The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

If you haven't heard of The Art of Fielding then seriously you must live under a rock. I doubt another book has gotten this much publicity in recent years. Its been mentioned just about everywhere you look to the point that even non-readers would have come across a review or reference about it in newspapers and magazines. It has generated a lot of hype and glowing reviews. So much in fact that even the author's Harvard roommate together with Vanity Fair wrote a book about how The Art of Fielding was published (How a Book is Born). This itself should make an interesting read considering that Harbach toiled so hard on the book for ten years before finally being offered a $650,000 advance. After being disappointed by that other college novel that was released last year, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, I decided to crack the spine of The Art of Fielding and find out for myself what the hype is all about.

The book opens with an amateur late summer baseball game wherein Henry Skrimshander, a smallish player, impresses Mike Schwarz, another player on the opposite team with his fielding ability. A friendship is formed and Henry wins a place at Westish college and becomes the shortstop for the college team. The years pass and Henry is right on track but just when he's offered a chance at playing for a major league team, Henry literally throws a curve ball. I don't want to give too much away but suffice it to say I didn't see that coming at all. Besides all this there are three other characters in the book with their own stories - Henry's gay roommate Owen; Guert Affenlight, the college president who after being straight all his life is suddenly attracted to Owen; and then there's Guert's daughter Pella, the girl who comes in between Henry and Mike.

So was it good? Yes, it was. It had extremely likeable characters and though I know next to zilch about baseball, I loved the sporting aspect of the book. I think Harbach fared well in delivering what it's like to be in a team - the pressure to perform, the deep friendships that are formed, the camaraderie, the competitiveness and also the jealousy. It's a very good book considering it's his first.

Is it the next great American novel? Yes and no. I can certainly think of many other American novels that I prefer however it's probably one of the best ones in recent years. It's certainly all- American and  it's a book with themes that may not have been written about before. It's an ambitious novel and daring on several fronts and it's entertaining so I can understand why many people loved it.

So is it worth the hype? Yes. I wouldn't say it's wonderfully written. In fact some of the prose was wooden at times. Although I didn't love the book, I liked it a lot. It's charming and I guess Harbach succeeds mainly because of his appealing characters. I also believe in some of the themes and messages that Harbach was conveying. Ambition isn't everything. When it comes down to it, family and friendships are definitely the most important things in life. I'd happily give this book four stars out of five.

Don't You Just Love...

...Calvin and Hobbes? Remember this one...

The Orange Longlist 2012

The Orange Prize, the UK's only annual book award for fiction written by women, just announced its 2012 longlist. The Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing throughout the world.

From the longlist, I've only read Gillespsie and I by Jane Harris and it was quite good. I read part of  The Night Circus a few months ago but abandoned it halfway. I was disappointed that the novel was more driven by setting rather than characters. However after all the praise its received, I'll just have to give it another go. I doubt I'll read everything on the longlist but oh, there are so many that look interesting! I've narrowed it down to eight books I'd love to read. I highly doubt I'll even read half of this before the shortlist is announced on May 29 but it's nice to make a list. Here they are in the order I'd like to read them (with blurbs courtesy of Amazon):

Song of Achilles  by Madeline Miller

Patroclus, a young prince, has been exiled to the kingdom of Phthia. Here he is just another unwanted boy living in the shadow of King Peleus and his son, Achilles. Achilles,is strong, beautiful, the child of a goddess. Yet one day, Achilles takes the shamed prince under his wing and soon their companionship gives way to a steadfast friendship. As they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something far deeper. When word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, the men of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles and Patroclus joins their cause.

The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay
Mary-Margaret is seemingly a harmless enough young woman, ready and willing to help out in the Sacred Heart church in Battersea. It is the statue of Jesus on the cross Mary-Margaret is especially drawn to, and one day she decides to give Him a thorough and loving cleansing. But then something strange happens, and moments later she lies unconscious, a great gash in her head, blood on the floor. Soon a full-scale religious mania descends on the quiet church and Battersea.




 



The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy
Elizabeth Barber is crossing the Atlantic with her boyfriend, Derek, who might be planning to propose. In fleeing the UK - temporarily - Elizabeth may also be in flight from her past and the charismatic Arthur, once her partner in what she came to see as a series of crimes. Together they acted as fake mediums. Elizabeth finally rejected the game but Arthur continued his search for the right way to do wrong. She hadn't, though, expected the other man on the boat. As her voyage progresses, Elizabeth's past is revealed, codes slowly form and break as communication deepens. It's time for her to discover who are the true deceivers and who are the truly deceived.


The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
Miss Emily "Fido" Faithfull is a "woman of business" and a spinster pioneer in the British women’s movement, independent of mind but naively trusting of heart. Distracted from her cause by the sudden return of a once-dear friend, the unhappily wed Helen Codrington, Fido is swept up in the intimate details of Helen’s failing marriage and obsessive affair with a young army officer. What begins as a loyal effort to help a friend explodes into an intriguing courtroom drama complete with accusations of adultery, counterclaims of rape, and a mysterious letter that could destroy more than one life.

Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg
A richly imagined novel about two people struggling to keep their love, and their family, alive in a place of extreme hardship and unearthly beauty. Everything lies ahead for Lizzie and Neil McKenzie when they arrive at the St. Kilda islands in July of 1830. Neil is to become the minister to the small community of islanders, and Lizzie-bright, beautiful, and devoted-is pregnant with their first child. As the two adjust to life at the edge of civilization, where the natives live in squalor and babies perish mysteriously, their marriage-and their sanity-are soon threatened.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have all but disappeared in the Amazon while working on what is destined to be an extremely valuable new drug, the development of which has already cost the company a fortune. Nothing about Marina's assignment is easy: not only does no one know where Dr. Swenson is, but the last person who was sent to find her, Marina's research partner Anders Eckman, died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding her former mentor.

The Forgotten Waltz  by Anne Enright
A new, unapologetic kind of adultery novel. Narrated by the proverbial other woman—Gina Moynihan, a sharp, sexy, darkly funny thirtysomething IT worker—The Forgotten Waltz charts an extramarital affair from first encounter to arranged, settled, everyday domesticity. . . . This novel’s beauty lies in Enright’s spare, poetic, off-kilter prose—at once heartbreaking and subversively funny.

There But For The by Ali Smith 
At a dinner party at a posh London suburb, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and Miles’s story is told from the points of view of four of them: Anna, a woman in her forties; Mark, a man in his sixties; May, a woman in her eighties; and a ten-year-old named Brooke. The thing is, none of these people knows Miles more than slightly. How much is it possible for us to know about a stranger? And what are the consequences of even the most casual, fleeting moments we share every day with one another?

So which ones on the longlist have you read? Which ones would you like to read?
    Here's the complete longlist:

• Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg
• On the Floor by Aifric Campbell
• The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen
• The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
• Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan 
• The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
• The Flying Man by Roopa Farooki
• Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
• Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding
• Gillespie and I by Jane Harris
• The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay
• The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick
• State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
• There but for the by Ali Smith
• The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard
• Tides of War by Stella Tillyard
• The Submission by Amy Waldman

A Separation

 

I recently saw A Separation, the Iranian film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It's a great movie and a must-see. At first I thought it was about a couple who file for divorce and fight for custody of their daughter but the film is so much more than that. It's better to go in knowing nothing so you'll be completely unprepared for its twists and turns. The movie is riveting and never boring. Do yourself a favor and see this movie! Or better yet, see it with friends and discuss it afterwards.

Midnight's Children Group Read

The Group Read for Salmon Rushdie's Midnight's Children has officially begun. This will be an extremely slow and flexible read-along covering  more or less 130 pages a month.  On the last day of each month, we post our reading response to each part. 

March 31 — Book One
April 30   — Book Two (Part A ending with ‘Alpha and Omega’)
May 31    –  Book Two (Part B starting with ‘The Kolynos Kid’)
June 30   — Book Three

What do we mean by slow and flexible? Midnight's Children isn't an easy read so to those participating please feel free to join in at your own pace. There's no need to follow the above schedule which just serves as a guideline.Personally, I'm not sure myself if I'll be able to read as much as the rest due to unexpected travel plans this month and in April. If you are interested then please sign up at either Arti’s blog and Bellezza’s blog and do check out other participants’ links as well.

Midnight's Children won the Man Booker Prize in 1981 and then went on to win the Booker of Bookers in 1993, which commemorated the awards 25th anniversary. The latter award was given after the public voted from a selected shortlist.

The synopsis from the Amazon website:
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. 

A Song for Monday

I heard this song yesterday on the radio. I'd completely forgotten about it and how much I used to love it. All it took was a quick google search to jog my memory. The song is sung by Des'ree and it's called You Gotta Be. Great lyrics! Here's a few lines...

Listen as your day unfolds
Challenge what the future holds
Try and keep your head up to the sky
Lovers, they may cause you tears
Go ahead release your fears
Stand up and be counted
Don't be ashamed to cry
You gotta be
You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold
You gotta be wiser, you gotta be hard
You gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm
You gotta stay together
All I know, all I know, love will save the day
Herald what your mother said
Read the books your father read
Try to solve the puzzles in your own sweet time
Some may have more cash than you
Others take a different view
My oh my heh, hey
You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold
You gotta be wiser, you gotta be hard
You gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm
You gotta stay together
All I know, all I know, love will save the day

Date A Girl Who Reads by Rosemarie Urquico

I've just recently come across this wonderful essay that's been going around the internet. I was surprised to learn it's actually written by a Filipina writer called Rosemarie Urquico. She wrote it in response to Charles Warnke’s essay, You Should Date An Illiterate Girl. 

You should date a girl who reads.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

....he turned back to Madeleine and said, as if in pain, "There's a Fellini film playing at the Cable Car this weekend. Amarcord."

Madeleine gazed encouragingly up at him. There were all kinds of outmoded, novelistic words to describe how she was feeling, words like aflutter.

Ah, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. What a disappointment! I loved Middlesex and was so looking forward to this novel. There were moments of startling beauty in the book with sentences and paragraphs just like the above. I highlighted quite a number of passages that I'd love to remember. The book certainly had so much promise not just because it's written by Pulitzer prize winner Eugenides, but because it involves a love triangle (and who doesn't enjoy a love triangle?) of three recent college graduates one of whom is manic depressive. The first half was indeed wonderful but then it spiraled into a convoluted and tedious narrative in the second half. It almost felt like a showcase for Eugenides' wide range of knowledge on a variety of obscure topics. I'm surprised his editor didn't yell 'cut, cut, cut!' This could have been a great novel but unfortunately it's just ok. Make that a messy, ok novel.

*The above photo is a scene from the film Amarcord.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

 

Reading a John Green novel is like being a teenager again and watching a John Hughes film for the first time. John Green has that in common with John Hughes - he remembers exactly what it was like to be a teenager. Though I'm far from being an adolescent, I still loved Green's award-winning novel, Looking for Alaska. I thought it was beautifully written with a lot of depth and wisdom that you don't usually find in young adult novels. In his new novel, The Fault in Our Stars, John Green is tackling not just ordinary teenagers but teenagers with cancer. When I first heard the premise of this book, I was afraid that it would be too depressing but it actually wasn't. Hazel is sixteen, with terminal cancer, when she meets Augustus at her kids-with-cancer support group. Hazel introduces him to her favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction by Peter van Houten, and together they embark on a quest to meet the reclusive author and finally find out what happened to the characters in his open-ended novel. But apart from this quest, the book is about love, friendship, death and finding joy in living even when one knows that time is short.

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”  

As always John Green's writing voice is immensely readable and charming. I must say though that I preferred Looking for Alaska.  However, The Fault in Our Stars is still a very good book, one that took me out of my comfort zone. Normally, I would never read a book with this subject matter but since it was John Green I just couldn't refuse. It brought ideas and thoughts to the forefront that I would never have thought about. The fact that life has value no matter how short it is; that immense joy can be found even when you know your days are numbered; that deep friendships can be created even in sad circumstances.

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

My book club is reading this for our February meeting. I kind of got a head start because once I started reading a few pages, I had to find out what would happen next. I've always been interested in this period of history and like many people I've often wondered why the Holocaust couldn't have been averted. Why didn't world leaders see it coming? Reading this book has given me a clearer view of this era. In the prologue of In the Garden of Beasts, author Erik Larson writes "That's the trouble with nonfiction. One has to put aside what we all know - now- to be true, and try instead to accompany my two innocents through the world as they experienced it. These were complicated people moving through a complicated time, before the monsters declared their true nature."

I wondered when I read those lines how I could read a novel that begins in 1933 in Berlin and forget that I knew exactly what was going to happen years later. But somehow Larson nailed it. As I kept reading and following the story of the American ambassador to Berlin, mild-mannered William E. Dodd. and his flirtatious daughter Martha, I started to understand why very few people predicted what Hitler was actually capable of.  No one saw the nightmare that was looming over Germany. Even the few people who realized Hitler was insane didn't believe he would last that long. The atrocities that were reported back to America were looked on as isolated incidents. Anti-semitism was ripe not only in Germany but in the rest of Europe and even in the States. The dispatches and letters sent by the few in the U.S. embassy who believed there was cause for concern were all ignored. America, suffering from the Depression, only wanted Germany to pay it's financial debt back and that's what they tasked Dodd to focus on.

the Dodd family en route to Berlin

Larson follows the years of Dodd's posting in Germany and his growing disillusionment with Germany and with his own job. Martha, who at first is fascinated by the Nazis and her glamorous life in Berlin slowly starts to unravel the truth because of various incidents culminating in the Night of the Long Knives. This was a fascinating read and now I have a better understanding of what happened in Germany in the 30s before the outbreak of war.

Larson is called the master of the nonfiction narrative and that's not surprising. In the Garden of Beasts was as gripping as the best fictional political thrillers .

Midnight's Children Group Read

I'm doing a group read together with Arti at Ripple Effects and Meredith at Dolce Bellezza.
We'll be tackling Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I've been wanting to read this for a while and when I saw that Arti was planning to read it in 2012 in preparation for the film release later this year, I suggested a read-a-long. My only experience with Rushdie has been reading and abandoning The Ground Beneath Her Feet which isn't exactly his most popular novel. Midnight's Children won the Man Booker Prize in 1981 and then went on to win the Booker of Bookers in 1993, which commemorated the awards 25th anniversary. The latter award was given after the public voted from a selected shortlist.

The synopsis from the Amazon website:
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. 

Since Rushdie won't be an easy read we decided to take this very slowly so this will be a long and relaxed group read. We don't want it to interfere with other reading plans. The book has 533 pages and is divided into three parts with the second part being the longest. We'll begin in March, and for four months at the last day of each month we'll post our review.

Here's the exact schedule for postings:

• March 31 -- Book One
• April 30   -- Book Two (Part A ending with 'Alpha and Omega')
• May 31   --  Book Two (Part B starting with 'The Kolynos Kid')
• June 30   --  Book Three

As you can see we'll have more than enough time to get through the 533 pages. If you'd like to join, please let us know and take note of the schedule above. We'll do a reminder post in early March.

Blogging and Reading Plans for 2012

It's a new year and my google reader is crammed with blogging posts about resolutions and reading plans so I figured I should probably get my act together and write one too. I haven't reviewed too many books lately  because I don't want blogging to become a chore. There was a time when I felt I had to blog every week to keep the followers I had. I admit, I love having readers and getting comments. It's fun and it leads to other blogs and thus other books. But last year there seemed to be a new book blog popping up every week. Each one more glamorous than the last. Suddenly it was very hard to keep up and read fast enough to write the next review. I couldn't even enjoy the books I read because I'd be busy thinking about the next one and the one after that.

So I've decided that I just want to read what I want and post only about books I feel like writing about whether it's a good or bad review. I want to take my time reading and not have this pressure to finish as soon as possible. Last year I only read 42 books which is nothing compared to the 80+ books of many other book bloggers. I don't think I'll ever be able to read 80 books in a year and that's completely ok with me.

So my plans for 2012 is to continue blogging when the mood hits me. I'll always be reading but I won't write about every book. I also want to blog about films since I love the movies and if I see one that strikes me then I'll definitely want to talk about it.

I'd also like to take part in more read-a-longs. There are books I've wanted to read for a while but tackling them always seemed like a daunting task so it would be encouraging to read them with others. Arti of Ripple Effects and I will be having a read-a-long of Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie which will also be a film released in late 2012. I've been wanting to read this for ages but Rushdie is not exactly easy or at least that was my experience when I tried and abandoned The Ground Beneath Her Feet. So I want to try Midnight's Children which is generally agreed to be Rushdie's best novel and it won the Booker of Bookers. If you'd like to join this read-a-long, do let us know. We'll post more about it soon. And if you have other suggestions for books that would make great 'read-a-longs' then leave a comment below.

The following are the novels I'd love to read this year:

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
The Submission by Amy Waldman
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The History of History by Ida-Hattemer-Higgins
The House of Silk: the New Sherlock Holmes Novel by Antony Horrowitz
Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu and Erin McGuire
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Divergent by Veronica Roth

I also want to read more non-fiction. Here are some I have in mind:

Catherine the Great: Potrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
The Nightmare Years 1930-1940 byWilliam Shirer
The Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn

However, I don't know how many of the above I'll actually manage to read this year. Have you read any of the books I've mentioned? Which ones do you recommend? What other books do you suggest I should read this year?  I'd love to hear every suggestion so do leave a comment below and Happy Reading this year!

My Six-Year-Old's Best Books of 2011

My eldest turned six in November of 2011. We read him a number of chapter books last year and these were the books that stood out in no particular order.

Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl

My son loved this and he loved the film version as well. He had a Roald Dahl day at school and he went as the Fantastic Mr.Fox himself.

The Adventures of Tintin by Herge

My son discovered Tintin last July and ok, so he's not actually reading the comic books yet but he has loved following the stories through the pictures and listening to us read to him. Its been fun for us to reread them too and to make up voices for Captain Haddock and Bianca Castafiore.

Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson

The Moomins are adorable happy and whimsical characters in a series of books and comic strips written by Swedish-Finnish author, Tove Jansson. They are a family of trolls but far from appearing scary, they are white and roundish with large snouts that make them resemble hippopotamuses. They are carefree and adventurous and live in a house in Moominvalley in the forests in Finland. Fun and delightful things seem to always happen to the Moomins and their friends.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

I bought this for my son's 6th birthday and we enjoyed reading it together. It has beautiful drawings and is actually a homage to Georges Melies one of the forefathers of the movies. We can't wait to see the film directed by Martin Scorsese. The trailer looks incredible!

The Witches by Roald Dahl

This for me was the most fun book to read aloud. "You brrrainless bogvumper! Are you not rrree-alising that if you are going rrround poisoning little children you vill be caught in five minutes flat? Never in my life am I hearing such a boshvolloping suggestion coming from a vitch!" 








I wonder what his favorite books this year will be. If you have any book recommendations for a six-year-old, then I'd love to hear from you. Meanwhile, I highly recommend the above books for the 5 or 6-year-old in your life. Enjoy!

Best Films of 2011

Among the movies I saw in 2011, these are the ones I will gladly see again.


1. The Best of Youth
This is the only film on this list that wasn't released in 2011. It's an Italian movie made in 2003 but it tops the list because it's probably the most beautiful movie I've ever seen. My full review here.


2. Midnight in Paris
I absolutely loved this one. I'm a big fan of Woody Allen and this film is reminiscent of some of his older movies such as The Purple Rose of Cairo. The cast was excellent especially Owen Wilson as the Woody-like neurotic character.  I know I'll be watching this film again and again.

3. The Adventures of Tintin
I saw this with my dad, my husband and my eldest son. Three generations of Tintin fans treated to a fantastic adaptation. Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg did an excellent job. It's quite obvious they have tremendous respect for Herge and that they're also big fans.

4. Jane Eyre 
The latest adaptation of one of my favorite books is one of the best I've seen. It has the best cast and the cinematography is excellent. My only complaint is that it was too short.

So which were your favorite films from 2011?