Made of Library

I don’t know why I’d never noticed the shop before. I was sure it hadn’t been there yesterday. I walk past that row of stores every day and I’d never noticed it. I would have noticed something like that. The glass-fronted windows were empty, waiting for a display to go in. What that display might be, I couldn’t even guess. There was no indication from the outside as to what kind of store it actually was. The words above the door said DISPARATE TIMES in a gothic font. My curiosity got the better of me and I went in. “Ah, good. You made it”. I looked around to try and find where the voice had come from. A small, elderly man shuffled around behind me and locked the door. He peered out through the window as if checking whether I’d been followed. “Take a seat, take a seat,” he said, ushering me to a small, round table near one of the display windows. I sat down and saw a tray of tea laid out before me. A steaming teapot, two fine, porcelain teacups, a sugar bowl and a sm...

“There’s a bridge downstream, just before the next town. Let’s just cross there instead.” “We can’t. There’s people there. Someone will see us and tell the constables. We have to cross here.” “It’s too dangerous, Dani. Look how fast the river is flowing. We’ll be swept out to sea before we get halfway across. And even if we did manage to get to the other side, we’ll be soaking wet, it’ll be dark soon. We’ll freeze to death.” “So what’s your suggestion? Cross at the bridge so that we can be spotted and jailed for theft? I thought we were in this together, Jakob.” Jakob sighed and sat down on a nearby tree stump. “We are in this together. I just didn’t realise that when you asked me to run away with you, you meant right now. I thought you meant, like, in a month, when we’d had a chance to make a plan.” “I saw an opportunity and I took it. The money was there, unattended, no one saw. But I had to take it then, otherwise I’d lose my chance. Now we’ve got enough money to ge...

I’ve decided to take part in a reading challenge this year. Book Riot run a challenge every year called the Read Harder Challenge, aimed at getting you out of your reading comfort zone. You can find this year’s challenge here . It’s only 24 items long so I’ve added some self-imposed rules to make it better match my own reading goals. No double ups. Each item on the list must be a different book. Even if a book qualifies for different items I can only count it for one of them. Wherever possible the book needs to come from my already existing reading list . These are books that I already have a copy of, either a hard copy or on one of my devices. This serves the double purpose of getting through some more items on my TBR list as well as stopping me from spending too much money on new books. Here’s the challenge list and the books I’ve chosen to read for each one. I still have three items that I haven’t chosen books for. I’ve either been unable to find anything on my ...

I went to see this production on the final night of it’s run. I was unsure what to expect as I’ve often found that amateur theatre can be quite uneven; somewhat hit and miss in whether it manages to pull off what it was intending to achieve. Considering the historical importance of this document, a miss could be almost blasphemous. It’s been quite a few years since I read the book, and mostly what I remembered what that it was very much the diary of a young girl. It was full of complaining about parents and how no one understands and puberty and dealing with all the usual emotional ups and downs that teenagers have to deal with. I remember being somewhat surprised at how normal all of that seemed, despite the uniqueness of Anne’s situation. I was worried, that the theatre version was going to be a couple of hours of emo whining by a young and inexperienced actor. Thankfully there was more to it than that. Henny Walters played Anne, and I found her acting to be somewhat for...

Only about a quarter of the book was written by the author. The rest was excerpts of interviews with people who Ali knew and with Ali himself. Basically it was a collection of interview excerpts arranged in a logical order. One of the most eye opening parts of the book was how much it taught me about the Nation of Islam. I had no idea of the extent of the black supremacy that was part of it. Even though Ali later changed his views I was surprised at his stance on segregation early on. No one had anything bad to say about Ali, and I guess that’s ok as long as you remember this is a book more about celebrating his achievements than an accurate historical account. I am a martial artist but boxing is not my preferred discipline. I keep half an eye on what’s currently going on in the boxing world, but I don’t know a lot of boxing history. I think someone who knew nothing of the boxing world could read this and not be lost in the history and terminology of the sport, yet t...

The English Patient is the story of four people brought together by war. Hana, the English Patient, Caravaggio and Kip all end up in the same crumbling Italian Villa. The story moved slowly, lazily. Not slow as in boring or lazy as in poorly written, but slow like a Sunday afternoon in the sun, like laying down on the couch for a nap, like watching proceedings through a haze of morphine. It was beautifully written and so evocative that I could see Hana wandering the fallen halls of the villa alone at night. I love the way the character’s stories intertwine. As we learn more about one of them we inevitably learn more about them all and what brought them all together. The move away and come together again in a kind of literary dance. I was only slightly disappointed by the ending. The ending that I wanted to happen would have put too sweet a tip on it, but that doesn’t stop me still wanting it. Like that last spoon of ice cream when you’re already full. The ending came too so...

Part two of the Kingkiller Chronicles continued Kvothe’s story. We see him move beyond the university and into the broader world, learn new skills and meet new people. I still enjoyed the second novel in the series, but it lacked something that the first had. This time round I found it irritating that Kvothe was so good at everything he turned his hand to. Be it composing songs, combat or love making, he was able to master the skill in an exceptionally short amount of time. It’s starts to rub after a while. No one can be that good at everything. There wasn’t as much advancement in Kvothe’s the elder’s story as I would have liked, but it still moved toward telling us more about the Chandrian, which is now the main plot line that is pulling me into this series. Overall I found myself getting irritated at Kvothe’s perfection, especially given that he’s only 16 years old during these events. It’s certainly asking us to believe a lot that someone so young can have such a mature ou...