Category: Books & Literature

Ten books that stand out in my reading life

A couple of months ago Emma at A Wordless Blogger tagged me for the Ten Influential Books Tag.  I’ve recently decided not to do awards anymore, partly because I keep getting nominated for the same award over and over, partly because I am out of eleven facts to share about myself, partly because I never know who to nominate, but mostly because I forget about the things until I one day start clearing out no longer relevant bookmarks in my browser and discover there are a bunch of old award nominations I just never got around to.

But this blog-tag sounded fun, as I’m all about books, reading them and writing them, after all.  Then I ran into a problem:  this tag contained no description, only a name.  And what does it mean if I say “Ten most influential books”?  The most influential books ever?  As Jimmy over at Dysfunctional Literacy never gets tired of pointing out, you can’t nominate any book the best ever unless you’ve read them all.

Okay, books that have influenced me, then.  That’s a tough one.  Sure, there have been books that have influenced me, my way of thinking and my outlook on life, but most of them were non-fiction, many of them were academic texts, and I can’t remember them specifically – when I come across something significant which I want to add to my life, I absorb it and internalise it, I don’t make a note of where I found it (I also don’t highlight novels or write down quotes).

So I decided to decided to depart a little from the brief and share with you ten books that have stood out in my reading life thus far.

Click here to see what they are

Books are treasure chests

Of course, some books are treasures in and of themselves.  Rare first editions, illuminated 8th century manuscripts, limited edition collected works, and the like can fetch thousands, in some cases even millions of dollars at auctions and on the black market.

The stories inside them are also treasures, but neither of those are what I meant when I said books are treasure chests.

To find out what I meant you’ll have to click the link

KokkieH Reviews Men At Arms by Sir Terry Pratchett

I reckoned it’s probably time I drop this laziness and do one of these again, what do you think?

Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett
Cover illustration by Josh Kirby
Publisher: http://www.transworldbooks.co.uk

‘What’s so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone?  The real work’s already been done.  You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place.’

The City Watch needs MEN!  But what it’s got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-constable Cuddy (really a dwarf), Lance-constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-constable Angua (a woman…most of the time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving).

And they need all the help they can get, because someone in Ankh-Morpork has been getting dangerous ideas – about crowns and legendary swords, and destiny.  And the problem with destiny is, of course, that she is not always careful where she points her finger.  One minute you might be minding your own business on a normal if not spectacular career path, the next you might be in the frame for the big job, like saving the world… – Book description on cover

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On propaganda and birthdays

George OrwellOne of the things I like about George Orwell’s Animal Farm is…what’s that?  I promised not to write about it anymore?  I did, didn’t I?  But I have to, for this morning the interwebs informed me that yesterday would have been Mr Orwell’s eleventy-first birthday.  (The reason the interwebs only informed me of it this morning is because the pages I follow which inform me of titbits like this are mostly based in the US and as such are at their most active when I’m snug in bed, thus the belated tribute to ol’ Eric (what Orwell’s mother called him).)

His two best-known novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four (the latter published only months before his death), both describe totalitarian societies where power is vested in a small minority who uses a combination of intimidation and propaganda to keep the masses in check.

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