Have you ever had a book recommended to you - or read a book recommendation somewhere - and thought "I should totally read that one day?"
This week's Reading Challenge was to read A book someone else recommended, and we've rustled up a few that were recommended to us. But would we recommend them to you? Read on to find out.
Brenda Carter read Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook: Little Exercises for an Intuitive Life, by Gill Hasson.
A recommendation hot off the press is the ebook Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook : Little Exercises for an Intuitive Life by Gill Hasson. It’s easy to become stressed and even overwhelmed by life’s demands, concerns and commitments. Emotional intelligence is all about using your emotions to inform your thinking and using your thoughts to understand and manage your emotions.
The more in touch you are with your own feelings, the more able you are to understand and relate effectively to others. Developing your emotional intelligence can not only help you manage difficult situations and live a happier life, it can also help you engage the ‘feel good’ emotions to inspire and motivate others.
Emotional intelligence pocketbook is a helpful read for so many reasons. At only 120 pages and available 24/7, it’s a good one to dip into when you or others need a lift.
Scott Dale read Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Celine.
I was too slow with this novel for last week’s true story Reading Challenge. Luckily it fits in with this week’s challenge of a book recommended by someone else. In this case the book was actually recommended by Charles Bukowski, many years ago. No, not in person, I did not meet “Hank”.
I’ll start by being a little over the top – although it is true. Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote Journey to the End of the Night (840 CEL 2C VOY) and changed French literature forever. The influence of Celine’s novel went far beyond France itself, influencing writers all over the world.
I want to say that I do not endorse the artist as a person by reading their work (you can find out why one might want to use this qualifier by researching Celine's politics).
This book is not for everyone (but it is for me).
Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit) is a novel that has been labelled as emetic (I had to look it up), vulgar and as a masterpiece. The story follows the travels of the largely autobiographical antihero, Bardamu, from the fighting in the First World War, to colonial Africa, the United Sates and Paris. Along the way we hear much obscenity and much of what is wrong in the world. There is not much sign of hope or goodness from people and the systems and cities they create.
Ok, this is a dark book – the journey is to the end of the night, not toward a new day or to the light. Whatever followed later with the author, he seemed to revile all peoples equally in this book. But I enjoyed this journey. Yes, you will get your hands dirty along the way but there is a lot of humour (dark, of course) and insight amongst the muck and ellipses.
Sharon Bryan read Playing Beatie Bow, by Ruth Park.
This is another book that was recommended to me by a teacher back when I was in school (you can read about the other one I've reviewed here).
Actually, the same teacher recommended it to me more than once. I have to admit, though, that I judged it by it's cover and decided it didn't look like my kind of book. And then, sometime later, I read another book by Ruth Park - Poor Man's Orange. That book didn't exactly fill me with a burning desire to go out and read Park's other works. Mostly, it just made me grateful I live in a time and place where I don't have to douse my bed with kerosene on a semi-regular basis to get rid of bed bugs.
So, yes, Playing Beatie Bow was a long time coming. And I have to say it's something I really would have enjoyed reading back when I was in school, so my teacher was right. This, by the way, was the same teacher who also recommended Seven Little Australians, so I really should have listened to her more often.
The book features a teenage girl called Abigail (although that's not her real name) who finds herself involved in a playground game gone horribly wrong, in a most unexpected fashion. While babysitting her neighbour’s kids, she notices a strange young girl watching the children playing a spooky game called “Beatie Bow”. Abigail follows the girl and ends up 110 years in the past.
Is it a ghost story? A fairy story? A time-travel adventure? All of the above? You’ll have to read the book to find out. In doing so, you’ll learn a thing or two about working class Victorians in Sydney in the 1870s. Entertaining and informative!
This week's Reading Challenge was to read A book someone else recommended, and we've rustled up a few that were recommended to us. But would we recommend them to you? Read on to find out.
Brenda Carter read Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook: Little Exercises for an Intuitive Life, by Gill Hasson.
The more in touch you are with your own feelings, the more able you are to understand and relate effectively to others. Developing your emotional intelligence can not only help you manage difficult situations and live a happier life, it can also help you engage the ‘feel good’ emotions to inspire and motivate others.
Emotional intelligence pocketbook is a helpful read for so many reasons. At only 120 pages and available 24/7, it’s a good one to dip into when you or others need a lift.
Scott Dale read Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Celine.
I’ll start by being a little over the top – although it is true. Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote Journey to the End of the Night (840 CEL 2C VOY) and changed French literature forever. The influence of Celine’s novel went far beyond France itself, influencing writers all over the world.
I want to say that I do not endorse the artist as a person by reading their work (you can find out why one might want to use this qualifier by researching Celine's politics).
This book is not for everyone (but it is for me).
Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit) is a novel that has been labelled as emetic (I had to look it up), vulgar and as a masterpiece. The story follows the travels of the largely autobiographical antihero, Bardamu, from the fighting in the First World War, to colonial Africa, the United Sates and Paris. Along the way we hear much obscenity and much of what is wrong in the world. There is not much sign of hope or goodness from people and the systems and cities they create.
Ok, this is a dark book – the journey is to the end of the night, not toward a new day or to the light. Whatever followed later with the author, he seemed to revile all peoples equally in this book. But I enjoyed this journey. Yes, you will get your hands dirty along the way but there is a lot of humour (dark, of course) and insight amongst the muck and ellipses.
Sharon Bryan read Playing Beatie Bow, by Ruth Park.
Actually, the same teacher recommended it to me more than once. I have to admit, though, that I judged it by it's cover and decided it didn't look like my kind of book. And then, sometime later, I read another book by Ruth Park - Poor Man's Orange. That book didn't exactly fill me with a burning desire to go out and read Park's other works. Mostly, it just made me grateful I live in a time and place where I don't have to douse my bed with kerosene on a semi-regular basis to get rid of bed bugs.
So, yes, Playing Beatie Bow was a long time coming. And I have to say it's something I really would have enjoyed reading back when I was in school, so my teacher was right. This, by the way, was the same teacher who also recommended Seven Little Australians, so I really should have listened to her more often.
The book features a teenage girl called Abigail (although that's not her real name) who finds herself involved in a playground game gone horribly wrong, in a most unexpected fashion. While babysitting her neighbour’s kids, she notices a strange young girl watching the children playing a spooky game called “Beatie Bow”. Abigail follows the girl and ends up 110 years in the past.
Is it a ghost story? A fairy story? A time-travel adventure? All of the above? You’ll have to read the book to find out. In doing so, you’ll learn a thing or two about working class Victorians in Sydney in the 1870s. Entertaining and informative!
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