Book failure...

Started Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with high expectations...got about 12 pages into it and gave up. Just wasn't my cup of tea, despite being a huge Austen fan and loving zombies!!

An Autumn Evening by Lucy Maud Montgomery

An Autumn Evening

Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow
And wake among the harps of leafless trees
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies.

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar,
And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blue
In the southwest glimmers a great gold star
Above the darkening druid glens of fir
Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir.

And so I wander through the shadows still,
And look and listen with a rapt delight,
Pausing again and yet again at will
To drink the elusive beauty of the night,
Until my soul is filled, as some deep cup,
That with divine enchantment is brimmed up.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Memory

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Aldous Huxley

Blogging absence

OK - so I haven't blogged for ages...
I've stopped doing challenges as they are driving me insane!
I'm also stopping doing individual book reviews, as I just haven't got the time!!

So ... new plan...
Monday literary quote - keep
Friday poem - keep
Sunday sonnet - keep
Saturday - weekly round up and review of books I really like!

Will add books read recently later today!!

The Dead by Sylvia Plath

The Dead

Revolving in oval loops of solar speed,
Couched in cauls of clay as in holy robes,
Dead men render love and war no heed,
Lulled in the ample womb of the full-tilt globe.

No spiritual Caesars are these dead;
They want no proud paternal kingdom come;
And when at last they blunder into bed
World-wrecked, they seek only oblivion.

Rolled round with goodly loam and cradled deep,
These bone shanks will not wake immaculate
To trumpet-toppling dawn of doomstruck day :
They loll forever in colossal sleep;
Nor can God's stern, shocked angels cry them up
From their fond, final, infamous decay.

Sylvia Plath

Medea and Other Plays : Medea; Hecabe; Electra by Euripides

Medea and Other Plays : Medea; Hecabe; Electra by Euripides

Genre: poet plays - classic Greek
Rating: Excellent *****

I'd forgotten how much I loved reading Greek tragedies until I re picked up this book to read.
Loved Medea the best - the story of Jason's spurred wife and mooter of his two sons...how she enacts revenge on him and all those who have wronged her.

As a feminist I'm on her side!!!

'These plays show Euripides transforming the awesome figures of Greek mythology into recognizable, fallible human beings.'

Plays 2010: 5
Challenges: Great Books Challenge 2010,

A thousand Suns - Alex Scarrow

A Thousand Suns by Alex Scarrow

Genre: fiction
Rating: Very Good ****

Synopsis:

Photographic journalist Chris Roland is sent to cover the story of a WW2 American B17 bomber plane discovered off the coast of the USA

What he discovers is not what he expected.
Chris finds himself embroiled in a historic conspiracy that the US have tried to keep under wraps.
Dead bodies, disappearing locals after the war, and a WW2 plot by Hitler to go ahead with his atomic programme, put his life at risk.... (it's difficult not to give the plot away too much here).

My thoughts:
Really good book using actual historical evidence of Germany's atomic programme to cleverly weave a plot of events that could potentially have occurred.
Once again well researched, written with style and a convincing plot.
Characters are believable and the WW2 Germany pilots are engaging - your sympathies lie with them.

Recommended.

novels 2010: 76
Challenges: Support your local Library reading challenge 2010, Thriller and Suspense Challenge 2010,