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post from on 21 November 2009 11:24:40 PM. ©

More Reports of March, 2010 Release Date for LEGO Harry Potter Video Game[...]

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Week in Review

post from The Written World on 21 November 2009 08:40:00 PM. © The Written World

Random Thoughts

Note to self, do not get really excited about reading weeks! The next week generally turns out to be rather bad after that... I have only finished three books this week. Count them, THREE! How depressing is that! It means several books are going to have to go back to the library unread, though, and that makes me sad!

I am still coughing from when I was sick. I get like this every year, but with the swine flu worries I feel like everyone thinks I am going to die! I really do get a bad cough every year... I mean, just ask the charming comedian! For our first date we went to the movies and I coughed for the first half and he kept asking me if I was okay. I was really regretting saying no to the drink, but he gave me gum and I managed to make it through the rest of the movie cough-free! That is probably why he just is my mini-pharmacy and doesn't complain... It is also why I am now required to have a drink at all movie viewings.

November Reading Challenge

I don't think there are any new reviews for my unofficial reading challenge, but if there are feel free to leave the URL in the comments and I will post about it next week! I hope to read at least one more book for the challenge, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

Virtual Advent

Can you believe that this starts in just over a week? I am so excited! There has been an amazing turnout of sign-ups and I can't wait to read all the posts! There is still plenty of time to sign-up and there will be a post soon with last-minute details. To sign-up, just head over to the blog! There are still some people I was hoping would sign-up that haven't... Hint, hint!

Dewey Reading Challenge

In December there will be a mini-challenge as a bit of a wrap-up to the challenge! It's all about doing things in Dewey's memory, so I hope that people will sign-up. There will be an official place to post your links in December, but for now you can read all the details on this post.

Other Challenges/Events

I have a big post scheduled for Thursday to talk about all the challenges I am planning to sign-up for so far in 2010, so be sure to check it out! In the meantime, I am hosting a read-along in 2010 to read The Time Quartet by Madeleine L'Engle. There has been a decent amount of interest so far, so I hope others will join in. I was just posting to see if there is any interest. Since there is, should I put up a place to offically sign-up or something?

Also, don't forget about The Alphabet in Historical Fiction that is being hosted by Historical Tapestry. The letter is 'A'. You still have another week to post for it. I know what my post is going to be, but I seem to have forgotten to post it. I will have to try and squeeze it in this week somewhere.

Weekly Reads

I read Peter & Max by Bill Willingham. I am reviewing this with Heather, so my review will be up on Tuesday! Then, I read Avalon High Coronation - Volume 2: Homecoming by Meg Cabot. This is manga series. Apparently there is a novel that they spin-off of and I have it from the library now, too. Lastly, I finished Ash by Malinda Lo. If you are doing the GLBT challenge next year this is a good book for it! It's supposed to be a fairy tale retelling, but it is not what you would generally expect...

It's not like I don't have good books on the go! I am reading Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt, and Flappers by Joshua Zeitz. I just need to settle down, read, and finish something! That's the plan, anyway! Instead, I am thinking about all the books I want to be reading...

Weekly Posts
Music Munday - Guest Post: SoundRelief
Review: The Wild Things by Dave Eggers
Dewey Reading Challenge: A Mini-Challenge
Random and Some Reminders
The Time Quartet Read-Along

Library Loot

Oops, the library website is down! I will have to add this part in after since I don't have the physical books very organized at the moment!

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post from on 21 November 2009 08:24:12 PM. ©

New Half-Blood Prince DVD Trailer, Knowing Voldemort Clip, Years One to Six Giftset Trailer, More[...]

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Knitting update...

post from dovegreyreader scribbles on 21 November 2009 07:15:00 PM. © dovegreyreader scribbles

I was having a browse through the V&A online collection thanks to a link from Karen at Cornflower.
I'm really looking forward to the V&A's exhibition of British quilts coming up in March 2010 and I'd had a look at those and was just idly flicking through the knitting collection which Karen had warned would happen, it's addictive and interesting and then I hit the third page .
Nothing quite like spotting something of your own which is now in the V&A as I realised when I saw this.

This was my mum's Knitting Nancy, "keeps our little girls busy" and handed on to me as a child and look, there's even some on there that I've done earlier...well, about fifty years earlier I think.

It did keep me busy and don't ask me how many miles of this I made and never quite knew what to do with next and it would seem that 'Wendy', whose box now resides in the V&A didn't know either because she's made 810cms of it.
I think the idea was to stitch it into a coil and make place mats and things but mine never got that far and nor can I believe that a six year old would now be allowed to wield that lethal stabbing needle thing, how nobody lost an eye we'll never know.

Carrying on with my completer-finisher pledge these are off the needles and ready for the feet.

Don't you just love the unpredictability of a ball of Noro?
This used about two thirds of one skein leftover from the gilet and a standard top-down sock pattern invention using 36 sts on 6mm dpns. Doing the maths that meant 18 stitches (half) for the heel flap and then picking up 9 stitches (quarter) each side of the flap once the heel was turned and into gussetting. Very quick to do and perhaps a really good starter sock now I think about it because you get encouraging results in a single evening.
Hopefully that makes sense to all you sock-knitters out there and what a plethora of them I have come across in all this wartime reading.
Then a little gift of a hat for the new baby of a work colleague and finished off with my first attempt at something called I-cord, (aka Idiot cord and invented by Elizabeth Zimmerman) so simple to do on dpns once I'd got the hang of it and which in the end resembled all those yards of Knitting Nancy.

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post from on 21 November 2009 05:26:26 PM. ©

First Looks at Xeno in Lovegood House, More from Deathly Hallows Found on Ultimate Editions DVDs[...]

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'Everyone's Got a Bono Story' by Anne-Marie
O'Connor

post from Reading Matters on 21 November 2009 04:40:46 PM. © Reading Matters

Fiction - paperback; Tivoli; 352 pages; 2004. If you ever needed proof that I have rather eclectic reading tastes, then this review coming directly after W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four should do it. Admittedly, I read Everyone's Got A Bono Story on my sick bed; my mind couldn't settle on anything and I was looking for something completely fluffy, something that wouldn't tax my brain and would be as easy to read as a knife slicing through soft butter. This book, the first by Anne-Marie O'Connor, fit the bill perfectly. It's set in Dublin where everyone has a story to recount about Bono, the lead singer of U2. Perhaps they've seen him drinking in a bar, maybe a cousin went to school with him, or a friend of a friend once delivered him a pizza. But Aoife Collins, a 20-something office manager who has dreams of...

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More Sebald Activities in Paris

post from Brit Lit Blogs on 21 November 2009 03:35:20 PM. © Brit Lit Blogs

Paris seems to be the current capital of Sebald land. Here’s the text for an event being held November 28.

Samedi 28 novembre 2009, Petit Palais Musée des Beaux arts de la Ville de Paris

Lire Sebald, aujourd’hui.

Une rencontre organisée par la Maison des écrivains et de la littérature le samedi 28 novembre 09 au Petit Palais avec les écrivains Pierre Assouline, Robert Bober, Mathias Enard, Hélène Frappat, Christian Garcin et Oliver Rohe. L’oeuvre de Sebald, disparu accidentellement en 2001, a produit un effet très singulier sur les auteurs qui le lisent et l’évoquent. Secret ou avoué, l’écho que la lecture de ses textes produit, marque indiscutablement la littérature contemporaine. Comment et pourquoi, c’est ce que nous allons tenter de discerner lors de cette rencontre où les auteurs présents évoqueront leur Sebald.

La rencontre sera précédée de la projection du film, W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) et son oeuvre, des éditions Actes Sud.

Entrée libre et gratuite, dans la limite des places disponibles.

Auditorium du Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Avenue Winston Churchill 75008 métro Ch-Elysées Clémenceau.

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Vote Harry Potter at Mashable Open Web Awards[...]

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It’s A Small World, After All

It’s a rare and special thing for me to be entranced by a novel from the very first sentence, but in Little Bee, Chris Cleave does just that.

Little Bee, as she calls herself, is a 16-year-old orphan from a Nigerian village. When we first meet her, she is living in a British detention center for immigrants and refugees, about to be released after being locked up for two years. Her voice, full of dark humor and deep sorrow, evokes feelings of both sympathy and admiration. Knowing only two people in England, Andrew and Sara, from a fateful encounter on a Nigerian beach, Little Bee sets out to find them and so continues along a path that was set before her two years ago, but one that began long before that day.

Sarah is the other narrator of the book, a woman whose life has also taken unexpected and unwanted turns. Her young son, Charlie, insists on dressing and acting like Batman, and sees everyone as either “goodies” or “baddies.” His simple worldview underscores the naïveté of the adults of the book, who are unaware of the inherent ignorance of their actions and the inevitable consequences.

It is Charlie on whom so much of this book pivots and the most vital scenes with him felt a bit too contrived for my liking, but that small detraction from my enjoyment of the book doesn’t diminish its power. Little Bee is brutal, shocking and tragic. It’s a story about the how one person’s decisions can ripple-effect across people and continents, how even the best of intentions can have devastating consequences, and the dark side of living in a globalized world. The book is riveting and works on many levels, although the way in which Cleave chose to bring the story to a close left me somewhat unsatisfied.

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Challenges and Read-a-Longs, Oh My!

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably realised that I’m a complete challenge addict. I adore them: from the time spent making the perfect reading list to adding them to my Current Challenge Page to reading the books and using the strike tag to reading the reviews of [...]

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y/