Tales of a Scorched Earth: STILL in Leamington!!

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

STILL in Leamington!!

Hmmm... one week on and we're still here!?

Waiting to exchange contracts on simon's house sale and ultimately the completion date. Then (and only then) can we finally start the ball rolling for getting the tickets finalised and our actual leaving date... it's frustrating as it seems we've been leaving "in two weeks" now for months...!?

Hey ho! Regardless of this minor hiccup we are now officially living out of our backpacks - having almost completed packing the last remnants of our 'normal' clothes that we've had left over from our intial storage push - the final storage crate arrives on Thursday (the day after tomorrow) and then all we should have is our backpacks and the belongings we'll be spending our year travelling with...

So close, and yet so far.

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RTW Reading Club 2007 -

1. Andrew Collins - "Where did it all go right - Growing up in the 70's" - Biographic story of growing up in a 70's provincial town england (northampton as it happens), I enjoyed it - Sarah discarded it after a few pages... It's a boy thing maybe, talking about Action Men, Nutty Bars, Walnut Whips, Beezer, Dandy, Punk Rock and the Poseidon Adventure - As my mum always used to say "You know you're getting old when you start to reminisce" and this book (for me anyway) certainly pushed those buttons. 2. Louis de Berniers - "Senior Vivo and the Coca Lord" - Third in the trilogy set in a fictitious South American Country. Superb book. I loved the first one, didn't quite manage to finish the second but it enjoyed it anyway and this one rounds of the series nicely. Follows the progress of a College Lecturer (Senior Vivo) who manages to stir the wrath of one of the biggest cocaine barons in South America by just writing letters to a newspaper... It manages to be humorous all the way through whilst simultaneously dealing with gangster violence, retribution and so on... Funny, Sad, Whimsical, Lovely, Horrific, Magical are all words suited to describe this book. If you haven't read it... then read the others first - you won't regret it. 3. Gregory David Roberts - "Shantaram" - Just over Halfway and thanks to Andy (west') for the tip... excellent read so far... perfect location to read it too... particularly as it's set in Bombay and mentions all the places we've seen and been to... with the exception of the Prison... we didn't go there, thankfully. I'll be sad to finish it. Apparently it's been turned into a film... possibly with Johnny Depp (Sarah will be pleased) Finished it now and I have to say it was really rather good... made me laugh, made me cry and made my think too... excellent holiday read - especially whilst in India. 4. PADI - Adventure diver - yeah... not exactly the most thrilling of books but necessary to pass the advanced diving course... 12 different fields of diving to choose from, pick 5, learn them, do the exams, do the practicles... and hey presto you're advanced... all seems a little too easy. But seriously folks, must reading if you want to go deep. 5. Stephen Hawkings universe - This is brain expanding stuff - not that I'm willing to say I understand it all, but certainly puts a different perspective on things. Dealing with everything from relativity, Black holes, Mini Black holes, Event Horizons, Singularities, Exploding Black holes, Bubble Universe Theories, Quantum mechanics, quarks, neutrinos, and all those other iddy biddy particle things... oh and a bit on God too! Downside being is that it's 20 years old now and more than likely to be outdated in current thinking... or maybe not. If you like having your brain twisted inside out then this is the one for you. Otherwise steer well clear. 6. Jung Chang "Wild Swans" - Historical, thought provoking account of the traumatic upheaval of China throughout the 20th century. Seen through the eyes of one family across 3 generations of it's women; the book is a stunning insight into a country in crisis - the ridiculousness of the political crusade of Chairman Mao and the struggle the society had with him and each other leading ultimately to a total breakdown of millennial old social structures, traditions and values and on to a state sponsored anarchic regime. An insight into a Social Suicide which should be a lesson for us all. It was certainly an eye opener. 7. David Mitchell "Black Swan Green" - Sentimental and often nostalgic story of a young boy heading into those awkward teenage years, set in a small village to the Malvern Hills at the start of the 80's... sounds familiar? Well, seeing that he credits Andrew Collins in his list at the back suggest he may have got some influence from the first book I read from this trip... difference being this is a novel, not reality - however, Sarah hated this and I sort of enjoyed it... probably for the same reasons I liked growing up in the 70's - the nostalgia - but Sarah loathed what she referred to as constant "Era dropping" - she may have a point - but maybe she's just a little too young to remember? :P 8. Patrick Suskind "Perfume" - Subtitled "The Story of a Murderer", may give away the contents of this aromatic read. I really enjoyed this, very flowery, pungent language as befitting a book about smells. Great story, if perhaps a little far fetched at some points - fatalistic to the extreme and quite disturbing too. I'd be interested to see how they did it as a movie... 9. David Mitchell "Number 9 Dream" - ooh how bizarre, my ninth book is called number 9 dream.. how peculiar? This is one of David attempts at being clever, whilst enjoyable to a point it ultimately fails to deliver. Which was a shame as I enjoyed reading it but felt after a while it got a little lost, with a but too many sub plots that became a little self indulgent... I can certainly see where he was going with this, but I feel "Cloud Atlas" was more accomplished. 10. "The Damage Done" - I forget who wrote this, but essentially it's a true story about an Ozzy guy who gets caught running class A drugs to and from Thailand to Oz and suffers a great deal whilst in various penal establishments in Thailand. Sold to the many young and naive backpackers in Thailand as a warning perhaps... which is bizarre because it highlights in extreme detail the atrocious conditions prisoners are kept in. Certainly a showcase perhaps for human rights campaigners... 11. DBP Pierre "Vernon God Little" - A really good read, a well written modern satirical take on the US legal system and TV media and how they behave during a tragedy involving school kids and guns... similar in essence to the topics dealt with in Natural Born Killers but without the blood and random violence. Thumbs Up. 12. Philip Reeve "Mortal Engines" - Award winning teenage fiction. First part in a series of four books. Set x-many years into the future after man nearly destroyed itself in some big war that left the world ravaged... yadda yadda yadda... yeah, it's the same old derivative backstory but then it IS kids fiction so we can excuse that... it's what comes next that's great imaginative stuff - humanity broken down into a pot rivetted collection of nomadic steam powered cities that have an almost animalistic life in themselves using the "Municipal Darwinism" principle - lol - quality! Anyway... falling firmly between the potter books and the dark material trilogy (in terms of writing style) a must read for those who like that sort of thing... oh... and the cover arts nice too... :) 13. James Joyce "Dubliners" - Not quite finished this yet but I'm getting there... bit of a departure from 21st century teen fiction I know - but, well you've gotta stretch yourself - I was expecting to be flummoxed by this TBH and whilst occasionally the language, rhythm and style does lose me, on the whole it's a really nice read... kind of like, Van Morrison reading Alan Bennett to Father Ted. "Hoy dare... Luk Father! therez a cracker under your sofa... so there is. Would ye loik a cup o tea? go awn...!" ... I'm sure Joyce is rolling in his grave... and no... I haven't got Ulysses lined up for me 14th choice...

Tales of a Scorched Earth

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

STILL in Leamington!!

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RTW Reading Club 2007 -

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