trash words: life is just a bowl of adjectives

The majority of this journal is now friends only. Please comment to be added.

A glimpse of heaven:

The 20 most beautiful bookshops in the world

I've been to Barter Books - it's in a converted railway station, with the waiting rooms set up as reading rooms on the side. Darned cold, kind of like an outdoor book market, but lots of fun to browse.

Oh, just look at this cast!

*swoons*

And Trish becomes a gibbering wreck of impatience.

Can you give me an OMG?

Does anyone have more fun naming things than palaeontologists?

6. Dexter by Design - Jeff Lindsay [***]
Tags: crime fiction
7. The Haunted Hotel and Other Stories - Wilkie Collins [***]
Tags: classic fiction, short stories, supernatural
8. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome [****]
Tags: classic fiction, humour
9. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis [****]
Tags: sci-fi, humour
10. The Slap- Christos Tsiolkas [**]
Tags: fiction

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Only five books read in January. It's some sort of negative record, but let's blame Dickens because he's a) dead and b) responsible for the my spending the first three weeks of 2011 squinching my eyes in stubborn determination. In addition to my review, under the cut, I should mention that if you're going to pick up any Dickens work, it's worth getting an e-book where you can enlarge the text, or a large-print copy, or not mind spending weeks reading it. At least, it is if you're over 35. Ten years ago, I could have swept through Nicholas Nickleby in five days. Alas, now, squinching.


1. Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens [*****]
Tags: classic fiction
2. The Remains of Sherlock Holmes - Paul Nash [*****] [short stories]
Tags: crime fiction, reauthoring
3. Movies in Fifteen Minutes - Cleolinda Jones [****]
Tags: non-fiction, parody, entertainment
4. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham [*****] [reread]
Tags: sci-fi classic
5. The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry [****]
Tags: non-fiction, autobiography, memoirs

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New York Blizzard film found; rather sweet video of the pictures with narration by the finder. And he's right, some of the photos are wonderful.

Thanks gingervere for the link.

I didn't quite manage my non-fiction/classic fiction - general fiction ratio; things sort of fell apart with the arrival on my TBR pile of a bunch of great general fiction, and a budget problem that meant I couldn't buy the non-fiction I'd been recommended. Still, I read some amazing books last year. Anything with four or five *s you can consider unreservedly recommended.

Ratio Watch

Fiction: 43
Classic Fiction: 20
Non-Fiction 17

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Happy Twenty-Eleventy, flist.