Top Ten...Wednesday?

The Broke & The Bookish blog runs a weekly Top 10 tag relating to books. Usually, I don't really think to partake, as I don't think I really read enough books. But this weeks theme is Books You are Dying to Read. Which is something I can do (:

1. Posession: A Romance by AS Byatt
After reading The Children's Book, I need some more Byatt in my life. I tried reading Possession back in Year 10, when I was fifteen, and for some reason I found it kind of boring and gave up on it. It deals with both a love story and with the art of literature, and I think after studying English with more depth for a couple of years, I should be able to tackle this.

2. The Virgin in the Garden by AS Byatt
This novel begins a series of novels about Fredrica Barrett. The publisher notes in The Children's Book about this sound intriguing enough, and I really adore Byatt's prose style.

3. On Liberty by JS Mill
Granted, this is a little different to the first two, but as I hope to study Politics next year, I really want to get my teeth into Mill's essays. I have a collecton that also includes Utilitarianism (which I've studied at school) and Representative Government. I believe he also wrote an essay on the treatment of women, and came across as an early feminist-aided by his wife-which I think would also make interesting reading.

4. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
My mum has the massive World Without End but unfortunatly gave away Follett's original work in the series. Pillars of the Earth is to be made, I believe into a television series, and I would love to read this before watching that. I adore historical fiction so this seems up my street.

5. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
I've read both Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, but my copy of this book is still sat on my bookcase. I'm intrigued by reading it, as opposed to dying to read it, but as this is Woolf's most famous feminist writing, it would probably be good to read it. I'd also love to read her diaries, if they are still in print.

6. Looking for Alaska by John Green
So, I've recently been spending too much time procrastinating on YouTube, and have discovered the sheer love shown towards this novel by the American author John Green. It's Young Adult fiction, which I rarely have any interest in anymore-due to the fact its nearly always just about sex or getting drunk. Yet Green's novel appears to have a geuninly interesting plot-about a boy obsessed with 'last word's'. His others-Paper Towns and An Abudance of Katherines-seem equally good.

7. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
The idea of exploring the horrific 9/11 attacks, through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy seems incredibly interesting, especially as the novel also winds in the Allied attack on Dresden in the Second World War and the nuking of Hiroshima. It seems interesting to tie all these horrible incidents, which killed more innocents than anyone else, together.

8. The Season by William Goldman
This book follows a 'Season' (September-May) on Broadway in the 1960s. It is raved about online on theatre websites, and I'd love to read about the so-called 'Golden Era' of Broadway.

9. Solar by Ian McEwan
This has been on my 'I want to read this' list since it came out. I loved Atonement and quite enjoyed Saturday, and the set up of Solar, with a physisit suddently thrown out of joint in his personal life-he's on wife number five. I'd also really like to get to read McEwan's On Chesil Beach as well.

10. Finishing the Hat-Volume 1 by Stephen Sondheim
OK, so this isn't even out yet. But! It's a collection of the lyrics written by musical theatre's Shakespeare (no exaggeration) with his comments on them (these shows include West Side Story, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd) as well as autobiographical musings on his working with Leonard Bernstein, Oscar Hammerstein II and Angela Lansbury. I cannot *wait* for this to be released, even if it is kind of expensive.

Upcoming Stuff

First off, I'm on Goodreads, here. I really like it, even if I am a little OCD about having the right editions for all the books I'm reading/have read. I'm also not sure about how the community side of things works, but its fun to be on there.

Secondly, I'm going to see Armstrong & Miller later this month, then Chris Addison in November and also, finally, Chess.

Armstrong & Miller is the live touring version of a television programme of the same name created by Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller, and contains skits such as an unsympathetic father, dinner parties, an ongoing really obvious affair that the husband does not get, and the wonderful Battle of Britain pilots sketch-which are two posh pilots, speaking in teenage slang.

Chris Addison is a comedian who I follow on Twitter (@mrchrisaddison) and he's a regular on TV shows like Mock the Week, has a guest-starring role as the headteacher in Skins and is generally awesome.

And then if you have no idea what I mean when I speak about Chess may I direct you here. It's a musical I adore, and the tour opened a couple of weeks ago, and you can view pictures and things here, but it's coming to Nottingham in November, and me and my friend are popping up to see it (YAY).

Also, way in advance, I'm going to see the amazing Arcade Fire in December in Birmingham.

There are also a couple of CD's I'm excited about:

• Anthems by Kerry Ellis. I love Kerry Ellis. I'm not crazily obsessed, I haven't seen her in Wicked 50 times or anything, but I'll definitly be buying her solo album because her voice is amazing
• Illuminations by Josh Groban. This has been a longgg time coming, and is apparently going to be a little different to his last stuff. He's kind of an operatic-pop-musical-cross-over guy, and his voice is to die for. Not many people here know who he is, and so he's best-known for his appearances in Glee, but, yeah, his voice is amazing
• Les Miserables Live-This is the international 25th anniversary touring cast CD featuring John Owen-Jones, Earl Carpenter and, er, Gareth Gates. I'm intrigued as to how the new orchestrations come off, because apparently the songs have been made more poppy in places and things. This is in anticipation of whatever DVD/CD that'll be released for the 02 concert starring Alfie Boe, Norm Lewis and Nick Jonas among many others

I thought I'd pop this post in here in between my scheduled reviews of my holiday reads, and a couple of other things because I think once school starts I won't have *that* much time to write lots. I'm really, kind of, contemplating the whole vlogging thing after watching Rosianna's videos , but a) I don't know how long my camera lasts and b) I ramble. A lot.

I'm Back

Hi (:

So I’m back from Spain. I’ve been back for a few days, but I’ve been busy unpacking, working and trying to get my head in gear for the coming new school year-my last ever!

Morira, which is where my family go in Spain just seems to get more and more lovely every year. It has enough of a tourist industry for people to understand slightly bad Spanish, but it isn’t like you can’t move for English people. I got a little sad on our last night, as next year we’re planning a holiday somewhere else, and I realised that the chances of me coming back to a place I’ve been going to since I was six were getting smaller.

My AS-Level results weren’t quite what I wanted them to be, but I think if the same happens next year I would make the (hypothetical) offers of the university’s I’m looking at as insurance choices, which is still good.

I read all bar one of the books I mentioned here, I’m still on the go with The Lacuna, but I’m really enjoying it so far. So over the next couple of days I’ll tap up some reviews of them for you. As a warning, they’ll probably be brief as I forgot to make notes on them when I was reading, and a couple of the books remain in Spain.

Holiday Reading

(Stupid bad quality photo)

These are the books I'm taking with me to Spain. 14 days. 6 books. These have all been out for some time, but I'm catching up. and they should be wonderful.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Mexico, 1935. Harrison Shepherd is working in the household of famed muralist Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo. Sometimes cook, sometimes secretary, Shepherd is always an observer, recording his experiences in diaries and notebooks. When exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky arrives, Shepherd inadvertently casts in his lot with art and revolution and his aim for an invisible life is thwarted forever.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin yearns to escape her provincial home. She moves to the college town of Troy to start university and takes a job as a part time nanny to a glamorous couple. Tassie is drawn into their life and that of their newly adopted toddler. As the household reveals its complications, Tassie is forced out of her naivety, and the past and future burst forth in dramatic and shocking ways.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver
One night in London, Irina McGovern's destiny hinges on a single kiss. Whether she leans into one alluring pair of lips will determine whether she stays with her long-term partner Lawrence or runs off with Ramsey, a hard-living snooker player.
A parallel-universe structure allows us to follow Irina's competing futures with two drastically different men. An intellectual and fellow American, Lawrence is smart and supportive, but rigid and emotionally withdrawn. A British celebrity, Ramsey is passionate and spontaneous, but jealous, undereducated and prone to pick fights. Irina's choice of partner will have ramifications for her relations with friends and family, for her career, and, most importantly, for the texture of her daily life.
If all love is about trade-offs-if every romantic prospect is flawed-how can we ever know which to choose?

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice. Two years later, they meet again-the story starts there...

The Children's Book by AS Byatt
Famous author Olive Wellwood writes a special private book, bound in different colours for each of her children. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world-but their lives, and those of their rich cousins and friends, the son and daughter of curator at the new Victoria & Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets.
They grow up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, but as the sons rebel against their parents and the girls dream of independant futures, they are unaware that in the darkness ahead they will be betrayed unintentionally by the adults who love them.

As you can tell, I don't really do light holiday reading. But this book is the exception. hey it was free:

I Heart New York by Lindsey Kelk
Fleeing her cheating boyfriend and clutching little more than a crumpled bridesmaid dress, a pair of Louboutins and her passport, Angela jumps on a plane-destination NYC.
Holed up in a cute hotel room, Angela gets a New York makeover from her NBF Jenny and a whirlwind tour of the city that never sleeps. Before she knows it, Angela is dating two sexy guys. And, best of all, she gets to write about in her new blog (Carrie Bradshaw eat your heart out). But it's one thing telling readers about you romantic dilemmas, it's another figuring them out for yourself.
Angela has fallen head over heels for the Big Apple, but does she heart New York more than home?

Behemoth

As I said, Behemoth was my favourite character in The Master & Margarita and a little bit of web-browsing has bought me to these cool things:

This is a statute of Behemoth which is in the Adriyivskyy Descent in Kiev. The Adriyviskyy Descent is where Mikhail Bulgakov lived, and where the Bulgakov Museum is.

And this is the said Bulgakov musuem and house on the Adriyivskyy Descent.
And this is a super-cool T-shirt from Out of Print, which features Behemoth on the front, and describes The Master & Margarita as the 'most sensational literary work since Doctor Zhivago' which I really need to read.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

(courtesy of...er...Google)

As part of my English Literature AS-Level course, I'm reading Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper alongside Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice (yeah, I have no idea why the two link either).

The Yellow Wallpaper was first published in 1892, and raises the issues of women trapped in a patriachal society. At face value, it is the story of an unnamed woman having been taken to a house in the country to recover from an unnamed 'nervous disposition' by her husband, John. Underneath, however, it is a tale that's message is that the seeing the reality of women's oppression can send someone mad or that the only way of seeing reality is by going mad.

Gilman herself had a very interesting life. She was born in July 1860, and during her early childhood her father abandoned her mother with Charlotte and her older brother, leaving them in poverty and the occasional care of her intelligent and liberal aunts. When she was five, Gilman taught herself to read, although her mother forbade the reading of literature. She was also a great student, although she studied just to the age of fifteen, with her favourite subject being (apparently) physics.

In 1884, she married an artist, Charles Stetson, with their child Katharine being born the same year. Upon Katharine's birth, Gilman suffered from a bout of post-natal depression, although many people viewed this as just hysteria and her complaints were mostly ignored. Four years later, in 1888, Gilman and Stetson split in order for Charlotte to get better. Charlotte moved with Katharine to Pasadena, where she became involved in radical feminist movements, becoming involved in groups like the Pacific Coast Woman's Press Association and the State Council of Women, as well as writing for the Bulletin, a feminist newspaper.

After her official divorce from Stetson in 1894, Charlotte sent Katharine to spend some time with her father and his new wife Grace Channing-a close friend of Charlotte's. Upon the death of her mother a year later, Charlotte moved back east and came into contact with her cousin Houghton Gilman, a lawyer, and they soon became romantically involved, and married in 1900.

Houghton Gilman died suddenly in 1934, causing Charlotte to return to Pasadena. Having been diagonsed with terminal breast cancer in 1932, by 1935 Charlotte decided to end her life painlessly with a lethal dose of cholorfom.

One of the most fascinating things about Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the fact that she had such a radical life. She seperated from her husband, and held views surronding issues like Euthanasia that are still talked about today. The Yellow Wallpaper is a stunning work; and it is obvious that she drew on her real-life experience of Charlotte's post-natal depression on the woman in the novel-she has recently had a baby who she rarely gets to see. In my opinion, she seems to be almost an American Virginia Woolf-esque author...