Clocking on

I’ve returned from the abyss and currently working through the huge pile of RSS updates and such that have accumulated. You can expect some sporadic posting here for a while so’s I can get everything – online and off – sorted out.

In the meantime, I’m going to leave you with book art by Brian Dettmer – some of this is truly, truly stunning.

Review: You Shall Know Our Velocity

Genre: Difficult-to-place novel

Synopsis: After the death of their friend Jack, two friends Will and Hand decide to travel around the world in order to give away a large sum of money. The only problem is that they only have a week to do it. However, their plans are thwarted time and time again and their trip turns into something completely different.

Thoughts: I very much enjoyed this book. I loved Dave Eggers’ writing style in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I wasn’t disappointed here. The action was sometimes hard to follow and it took me a while to get the hang of reading the way it’s written, but it’s definitely very effective. Anyone who’d like to be an armchair traveller will love this book.  The first section, especially, where Will and Hand are in Senegal, is incredibly evocative of the atmosphere of Senegal (or at least what I imagine the atmosphere in Senegal is – I’ve never been, but after reading this, I’ve definitely acquired the desire to go).

However, I felt that near the end of the book, the narrative started to fall apart a bit and make less sense. It didn’t really measure up to the standard of the beginning.

While googling to find an image for the review, I found that this book was republished under the title of Sacrament with a middle section by Hand that casts doubt on Will’s retelling of the story. That section is available on the internet here (warning: that’s a link to a 49-page pdf) and I’m looking forward to reading it.

As an example of Dave Eggers’ fabulous writing style, I’m going to share a quote from very near the end of the book:

Hand took a breath and opened his palms, as if accepting the gift of rain. “YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY!” he bellowed into the cold exhausted city.

It’s not much, I know, but believe me – it’s worth reading this book so that you can understand.

Having seen some other reviews, I’d also recommend a little googling to any potential readers – there’s definitely some differing opinions out there on this one, and some of them are definitely worth considering.

Review format

I’ve just updated – for the first time in a while – the list of books I’ve read, and you can now see the true horror of my backlog of reviews to do. There was a weekly geeks question last week about review formats, and while I didn’t participate, I read the responses with great interest and thought a good deal about the reviews I find most helpful. I came to the conclusion that the reviews I like best:

• Give the genre of the book
• Include a brief synopsis
• If it’s a book I haven’t read, include some good general thoughts that let me know whether or not it’s worth reading
• If it’s a book I have read, includes some more specific thoughts that give me an insight into the reviewer’s opinion

The other thing that’s important to me is the length of the review. I’m really not one for long reivews, but just a couple of words isn’t really good enough for me – I want to know more than that. However, I always feel pressured to write long, detailed reviews – which is probably the reason I don’t write very many of them. So from now on, in an effort to stop the pile mounting up, I will (a) attempt to keep to just the list of things I’ve written above, thereby making sure I’m actually writing reviews I’d want to read and (b) make a renewed effort to actually write some reviews in the first place. We’ll see how it goes, eh?

On another note, I’m also going to signal my temporary absence from the blogosphere. I’m going to be busy this week with a French exchange partner arriving, and directly after she leaves, I’m swanning off to Iceland (lucky me!). It’d all be wonderful if it weren’t for the fact that bloglines is going to be backed up to high heaven when I come back…

Book blog guild

The Book Blog Guild

Many of you will already have seen this. It’s a new ’society’ for book bloggers, set up by Rebecca of The Bluestocking Society (you can read her post introducing it here).

This looks to be a good way of connecting with other book bloggers and such, so I urge you to take a look and maybe sign up if you haven’t already

Librarything

It seems a lot of people out there in the bookblogosphere make good use of librarything and similar websites for keeping track of their books.

Well, I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon. My weapon of choice is librarything and I’ve decided to start working through the backlog of books that aren’t catalogued (i.e. all of them) while trying to track my reading from now. Wish me luck!

How do you use librarything or a similar site?

Musing Mondays: TBR pile

How many books (roughly) are in your tbr pile? Is this in increasing number or does it stay stable? Do you ever experience tbr anxiety in the face of this pile? (question courtesy of Wendy)

Well, my physical TBR pile takes up two shelves: one jam-packed and with books on top (I arrange my TBR pile by genre, but I have a disproportionate number of murder books) and one with a little more space on. I also have a total of 82 books in my bookmooch wishlist/save-for-later list, plus another few lists floating around with probably about another 20 books on them each.

My lists are definitely increasing, but the amount on my TBR pile is actually fairly stable. I put this down to rarely reading anything that’s not come from it – I don’t reread much, and I have very limited access to public libraries so I don’t tend to get much from there.

Do I face anxiety? Oddly enough, no. I know that I’m working through the pile, and I know that I’ll never read most of the books on my lists, but those books aren’t staring at me so I can happily forget about them. If I did somehow manage to buy them all, though, then I might be reduced to a quivering heap on the floor.

What about you? Do you get anxious about how many books you have on your TBR pile?

The Sunday Salon

It’s been a funny week for reading. I’ve started 3 new books this week (and can’t remember what else I’ve been reading) and haven’t really gotten very far into any of them. Here they are:

You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers is absolutely excellent so far. In a nutshell, it’s the story of two men who travel – or try to – around the world giving away – or trying to – a huge sum of money. I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and loved it for the amazing writing style, and this is just as good if not even better. I haven’t got particularly far into it, though, because I decided to stop reading it last thing at night because it kept me up for hours thinking of all the places I’d like to travel to. A silly reason, but it’s true.

My edition of The Bonfire of the Vanitites by Tom Wolfe has a much less interesting cover. I’ve really read only the first four or five pages, and mean to read more but last night I was seized with a desire to pick up a mystery, so chose Booked to Die. I’ve not read much of this one either, but it looks like it’s going to be one I’ll really, really enjoy. Tomorrow is a bank holiday, and while I have a very long list of things I should be doing, I’m pretty sure I’ll manage to find some time for reading, and I’ll be continuing with these three.

Disappointments

One of the reasons I rarely participate in bookish memes is that I never remember to take part until I’ve seen everyone else’s posts, by which time it’s too late. Having read a couple of people’s answers to this week’s BTT, though, I’m inspired to add my views, even though it’s Saturday. So, here goes:

Which is worse?  Finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?

Out of those two, a completely disappointing book by an author I love is much worse for me. I prefer to read new authors, rather than sticking to old favourites, and so in order to have carried on reading the same person’s work, I have to like them a lot. Reading disappointing books by authors I like always feels a bit like a betrayal.

However, I’d argue that an author you expect to be good and turns out to be terrible is even worse. I’m thinking of Douglas Coupland. I read a synopsis of Girlfriend in a Coma and excitedly ordered it from the library, convinced it was going to be brilliant. One book later, it turned out to be mediocre. Undeterred, I recently read The Gum Thief, which turned out to be just as boring as you’d expect a book about office superstores to be (though if I’d expected it to be boring, I probably wouldn’t have read it). I still have Jpod waiting for me on my shelf, but I’m not sure now whether or not to bother with it – two disappointments is enough for me, I think.

An example of the first disappointment given is Christopher Brookmyre. I read The Sacred Art of Stealing and if I made a list of my favourite books – and I’m sure you fellow bibliophiles can empathise with how difficult that would be – then it would probably be in it. After reading it, I stocked up on his books in a charity shop and have since read Quite Ugly One Morning, Not the End of the World and One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night and they’ve all failed to be anywhere near as good as The Sacred Art of Stealing. I still have Country of the Blind, A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil, Boiling a Frog and All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye, but unfortunately, I’m expecting that they’re going to be the same.