by Lemony Snicket

First up we listened to The Hostile Hospital on tape (read by Tim Curry – very very very clever man – if ever you see a tape read by him, grab it!)

It was different to anything we’d read before. Strange, unusual, weird, quirky.
Fairly well-developed, if stereotypical, characters.
Storyline with interesting twists and turns.
Gripping….to the point that longwinded sidetracks, although often amusing, were somewhat frustrating, coz we just wanted to know What Happened Next. Would not omit the sidetracks. They helped build the suspense.
Humour that appeals to an adult audience. The most important job at the hospital is paperwork! That’s just one (and not the best) example that springs to mind. Actually, there were a number of times that the 12 and 13 year olds gave me knowing smiles as little jokes went over the heads of younger listeners!
My favourite aspect of the book was the way he plays with language. And can I think of an example off the top of my head? Not without ruining it. His explanation about why “no news is good news” is a bad philosophy was particularly priceless. And why the children did not *hop* into the car.

So when we reached the end of this book, we were pleased the library had had two on the shelves and we could delve straight into the second. (By the way, we listened to Book the Eighth first, and Book the Fifth second, with no ill effect).

By halfway through The Austere Academy, Snicket’s style was feeling somewhat repetitive. We could anticipate when he was going to say “By which she probably meant…” and other such sayings. What kept our attention with this particular tape was the fact that “Lemony Snicket” himself was reading it and it was most fascinating to hear exactly how the author intended for his work to be read. When we got to the end of the tape we were not busting to rush out and find the whole series, we do not feel compelled to listen to them from beginning to end in chronological order. However, if we come across one in a secondhand bookshop in the back of beyond sometime in the next twelve months, we’ll pick it up and share a chuckle or two.

Having only read two of the books so far, it may be too premature to award any stars, but I suspect it will be five stars for the first book you read and three stars thereafter.

Romeo and Juliet retold by Leon Garfield, read by Clare Higgins.
Also on the tapes are a plot summary, an Introduction to Shakespeare essay and an interesting piece pointing out Shakespeare-isms we still use today. 

If the others in the series (Hamlet, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night) are anywhere near approaching the quality of this one, I would be confident in calling this entire series an excellent introduction to the works of Shakespeare.
We had already read Charles and Mary Lamb’s retellings and a number of other less impressive ones. Garfield’s Romeo and Juliet has fast become a favourite.

The jury is out on whether this gets three or five stars!

Waking up in a friend’s bed on Saturday morning (next to my darling hubby, while friend slept with her own hubby on the futon in the lounge – cool friend, eh), I had to take a peek into the books on her headboard shelf. A couple of chapters of each. And definitely will return to all of them if I can find them.

A Year in Provence. forgotten the author already. written in the 70s I think.

Bono on Bono. not written by Bono though.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves. now was there a comma in the title or not? seriously hilarious book.
Said friend warned you’d either love it or hate it. “Why would you hate it?” I wanted to know. “If you didn’t get it.” Within a couple of sentences I understood what she meant and she was right. I fell headlong into the *loved it* category. If only the weekend had been longer. Friend might have managed to read the whole thing out to me

But she read giant portions of Blue Like Jazz too. That resonated with me as well. At least, the bits she read out did. Raw honesty. Again, no author in my brain. Maybe Don Someone.

Packing up my nemesis-paper-pile last night, I happened upon a stack of folders and notebooks with our read-aloud records from quite a few years ago. They found themselves gently laid to momentary rest in a box with the promise of being resurrected and recorded in blogland when we return from our out-of-book-experiences over the next year.

I still cling to the hope that I will get last month’s readings up before we leave…and at the rate we are going, this month’s will not take long to record at all………we have spent our reading hours packing boxes! Hopefully as we reach each country we have read about, I’ll finally get round to writing the reviews of the corresponding books. That’s a hope, not a promise

J13 and J12 spent a good portion of time earlier this year writing an episode of Robin Hood for the BBC, not that the BBC know anything about it

I decided the limited edition of four copies, each bound by hand, deserved a mention on this here very quiet blog! If you would like to read the text, you can find it by clicking right here.

Welcome to our Self-Directed Studies guidelines that we have put together for ourselves and the children. No reading today….but definitely well on the way to getting an education!

Last month we read nearly seventeen thousand books between us…….

pinch and a punch for the first of the month….it’s April Fools Day!

We didn’t read excessively last month, focussing instead on a range of other activities, but we did churn through a few more books, which are listed here.

informal thoughts recorded elsewhere (keeping up my desire to write every day)

The Beautiful Country, a movie set in Vietnam and the US

Hotel Rwanda, no guesses for the setting of this one

Also watched Miss Potter….a beautiful stirring artistic biographical movie incorporating a number of her stories, capturing wonderful scenery, authentic costumes and a dash of political comment thrown in for good measure. Totally recommended.

it’s been a very non-booky week

we’ve planned and mostly organised a silent auction

we’ve made a couple of books

we’ve been part of the ultimate blog party (had to read for that!!)

we’ve played with the new collage creator programme

we’ve kept everyone fed and generally clean

we’ve sorted the winter clothes and made all necessary purchases apart from two pairs of shoes – all up $60, not too bad eh!

we’ve taken two loads of *stuff* to the sallies

we’ve started a major production run of flower presses

i’ve enjoyed a too-short portion of The Lonesome Gods each evening before bed

we’ve bigtime overhauled the vege garden

but we haven’t read any chapter books aloud
and we’ve missed it