Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon

I first read this book back in my undergraduate days. I went through a big Wilkie Collins phase after studying The Woman in White for first year English, and so I took to loitering around the 823.8 section of the university library to see what else I could dig up of a similar ilk. Obviously, Braddon and Collins weren't far apart on the shelves. Plus, one of the Wilkie Collins books I read included an "if you like this, try _____" section at the back. This was one of the books listed.

I remember at the time thinking that it didn't really compare to Collins' writing, and I was probably right. Mary Elizabeth Braddon isn't QUITE in the same class as Wilkie Collins. But despite being the lesser writer of the two, she still manages to spin one HELL of a story.

Lady Audley's Secret revolves around Robert Audley, a young barrister. Accompanied by his friend George, he pays a visit to his uncle, who's recently married a much younger woman. When George disappears mysteriously shortly thereafter - with a trail of clues leading to suggest that he may have returned to the Australian goldfields - Robert gets it into his head that his new aunt is involved.

So he takes it upon himself to start investigating Lady Audley's past. He rapidly discovers that things don't entirely add up, especially when he takes into consideration the circumstances of George's disappearance and the fact that George left without leaving any plans in place for his young son. As the story progresses, Robert finds himself in an increasingly dangerous quest for the truth.

I really enjoyed this book. It was definitely a page turner as far as I was concerned, full of great characters and exciting adventures. Sure, Lady Audley's secret turns out to be a little bit of an anticlimax. But Lady Audley herself is a fabulous and incredibly conniving character, who'd probably be classified as a sociopath in the modern world. And I honestly can't work out if I think her fate was well deserved or not.

On the whole, it was a very enjoyable and occasionally creepy mystery, and I'd definitely recommend checking it out, especially if you like Wilkie Collins' writing.

Have you read it? What did you think??

K xx

Libraries are important, okay?

Um, hi. Eventually, I'll get a chance to breathe for more than five minutes and hopefully then I'll get around to telling you guys about the rest of my trip to England. You know, the one from last SEPTEMBER.

But for now, I wanted to share a video that I made last week. There was a lot of discussion in the Booktube community about libraries and whether they're still relevant in society now that we have Google and ebooks.

And obviously, being a librarian, I had a lot of thoughts on the topic.



I totally meant to post this last week when I posted it on Youtube. But...adulting is hard, yo.

What do you think? Are libraries still useful? Or should we replace them with something new?

K xx

Pretty things and ghostly toilet paper

Previously, we headed down to Belem, got caught in yet another rain storm, saw a fancy monastery and ate our body weight in custard tarts.

With our last full day in Lisbon, we decided that we should head back out to Sintra because there was still more to see and do. The day didn't start brilliantly - we stopped at Starbucks because Mum was in need of coffee, and I figured I may as well get a hot chocolate. Except the typical Starbucks name-for-the-cup thing didn't turn out quite right for me:

Yup. Costy.

We started our second day in Sintra with a trip to Quinta da Regaleira, which if I recall correctly was built by an eccentric rich dude. The house was a weird mixture of ridiculously ornate and incredibly plain that seems to be common in Portugal. The British and European palaces and stately homes that I've visited have all been over the top rooms with over the top furniture in them. Portugal? Over the top ceilings or walls, everything else is plain and boring. Weird...

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanywho, the house was pretty. But not *too* over the top.

Who doesn't love to hold a starfish to their
boob while at the beach?! 

Ridiculous doorknob is ridiculous.

The gardens, meanwhile, were lots of fun. It wasn't so much that the plants were spectacular so much as it was that the gardens were HUGE and there were unexpected buildings and underground grottos and stuff all over the place.

Once we'd exhausted the possibilities in the gardens, we stopped by the cafe for a quick ice cream based lunch and headed out to the bus stop to wait for the bus to our next destination. It turned out that the bus was running about 15 minutes late, so a very nice guy from a fancy hop on, hop off tour company who happened to have a mostly empty bus was like "Yeah, don't wait for the crappy public bus. I'll take you for free!". So that was awesome.

Our next destination was Monserrate Palace, and it was pretty damned spectacular. I think it was easily my favourite of the places we visited in Sintra. The gardens were fairly fabulous, but it was the house that I liked the most. It was open and spacious and full of Indian and Middle Eastern influences, and it was just GORGEOUS. Even the rooms that were still under repair and had no ceilings.

Mildly ornate walls.

LIBRARY PORN.

The music room was especially stunning, and I kind of wish I could attend a concert there.

By the time we'd finished there, the afternoon was rapidly disappearing. C wanted to go to another palace that was further afield, but we had no idea how late it was open or what time the buses finished and we didn't want to risk being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting back to town. So we spent 20 minutes waiting for a bus, headed straight to the train station and back to Lisbon, had a drink or two, and then went back to the little restaurant we'd found near the cathedral for a delicious and relatively early dinner before heading back to our apartment to pack.

And take photos of the ghostly toilet paper, because obviously:

Next time, we head to the airport and back to jolly old England where we spend a stupidly long time standing in a queue. Obviously.

K xx

Nothing says 'welcome' like furniture with faces

Previously: We flew to Lisbon, and found a lot of not-very-nice food. But it was super pretty so it kind of balanced out?? 

The following morning, we braved Lisbon's public transport system (the Myki/Oyster card equivalents are made of cardboard with a chip in them, which is both ingenious and the worst plan ever) and took the train half way across the city to a bus terminal. We managed to locate what seemed to be the appropriate platform for the buses to Mafra, but then an employee who spoke zero English appeared and when we asked in a weird combination of English, Spanish and Portuguese if we were in the right place, she said no and pointed furiously at a platform over the other side of the terminal.

There was about 15 minutes before the timetable said the bus should arrive, so we walked over there to find that the platform information said that buses to Mafra absolutely did NOT leave from that platform and that we'd been right in the first place. Maybe she thought we looked like we could use the walk... Also, we saw a cocker spaniel that looked a lot like our dead dog and briefly contemplated kidnapping it. Well. I did. I'm not sure Dad did...

The trip out to Mafra took about an hour and ten minutes. It's only about 40km, but it was a local bus, so it stopped approximately 5,000 times in the 40km. C and I took advantage of the time to catch up on some reading. because WHY LOOK OUT THE WINDOW WHEN YOU CAN READ?!

Eventually, we arrived in Mafra and made our way to the National Palace.

We got there just in time to catch the end of the church service, which was equal parts awkward and fascinating. And oddly entertaining, as one of the altar boys appeared to be wearing a Batman t-shirt underneath his robes.

From there, we headed into the palace proper to buy tickets, and discovered that they were sold out of English guides. But they had French guides, and the guide was the only thing that included a map, so for a whopping €1, C and I muddled our way through it with my high school French and his Latin/Ancient Greek. It worked moderately well, though there were many occasions on which I wished I had internet access on my phone so I could ask Clément what the hell I was reading.

Anyway, the Palace was built in the eighteenth century and its primary purpose was as a monastery following a promise from some random Portuguese king or other, and then he tacked a palace on the front. Much of the building (which is HUGE) is now used as a training academy by the Portuguese Army. The highlight of the palace is most DEFINITELY the library, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a library nerd. It's absolutely stunning.

TOLD YOU. (That first crappy phone photo really doesn't do it justice, but I had totally the wrong lens on my camera that day)

And not only is it stunning, but it's got all natural pest control and climate control. Basically, the walls and ceiling are false exteriors - there's actually a big empty space between them and the outside walls, which allows the room to warm up and cool down naturally over the course of the year. As far as pest control goes, there's a colony of bats that lives in the library. They hang out in boxes during the day, and at night they're set free to fly all over the place and eat any insects that get in. It's pretty damned nifty. (Although from a conservation perspective, it's probably a nightmare if the bats poop while they're eating insects...)

The rest of the palace was...very unpalace-like. It felt a lot more like a hunting lodge - very basic furniture, minimal decorations (except in the Queen's rooms), and a big focus on the church at the centre of the building.

"Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" "OINK."

The random head in the middle is a nice touch.

This horse has eyeball issues

Stupidly tall clock with C (who's 6'2") for scale.

"What? They were like this when I got here."

We finished at about lunchtime and found a little cafe nearby where we could grab cheese sandwiches and Magnums (because on holidays, a Magnum totally counts as lunch food!) before discovering that there wasn't a whole lot else to do in Mafra short of paying a taxi to take us the 7km out to the Palace's hunting grounds (now a national park of sorts) and wander around there in the hopes of seeing a deer. And that all seemed too much like hard work, so we caught the bus back into Lisbon and decided to head to the Castelo de Sao Jorge instead.

There wasn't a whole lot to the castle itself, which dates back to Moorish times. You can walk around the battlements, which was a lot of fun, and the views are SPECTACULAR. But it's not like you end up walking through hundreds of fancy rooms or anything. It's essentially just a shell, albeit a very imposing shell with a nifty little museum of artefacts from each era of its history attached.

Once we'd finished at the castle, it was rapidly heading towards dinner time, so we found a place nearby with the intention of having drinks there and then going somewhere else for dinner. But once we'd sat down, finding somewhere else for dinner seemed all too much like hard work. And so that's how I ended up having a vegetarian pizza for dinner. One that consisted of peas, corn, carrot, tomatoes and broccoli. It was a little weird, I have to say, but still better than anything else we'd eaten up to that point.

Except the custard tarts. Obviously.

Next time, we head to Sintra to look at more palaces. 

K xx

Bookish questions, part the second

I was going to write the next instalment of my trip today but somehow it's already after 5pm and that's far too much like hard work at this time of day. So you can have tomorrow's post a day early instead - the second half of the questions from last week's bookish Q&A!

28. Favourite reading snack?
Chocolate, probably?? I would say biscuits, but then you get crumbs stuck in the spine and that leads to disaster...

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.
I wouldn't say it RUINED my experience, but I'd heard so many amazing things about Elizabeth May's The Falconer. And when I read it, I enjoyed it. But it didn't QUITE live up to what I was expecting.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
If we're talking critics as in the people who work for newspapers and magazines, then I have no idea because I tend to skim through the newspaper as quickly as possible, and the only time I read magazines is when I'm at the hairdresser. So, like, once a year.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
I know I should probably be nicer because authors have poured their heart and souls into these books. But sometimes, the book is just so awful that I have to tear it to shreds. ESPECIALLY if it's riddled with typos and grammatical errors. Good Lord, people. Get an editor...

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you choose?
Um. Didn't we already cover this before with Gallifreyan?! If we're talking real languages, I guess it would be ALL OF THEM so I could read books in their original, untranslated forms. Because things always lose something in translation.

33. Most intimidating book you've ever read?
A tie between Bleak House and Les Miserables.

34. Most intimidating book you're nervous to start?
I have For the Term of His Natural Life on my Classics Club list, and I've heard that it's really hard going. So I'm scared of that one. I also want to read War and Peace at some point in my life, but it's ENORMOUS OMG.

35. Favourite poet? 
Poetry's not really my jam. Maybe Wilfred Owen?? Which is really weird and morbid, I know, but I like war poetry a lot more than the romantics or sonnets...

36. How many books do you generally have checked out of the library at a given time?
Somewhere between eight and ten. I once borrowed fourteen and could barely carry them home, so I limit myself.

37. How often do you return books to the library unread?
Never. I've either already finished them, or I return the ones I've read and renew the ones I haven't.

38. Favourite fictional character?
WHAT IS THIS INSANITY. As Danielle from Ever After would say, "I could no sooner choose a favourite star in the Heavens".

39. Favourite fictional villain?
Do they mean favourite as in the one-you-secretly-like-a-little-bit? Or favourite as in I-want-to-murder-your-face-off? If it's the latter, probably Dolores Umbridge. If it's the former, it probably applies more to anti-heroes like Becky Sharp for me.

40. Books you're most likely to bring on vacation?
Anything that doesn't require a whole lot of brain power (so no classics). Probably quite a lot of contemporary YA, to be perfectly honest.

41. The longest you've gone without reading?
Four years, give or take. Since I learnt to read, the longest has probably been about twelve hours.

42. Name a book that you could/would not finish?
I have a whopping SIX books on my did-not-finish shelf in Goodreads. One turned out to be book 20 of a series, two were high fantasy that I just couldn't get into, two were sci-fi that I just couldn't get into, and one was The Mayan Priest..........................

43. What distracts you easily when you're reading?
The internet. Mostly Twitter...

44. Favourite film adaptation of a novel?
If we're talking favourite as in "most true to the book", then probably The Fault in Our Stars. But if we're talking favourite as in "brought a slow paced story to life", then maybe Jurassic Park. Or The Count of Monte Cristo.

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?
Ohgod. Will I find a mob on my doorstep if I say Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? That was easily the worst of the movies for me. They left so much out of it. Or maybe the 2009 mini-series of The Day of the Triffids, which was TERRRRRRRIBLE. No. Wait. It's The Lost World. Because Steven Spielberg basically grovelled to Michael Crichton to write a sequel to Jurassic Park and then ignored three quarters of the book in favour of having a T. rex rampage around San Diego. (Don't see that movie, read the book instead. It's awesome.)

46. Most money you've ever spent in a bookstore at one time?
Probably somewhere over $200? But it was birthday money, so I'm not entirely convinced that counts.

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
Oh God, ALL THE TIME. I'm really terrible at flicking to the last page and reading the last sentence. You know, just in case I get hit by a bus. Which is why I like e-books - it stops me from doing that.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book halfway through it?
Frequent spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Or a really terrible story. Or hating the characters. But to be honest, I'd probably just keep reading and turn it into #stupidbookisstupid on Twitter because I'm a bad person...

49. Do you like to keep your books organised?
DEFINITELY. If they're not alphabetical by the author's surname, it makes me twitchy. My little brother just shoves things on the shelf in random order and it was all I could do not to reorder his bookshelf while I was staying with him in London.

50. Do you prefer to keep your books when done, or give them away?
Keep them. Always keep them. Maybe if I didn't really enjoy them, I'll put them in the pile for the op shop the next time we have a bit of a cupboard clean out...

51. Are there any books that you've been avoiding?
I assume this means "avoiding but still want to read", because otherwise the answer is clearly Fifty Shades of I Will Never Read This Book Grey. Other than that, it's probably just a bunch of stuff that I ended up putting on my Classics Club list.

52. Name a book that made you angry?
Oh, so very many. Believe by Erin McCarthy because it features rape that's never called rape. The Selection because it was just horrifically awful. The Last Thirteen series because it felt a lot like a sci-fi Harry Potter and because the publisher bought all 13 books in the series before even one had been published. Side Effects May Vary because I JUST HATED THE MAIN CHARACTER SO MUCH, YOU GUYS. And many more.

53. A book you didn't expect to like but did?
I was a little dubious about Throne of Glass because high fantasy and I have such a messy relationship. But I loved every second of it. And of the subsequent books.

54. A book you expected to like but didn't?
Everyone told me I'd love A Game of Thrones. Instead, I was bored shitless for like 700 pages.

55. Favourite guilt-free guilty-pleasure reading?
I'm not sure they're guilt-free, but I have an unfortunate addiction to Pride and Prejudice sequels/alterna-plot line books. They're generally terrible, but I've read a couple that were actually pretty decent which has been enough to get me to keep reading in case there are more than are unexpectedly good. Sigh.

So. Please tell me what books have made you angry so that I can avoid them like the plague. And tell me how you organise your books, because I like to live vicariously through others!!

K xx

Bookish questions, part the first

So approximately forever ago (read: July), Cait and Mime answered these questions on their blog. And I was like "Oooooh, that's fun! I should do that!". So I hit the handy little "save for later" button in Feedly and, as I always do when I hit the "save for later" button, promptly forgot about it. (Seriously. I have stuff in there from 2012... It's scary in there.)

Today, I saw someone on Twitter talking about a bookish Q&A, and it rang a little bell in the back of my brain that sent me digging through the depths of Feedly for the questions because answering questions about books seems like an excellent way to spend a gloomy Wednesday afternoon!

1. Favourite childhood book?
Oh, please, like I can just pick one. When I was about five, it was Robert Munsch's The Paperbag Princess. (Or, really, anything by Robert Munsch EXCEPT A Promise Is a Promise, which was terrifying, or I Love You Forever, which gave me Feels. And Little Kirsti did not like having Feels.) When I was about seven or eight, it was pretty much anything by Laura Ingalls Wilder. And when I was about ten, it was anything by Brian Jacques. Holy crap, I loved the hell out of the Redwall books...

2. What are you reading right now?
I'm rereading Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment, and I'm reading Dracula for Classics Club. It seemed appropriate to read Dracula during October!

3. What books do you have on request from the library?
At the moment, none. Which is scandalous, I know. But I rarely request books from the library. I prefer to buy the books I'm really REALLY excited about, and pick up the others from the library when I happen to see them on the shelves.

4. Bad book habit?
Um. Reading too much?? OH WAIT. Reading books that I know I'll probably hate so that I have fodder for #stupidbookisstupid on Twitter. The internet asks, I deliver. Even though I probably shouldn't.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
Considering I just got back from three weeks overseas, nothing. Unless you count the library where I work. In which case I have Neil Gaiman's Suddenly the Milk, which Little Miss A and I are slowly working our way through at bedtime when she stays over.

6. Do you have an e-reader?
Yes. I have a Kindle. And I love it. (Although I don't love the prices. Or the fact that I can't borrow e-books from my library...)

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time or several at once?
Generally one at a time. But seeing as classics can be pretty dense, I've been moving towards a one Classics Club book and one other simultaneously. Sometimes that morphs into one new book, one reread, one Classics Club book. But more than that makes my head hurt.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
I don't think so? I think I read more young adult books than I used to back in the day. But I'm not sure if that's because of blogging or if it's because of my librarianship degree...

9. Least favourite book you've read so far this year?
I'm torn between The Selection, which made me incredibly angry, and Winter Be My Shield, which was a Kindle Deal of the Day book that dragged on FOREVER and which I hated with the fire of a thousand suns.

10. Favourite book you've read so far this year?
Oof. I'm limiting this to books I've read for the first time this year, otherwise this would be impossible. It's a tie between Alysia Grey Painter's Fairwil, and Sarah J. Maas' Throne of Glass series. ALL OF THEM.

11. How often do you read outside your reading comfort zone?
Well, I'm doing the Classics Club challenge, and my list is filled with stuff I'm a little bit scared of, so I guess at least one book a month??

12. What is your reading comfort zone?
These days, probably YA. Back when I was living in Canberra, it was more a mix of crime and fantasy.

13. Can you read in the car?
YUP. I can read pretty much anywhere. Except the shower. Well. Until someone invents a waterproof e-reader, and then you'll never get me out of the shower again. MWAHAHAHA.

14. Favourite place to read?
Pretty much anywhere, really. I'm not fussy.

15. What is your policy on book lending?
As long as I've made sure my name is written in the front of it, sure! Just be prepared for me to not-so-subtly say "Hey, did I lend you _____? I can't seem to find it..." if you haven't given it back after like a month.

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?
Accidentally, yes. Intentionally? NO. That's why post-it notes and bookmarks were invented.

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
My textbooks, yes. And the books I studied in high school English have scribble all over the pages. But a regular, run-of-the-mill novel? God, no.

18. Not even with textbooks?
Didn't we just cover that?

19. What is your favourite language to read in?
Gallifreyan. (Who the hell wrote these questions?!)

20. What makes you love a book?
I need to like the main characters, for starters. Other than that, it's all based on gut feeling.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?
Pretty much anything. I'm a librarian, it's what I do. Just because I don't like it, doesn't mean someone else won't love it!

22. Favourite genre? 
A tie between contemporary and urban fantasy. High fantasy can, as a general rule, go jump in a ditch.

23. Genre you rarely read but wish you did?
Biographies. I've enjoyed the ones I've read, but most of them are JUST SO LOOOOOOOONG. Can't they just skip over the boring bits?!

24. Favourite biography?
How appropriate. Easily Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?
Not that I can recall. OH WAIT. I read He's Just Not That Into You, but that was because I took insufficient books with me to Thailand and literally read my way through everything that all three of us had in our possession... (I rolled my eyes the whole way through it.)

26. Favourite cookbook?
Um. Probably the Australian Women's Weekly's Bake?? It's certainly the one I've used the most...

27. Most inspirational book you've read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
I'm not really sure I'd consider anything I've read this year to be inspirational. Unless it counts that I was inspired to not live in a dystopian world (1984, The Day of the Triffids) or get scurvy (Scurvy) or cholera (The Ghost Map)...

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's probably quite enough for one blog post. So I'll post my answers to the remaining questions in the next couple of days.

Until then, what are your favourite and least favourite books of this year?

K xx

Things they don't teach you in library school

So you guys know that I finished my Masters in library stuff last year. Over the past few months of working and volunteering, it's occurred to me that there's a bunch of stuff that my Masters didn't prepare me for but probably should have. As well as a bunch of stuff that was COMPLETELY SUPERFLUOUS INFORMATION AND GENERALLY A WASTE OF MY TIME. But let's focus mostly on the former, shall we?

Things I Wish They'd Taught Me In Library School

1. How to contact books. 

So. Much. Contact.

When you're at the start of a roll of contact, it's pretty straightforward. (You know, unless you suck at contacting things and get bubbles everywhere) But when you're getting towards the end and all the contact wants to do is roll up on itself? It's a bitch and a half. Today, I had to use four pairs of scissors to weight down the corners. And a fifth pair to actually cut it. There should really be an entire subject on how to wrangle that stuff.

2. How to not squeal like an excited six year old when you come across a book that you loved as a kid and had forgotten about.
Last week's examples of this? The Bugalug's Bum Thief, aka the only Tim Winton book I've ever liked. Pagan In Exile, aka the book that contains my favourite blasphemous curse ("Christ in a cream cheese sauce!"). Come Over To My House, which is sadly out of print now, probably because it straddles a fine line between YAY DIFFERENT CULTURES and extreme cultural insensitivity...

3. There may be cockroaches.
Look, there may be cockroaches ANYWHERE, really. But when you're in a building populated by small children who like to drop crumbs and that's full of dark crevices? You will encounter them more than you would like.

4. How to not scream about said cockroaches in front of a room full of prep kids.
File under: things that would have been really handy last year when a huge cockroach fell out of a picture book and onto my foot.

5. You will always feel dusty.
Go look at your bookshelf. See how dusty the books are (even if you read/dust them regularly)? Multiply your book collection by several hundred and you'll start to understand. Always carry hand cream.

6. You WILL giggle hysterically while reshelving because some books have awful covers. 

I question your definition of "great"

Her heart says "yes", her eyes say "murder"

Friendship and demonic possession

7. The system will only freeze/play up when you have a queue of 25 six year olds staring at you expectantly with piles of books in their hands. 
True story.

8. You won't need to know how to MARC code.
Okay, sure, if you get a job as a cataloguer, MARC coding might be a handy skill to have. But for the vast majority of us, you can just go ahead and copy catalogue that shit. And if worst comes to worst, Google what 245 |a means.

9. Knowing your collection is more important than knowing Dewey numbers.
People are going to come in and say "Do you have any books about [for example] dragons?". Saying "Probably. Go check 398.2454 and see what you find!" isn't nearly as helpful as "Are you looking for fiction or non-fiction? If it's the former, we have Harry Potter, Eragon, the Temeraire series or The Hobbit. If it's the latter, we've got books on dragons in western culture, in Chinese culture, in Meso-American culture (though strictly speaking those are feathered serpents), in art, in literature, and in Dungeons & Dragons. Where would you like to start?"

That said, the Dewey Decimal Rap is pretty great:


10. Your patrons will crack you up more than you expect.
My favourite is still the kid who said to his friend "You know, pee is 90% water and 10% malaria", but the kid today who yelled "LET HER EAT HER APPLE IN PEACE!" at her friends who were watching me through the library window was equally hilarious.

Plus, on my first day? I discovered that a kid had shoved a book about the five senses ("Feeling with the fingers") in the puberty section. Said title took on a WHOLE different meaning.

Patrons totally make the dust and the cockroaches and the mysteriously sticky books worth it.

What elements of your job did university not prepare you for?

K xx

Bookish Q&A

Two weeks into August means two weeks into VEDA! Seriously, how the hell are we half way through the month already?!

This morning, I saw this questionnaire/meme/thing on Charleen's blog and figured that I'd jump on the bandwagon, because BOOKS YAY BOOKS.

Rules

1. Post these rules
2. Post a photo of your favorite book cover
3. Answer the questions below
4. Tag a few people to answer them too
5. Go to their blog/twitter and tell them you’ve tagged them
6. Make sure you tell the person who tagged you that you’ve taken part!

Favourite book cover
I don't really have a favourite. I love all the cover art that Josh Kirby did for Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, but at the moment? I can't get over how gorgeous the new US covers of Harry Potter are. Kasu Kibuishi really captured the essence of the books.

Source

What are you reading right now?
I've just started The Cuckoo's Calling, which is J.K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith. I've heard excellent things, so I can't wait to get stuck into it!

Do you have any idea what you'll read when you're done with that?
I've got a few things sitting in my to read pile at the moment, so it'll either be Bill Bryson's At Home or Alysia Gray Painter's Redwoodian.

What five books have you always wanted to read but haven't gotten round to?
Nelson Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom
J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
Grace Karskens - The Colony: a history of early Sydney

What magazines do you have in your bathroom/lounge right now?
None. I don't read magazines unless I'm going on a short haul flight. There are too many ads and not enough actual content.

What's the worst book you've ever read?
Hands down, The Mayan Priest. You may remember it from such blog posts as this.

What book seemed really popular but you didn't like it?
The two that are coming to mind right now are A Game of Thrones and Twilight. Ugh.

What's the one book you always recommend to just about anyone?
Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity. Holy crap, that book is incredible. And I've yet to meet anyone who hasn't completely adored it.

Source

What are your three favourite poems?
I'm not much of a poetry person. I prefer my literature less hidden-meaning-y. That said, I really like Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandius. And I do (somewhat morbidly) like quite a lot of poetry from World War I - Wilfred Owen's Dulce et decorum est, John McCrae's In Flanders Fields, and Rupert Brooks' The Soldier.

Where do you usually get your books?
Mostly from the library. Books are crazy expensive in Australia - the standard price of a trade paperback is $20 - and given how much I read, I'd be completely and utterly broke if I bought every single book I bought!! Obviously, anything for my Kindle comes from Amazon. If I'm browsing, it'll probably be at Dymocks because they have a great rewards program, and if I'm buying online, it's more than likely through Book Depository.

When you were little, did you have any particular reading habits?
Read All The Things All The Time? There's not a lot to it than that. Unless you count reading a 1,200 page Dickens omnibus at the age of ten to be a particular reading habit...

What's the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was too good to put down?
I think it was probably Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park.

Have you ever "faked" reading a book?
Uh, no. Why on earth would you pretend to have read something?!

Have you ever bought a book just because you liked the cover?
I haven't bought anything because I liked the cover, but I've definitely borrowed stuff from the library based on the cover. More often than not, though, I've chosen NOT to borrow/buy a book based on the cover. It can be completely and utterly awesome, but if the cover is total shirtless-six-pack-having-dude chick lit, it's going right back on the shelf.

What was your favourite book when you were a child?
Oh, man. There were so many. I loved The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch. Then I went through a phase of loving the absolute crap out of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. When I was about ten, my favourite book was The Boggart by Susan Cooper. And then I rapidly moved onto a complete obsession with Brian Jacques' Redwall series.

What book changed your life?
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I've talked before about how I read this and Chamber of Secrets on a flight from London to Melbourne and how I didn't sleep the entire way because I had to keep reading. Life would never be the same.

What is your favourite passage from a book?
Appropriately enough, this was a VEDA topic last week, so I'm just gonna go ahead and post in the video I made for that.


Who are your top five favourite authors?
Gail Carriger, Bill Bryson, Jane Austen, J.K. Rowling, and Terry Pratchett.

What book has no one heard about but should read?
It's a toss up between pretty much anything by Simon R. Green or Murder with Peacocks by Donna Andrews.

What book are you an "evangelist" for?
Okay, the word "evangelist" is totally weird to use in regards to books. I'm choosing to interpret this as "a book that no one wants to hear about but you tell them anyway", because that's pretty much how evangelical religion works, right?! Probably Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Because they're made of pure, unadulterated win.

What are your favourite books by a first time author?
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, and Kelley Armstrong's Bitten.

What is your favourite classic book?
It's a tie between Jane Austen's Persuasion and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Five other notable mentions?
Notable classics, you mean? Sure!
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

I'm not going to tag anyone because that seems too much like hard work, but feel free to jump on the bandwagon and tell me all about your favourites!

K xx

Turning 30? It's pretty great - Part 2

So. I already told you about my actual birthday. But I didn't tell you about the rest of the extra long weekend of awesomeness because I was a dirty slacker at the end of last week (aka I spent every night playing Lego Batman on my shiny new XBox and totally forgot that I had other stuff to do. Whoops?). So I shall rectify that now!

FRIDAY:
Got up stupidly early and headed into the city to meet Nikki. There was a small degree of excited flailing before we jumped on the train and headed down to Flinders Street. From there, we took a wee jaunt across the river to the Eureka Tower. Once we'd laughed ourselves stupid at how ridiculous the "look through this tube to see the thing we're talking about" viewers were (half of them need to be updated as new buildings are now in the way, and one was for the tram restaurant. Which moves...), we headed over to Crown to marvel at the hideous atrium. Sadly, I didn't time our visit properly so we didn't get to see the fountains in action.

From there, we hopped on the City Circle and up to Melbourne Central for a spot of lunch, before heading across to the State Library to ogle the La Trobe Reading Room and visit the exhibitions. Then we headed up to the Royal Exhibition Building, down to Elizabeth Street and Minotaur, and then home via Royal Arcade. The evening was spent playing Lego Pirates of the Caribbean on XBox because we're cool like that.

SATURDAY:
A slow start, followed by heading off to see Iron Man 3. It was completely phenomenal, and it's possible I ate an entire box of Junior Mints during the course of the film... That night was my proper 30th, which took place at a Mexican restaurant in the city with 22 of my bestest friends. It turned out to be happy hour when we arrived, which was very welcome news. It also led to one of the whopping TWO photos taken that night:

Yup. That happened. Also, mmmmmmm, daiquiri...

Dinner was delicious nachos, followed by fajitas, followed by churros. Om nom nom nom nom. Dinner was an absolute blast, and it meant I got to catch up with a bunch of people I don't get to see very often. Which, WIN. And because I'm totally geriatric now, we were home by just after midnight.

SUNDAY:
The morning started with a jaunt around the Tan, which took longer than it usually would on account of Little Miss A was with us, and she wanted to stop for hot chocolate/biscuits/a wander around the children's garden. After a wee sojourn at home with Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (because we're cool), we headed into the MCG to see Hawthorn play North Melbourne. I'm pretty sure Nikki was HORRIBLY confused, but it was a pretty great game. It was much less of a walkover than I'd expected, for starters! It pretty much came down to the final siren, so that was fun. Plus, there was a very vocal Hawthorn supporter behind us who kept yelling her advice to the players every couple of minutes. Hilarious.

MONDAY:
Nikki's flight back to Sydney wasn't until 8.45pm, so we headed into the city and went to the Hollywood costume exhibition at ACMI. It was AMAZING - definitely worth the money it cost to get in. It included costumes from The Wizard of Oz, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Braveheart, The Dark Knight Rises, Gone with the Wind, Gladiator, The Addams Family Values, Fight Club, Brokeback Mountain, The Queen, and Pirates of the Caribbean. And not costumes from the extras or anything. Costumes from the main characters - costumes that you recognise in a split second.

Personally, I thought the sound spill in the exhibition space could have been better controlled, but it was still complete and utterly incredible. Although Nikki and I did nearly die laughing when we realised that the mannequin they'd put Mel Gibson's Braveheart costume on had lady legs. How could we tell? First of all, they were very shapely. Secondly, they were doing that weird pose that's meant to make your legs look thinner but which mostly makes you look like you need to pee. You know, the one that actresses do on the red carpet all the time. Basically, picture Taylor Swift's legs on Mel Gibson's body. Yeeeeeeeah... We even went back to all the other male mannequins with exposed legs to check if they had lady legs too. And NOPE. Just Mel.

Then we had a wee spot of lunch on Degraves Street and headed for home, where we spent our last few hours of pretending we didn't have a million assignments to do playing Lego Pirates of the Caribbean. Because OBVIOUSLY. We also learnt that it's possible to kill someone through a jail cell door in the game. When you're a dog. (Sorry, Nikki.......)

So there you have it. I think I planned and executed a kickass 30th birthday pretty damned well, don't you?!

K xx

Awesome books and giant forks

Whoops. Apparently I'm the WORST at telling you guys all about my trip. Previously, Lauren and I saw lots of planes and spy gadgets, and ate delicious cupcakes, as well as discovering the world's weirdest salad and an escalator for shopping trolleys.

SO. The rest of the time in Washington was somewhat less exciting.

Monday: Site visits to big businesses, including Walmart. Except we went to the wrong one on account of no one bothered to give the bus driver the actual address of the store. And then we had to stand around in the stockroom for an hour while the manager talked about supply chain stuff and I tried not to sneeze because we were standing next to box after box of laundry detergent and cleaning products. And then shopping time. At Walmart. Because that was something we desperately needed?? Oh, and after Walmart, we were dropped at Pentagon City shopping centre, where I managed to get stuck in a toilet cubicle. And lose the subway station. And message half of 20SB to tell them about it. The general response was "BAHAHAHAHAHA".

Tuesday: The World Bank in the morning, which was surprisingly awesome, followed by a couple of hours of free time. The Coolest People You'll Ever Meet took advantage of the time to to a mad dash past the White House:

En route to the National Museum of American History. The exhibits were similar enough to 2011 that I was able to steer us around all the important things in under an hour, including the First Ladies dress collection, which was all Inauguration Ball gowns. But mostly the 'important things' consisted of this stuff:

Idina Menzel's Elpheba costume. *flail*

The original Kermit

This was a "Things you'd like to see on display" suggestion board.
I nearly died laughing from this suggestion.

George W. Bush jack in the box

HARRY POTTER'S ROBES. No, I don't know why they're
at the National Museum of American History.

The afternoon was the International Monetary Fund, which was interesting but a little too financial for my brain to be able to process.

Wednesday: The Coolest People You'll Ever Meet got to skip an entire day of boring business studies classes in favour of a behind the scenes tour at the Library of Congress. And it was awesome. Well. Except for the part where we got lost finding the room we were meant to be in. AND the part where we were in a rush so ate lunch (wraps bought at the food court of a subway station) standing on the steps, and the security guards were like ".......You know you can come inside, right?" But I digress. Back to the awesome:

ROMAN LAW SECTION OMG.

You cannot even begin to imagine how awesome this room smelled

And then that night, Agatha Goodkin and I went to a bar to see a Swedish band called The Amazing. They lived up to their name reasonably well, although people + loud music + not eating dinner until 11pm = Curmudgeonly Kirsti. On the plus side, Angry Orchard cider is freaking fabulous.

Thursday: A millionty years worth of classes. All of which were about marketing, and all of which made me nearly fall asleep a thousand times.

Friday: MORE classes, including four hours about leading change which had us all nearly slitting our wrists. Oh. Except for the video they made us watch about merging two companies that kept including weird shots of the interviewer nodding in response to what the interviewees were saying. It was rather like a bobble head, only weirder. And Agatha Goodkin and I kept giggling as a result. That night was our farewell dinner. We ended up at the same microbrewery where Kat and I spent our last night in DC in 2011. And I discovered that they had GIANT forks:

A full day of business lectures will make you look MUCH older than you are.
Also, HOW ENORMOUS IS THAT FORK?!

I also got laughed at by a bunch of the guys on the trip when I ordered a peach martini at the bar and discovered shortly thereafter that it tasted very much like cough syrup. It pretty much ended up like this:

Like they can talk. A bunch of us ended up at a bar just off U Street shortly thereafter, and the guys proceeded to throw back a round of Picklebacks. *shudder* (To those not in the know, a pickleback is a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of PICKLE BRINE) Needless to say, I bailed shortly thereafter.

Saturday: A "tour" of Georgetown, which basically consisted of "Here's the main building. Here's a classroom. We're done now." Agatha Goodkin and I were not even remotely impressed with the tour leader for that. Still, Georgetown is pretty:

Once our "tour" was finished, we had about three hours of free time. So while a bunch of the others went shopping, Agatha Goodkin and I went for a walk along the Potomac:

After a rather rushed lunch, we had three hours of class about culture and social responsibility, which mostly seemed to be about marketing to different ethnic groups. Which was weird, because I don't think that's really something that happens outside the US...

ANYWAY. It was actually pretty interesting, plus there were massive boxes of Georgetown Cupcakes for afternoon tea. WIN. The Key Lime was pretty good, and the chocolate² was kind of amazing, but neither of them compared to the flavours I tried at the Bethesda one.

The trip back to College Park was...interesting. Have you ever tried to hail a taxi in peak hour on a Friday night? I recommend not doing it. I ended up in a taxi with three of the guys, one of whom proceeded to torture the taxi driver by alternating between a British and an Australian accent to prove how different they were.

And thus we come to the end of the Washington segment of the trip. Next up, FLORIDA AND ALL THE FABULOUS FRIENDS EVER.

K xx