i am reading..
i can't say this about too many authors but i have long appreciated anne tyler's work and have read every single one of her seventeen novels. i started off with the accidental tourist which, was an accidental find, i picked it up at st pancras station, london as we were off to amsterdam via nottingham and i had nothing to read on the train. i'm not the sort of person who can travel without reading materials. what i remember of the book are the characters, tyler creates believable people which, for me, is key to a good read.
i had no idea what this book was about when i chose it, i picked it up purely based on my enjoyment of her previous work. it' relates story of two very different families who forge a friendship based on one common thread; their adoption of a korean baby. it's a modern novel which relates how cultures mesh and collide, and the sub plot of life after 9/11 and how it has affected some people more in less overt ways.
cultural adjustment is a topic close to my own heart, seeing as i have lived in 4 different countries. another book i read recently revealed that immigrants usually love their adopted country with a passion and it is their children who yearn to discover more about their parents' roots. this is obviously relevent to me and my family, my husband and i are both from different countries and our son was born in a third. perhaps in some way this contributes to my feelings of unsettlement. i can only guess at where he will chose to live his life.
posted by fivespice @ Wednesday, September 20, 2006
14 Comments:
ta very much. what books are you into?
Read loads of newspapers and mags but don't read many books lately unfortunately.
Last one was The New Rulers of The World by John Pilger. The next one may be Great War for Civilisation; The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk, because I've read a few good reveiws.
i only read a couple of mags, the UK edition of Marie Claire which i have been a fan of for about the last 10 years and Vanity Fair. i don't read a lot of non-fiction, i prefer to lose myself in escapism and get away from all the bad news. i have had the pleasure of knowing and working with robert fisk, i believe his book is supposed to be very good. this is a guy who has met bin laden so i'm sure he has a few good tales to tell.
...love mags I subscribe to the wire and buy Mojo every month I often check out other music mags like Uncut or classic rock I avoid Q. I often buy art/business mags also. Also I would highly recommend Artbusters (check it out) Recently I have been reading biographies and letters of ...whoever ... not much fiction. I read the Pilger book (Gill bought it for me) but am kinda fed up of him preaching. I have the Fisk book (another gill pressie) but it is a big read and Ihave been putting it off but who knowssoon??!?!?
anyway nice post
Most of my magazine reads are computer related. PC Plus some months, PC Format every month, Linux Format every month, Custom PC every other month. I have bought The New Scientist a few times as well as Time.
I also read The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Mirror, daily, The English Daily Independent (Excellent paper) twice a week. I go thru phases of reading The Guardian.
Every so often I get copies of Bizarre, Irish Property Guide, The Phoenix and Q.
Actually two other recent books were The Complete Irish Wildlife Handbook and some book about photography - forget the name, but very good.
Phew!
yeah, i'd be worn out after that little lot. interested to hear your opinion on irish real estate (property), will the prices ever come down? i read somewhere that house prices in ireland have gone up every quarter for the last 5 years or something crazy like that?
House prices have risen steadily here fot the last few years and continue to, albeit at a slightly slower rate.
The average price here in The West is €270,000 to €300,000.
You can built for alot cheaper. However site prices are becomming very expensive atm, and there is a whole lotto bother surrounding planning permission.
Dublin is prohibitively expensive to buy in, as is places like Westport (Scenuc value)
They won't come down in the foreseeable future as the economy is doing very well, which ironically is being driven primarily by the building boom.
This boom has led to loads of immigration, especially from Eastern Europe. AFAIK, one fifth of Castlebars' population is from Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Lithunia and Latvia. All other town, villages and cities have similar stats.
Good post, I must read an Anne Tyler work. It is interesting to note the interplay between believable characters and believable plot.
I read Decanter a UK wine magazine. I read a number of article from the Harvard Busienss Review and other business publications. The Economist or MaCleans (Canadian mag) when I am in airports.
Generally I read non-fiction but I do dip into fiction occasionally. Just finished re-reading Hamlet and I often dablle into the classics from Russian authors amongst others.
Surprised to hear that 1 in 5 of C/bar's population is non-Irish.
Out of interest, do any of yout think that the internet has changed your reading habits.
Me, I no longer buy as many PC related mags as I used to. The info is available online earlier than the mag and broadband enables me to download any software I want now as opposed to waiting for it in a magazine.
I don't think that mags are gone. I still enjoy the portablility and throwawayity of the poaper product, and always will.
I dislike the fact that you buy a book, read it, stick it on a shelf and never touch it again.
I'm into the whole recycling thing.
i hardly ever buy a newspaper anymore, the calgary herald is not that great and i can get all the info online, usually from the beeb.
magazines i still prefer to read in hard format, i read vanity fair and marie claire UK edition which is a gift from my mum.
i like books and don't really buy that many as i support our local library which is brilliant. i order the majority of stuff online which is really handy but i do like bookshops!
Sorry about this but I love buying the newspaper. I love to stop off go into the shop and pay up... I could have it delivered, indeed I have in the past but prefer to buy it as a daily ritual. I love the tactile experience of the Sydney Morning Herald which is a broadsheet. If they ever go to Tablioid I am outa here. I hate, with a passion the times as a tabloid. In Austrlia we have crap papers, no red-tops but no real meaty reads either excepting one or two obvious ones. The SMH, The Austrlian are my only two choices) The UK/Irish choice is so good I spend up big on papers when I am there (Red tops and serious ones I am not proud)Of Course this is the baby boomer generation speaking but long live papers, magazines and fanzines. I love to cut out articles and stick them in a scrap book for later reference (more info on request here!)
I am martyr for cutting out little snippets from papers, but especially magazines. I always have a sizeable pile in front of the pc. Every so often, I do go through them and reduce the big pile to three or four manageable? piles.
don't apologise! it's not that i don't enjoy reading newspapers in fact it was a big part of my working life, i just don't rate either of the calgary papers. the globe and mail is better but i just don't seem to have the time, or the inclination, to wade through it on a regular basis. i love the idea of cutting out articles, i bet that would make interesting reading so, yes please more info. i would like to be the kind of person who does that but i tend to keep the whole mag so we have a lot of mags in the basement but never really have the time to go through them again. am seriously thinking of flogging them on ebay but that is another topic entirely.
View the front page of RX for an example of these cut-out articles/snippets. http://tinyurl.com/7e6wv
This was taken two minutes ago, so is very typical of my desk. Sometimes there are many more notes here. It's a job to keep them to a manageable "pile". I have folders full of "Important Stuff"
And it is all important stuff. Honest - guv.
I too have a load of mags, but I cut out everything that I think i will read again and keep.
Post a Comment
<< Home