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I (quite embarrasingly) still have a whole load of my Enid Blyton's that I read as a kid. The Mallory Towers/St Clares boarding school series, which were really the books that got me hooked on reading so many moons ago. They're not valuable or even in anything approaching good condition, but I...

If you're anywhere near Petersfield in the UK, check out the "Petersfield Book Shop" - it's great. Rooms and rooms full of old and antique, second hand and brand new, a dedicated first editions section, piles and piles of stuff on the floor that they don't have shelf space for yet, and a great...

Hmmm. Book: Amy Hempel - Reasons To Live. Narrowly beating Norwegian Wood and Mockingbird. Film: not much of a film person. Probably The Glenn Miller Story. I like Novella's idea of a home movie though, so maybe the incredibly silly movie my friends and I made of ourselves this Christmas...

Just finished Brady Udall's "The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint". Liked it *alot*. Bit of a hurried ending, I thought, but the fact that it's got one of the best opening lines I've read in a long time kind of made up for that. Very good stuff indeed.

Wow, must've been good then ;) That's pretty much what I do, Hatter. Did it recently with a TC Boyle - "The Tortilla Curtain". I guess it just wasn't holding my attention enough to keep me reading, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily bad - it's probably filed under "go back and take...

I'm a lapsed ex-smoker, currently still smoking but wanting badly to give up. It was only when I quit that I realised how truly revolting my smoking had been for everyone around me, and since then my views on smoking in public have changed a bit. Most smokers I know talk about the "smoker's...

Two questions: 1. Am I too new here to dive into nominating a book? (hope not, this is something I'd really love to participate in) 2. Does it have to be available in paperback for reasons of cost, etc? Assuming the answer to both is no, I'd nominate Murakami's newest - "Kafka On The...

*waves shyly* - I am! About two thirds of the way through The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint - Brady Udall. Fantastically good.

My current non-fiction read is A.N Wilson's "The Victorians" - I'm slowwwwly getting through it in addition to some other stuff. "London - The Biography" - Peter Ackroyd, is next in the pile. I'm insanely fascinated with anything from the Victorian period, especially Victorian London, so any...

I'm tempted to ask you how it ends, but I'm not sure I really want to know :D I can't quite put my finger on what I disliked so much about this book, it started off well enough, but I started having doubts when the green astronauts made their appearance...I'm all for a dose of "suspension...

Two recently come to mind: Coupland's "Generation X". I really, really tried to like this book because I was impressed with his other work, and persevered as long as I could with it. I made it to about 50 pages from the end and gave up when I realised I didn't actually care what happened to...

I'm researching Murakami a bit. I've just ordered Jay Rubin's "Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words" in an effort to find out a bit more about him. I would have read it already, but there's a bit of a backlog at Amazon, apparently. Anyway... Exactly the reason I'm inspired to find out...

Halo, I'm confused too, and I'm living it :D Thanks for the warm welcomes, folks. Liking it here already - hopefully I'll be able to contribute something useful from time to time ;)

Rogue, that was one of the things that stuck in my head about Choke - ("Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it" is the one that I remember) - the only Palahniuk I've read so far and really enjoyed, so at some point I'll look into his other offerings. I've had Invisible Monsters...

I'd like to look further into Faulkner, after making the pretty bad mistake of starting my venture into his work with "The Sound and the Fury." Obviously brilliant, but hard going for a first-time-Faulkner reader. Also keep meaning to read Poe, and Hemingway, but somehow never manage to get...

Novella, thanks for the recommendations. Much appreciated! Banana Yoshimoto is someone I'm just starting to look into, so it seems as if I may be on the right track. Thanks again, L2

The same (but slightly different) here: I usually look out a short story collection when I hit a dry spell. I go through periodic episodes of having the attention span of a gnat, and the change of pace from a novel to a short story often helps. For one, they get me "thinking". Something like...

I was introduced to Bookcrossing by a friend some time ago. I've only released one book so far - a copy of "Whatever Love Means" by David Baddiel, which I knew I was never going to read again. I left it under a Christmas tree at in the arrivals lounge at Heathrow airport when I went to pick up a...

Verrrry difficult to narrow it down to just 5. My current list, in no particular order: "Reasons To Live" - Amy Hempel "To Kill A Mockingbird" - Harper Lee "The Elephant Man and Other Reminicences" - Sir Frederick Treves "Norwegian Wood" - Haruki Murakami "The Picture of Dorian Gray" -...

Thanks for the welcomes! I haven't got to "Wind Up Bird Chronicle" yet - it's still in the TBR pile, but I'm looking forward to it. So much to read, so little time...