Three Books

Holly's book

David's book

Wave - Inspired by Maggie Hambling

The Book of the Dragonborn

For The King, Dovahkiin

for the sake of Skyrim

for our land, for our home

for Hrothgar's blood

for the Nords, for the Gods

for the sole single son

Dovahkiin, our king

Will dawn with fire!

Book Meme - Chapter Three

Taken at the brilliant Imagine Books, Weymouth

 Chapter Three 

 Favourite Series

From the shelves in Compass Books, Dartmouth

 The Hornblower books by C.S. Forester

Admittedly, I haven’t quite finished this series yet, but I would say it is one of my favourites. I always want to read on after I have finished the last word – read the next book, to be at sea again.

The Hornblower series is my favourite. It’s special to me because it’s about the sea, and I love every swash-buckling second of Forester’s prose, the humanity, the conscience of the characters. Hornblower is a solid man, but at the same time more human with every book he appears in.

Here is a review I wrote for Goodreads about the latest Hornblower book I read, The Happy Return:

Another winner from Forester. His first Hornblower book is presented with flair and compassion. Hornblower has never been such a human in the skin of an other-worldly entity – harsh, but only because he needs to succeed, for others, as well as himself – it is after all, his duty: ‘They love him not for anything he does or says, but for what he is.’ (p.212, Bush)
Beneath his lion like front he faces as much insecurity as the next man – the thought of mutilation – or indeed, of hair-loss – makes him sick. Forester guides the reader through Hornblower’s physical and mental struggles at sea on the Lydia. The battle scenes are, heart pounding episodes which made me smile with the thrill: the more emotional scenes and information at the end of the book are just as moving as the destruction of a ship, the blood running on the decks.
As always, there is humour to be found among the canon shot and splinters – ‘Almost at his feet lay young Clay, sprawled upon the deck, but Clay had no head. [Hornblower] noted this as an interesting phenomenon.’
Forester likes to include snippets of the century they were in and this lends to a deeper and more believable narrative: ‘There was a madman called Wordsworth of whose revolutionary opinions in literature Hornblower had heard with a vague horror.’
Again, I may be biased, but this book was spectacular, and I cannot wait until I am back at sea with Horatio Hornblower.

Reading Forester is something I enjoy thoroughly – to be at sea with Hornblower again is all I think about, when I’m missing the Island and haven’t seen the island since Christmas.

It is also a fantastic television series, with the ever so tasty Ioan Gruffudd. I imagine Gruffudd’s Hornblower when I read the books, except that he’s a lot more stern, hard and mean within the pages.

Writing like this really makes you appreciate the amount of work and dedication that goes into a series. Hornblower is a fantastic representation of a man who follows his duty. I haven’t read other naval historical fiction, but after reading about Hornblower’s adventures, I can’t see how a man like William Lawrence, of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, was taken seriously as a naval captain during the Napoleonic wars.

I love Hornblower so much I was even considering writing about it for my final year dissertation.

There are several series I have considered for this chapter, including the obvious Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Another fantastic series, in which I only have one book left, is Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines. The sheer amount of imagination is truly fantastic, and although the books are aimed at children, adult themes resonate throughout.

Any series you think I should get into?

Instead of eating and finishing an assessment, I...

....tried my hand at Japanese style bookbinding.

Japanese bookbinding uses 'stab sewing' to bind single leaves together. It can be quite decorative. (See end of post)

Now, I'm terribly aware that this is probably the messiest thing you've seen me post - but I did make it out of scrap paper. (From print outs from my third year project, coincidentally, about books) It also has fluorescent orange endpapers. *Shiver*

But I'm pretty pleased with the result, and the sewing wasn't as complicated as I thought it would be.

I made a right mess with the beginning and start knot. But I was practising a new technique - never intending to make things completely perfect.

 

The only thing with sewing like this is that, although it looks great, you do lose quite a lot of margin, and can only open it a certain amount without bending the board too much.

Here are some examples of neater and quite frankly beautiful books sewed in the Japanese style. 

Japanese Journal by aalenfae

Japanese exercise books by nekogriz

handmade book 25 by darkest-red

 

Maybe I could bind my own dissertation like this....(!)

...now to cook some dinner!

Spoilers

I love Doctor Who, and when I saw River Song’s journal I knew I just had to re-create it.

http://www.onecobble.com/2011/09/23/making-river-songs-journal/

 

Last summer I was very lucky to receive a whole load of bookbinding materials from Roger Trise. Included with all the tools and things (see post 'A bookbinder's cigar box') I got some small rolls of book-cloth. I used the most beaten up and ‘Tardis blue’ cloth form the bunch and tried to make something that resembles River’s journal of Spoilers. I also used some of the paper that Roger gave me.

I made the book and cover in the normal way, and then cut out the elements for the ‘Tardis’ effect from thin card, gluing them on. Here is a template I used:

http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=2514.0

 

Then I glued the book-cloth over the top, pressing my bone folder into all the grooves.

After that, I got a charcoal pencil and did some outlining in black. Then I sanded down some areas for more of a 'worn' effect.

The charcoal kept on coming off on my hand, so I covered the whole thing in glue, which as well as making it shiny, helps to keep it strong.

For endpapers I bought a dove-grey colour, and used a light blue ribbon as bookmark.

This was also the first time I have used headbands, and adding them to the spine immediately made the book look a lot more neat and professional than any of my others.

I completed the book by adding a book plate and tying it with red ribbon.

I made it for my friend, Abbie, who loves Doctor Who. She received the package on her birthday. When she finally opened it after a few tantalizing hours after she told me she’d got it but hadn’t opened it she said that she ‘squealed’ and thought it was amazing.

I am ridiculously proud of this. Although it’s not perfect, at least Abbie still knew what it was meant to be!

This has been the first time I have used pretty much everything that a bookbinder should use, and it was really fun!

 Next project? 

I have some black book-cloth. So naturally, I'm thinking something like this:

http://gamerant.com/elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-best-disappointment-sieg-66060/

Book Meme – Chapter Two

A Book You’ve Read More Than Three Times


Unfortunately, the only books I have read more than three times are books that got me through school and angsty teenage years. They include possibly every book by Michael Morpurgo, Anthony Horrowitz, and J.K. Rowling. I haven’t had the time to read the more ‘adult’ books on my shelves (a considerably small selection) over again, but there is a reason why I do keep them. I keep them because they are good enough to be read again, and I will enjoy them again. My outlook on life may have changed since the time I first read them. I may understand something that my younger self didn’t.

There are books I haven’t touched or considered looking at again – the charity shop cheap fantasies, the books that actually belong to my brother. I would quite like to read T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain again. This was really an incredible read, and I loved every minute of it.

    
Shamefully, I would like to re-visit Stephanie Meyer – because I read her before everyone else did, and I want to see if university has actually taught me anything about bad writers. Heck, if I hate them, maybe I can make them into pretty book art. 

I think I’ve read this book more than three times. Well, three times, at least.

Tamar by Mal Peet

 
 I haven’t read this book in an awfully long time, but I remember loving every second of it. It was my first WWII story that wasn’t Michael Morpurgo, and although aimed at young-adults, it could very well fit into the adult section in a bookshop, too. I have a strange fascination for the world wars, heightened even more by watching War Horse (now there’s a book I’ve read about twenty times!) and I’m currently chugging my way through Birdsong. I intend to read Tamar again, over and over and over.

 



Other books on my shelves I want to re-read:

·        Elizabeth Chadwick – The Greatest Knight

·        Helen Dumore – The Siege

·        Holly Black – Tithe

·        Alison Croggon – The Pelinor Quartet

·        Eleanor Updale – Montmorency Quartet

·        Charles Dickens – Great Expectations

·        Hugh Cook – The Wizards and the Warriors

·        Vikas Swarup – Q&A

·        Ann Halam – Siberia

·        Eva Ibbotson – Journey to the River Sea

·        Elizabeth Golding - The Little White Horse

Basically, all of these:

From June 2011 - My shelves change round a hell of a lot so some of these books aren't there any more - oh, and there's no space on the ends, either.

Book Meme - Chapter One

(Perhaps shamelessly stolen from A GuysMoleskine Notebook, who maybe stole it from Fat Books, Thin Women.)

Chapter One – The Best Book You Read Last Year

This seems to be an incredibly suitable starting place, what with it being barely ten days into 2012 and all.

I started just after Christmas to record books read in my Moleskine Book Journal, and I have a feeling that it’s going to help me a lot with remembering all the books I read. Thanks to it’s always useful ‘comments’ and ‘rating’ spaces to fill out, I am hoping these blog posts will be interesting and will help me to really think about books in a critical way, perhaps helping me with my own writing.

Out of the fifty-three books (I’m not sure if this is entirely accurate, but numbers scare me) I read in 2011, three books got a pitiful two and a half stars. Ten books got three stars, and six were almost good with three and a half. Eleven books were brilliant (four stars), and twelve books at four and a half stars were almost perfect. Ten books out of fifty-three have five little stars filled in on their pages:

Frederick Harrison - A Book about Books

C.S. Forester - Hornblower and the Hotspur

C.S. Forester - The Happy Return

Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita

Ian Fleming - Live and Let Die

Greg Keyes - Lord of Souls

Winifred Watson - Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Katherine Howe - The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

Naomi Novik - Temeraire

Naomi Novik - Temeraire – Throne of Jade

As is clear from the list, I thoroughly enjoy historical and fantasy novels. Sometimes, even both at the same time (Temeraire). I even had an ultimate geek out when I read Lord of Souls, a novel tied into my favourite gaming universe.  Watson and Fleming appeal to the side of me that wants to live in an age of jazzy femme fatales and dangerous, dashing men in tuxes. Occasionally I wander off the track and read those novels that as an English student, or even, an English speaking person, you just have to read – Lolita was stunning. I can remember reading it in my bunk on the boat at Easter.  

Most of these books are your typical genre fiction, things I can get easily sucked into and enjoy every minute of. Lolita was different because of the disturbing elements, but I found that I respected Nabokov’s fine writing all the more because of this.

In a similar way, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was unlike anything I had read before. It is written in the perfectly delightful style of a lady's war time book. 

‘Ugh!’ thought Miss Pettigrew, disappointed. ‘Why men waste

 money getting drunk on that when they can get a really cheap

        palatable drink like lemon squash...’ 

Watson, Winifred, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

I brought the best book I read last year at Bayntuns, second hand, with the War Economy Standard binding for £4. The smell of the second-hand book basement still clings onto it, mixed in with the potentiality of the binding of new books. It was the first book I dared to buy at this imposing shop. I walked out of Bayntuns proudly with my purchase in a paper bag under my arm. It is non-fiction, and I very rarely read non-fiction. I really enjoyed it and found pleasure in the facts and the prose made the finishing of the book all the more sweet. I feel that I got the most out of this book than any other on the list, as it has inspired my projects at university this year and formed the basis of my research into books, and ultimately my passion for them. This is perhaps why A Book About Books by Frederick Harrison was the best book I read last year, although Miss Pettigrew comes a close second.