on my gap year...what a cliche, cringe)
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie x+
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x (Ive read it, but there are no words to express how much I hate Dickens)
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker x
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x+ (I loved this when I was little, I wanted a secret grden of my own)
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce *
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath x
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell *(Ivertried and tried and tried again with this. gave up and read The Calcutta Chromosome instead, they're similar)
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker x+
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry x+
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White x, (I know I've read it, but blocked out the trauma of the experience)
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton x
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks x+
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (see Charlotte's Web comments)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Conclusions
1.I've read 45, therefore I am 7.5 times more literary than 'average'
2.I only loved 12 of them though.
3. I failed to finish 7 - I'm a quitter, but I try and fail more times than the 'average' person tries
4. This list is biased - it's full of books that people are told they should read, rather than ones they want to read.
5. I have too much time on my hands.
Instructions
1) Look at the list and add an 'x' those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you love.
3) Add a '*' if you tried to read it and failed.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
5) Feel smug if your score is higher than that of your friends.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2. The Lord of the Rings x
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x+
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x+
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x+
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller x
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Has anyone read all of them? Really?)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x+
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen x
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini *
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres x
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x (Yes, I've read. No I'm not proud. Yes, I felt dirty afterwards.)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x+
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving *
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan x
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel x +
52. Dune - Frank Herbert* (I tried to read this for a course at uni)
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen *
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I'm sitting next to the DVD, does that count?)
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov x
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt x (Why do people think this is a classic, I don't get it, I thought it was more or less the most mediocre thing I'v ever read)
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac x+ (yes, on my gap year...what a cliche, cringe)
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie x+
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x (Ive read it, but there are no words to express how much I hate Dickens)
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker x
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x+ (I loved this when I was little, I wanted a secret grden of my own)
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce *
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath x
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell *(Ivertried and tried and tried again with this. gave up and read The Calcutta Chromosome instead, they're similar)
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker x+
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry x+
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White x, (I know I've read it, but blocked out the trauma of the experience)
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton x
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks x+
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (see Charlotte's Web comments)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Conclusions
1.I've read 45, therefore I am 7.5 times more literary than 'average'
2.I only loved 12 of them though.
3. I failed to finish 7 - I'm a quitter, but I try and fail more times than the 'average' person tries
4. This list is biased - it's full of books that people are told they should read, rather than ones they want to read.
5. I have too much time on my hands.
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