The Reading Book Post, June 15th

Hello, everyone! I was so happy that this week I was nominated for the Beautiful Bloggers Award. This Thursday The Reading Armchair will also be featured in Melissa's blog, Around the World in Books, so be sure to check it out! But, as usual, let's see what happened in the literary world during the previous week.

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has its 150th anniversary this year. To celebrate it, some new translations will be published. Among them, there will be a translation in emoji, Gothic, as well as Scouse (the dialect of Liverpool) and Pashto (Afgan language).

• David Mitchell was selected to be the next author to write and deposit a new novel in Katie Paterson's Future Library. This is a project, in which the selected authors will have one year to write a book without any rules or restrictions, and an anthology will be published with these works in 100 years. The first author to contribute was Margaret Atwood. 

• Rhianna Pratchett confirmed that The Shepherd's Crown will be the last Discworld novel. She said the series was his father's legacy and it was sacred to him. The Shepherd's Crown is due on August 27th.

• John Cleese has written an autobiography, So Anyway. Read an excerpt from it, in which Cleese talks about his father. 

• Corey Pressman has a new project called Poetry for Robots, in which he questions the result of using poetry and metaphors as metadata. This is very interesting and I'd like to see the actual results.

• During the Agatha Christie festival, recipes from the famous author's novels will be recreated. It will be held in Christie's own kitchen, and the guests are advised to taste the samples with extreme caution!

• What character are you like when you're angry? Take the quiz to find out! I got the Wicked Witch of the West, how about you?

Beautiful Bloggers Award

Thank you so much Ana @ Book Addict for the nomination!

Rules

• Link to the blogger who nominated you
• List seven random facts about yourself
• Nominate seven creative, beautiful bloggers
• Notify the people you nominated

Seven Random Facts 

• My favourite tea is green tea with jasmine. Either hot or iced it's amazing!
• I am a huge Darren Hayes fan. The first time I traveled to London it was in order to attend his concert. 
• I've just finished playing Bioshock: Infinite.
• One of my favourite board games is Love Letters.
• My new hobby is colouring books.
• I can't wait to watch The Martian.
• Strawberry ice-cream is the best!

My Nominees

1. Mehsi @ Twirling Book Princess
2. Jennilyn @ Rurouni Jenni Reads
3. Julia @ For the Love of Books
4. Emily @ Paperback Princess
5. Hp20508 @ LiveLove&Explore:)
6. Nita @ Book Choose
7. Killian @ Leaf on the Breeze

Can't wait to read at your random facts!

Thursday Quotables: number9dream

Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies. Every week we highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.

This week I chose a book that I reviewed at the beginning of the year, number9dream by David Mitchell. In this novel, a young man, Eiji Miyake, moves to Tokyo in order to find out the identity of his father. I can't really give anything more of the plot because it would be a spoiler. But, as a Mitchell novel, it's unique and thought-provoking. 

It would be so much simpler if you would just drop by her for a sandwich and a coffee. I will recognize you, introduce myself, and persuade you that natural justice in on my side. How do daydreams translate into reality? I sigh. Not very well, not very often. 

In this novel, Mitchell explores many themes and ideas. It's sure to think about it a long time after you've finished it.

A single night is stuffed with minutes, but they leak out, one by one. My capsule is stuffed with Stuff. Look up 'stuff' in a dictionary, and you get a picture of my capsule above Shooting Star. A shabby colony in the empire of stuff.

The part about memories is probably one of my favourite in number9dream.

'I took her literally at first, too.' Mrs. Sasaki speaks carefully, the way she does. 'But I think she's talking about her memories.' We watch her disappear in the shimmer. Cicadas wind up and wind down. 'All we are is our memories.'

And a quote about us gamers.

All these people like my mother paying counsellors and clinics to reattach them to reality: all these people like me paying Sony and Sega to reattach us to unreality.

Have you read number9dream? What do you think about these quotes?

Mini Reviews: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, Il Duro and Woman Much Missed

The Little Black Classics have turned out to be some excellent and quick reads. Moreover, they are great because they offer a chance to read some lesser-known works of these authors. Indeed, I wasn't familiar with none of these three works, although I admire all three of them. There is at least one novel by Oscar Wilde, D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy in my all-time favourite books list. So, I was eager to read Little Black Classics #59, #71 and #14.

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime by Oscar Wilde

This is a funny, but also a quite dark short story. Lord Arthur Savile has his fortune told at a social gathering. The palm reader informs him that in his future he will murder someone. But Lord Arthur is due to get married and in order to save his wife-to-be from the future distress, he starts planning a murder right away.

Oscar Wilde can write a comedy like no-one else. I first observed this in The Importance of Being Earnest, then in Lady Windemere's Fan and now in this short story. As usual, Wilde's writing style is brilliant. It's witty, fast-paced and full of irony. Lord Arthur is touched by what is written on his palm, but he doesn't do anything to prevent it. He just accepts that this is a fact and so he wants to get on with it, so he can continue his life. In fact, there wasn't a single moment in the short story when Arthur didn't have a choice. The ultimate question is whether our destiny is predetermined or we create it.

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime is a quirky and enjoyable read. I recommend it to everybody!

Il Duro by D.H. Lawrence

This little book contains four short narratives about Lawrence's travels in Italy. In these narratives, the author describes mostly the people he met, their conversations and his thoughts. I liked it that it wasn't a typical description of the scenery.

From the four of them, I liked best the first one, The Spinner and the Monks. In this one, I could find the Lawrence I learnt to love from his novel.  Her world was clear and absolute, without consciousness of self. She was not self-conscious because she was not aware that there was anything in the universe except her universe. In her universe, I was a stranger, a foreign signore. But, the main problem for me was the lack of a story. These weren't short stories, a creation of the imagination of the author, but the stories of the people he met and those weren't that interesting. 

All in all, this is not D.H. Lawrence's best work. That's why I would recommend it only to those who are familiar with his other works.

Woman Much Missed by Thomas Hardy

This Little Black Classic was a surprise to me. I've read Far for the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but I wasn't familiar with Thomas Hardy's poetry. Now I realise what I was losing all this time!

This selection of poems includes among others the Poems 1912-1913, which were inspired by the loss of Hardy's wife. They were all heartfelt and very moving. The pain and loss of the poet are apparent.        

The poems I liked the best were The Voice, We Sat at the Window, He Prefers Her Earthly, She Did Not Turn, If You Had Known and Days to Recollect.

If you are in the mood for some poetry, this is a book for you. It's highly recommended!

The Reading Book Post, June 8th

Hello, everyone! Another Monday is here bringing a new week, I've been reading some interesting news and I enjoy very much the funny books theme. But, for the time being, let's see what happened in the literary world the previous week.

• The 2014 Nebula Awards Winners have been announced by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Among the winners are Jeff VanderMeer for his novel Annihilation and Nancy Kress for her novella Yesterday's Kin. Also, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction was awarded to Ali Smith for her sixth novel How to be Both. You can watch the winner announcement here.

• One of the things that have divided the literary world is the distinction between literary and genre fiction. In this talk, authors Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro, try to find the answer why, by talking about the politics of storytelling.

• Ursula K. Le Guin posted recently on Book View Cafe, asking all of the readers to stop buying books from Amazon. She argues that Amazon takes no risks, that's why it's ideal book is a safe commodity. Does Amazon really influence the way the books are written and which books are read?

• A library in Japan, in order to promote the establishment, has planned a book dominoes event, where they will try to break the world record. But this has caused controversy because some believe it is disrespectful towards the books. The event will be held on July 12th.

• The past week the internet was full of the news that a fourth Fifty Shades of Grey book will be published from the point of view of Christian Grey. The book is due on June 18th, Christian's birthday.

• A first edition of The Hobbit with a Tolkien's elvish inscription was sold for the record price of £137,000. The first estimate was only £50,000-£70,000.

• Georgette Heyer has been honoured with an English Heritage blue plaque at her birthplace, in Wimbledon. Famous fans and family gathered to honour the queen of Regency romances. 

• A group of scientists, drawn to The Lord of the Rings, make thorough scientific studies about the conditions and races in Middle Earth. Some of the studies include if there is higher Oxygen content and the mental illness of Gollum. 

• Readers and experts have voted the most evil child book characters of all time. The list was compiled by the online bookshop Abebooks. 

• This week's Reading Book Post has two quizzes. With the first you can find out in which dystopian world you would survive. I got Panem. The second informs you of your age depending on your literary tastes. According to this quiz, I'm a teen.