RANT: Penguin Drop Caps Packaging – BEWARE!!

It’s sad that I return to publish a ranty blogpost, but here I am, with something to say which I feel anyone buying one of the Drop Caps books should know:

If you were around on the online book-loving community in the past year or so, or even been around on tumblr/pinterest, then you’ve probably come across the new A-Z collectible series of 26 books which Penguin USA is putting out. They all feature a Drop Cap letter on the front, and each letter represents a different author.

I can’t deny the fact that these books are aesthetically appealing and would look beautiful on a shelf because all 26 books would then form a rainbow, and oh my GOODNESS would that look great.

I thought it would make a wonderful gift to buy the first ‘A’ book, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, to gift this Christmas to a friend whose name starts with an A and who has never read this. It came in the mail. The book comes wrapped nicely in shrink wrap, but to my horror there was a hideous and huge price and barcode sticker under the plastic. I thought best to remove the plastic and take the sticker off, since it was a gift… but lo and behold – ugly paper stickers:

Pic isn’t mine – links to blog source, a great post which shares my feelings on this!

Which I then tried to peel off:

Since the book has a velvety feel and the sticker is as PAPERY and SUPER GLUEY as it gets, it wouldn’t get off neatly at all. Tried at first taking it off with my fingers, to no avail. Dabbing water wouldn’t do the trick either.

Thanks. Penguin!!! I would have expected that an experienced publishing group like you should have known better. I’m so sad about this. It makes absolutely no sense at all that a series marketed as collectible would have suck a tacky sticker stuck on and ruin the book’s visual glory.

RANT

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Gatsby was Great

I’ve been away more than for just a little while. Keeping a blog going is far from easy. I am back with thoughts on the Great Gatsby though.

If you have not yet read the Great Gatsby, I can tell you many a reason why you should pick it up as soon as a slot in your schedule will allow:

1) Great Gatsby is set in post-war, pre-Depression 1920s East Coast America. Picture the era of decadent parties…and the fashion and attitudes of the time.

2)The American dream of prosperity. Or rather, the universal dream. Aspirations of the time are after all not exclusive to folks in the 1920s and nor to Americans alone. You will relate.

3) The drama that ensues. Decadent parties, very extravagantly wealthy people, questions as to how they go wealthy in the first place, intrigue, love triangles, jealousy, lovers reacquainted after 5 years. Oh yes. Drama does ensue, and yes, you will be hooked.

4) It is not overly time consuming. At just over a 100 pages, it’s no big feat.

5) You will not be left out of pocket getting your hands on a copy. At just over 2 euros on the Book Depository and at your door in a couple of days (I ordered it on a Tuesday and received it on the following Friday!)you’ll be digging into i in no time.

6 To read it before the film this December. Need I even link to the awesome bomb of a trailer?

Dig in.

For the record, if you enjoy lavish book covers and special editions that will furnish your shelves beautifully forever, I really do recommend the Penguin Classics edition of the Great Gatsby. I actually own this edition myself but bought the cheapo 2 euro one so I’d have a copy I can carry around and afford to get battered. 

Book Challenge: the BBC Big Read

Looks like I’m on a roll! There’s nothing like that feeling of satisfaction when one of your summer goals is accomplished, is there now? Now that my first blog post is up and running and my energies are not yet spent, I’m using my satisfaction-high to have one more up today. Hoorah!

The BBC Big Read list of a 100 books that the BBC thinks everyone should read – this list is far from new on the blogosphere, but since I’m a nerdy bibliophile and my blog shall perhaps definitely speak of books then this list is a challenge I will willingly take on with an indefinite time limit.

“Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here, in their The Big Read list.Instructions: Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt.”

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter Series – JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8. Nighteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Ubervilles – Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve read Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night)

15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk

18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch – George Eliot

21. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis (Read the half the first one…)

34. Emma – Jane Austen

35. Persuasion – Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Correlli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41. Animal Farm- George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving

45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47. Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50. Atonement – Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52. Dune – Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon

60. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66. On the Road – Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones Diary – Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72. Dracula – Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson

74. Noted from a Small Island – Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses – James Joyce

76. The Inferno – Dante

77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal – Emilie Zola

79. Vanity Fair – William Makepiece

80. Possession – AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance – Robinston Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94. Watership Down – Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet- William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So far I’ve read 21 of the books, started another 3. Hmm, a fifth of the way through. We’ll see how it goes

Just finished reading: A Monster Calls

I just finished reading A Monster Calls a couple of hours ago, and now is the soonest I could get here to share my feelings on it (really, this book gives you All Of The Feels.) It’s probably common knowledge that this book was written by Patrick Ness based on the idea that Siobhan Dowd [**EDIT**I was wrong. Not everyone knows, I’ve had questions about this. See end of post for more on this!] never had the time to see into fruition as cancer took her life young.

Do not be fooled by this book being labelled as a Children’s Book!

A beautifully moving book, everyone should read this. The illustrations by Jim Kay (which interestingly were drawn using of all kinds of textures: fingerprints, breadcrumbs, and even beetles!) are visually stunning and a great accompaniment to the story of young 13 year old Conor whose mother is suffering with terminal cancer. This is not a scary read at all, rather, the monster in the book is nothing like a conventional monster, but a yew tree man as old as time itself who has wise tales to share with Conor in order to help Conor himself tell the truth he needs to tell (and face) in the end…

Two words: read it.

**EDIT:**

Here’s a footnote with some deets to clear up some misconceptions I’ve heard with regard to A Monster Calls. This book has nothing to do with Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy (That trilogy’s a super read, by the way. Nothing you’ll be expecting. A twist at every corner, after every page. If you’ve never picked it up, do so, because it will blow your mind, five times over.)

Siobhan Dowd’s had the time to publish two books before her untimely death (I’ve read A Swift Pure Cry, by the way. It’s been many years ago now and I dont remember much of it, I’d like to reread it some time), and another two were published posthumously. Waterstone’s named Dowd, in May 2007, as one of 25 “Authors of the Future”. By a bitter irony, three months later she died, at the age of 47, from breast cancer. The general consensus is that Dowd had ‘many more books in her’ at her death. The publishers approached Ness with an outline, a skeleton for a book she wanted to write but did not get quite have the time to. Even while reading, it’s quite apparent that the idea and foundation of the story is Siobhan Dowd’s, while the writing and way with words has Ness’ signature style.  Makes for an even richer story, in my opinion.

This is a short book, at just over 200 pages and plenty of illustrations, I bet it would take up perhaps around 5 accumulated hours of reading time, and not much more, to finish. Definitely worth picking up.