Posts by octopusgrrl
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Up Front: Reading Murder Books, in reply to Carol Stewart,
Quite right, Carol - I enjoyed Cornwell's books in the beginning but now they seem to dehumanise the victims too much and the plots are so unbelievable, not to mention that Kay Scarpetta has become a very unsympathetic protagonist for me. I like the Tempe Brennan books, but they're a bit like junk food: sometimes you really crave them and they're great at the time, but you can't have too much in one sitting :-)
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Lewis Buzbee said, “If you read one book a week, starting at the age of 5, and live to be 80, you will have read a grand total of 3,900 books, a little over one-tenth of 1 percent of the books currently in print.” Granted, my speed is a little better than that, but it still saddens the hell out of me that there are so many books and so little time!
Loving the recommendations on this thread, ta very muchly! I too have always loved mysteries, ever since I found my mother's copies of the Five Find-Outers and Dog as a pre-teen, and moving from those into Golden Age detective fiction. I was lucky enough to take a paper in Scottish crime writing this year - "Tartan Noir" - and I'm still chewing through the books I came across there. William McIlvanney (who sadly died on the weekend), Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Ann Cleeves, Louise Welsh... I think I could be quite happy in life just reading Scottish writers. But then there'd be all the rest I'd miss out on!
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Speaker: Hall of Memories, in reply to John Farrell,
That's the so-called "Vogel St frontage" according to the real estate blurb... not exactly inspiring, but you can see the proscenium arch in the brickwork, which is pretty cool.
Great to finally see it with the lights on in the real estate photos - it's a pretty amazing space! I really hope it doesn't get demolished, but I imagine the earthquake strengthening costs would be pretty prohibitive :-/
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Here's a few that never fail to cheer me and make me bounce about a bit:
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Bizarro - I kinda hope they play "You Love Us" or "Little Baby Nothing" or "Yes"!
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I'm so looking forward to this gig - Manics are one of my bucket-list bands to see live. From what I can gather, we should expect a range of the hits from across the years, and although I'd love to see some of the less upbeat tracks from The Holy Bible and Journal For Plague Lovers live, I imagine they'll stick more to the sing-along anthems and singles. If they play at least "The Girl Who Wanted To Be God", "Motorcycle Emptiness", "Faster" and "Autumnsong" I can die happy! #fangrrl
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Kumara Republic,
I do kind of hope that he was joking, but after recent foot/mouth episodes who can say?
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Max Rose,
Sodomy and buggery?! I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Don't ask me, he already had me in hysterics at "poxed". Ah Garth, reading you is like reading the Onion, just not as nuanced!
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I'm enjoying the 80s Oz music love going on here - I grew up in Sydney and was lucky enough to be exposed as a teenager to 2JJJ/TripleJay during what I would consider to be the best period of Australian music #nostalgia
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I'm conflicted as well - I've used Whitcoulls online a couple of times this past year and was quite pleased with the available titles and service, but I rarely bother with their retail stores as I just find the lack of range depressing (although I admit to trawling the remainder bins from time to time!) Having spent time in Wgtn and Chch this past week exploring a number of bookshops, I've got to admit that apart from the "ooh shiny!" you get from browsing places such as Borders, Unity and Scorpio books, I rarely spend much money there, and I prefer the thrill of the hunt-n-gather of second-hand books. If I want something in particular I'll check out the best prices online (bookdepository.co.uk and goodbooks.co.nz seem to be the best I've come across so far).
Good friends of mine are converts to the Kindle, but I'm still holding out. I haven't got past that need for the tangible, and there's not many things (in my mind) as delicious as holding an unopened but long-awaited title in hot little hands :-) Then again, e-books do satisfy that instant gratification need of the long-term book addict...