Tag: memes

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Worlds I’d Never Want to Live In

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Top Ten Tuesday new

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

  • Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
  • Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
  • Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
  • Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Bookish Worlds I’d Want To/Never Want To Live In.  There are certainly some fictional worlds created by authors that I’d never want to live in.   Click on the title to read my review of the book description on Goodreads.

The Rain Never Came by Lachlan Walter – In a thirsty, drought-stricken Australia, some individuals resist forced evacuation by the government to less affected areas.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee – Tom Robinson, a black man, is accused of assaulting a white girl against a backdrop of racial tension.

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens – In one of many story lines, financier Mr Merdle’s fraudulent activities bring about a banking collapse.

Stranger by David Bergen – The brutal reality of the dangers faced by desperate people trying to enter the United States illegally via a kind of modern day ‘underground railway’, which operates by virtue of bribes and officials who look the other way, but whose organisers have no regard for the safety of the people they transport.

Oliver Loving by Stefan Merrill Block –  One warm, West Texas November night, a shy boy named Oliver Loving joins his classmates at Bliss County Day School’s annual dance.  But as the music plays, a troubled young man sneaks in through the school’s back door. The dire choices this man makes that evening will tear the town of Bliss, Texas apart.

1984 by George Orwell – A vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world where the media and the distortion of the language is used to manipulate and control the population.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – In this imagined world, firemen start fires rather than put them out in a bid to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book.

House of Cards by David Dobbs – A journalist stumbles upon a web of intrigue and financial corruption at the very highest levels of government, risking everything in the process.

The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse – A secret is handed down against the backdrop of a time when, for some, practising your religion is outlawed.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick – A post-apocalyptic world in which electric animals are crafted so well they seem real and androids are so lifelike they themselves may not be aware they are androids.

So, we have: countries suffering the effects of climate change; individuals being discriminated against because of their skin colour; a financial crisis brought about by the greed of bankers; borders patrolled to prevent people seeking a better life in another country; a massacre in a school; a surveillance society controlled by the spread of ‘fake news’; literature and the ideas it contains considered a dangerous commodity; scandal, intrigue and worse at the heart of government; persecution based on your religion; and the threat posed to humans by artificial intelligence.

Who’d want to live in worlds like that?  Good to know they’re only fictional.  Oh, wait a minute….

Fact in Fiction Friday: 5 Fascinating Facts From My Reading Week

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Fact in Fiction

Reading is entertainment but it can also be education – new words, myths that turn out to be reality and vice versa.  Here are just a few of the things I learned from the books I read this week.  Click on the title of the book to read my review.

Juliet and RomeoWhilst reading Juliet & Romeo, David Hewson’s retelling of the story that inspired Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I was intrigued by reference to the fishermen using cormorants that are trained to catch fish.

It transpires this is a traditional fishing method which originated in Japan and China many centuries ago.  The fishermen tie a snare near the base of the bird’s throat which prevents it swallowing larger fish which are held in its throat.  However, the birds can swallow smaller fish. When a cormorant has caught a fish, the fisherman brings the bird back to the boat and has the bird spit the fish up.

You can find some amazing photographs of the practice here.

Source: Wikipedia

Mr Peacock's PossessionsStaying on the bird theme, in Mr Peacock’s Possessions by Lydia Syson, mention is made of a practice called ‘blackbirding’.  Indeed the alternative name for the fictional island on which the book is set is ‘Blackbird Island.’

‘Blackbirding’ was the shocking practice of coercing people through trickery, such as posing as missionaries, and kidnapping them to work as labourers.  It came to prominence in the 1860s when ‘blackbirding’ ships would sail the Pacific seeking workers to mine guano deposits on the islands off Peru. Later, the ‘blackbirders’ focused on supplying indentured labourers for the sugar cane plantations of Queensland and Fiji. Those “blackbirded” were usually the indigenous populations of nearby Pacific islands.

Source: Wikipedia

I Will Find YouNext, we’re off to the Scotland and the fictional island of Seal, one of the locations in I Will Find You by Daniela Sacerdoti.  In the book there are a number of references to a feature of the landscape called machair.

As I now know, machair is a Gaelic word meaning fertile, low-lying grassy plain.  It refers to the dune grassland that occurs on the exposed western coasts of Scotland and Ireland, formed partly by sand made up of crushed shells blown ashore by Atlantic gales.   It is a habitat renowned for its diversity with an abundance of wildflowers, rarer species such as orchids and hollows favoured as nesting places by corncrakes (as mentioned in the book).

Source: Visit Outer Hebrides

The Magpie Tree CoverNow we’re moving south to Cornwall, the location of the historical mystery The Magpie Tree by Katherine Stansfield.  One of the many things I enjoyed about the book was the author’s inclusion of some Cornish dialect words.

How about ‘braggaty’ meaning spotted, mottled or ‘clitter’ meaning a confused noise.

Source: Cornish Culture

That Summer in PugliaFinally, it’s back to Italy and That Summer in Puglia by Valeria Vescina.  One of the many things I loved about the book was the luscious descriptions of Italian food.  A reference to a drink, nocino, that I’d never heard of caught my eye.

As I now know nocino is a walnut based alcoholic drink, common in the north of Italy.  It is made with green unripe walnuts, has a syrupy consistency and is a dark oily brown in colour.  Its aroma is distinctly nutty and it’s strong: 40% alcohol by volume or 80 proof.

Source: Italy Chronicles blog

What fascinating facts did you learn from your reading this week?