I read this book in preparation for watching the TV series, but really, I should have read it a long time ago. I've loved Terry Pratchett's Discworld I read this book in preparation for watching the TV series, but really, I should have read it a long time ago. I've loved Terry Pratchett's Discworld series since I discovered them in the early 90s, but for some reason I never read this one. I wish I had! As I fully expected, it's very clever, and has actually aged better than I thought it might. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch the show and see what they've made of it......more
Stinky Street Stories is a collection of four pongy stories, written by Alex Ratt (you may know her as Frances Watts, author of Kisses for Daddy), andStinky Street Stories is a collection of four pongy stories, written by Alex Ratt (you may know her as Frances Watts, author of Kisses for Daddy), and illustrated by Jules Faber. Brian and his mate Nerf to go war (unsuccessfully) with the girls of Sweet Street, and along the way have plenty of hilarious adventures. I’ve never seen my six-year-old laugh as long or hard as he did while we read this book together.
The language is fairly simple, but there are some trickier words now and then. It would suit a confident reader, perhaps from year two and older, but it’s perfect for reading together with an adult for younger ones....more
Bill Bryson has a love affair with Australia. In Down Under, he is at turns delighted, amazed, horrified, exasperated, sunburnt, and loving every momeBill Bryson has a love affair with Australia. In Down Under, he is at turns delighted, amazed, horrified, exasperated, sunburnt, and loving every moment, by the sounds.
There's something satisfying about listening to a foreigner talk in detail about your own country, and Bryson has portrayed it well. There's a hilarious section where he describes a game of cricket, and captures it perfectly (don't worry Bill, I've lived here all my life and it baffles me still!). He stresses over and over the sheer size, emptiness and deadly nature of most of the country, and doesn't focus much on the big cities at all (Brisbane barely gets a mention), but I still felt he captured the feeling of many special places in the country.
I listed on audio, read by William Roberts. The narrator is fantastic, and I commend his impeccable pronunciation of place names (including "Australia" itself), which can be difficult for Americans (as well as other nationalities of course). The only thing I didn't like is that he does a truly dreadful Australian accent! Oh well, it adds to the charm....more
Full review from Tea in the Treetops blog, posted June 2016: As a long-time fan of both Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, I felt that this book had soFull review from Tea in the Treetops blog, posted June 2016: As a long-time fan of both Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, I felt that this book had some big boots to fill. While it did have some of the slapstick humour of the Discworld and wacky aliens and robots of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, sadly I didn't think A Toaster on Mars quite lived up to the blurb.
The evil genius Bartholemew Badde has stolen a Super-EMP from a high security facility on Earth. He's holding the world to ransom, and to top it off, he has kidnapped Blake's twelve-year-old daughter in an effort to force him to comply. Blake, his new cyborg colleague Nicki Steele, and his ex-wife Astrid must meet Badde's demands to steal a super computer to get their daughter back alive.
I'm going to go for the list approach in this review. There were things about this book I really enjoyed, but there were also some things that I was disappointed in.
What I liked - Neo City. I liked the way that the city was just constructed on the top of everything else for thousands of years, so that the current inhabitants lived around level 700 and the lower levels are actually a physical underbelly. Very dystopian. - Bartholomew Badde - Such an evil villain yet occasionally compassionate captor. He genuinely seems to have no ambition other than being remembered as someone who destroyed a whole civilisation. Totally bonkers - I thought he was great. - Nikki Steele, the cyborg. The poor girl is just trying to do her job while being only nine percent human and continuously called a robot. Actually, all of the characters had endeared themselves to me by the end.
What I didn't like so much - For a far-future society, it feels like they have culture that is stuck in the late 20th century. That's like people who live now using references to celebrities of the Renaissance - so much history will exist between the 21st and 26th centuries, it seems slightly unrealistic that there would be an Elvis planet or that people would still be watching Survivor. - I'm not sure why Blake agreed to Badde's demands in the first place. Surely someone of his background, who had already chased down all sorts of criminals, would have some other course of action to take rather than just agree to do the dirty work? - The interjections from Zeeb. The book has a foreword by Zeeb Blatsnart, the editor of Blake's story, and a bit of an interplanetary Bear-Grylls-type figure, apparently. He has little interludes dispersed through the text, which have a bit of a HHGTG-footnote feel about them, but as they are just kind of in the way. Wow, I'm picky.
Read this book if you're after a quick read with a silly sense of humour. It's not quite Douglas Adams, but it's entertaining.
Thank you to Text Publishing for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review....more
For some reason this was in the junior section of our local library, but my son didn't really know what to make of it. It's basicRidiculously cute :)
For some reason this was in the junior section of our local library, but my son didn't really know what to make of it. It's basically Darth Vader being a Dad to Leia, in the cutest possible cartoons.
Get it for a dad you know who has a little princess!...more
As you may have heard already, I spent the last weekend at the Brisbane Writers Festival. While there, I had the pleasure of hearing a very enthusiastic Dave Burton tell a room of high school students all about his teenage years, A memoir of teenage years wouldn’t normally be my sort of book, but I had also heard Dave on the new #LoveOzYA podcast the previous week. How could I ignore such coincidence? I bought his book.
How To Be Happy is about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how we fit into the world around us. Sometimes those stories are louder than the common sense or positive thinking and the negatives rise, and it can be so hard to bring the positive thoughts back.
This book took me right back to my high school years, around the same time as David’s. They contained a very similar mix of anxiety over not fitting in, a few close friends who I used to geek out with in the library and or the music block and a general sense of stress in the senior years. I am really not looking forward to those days of trying to help my children through their high school years, knowing that they will most likely push me away at times.
David’s writing style is simple and direct. The story isn’t super-fast – it’s a non-fiction true story, after all. There’s a very honest and courageous feeling about it that appealed to me, though. I enjoyed hearing about his younger brothers (twins with Asperger’s) and their ways of dealing with the realities of life. I also enjoyed David’s own geeking out about my own passions of the day such as Red Dwarf, Star Wars and (later for me) Doctor Who! (Spoiler: I still geek out about that stuff with anyone who will listen.)
How To Be Happy contains a message of hope, that help is out there if you feel you can’t cope, if only you realise that it’s okay to ask for it. I hope this book helps some young people through their troubled times, and I’m glad that David was able to share his story....more
The Doctor has run into a relic from the Time War and suddenly, there's a Welsh town inside the TARDIS, complete with a strange new version of ChristiThe Doctor has run into a relic from the Time War and suddenly, there's a Welsh town inside the TARDIS, complete with a strange new version of Christina de Souza. Timeline-wise, this takes place after Planet of the Dead.
One of the "Time Trips" short stories, this rollercoaster of a Tenth Doctor tale had me hooked from start to finish (in fact I read it in one go over a couple of hours). The Doctor's quirks and mannerisms come through in the writing so well, I could almost hear David Tennant's voice in my head (oh, yes please). The portrayal comes across as rather bonkers, and is almost exactly what I'd imagine the inside of the Doctor's head must be like. Loved it to bits....more
William Shakespeare meets Star Wars: One of the greatest stories to be told (in certain opinions) told in the style of one of the greatest storytellerWilliam Shakespeare meets Star Wars: One of the greatest stories to be told (in certain opinions) told in the style of one of the greatest storytellers to have lived. It's a match made in heaven!
Of course, if you're a die-hard Shakespearean scholar you may not find the adaptation to your taste - it's not meant to be a real Shakespearean play, but a retelling of the Ep 4 script. Likewise, I'm sure there are some Star Wars fans out there who'd hate this take on their favourite story. Personally, I thought it was just delightful!
Ian Doescher has done a wonderful job of bringing the script for Episode 4 not only into iambic pentameter, but in capturing so many of the character quirks that make the movie so enjoyable. In addition, he has included many nods to the Bard throughout the text ("What light through yonder flashing sensor breaks?"). Each character has asides to the audience and soliloquies to discuss their situation. There are even winks to the fandom here and there which had me chuckling.
I was lucky enough to get my copy of this book for Christmas, and my family and I had a very enjoyable morning flicking through and quoting passages that caught our eye (it helps that my brother does a mean Darth Vader impression!). I'd pay good money to see this play on the stage. Someone get on that!
I seem to have ended up reading quite a few apocalyptic angel/demon stories lately. I thought that In the End would be another slightly depressing, fiI seem to have ended up reading quite a few apocalyptic angel/demon stories lately. I thought that In the End would be another slightly depressing, fire and brimstone end-of-the-world thriller, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find that, as well as being quite thrilling at times, this story is also very funny. The blurb doesn’t really give that away at all, but yes, this is a snarky comedy.
Firstly, let me just say that Alexandra Rowland is certainly a talented author. This story gripped me all the way through – the action scenes were brilliant and the banter between Lalael and Lucien, while occasionally silly, lifted the whole tone of the story. The two angels have very strong personalities and their relationship is the highlight of this story for me. Loved them, need more please!
Dodger is on the tosh – that is, collecting valuables washed down drains into the oReview originally posted on The Oaken Bookcase on October 22, 2012.
Dodger is on the tosh – that is, collecting valuables washed down drains into the old sewers. A massive storm arrives and Dodger happens to pop out to the street long enough to rescue a young girl who is trying to escape some violent men in a carriage. This rescue and subsequent meeting with one Mr Charlie Dickens sets off a chain of events that draws Dodger out of the slums and into more upper-class circles of Victorian London. Can Dodger work against the powers-that-be to rescue the girl of his dreams a second time, and make something more of his life?
Dodger is an interesting departure from the Discworld for Terry Pratchett. It feels very much like a City Watch book, with a mystery to be solved, dirty streets of a big city and policemen everywhere. I think that’s the main reason I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as I wanted to – every time the peelers (policemen of Sir Robert Peel’s Scotland Yard) were involved, I expected Nobby Nobbs to appear. Peel himself had rather a “beat copper” feel about him – very Sam Vimes. In any case, this is not the Discworld and I had to keep reminding myself of that as I read.
Pratchett has taken real-life personalities from Victorian England and put them into a fantasy situation. Charles Dickens, John Mayhew, Benjamin Disraeli and several other notable personalities are involved. At times, it did feel like people were being stuck in just to see how many could be included (Sweeney Todd, for example), but they did all mostly fit in with the story.
The story itself has exciting moments, although had a rather rambling start which slowed my progress into the book. Secondary to the main story was a very interesting look at how the poor lived in Victorian times – it was a time of extreme poverty for the underclasses of London. There are some distressing discussions of the trend of young girls who moved to the city, got taken advantage of by men who ply them with drink, then threw themselves into the river when they discovered they were pregnant. The plight of orphaned children is also rather terrible and is one of the reasons I like to keep away from Dickens and the like – too depressing!
Dodger lives in the Seven Dials with an old Jewish watchmaker. I’m not sure if Samuel Cohen is based on a real person but he is certainly a fascinating character – full of snippets of stories about his travels and meetings with famous people. I’d love to hear more about him!
Dodger has just the right amount of humour for a story with quite a dark undertone. Although billed as a “young readers” story, all fans of Pratchett (and indeed, fans of Dickens and Victoriana) should give this one a read. I just found that the story didn’t grab me quite as much as I hoped it would....more
The National Year of Reading theme for February is Laugh, and if there’s one Fantasy author who makes me laugh, it’s Terry Pratchett.
I’ve loved reading each book in the Discworld series as they’ve been released for a long time now. I love the world that Pratchett has built over the years, populated with its many varieties of people and creatures and reflecting the real world in a slighty wonky mirror. I usually find that the stories begin fairly quietly, then become harder and harder to put down – the type of stories that cause me to miss my stop on the train, or stay awake reading until I realise that it’s suddenly two am and I have to be up in a few hours.
Snuff is no exception, almost making me rather late for work a couple of times, although in this case the most exciting part is a fair way before the end of the story and the rest sort of comes in bites of action. This installment in the story of the Discworld is about murder, slavery and prejudice with a tip of the hat to Jane Austen. There are some pretty dark goings-on such as torture, loss of children and sacrifice that aren’t directly dealt with in the story, but we see the aftermath.
In general, I’m not a fan of the Commander Vimes books. The stories about the City Watch are great, don’t get me wrong (plus I think I have a bit of a thing for Captain Carrot), but Vimes occasionally comes across as being a bit too self-important, for all his supposed hatred of his titles. He always seems to know exactly what’s happening before it happens. While that may make him a good copper, it tends to annoy me for no particularly good reason.
That said, I do enjoy the stories he is usually a part of, involving other races and their acceptance into Ankh-Morpork society. I also love Lady Sybil and little Sam and I think they should be in more stories!
While Snuff was not my favourite Discworld book, it is still a very exciting and funny read. Get yourself a copy and have a Laugh this month....more
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