Under The Duvet by Marian Keyes

A real treat - the incredibly funny jottings of a hugely bestselling and much-loved author Her books are read and adored by millions around the world - now read the collected journalism of the woman who writes them: the woman under the duvet. Marian loves shoes and her LTFs (Long Term Friends), hates estate agents and lost luggage, and she once had a Christmas office party that involved roasting two sheep on a spit, the Moroccan way. She's just like you and me...

I love Marian Keyes. Reading her books is like splashing through puddles in wellington boots on a rainy day, or stretching out on a deck chair in the sun with a cocktail - utterly satisfying. You feel like you're doing exactly what you're meant to be doing in that moment.

Under the Duvet, so named because the author likes to write in bed, is a little different to the other Keyes books I have read before, in that it is a selection of magazine articles, columns and personal essays rather than a work of fiction. Marian reveals the woman behind the label of World Renowned Chick Lit Author; her trials and tribulations, her views on life and family, her inimitable Irishness and her obssession with shoes. She writes with a healthy dose of good humour, even when discussing her descent into alcoholism and her subsequent struggle to recover.

Most of you reading this like blogs... well, this is like taking a brilliant blogger's top 30 posts and compiling them into a book. Light, easy and highly enjoyable reading.

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Related Website: BOOK SA

BOOK SA is an online SA Lit Daily, dedicated to covering matters literary - in English and beyond - in Southern Africa. BOOK SA reports on local fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, book reviews and happenings and more.

Definitely handy if you enjoy the occasional Book launch or reading since they have an up-to-date Events calendar.

Soul Of The Fire by Terry Goodkind

In this, the fifth volume in the Sword of Truth series, the Chimes are loose in the world and intent on destroying all its magic. This spurs our heroes, Richard Rahl and his wife Kahlan Amnell, to embark on a quest into the middle of a civil war that will further splinter an embattled land.

I deliberately used the shortest synopsis I could find, as this is a book in a series, and any more info would give the game away to someone reading one of the earlier books.

Let me start by saying I'm not big on fantasy. In fact, before the Sword of Truth series, I was unable to finish a fantasy novel, and that is not for lack of trying. Spurred on by several good friends who wholeheartedly embrace the genre, I tried again and again to find the soul of a fantasy novel, only to give up half way each time. I got to page 100 on the Grandfather of them all, The Lord Of The Rings, and it was like hitting a brick wall - I just could not turn that page and continue. Enter Terry Goodkind.

While Terry Goodkind's books are classed by his public as fantasy, he does not consider himself a classical fantasy author. As he said in an interview: "I believe that fantasy for fantasy's sake is not valid. Fantasy is only valid if it's used to illustrate importance to human beings." And I believe this is why I have finally found a fantasy series I enjoy. It has real people dealing with real things, in a world that has the same real problems as we do today. It has romance, mystery and political intrigue. The big difference is that some of these people have magic.

Goodkind is a brilliant author. His characters and involved plots leap off the page at you; his writing is so lifelike you feel you are journeying with your heroes. There are not many books that have captivated me like these ones. Having said that, his characters are only human (well, most of them), and as with any humans, you feel frustrated and annoyed by their human failings at times. This, however, is his drawcard - you can identify with them.

Goodkind is really uncategorisable in terms of the type of books he writes. One thing is certain though - his books are a breath of fresh air which transcend all genres, and I can't wait to start the next one.

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Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring....

In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.

The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.

Only it's different.

At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there's another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.

Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.

Critically acclaimed and award-winning author Neil Gaiman will delight readers with his first novel for all ages.

For the first time in a long time, a children's story that allows itself to be frightening. There are a lot of parallels to Pan's Labyrinth, though neither suffer from the similarities. Also, Coraline's real life is nice and normal and not half so scary as the beldam's world. A wonderfully funny and frightening escapade that anyone who liked to explore as a child will appreciate and enjoy.

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Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Illustrated Novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Match wits with the razor-sharp mind and keenly honed instincts of literature's most famous detective. Every one of the immortal Sherlock Holmes novels appears in this single volume, unabridged, embellished with the beautiful original illustrations, and reasonably priced. The classic works include:
A Study in Scarlet: the very first Holmes adventure--and the start of a beautiful friendship between the detective and Dr. Watson.
The Sign of Four: Holmes is called upon to solve the case of a missing treasure in India.
The Hound of the Baskervilles: Holmes and Watson find themselves involved in an age-old curse.
The Valley of Fear: A cipher message. A grisly murder. A dark and powerful tale.with a battle between Holmes and his infamous nemesis, Professor Moriarty.

I was rather surprised to discover that the complete illustrated novels amounted only to four. Perhaps the other novels were not illustrated? Or, from the very small amount of research I've done, it seems that all the others were short stories, as opposed to novel-length books. Anyway, on to the books - in case you can't read it off the picture, the four novels are: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear. The first two novels were not very good, in my opinion. The first one suffered from being, not only the first Sherlock Holmes story, but from [apparently] being the first in the murder mystery genre. Either way I did not enjoy them. They seemed somewhat far-fetched and contrived - after all, what on earth is the whole mormon sub-plot necessary for? He did a similar thing in The Valley of Fear, but that was far more interesting and seemed less out-of-step with the novel. The Sign of Four had a similar problem to the first one - there was no possible way for you to work out anything. The first time that you were introduced to half the clues, was when Holmes was explaining to you what had happened. The last two novels in the set were far more enjoyable, for the simple reason that you were shown all these enigmatic tidbits and could actually figure one or two things out. Of course, they might've been a lot more enjoyable if I actually liked any of the characters...

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Related Website: BookCrossing

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Leave it on a park bench, at a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym -- anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel next. Track the book's journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

Join hundreds of thousands of active BookCrossers daily in our many forums to discuss your favorite authors, characters and books in every genre throughout history right up through current releases.

Join BookCrossing Help make the whole world a library and share the joy of literacy. Reading becomes an adventure when you BookCross!

Related Website: The Lazy Library

Ever read a book that was a few hundred pages longer than it needed to be? Yeah, so have we. Fortunately, there are authors out there that would rather have a concise and effective book than a lengthy and diluted tome, and that's where the Lazy Library comes in.

The Lazy Library, where you can find books on any topic without having to worry about high page counts. If it's over 200 pages, you won't even see it. Read all about anything, in less time, for (usually) less money.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

One of the most ingenious (or infuriating, depending on your point of view) of Christie's novels. Narrated by a Doctor Sheppard, who takes the place of Hastings (now living in Argentina with his wife) in assisting Poirot. A wealthy widow in the village of King's Abbott, Mrs. Ferrars, is found dead, and Dr. Sheppard suspects suicide until Roger Ackroyd, a widower who was expected to marry her, is also killed. Poirot is Sheppard's new neighbor, and is relieved to escape the boredom of the vegetable marrows he has been growing by investigating the case. Most of the suspects were Ackroyd's house guests, including Ackroyd's niece, Flora; Major Blunt, a big-game hunter romantically interested in Flora; Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd's secretary; Ursula Bourne, a parlormaid; and Ralph Paton, an adopted son with gambling debts. Poirot is also assisted by Sheppard's sister Caroline, a middle-aged village spinster who anticipates Miss Marple's character. Both a play (1928) and a film (1931) were made of the story, both called "Alibi". There is apparently a more recent film version from 2000.

If you only read one book by Agatha Christie, make it this one. Published in 1926, this story of Poirot is one of the best written. All the clues are there, if only you could see them the way that Poirot sees them. The book is seen through the eyes of Dr. Sheppard - Captain Hastings being in the Argentine. We start, unsurprisingly with a death. An apparent suicide, if you believe Dr. Sheppard's nosy sister, Caroline. She believes that Mrs. Ferrars [and there's a nod to Jane Austen even] killed herself because she was overcome with remorse as she murdered her husband. It's not the death of Mrs. Ferrars that pulls Poirot into the mix - it's the death of Roger Ackroyd, a wealthy inhabitant of the small town. What's the significance of the chair? What is Miss Russell [the housekeeper - very lucky to have an alibi, according to Caroline] up to? And most importantly - if all the evidence points to Ralph Paton, surely he's guilty? And if he's not guilty, where on earth is he? Fantastic, unexpected and obvious all at once.

A number of criticisms have been levelled at this book, relating to internal consistencies and the fact that some people just couldn't handle having the rug pulled out from under them. No book will be completely consistent in every way, but the minor inconsistencies in this book, can be easily explained away. Utterly fantastic, read it, read it, read it.

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Brother Grimm by Craig Russell

A girl's body lies, posed, on the pale sand of a Hamburg beach, a message concealed in her hand. 'I have been underground, and now it is time for me to return home...' Jan Fabel, of the Hamburg murder squad, struggles to interpret the twisted imagery of a dark and brutal mind. Four days later, a man and a woman are found deep in woodland, their throats slashed deep and wide, the names 'Hansel' and 'Gretel', in the same, tiny, obsessively neat writing, rolled tight and pressed into their hands. It becomes clear that each new crime is a grisly reference to folk stories collected almost two hundred years ago by the "Brothers Grimm".

Although this took me quite a while to read, what with my recent busy social schedule, I did enjoy it. When it got to the conclusion at the end it was tough to put down.

It's well written and you're provided with plenty of characters to speculate on "whodunnit" but in the end I must admit that I was none the wiser. My only issue with this book was that it was written like it had been translated (like The Beast), and with all the police titles in German, it means the reading flows slightly less as you pass over these words that you understand their meaning but are not articulated in your head (does that make sense?).

Aside from all that, I am curious to read his first book (the story is reference occasionally as background for the characters) and will definitely be borrowing the next one (Eternal) from book club :)

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The Knife Man by Wendy Moore

This title is the winner of the Medical Journalists' Open Book Award 2005. Revered and feared in equal measure, John Hunter was the most famous surgeon of eighteenth-century London. Rich or poor, aristocrat or human freak, suffering Georgians knew that Hunter's skills might well save their lives but if he failed, their corpses could end up on his dissecting table, their bones and organs destined for display in his remarkable, macabre museum. Maverick medical pioneer, adored teacher, brilliant naturalist, Hunter was a key figure of the Enlightenment who transformed surgery, advanced biological understanding and even anticipated the evolutionary theories of Darwin. He provided inspiration both for Dr Jekyll and Dr Dolittle. But the extremes to which he went to pursue his scientific mission raised question marks then as now. John Hunter's extraordinary world comes to life in this remarkable, award-winning biography written by a wonderful new talent.

A fascinating biography of one of the fathers of modern surgery. This is not for the squeamish or those who cannot bear to admit or face the realities of what brought us to our vaunted state of enlightenment. It's a progressive world that we live in and sometimes scientists and researchers step outside the boundaries of what is strictly legal in order to make fascinating new discoveries and push the boundaries of both what we know and what we're capable of. The ethics are a little dodgy, in some cases more than others, but read the book and decide for yourself. Personally I'm grateful for the advances in modern medicine, and that I wasn't in need of medical attention in the mid-eighteenth century.

phillygirl reviewed this book on 3 December 2007:
This was a very interesting read and I can only agree with akika when she says she's grateful for all the advances of modern medicine but even more grateful that she wasn't one of the folks around in the mid-eighteenth century who needed medical assistance. I think for me what was so fascinating, since we're all so used to how medicine works these days and that all new medical advances should go thru a number of tests and trials before being let loose on the general public, is how differently things worked back in the day. The number of "surgeons" of the day who were obstinately opposed to testing new theories, or even to thinking for themselves is frightening.

I for one am heading onto Google right now to see where Hunter's preparations from his museum can be found (if any have survived to this day & age).

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Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie

What connects a movie star, an archaeologist, a French maid, a prime minister, a wealthy dowager, and an Italian count? Crime, of course—and the master crime-solver, Hercule Poirot.

I've always enjoyed Christie's writing, for the very reason that most people seem to hate it - it's so very intricate and detailed. Yes it's horrendously outdated - this set of eleven short stories was published in 1924. But it's still a collection of fascinating and intricate mysteries. And with only a few short pages for each story, you've got to be on the ball to work out whodunnit before Poirot tells you. Of course, sometimes it's easy to know who it was, just not why or how.

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The Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader

Totally absorbing...as gripping a tale of hatred and revenge as you will read... It is superb. This is the story of Nicholas Linnear, half-Caucasian, half-Oriental, a man caught between East and West, between the sexual passions of a woman he can't forget and the one he can't control and between a past he can't escape and a destiny he can't avoid. A sprawling erotic thriller that swings from postwar Japan to present-day New York in a relentless saga of violence and terror elaborately designed for the most savage vengeance of all...

A curious book, detailing a large portion of the life of Nicholas Linnear and why he is the way he is. Why the mix of three different cultures has such an influence on him - his American father, (mostly) Chinese mother and the Japanese land they live in.

Who is the Ninja, why is he in America killing people. More importantly, what connects all those people? It's utterly riveting, though suffers from occasionally lengthy bits of description that, while lovely in and of themselves, do tend to detract from the otherwise enthralling narrative. Of course, that may well be the entire point of them...

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The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA gives a rich and hilarious new meaning to plaints about "The Boss from Hell." Narrated in Andrea's smart, refreshingly disarming voice, it traces a deep, dark, devilish view of life at the top only hinted at in gossip columns and over Cosmopolitans at the trendiest cocktail parties. From sending the latest, not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter to Miranda's children in Paris by private jet, to locating an unnamed antique store where Miranda had at some point admired a vintage dresser, to serving lattes to Miranda at precisely the piping hot temperature she prefers, Andrea is sorely tested each and every day--and often late into the night with orders barked over the phone. She puts up with it all by keeping her eyes on the prize: a recommendation from Miranda that will get Andrea a top job at any magazine of her choosing. As things escalate from the merely unacceptable to the downright outrageous, however, Andrea begins to realize that the job a million girls would die for may just kill her. And even if she survives, she has to decide whether or not the job is worth the price of her soul.

I picked up this book more out of curiosity than anything else since I enjoyed the film but found that it was lacking in some places and I was wondering what the book would be like. I'll tell you one thing it is completely different from the film! From the beginning to the end this book is just so much better, the characters are more real, the boss more of a bitch, the tasks more insane and the storyline is completely different. It even ends differently! Not as neatly and perfectly as the film I might add, but a lot more like real life and a lot more interestingly.

For anyone who has ever had a bitch as boss and thinks that theirs is the worst read this book and marvel over how truly impossible someone can be! This book is a fantastic escape and is fiction at his best. Weisberger writes very well and you really engage with all of her characters; personally I had the over whelming urge to reach into the book and rip out Miranda's throat. The characters are more fleshed out than the film and aren't completely glossy Hollywood as in the film.

Don't watch the film after reading the book though because you'll only be annoyed by the film.

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McCarthy's Bar by Pete McCarthy

Despite the many exotic places Pete McCarthy has visited, he finds that nowhere can match the particular magic of Ireland, his mother's homeland. In McCarthy's Bar, he journeys from Cork to Donegal. Travelling through spectacular landscapes, but at all times obeying the rule, Never Pass a Bar That Has Your Name On It, he encounters McCarthy's Bar's up and down the land, meeting fascinating, friendly and funny people before pleading to be let out at four o'clock in the morning.

Through adventures with English crusties who have colonised a desolate mountain; roots-seeking, buffet-devouring Americans; priests for whom the word 'father' has a loaded meaning; enthusiastic Germans who 'here since many years holidays are making'; and his fellow barefoot pilgrims on an island called Purgatory, Pete pursues the secrets of Ireland's global popularity and his own confused Irish-Anglo identity.

This is quite literally one of my favourite books ever. I challenge anyone to read it and not have fits of giggles and feel the desire to go and visit Ireland. I guess that I am completely obsessed with Ireland and all things Irish but I seriously would recommend this book.

Whilst the book is not strictly fiction and is in fact a travel book the stories about the places that he goes to and the people that he meets make this book a rival to any fiction story. In fact if it was set anywhere else I'd refuse to believe that it was real and would be completely convinced that Pete had taken creative licence and embellished the people. However Ireland being Ireland these stories are all true and it is his delicious dry and naughty humour which make this book so amusing.

Throughout this book Pete asks the question of whether or not you can truly belong in a country that you've never lived in and whether just having family descent from an area can remain in your blood and make that country your true home. For me it can be an interesting question as I am first generation South African with no other family being born there but I believe myself to be a true South African. Many other people disagree with me and say that I am British however I refuse to believe this!

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The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

The No.1 ladies' detective agency consists of one woman, the engaging and sassy Precious Ramotswe, who sets up shop in Gabarone, Botswana. This unlikely herione specialises in missing husbands, wayward daughters, con men and impostors.

A fun book - you'll find phillygirl did the review for the follow up a couple of weeks ago. This is not your usual detective agency, nor will you find the latest technology or jargon or anything else that we've come to expect from detective novels. What this is, is a lyrical wandering through the life of Mma Ramotswe - how she came to start the agency and so on... It's fun, entertaining reading. It's also very light and a welcome change of pace after my previous read. I very much enjoyed the style and the slow pace, as well as the fact that it's a collection of vignettes from her life that are strung together by their connection with her work.

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