Popular Penguins

Have you seen the Popular Penguins around? I have and found a great post about them via twitter when I stumbled across @flexnib's librarian blog. Check out her Reading page to see books she's read each month.

Pile of Penguins

(republished with permission)

Originally Published on 17 November 2008

I’ve mentioned before that I love the Popular Penguins series, I think. The range of titles, the look and feel of the books, the low low price - what’s not to love?

And if you needed any proof of my obsession, here’s some photographic evidence showing the eleven titles I have bought to date:

1. Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
2. The Classical World by Robin Lane Fox
3. Six Easy Pieces by Richard P Feynman
4. The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
5. Congo Journey by Redmond O’Hanlon
6. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
7. Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
8. Empire by Niall Ferguson
9. Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer
10. Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux
11. The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski

I bought books 7 - 11 yesterday afternoon, spending the $46.15 I had in book vouchers. What other books are cheap enough at present that you can get five titles for $50?

According to the Penguin site, the ten most popular titles (as at 14 November 2008) are:

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain De Botton
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Love in the Time of Cholera by Garcia Marquez Gabriel (I’ve not seen this title around Perth shops!)
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

The bag in the picture I got in Auckland, from one of the vendors at the conference exhibition. The sales rep told me two interesting facts:

1. Penguin are going to release another series in 2009, and
2. They released Hegemony of Survival by Noam Chomsky in the series, before realising they no longer had the rights to it. So if you got yourself a copy, it could be a rare book in the future. (It’s no longer listed on the Popular Penguins site.)

In the background you can see our eeePC collection: one black and one white eeePC 1000h (the black one’s mine, the white, M’s) and the old 700.

OLPC Give a Laptop/Get a Laptop

OLPC's Give a Laptop/Get a Laptop innitiative kicks off on Amazon today. We wrote a post about it previously here. I thought it could have potential as an ereader with its sunlight friendly screen and wifi connectivity. As an adult, how would you use it? Do you think it could fill a niche? Or would it sit in the top of your desk drawer after a week or two?

Four Indian Books and 2 Booker Prizes

India has always intrigued me. While growing up I was made to sit through endless slideshows of awinspiring images that my Danish Grandfather projected on the basement wall of family life there. The traditional dress, the elephants and many stories; the sherpa who carried a family baby grand piano on his back for 1.6 kilometres along a dusty path in northern India; the blistering heat, no medicine and pain of my uncles birth that still makes my Grandmother shudder; chasing the worlds most beautiful butterflies, the suffocation of Dehli...

So there are four Indian books I'm going to read before the year ends:

• Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup. Based on a true story it's premised on a murder and how "all deaths are not equal". The six murder suspects are woven together as 6 short stories. This book paints a picture of India as one of diverse cultures and stark contrasts; soft and violent, opulent and destitute, stong and weak.


• Midnights Children by Salmaan Rushdie. Winner of the Man Booker Prize for best Man Booker in 25 years. Rushdie reaches back to his childhood and introduces us to him, embellished, imaginative and politically threatening for its time.


• White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize. A brutal Indian story of class divisions and the struggle of a somewhat endearing criminal's struggle to survive against oppression. 


• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts .In 1980, Roberts escaped from Victoria's maximum-security prison, becoming one of Australia's most wanted men for the next ten years. For most of this period he lived in Bombay; he set up a free health clinic and worked for the Bombay mafia as a forger and smuggler. A heavy going book I've been told.

The US election is over, what will we do next year?

What major news will we have next year? The news may be quieter on actual news next year because what else could possibly happen that's anywhere near as ground breaking as this year? I'm sure there'll be plenty of celeb gossip on prime-time to fill in the void.

I think 2009 will be a great year to curl up with a book (borrowed if finances are in a pinch) and escape. Sure there are video games, I gave up the better part of a week to Lord of the Rings Online and I missed the imagination that books bring. There are movies too, but there is just something about strength of self interpretation that movies generally don't allow you to explore. 

So start planning what you'll read next year. In light of the US election I'd highly recommend Barack Obama's book Dreams From My Father. It is an amazingly candid view of Barack before his US political career. He spoke what he felt and I really enjoyed the book. I hope you do to. 

Melbourne Cup Day - all about the horses

Today is Melbourne Cup Day in, well, Melbourne. It's all about the horse race, you know the one in Kenny the Movie. :) I asked my Twitter contacts which horse themed books were their favorites.
So far I have been recommended

• My Friend Flicka @orliyoung
• Jill Enjoys Her Ponies proof of book ownership pictures @retrogrrl

Also had movie recommendations

• Mr Ed
• Velvet Brown with Elizabeth Taylor (horses made her famous)

I must also acknowledge Phar Lap, the most famous Australian race horse that died under mysterious events while in the US. Solved this year by a big machine and found diary entries. Phar Lap's trainer gave a pre-race tonic (with extra strength arsenic which was commonly given then) that killed the horse. See ABC investigation with synchrotron analysis here: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2278343.htm. Books.

Oh and one more recommendation, Horse Sense for People (famous horse wisperer). Tell us about your famour horse book in the comments or tag it with Horse on Booktagger.