Halfway through this for the #rorygilmorereadingchallenge and 2 things strike me. 1:why is Emma with
Flap? what an grade A asshole and 2: Are Ignatius Reilly and Aurora Greenway the same person in different states/books?

After a month of waiting, and hoping, I've finally finished this book!!!

It's very good, but I seem to have been reading this FOREVER .... revenge is a dish best served very, very cold. #rorygilmorereadinglist #frenchliterature #Dumas #classics #doorstops

#rorygilmorereadinglist no 87/339 . Took a wee while to get into this one and I agree with others who said that the opera left me cold, but I concentrated on the themes of language, beauty and love and found it much more satisfying. Gorgeous, rich writing, shamelessly romantic and beautifully paced. Loved it.

Great non fiction read, with a couple of drawbacks. The first is be prepared to develop cravings for intensely salinated food products while reading. It is best to buy cinema popcorn to have alongside you. Second, it's a bit like eating very salty food. It's so fact heavy it can be a bit too intense to read all at once. Best savoured as an amuse bouche. If that makes sense!

What did I think of Dead Souls? Come and read my fantastic book review blog. You absolutely should. I'm hilarious and incisive. Promise.... http://wp.me/p6hg3F-n4

I'm finding this increasingly hard going. The hero has had to run away from the village he was fleecing and the author has subsequently and literally lost the plot. I find that the more I look at the percentage read thing on on kindle or the view from the bus (cherry blossom) the less likely I am to finish the book- this one's prognosis is not looking good!

#rorygilmorereadinglist
#commuterread

I feel like gogol is the sort of guy I would like to stand beside at a society ball, whispering arch sides into my ear as I twittered behind my fan. He's a brilliant observer of the weaknesses of human nature, not so much women, and this has got to be one of the first instances of breaking the third wall.

#busreads
#rorygilmorereadinglist

If you want to read a grown woman completely losing her cool over words on a page please visit my blog at https://wellwrittentooshort.wordpress.com/author/caitlinstott/
I've come over all fan girl, but (naturally) a beautifully expressed one.

I haven't read anything as wonderfully, expensively, unashamedly romantic as tracy and sammy's dinner on top of the empire state building in a long time. This book. 😍

Seriously everyone, just how good is this book? If you are not reading it, stop, put down what you are doing, and read.

This from Malcolm McLaren is as good as anything I've read to sum up rock and roll and being young. #punk #nonfiction #greatquotes #stickittotheman

I'm liking this one so much more than i thought I would- so well researched and readable. I've even listened to some of the music! #rorygilmorereadinglist

#rorygilmorereadinglist I have been putting this one off for ages as for some reason I felt ambivalent. I think I'm walking away ambivalent too. Set in new Orleans, it describes the adventures of the world's most irritating man and the various people his actions affect. It's well written, funny and the characters were very lifelike, but I feel like not much happened, there was no arc, and it wasn't generous enough and so it kind of left me cold.

My next #rorygilmorereadinglist book is daughter of fortune by Isabelle allende. I'm looking forward to this one because I read a few of her books back in the 1990s and I absolutely loved them. There should be more books about girls with green hair #houseofthespirits

Nice little haul at #oxfambookshop today!

Solid burn Ignatius 🔥🔥🔥🔥

#rorygilmorereadinglist no.82/339 Started this but for a classic there is really not a lot of love for it on litsy or anywhere else I've looked.... interested to see what I make of it myself. It doesn't sound like something I would naturally gravitate towards but this reading challenge is pulling me in all sorts of odd directions and opened the door to some fantastic stuff I might have avoided. So, I'll dive right in...

I have ....finally.... updated my blog! Please take a second to see what I thought of the bell jar (spoiler- LOVED it) and if you like what I wrote please let me know! https://wellwrittentooshort.wordpress.com/2017/02/17/avoid-the-avocado/

#rorygilmorereadinglist no.80. This is a terrible book. Out of date, bad attitudes to women, cringeworthy sex scenes and I have no idea what it has to do with the word ricochet. What was Rory Gilmour thinking????? Avoid.

Omfg is there any need for that.. #neverdrinkingabloodymaryagain #eeeeewwww

Why am I reading about the calorific content of egg mcmuffins when it has absolutely no relevance to the story? What is the point? What?? I have sooooo many opinions about this book.....

I'm sorry but wtaf???? #badsexscenes

Um, not sure that charged particles undulate tbh......#notlovingthelovescene

Not totally sure he said this in Lanark or a different novel but I loved it anyway- apathy is so much more dangerous than a betouped idiot #americanpolitics #trump

R is for...
OMG get to the point!!! How is it possible to describe a drive as boring and then spend the next page telling people what turnoff you take to get to the next junction? It's like a literary Garmin!!! Aarrrgh!

This, this right here, is why men don't get women. Discuss....

#rorygilmorereadinglist : no.79/339. The adventures of dissolute drunken fools in beautiful european locations. Lots of other people seemed to get upset that nothing much happens, but I didnt mind too much. Its a perfect book, but not a brilliant book. With #amoveablefeast I was all for moving to Paris, and becoming a journalist. Still, his so-so is leaps and bounds in front of most other people's best, so I'll let him off.

I have no feelings on this one yet, other than sue grafton has the worst taste in names... Vera, Reba, Stacey for a man and now we have dirk....

I feel really horrible saying this, but this book is a juggling cat. It's impressive that a cat can juggle in the first place, but to judge the quality of the juggling against proffessional jugglers is perhaps harsh. This book is a physicist writing a novel to explain kepler and galileo's ideas. The context and explanation of theory are very good, the novel is a bit wooden. But, better with kepler than galileo - I'd like to learn more about him.

Loved this! It's such a multi layered book it's hard to know where to begin, but if you start off by reading it as a surrealist comedy about a love story mixed up with the devil visiting stalinist Moscow with a black cat and mischief on his mind. You can go deeper, and meditate on the religious allegory, political satire, and ideas about good and evil. But you will love it. This is the book I would pick to film as a Netflix series if I could.

'What would your good do if evil did not exist? After all shadows are cast by things and people. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light?'

#barreading while waiting for my kid to finish brownies... I love this hour of the week!

The prose was sometimes a tad rich in this travelogue of Andalucian Spain. There's a strange juxtaposition between that floweriness and the very clear influence of Hemingway. But he does capture the barely concealed shock and grief of the people in Spain's post civil war era, and his fury at their fate. An atmospheric companion to 'ghosts of spain'. There are also some lovely turns of phrase- the last sentence being a case in point.

After the bleak misery of #1984 I'm off for a wee bit of #andalusian sunshine with Laurie Lee. I read #ciderwithrosie at school and loved it; picked this up in a charity shop and thought I'd give it a try. It'll be interesting to compare it with my recent read #ghostsofspain. I'm certainly on a bit of amid 20th century authors binge at the moment!

'One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution to establish the dictatorship' #1984 #trump

'I'm 39 years old. I've got a wife I can't get rid of. I've got varicose veins. I've got five false teeth'
' I couldn't care less' said the girl.
#dystopiaproblems

#RGreadingchallenge my favorite so far

Super interesting and worth a read #RGreadingchallenge

#RGreadingchallenge I've got to give this a so so because although I enjoyed it - and I did, and it's an excellent insight into rock an roll excess, I can't get past some of what they do is repellant. Rape isn't rock and roll high jinks.

I haven't read this for many years- it was a borrowed by a friend casualty. But I'm determined to find it (my hardback, pre- film copy I bought in a library withdrawn sale) somewhere, and keep it for a day my son or daughter is off sick, and draft a grandparent in to read it to them. Then I'll give it to the kids and let them read the red words themselves. This is the perfect fairy tale. Share it with people.

This made me forget the revolutionary and meet the teenager on a daft journey with his best mate. More than anything else this is the writing that made me realise that icons can be flawed, warm, funny people full of youth and friendship. Here's to the next adventure, che.

I keep on meaning to read #1984 but never seem to find myself in the right mood. But my book club has taken a somewhat dark turn and picked it so here I go. It seems that it's politically very apt just now, but I don't know whether it will make me feel better or worse about our current predicament. #RGreadingchallenge

How can I say anything against little women? I'd be dissing my oldest friends. And every so often there comes an insight into what it is to be a girl that shoots through the centuries and lodges in my head forever. Like marmee admitting that she's angry every day. Or Jo wanting to go off and have fun like a boy. Amy being tired of being poor. It's extraordinary how much and how little us girls have changed.

I think this is mostly an American site (although I could be wrong) and I'm not sure if you guys have heard much of jilly Cooper, but she's my guilty pleasure. Think modern day Jane Austin with more sex and much more bad behavior. If you, like me, are a bad feminist, but like your heroines to love being women, this can't fail to make you smile. Jilly may be a toff, but she's no snob. Read it! (But start with 'riders' first) xx

This was unrelentingly bleak. I mean, of course it was, it's a story about German resistance to nazis in Berlin in 1940. I'm not quite sure what I expected it to be. But in January, particularly this January, a book that feels mired in a pervading sense of political evil I just couldn't take. So I have bailed, for the moment, but I'll be back when I'm a bit more emotionally robust!

Gorgeous. Sharp, warm, sad and beautiful. Makes you nostalgic for a time and people you never knew. What she's doing advertising makeup for boots I'll never understand. Get writing Chimamanda- can't wait to hear what you've got to say next.