Golden days

There is a book fair nearby in a few days and I am hoping to find some Golden books for Oskar and Matilda. You can still buy Golden books, I was given a recently printed copy of the 1950 classic title The Fire Engine Book, but these are hard to find. Of those in abundance in the stores, Disney themes dominate, with their ubiquitous cartoon, and others that lack much of a story line (try flicking through There's a Monster at the End of this Book).

Frankie magazine featured a Golden Book collection in its December issue and it particularly made me want to read Scruffy the Tugboat, Pepper Plays Nurse and Colours are Nice again. What's your favourite Golden Book?

Skinny Bitch: Bun in the Oven

This book has been sitting about for awhile with the last couple of chapters unread. So today I finished them (it was still quite relevant, as the latter portion deals with post-pregnancy issues) and posted the following review:

Contrary to the title, this book is not about getting skinny when pregnant. As the authors state, they just have inappropriate sense of humour and wanted to gain attention by appealing to our vanity.

This is the another book by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, who wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller Skinny Bitch, which gained such status after Victoria Beckham was photographed clutching a copy. Written in the same no nonsense style, Bun in the Oven is similarly able to describe a lot more of "horrors" of the food industry than would normally hold the interest of a reader, although I doubt many pregnant women who are feeling more maternal and tearful than usual would be able to stomach the chapter on the cruelty than occurs in slaughterhouses.

Read the whole review.

For those that have embraced the skinny bitch philosophy (vegetarian, if not vegan with minimal refined and processed foods) and can't get up to cook as you don't quite know what is left to survive on, Skinny Bitch in the Kitch contains recipes and an assurance that the skinny girls know "Life without lasagna isn’t a life worth living" and "chocolate cake is vital to our survival". And for the men out there, last year Skinny Bastard was released, presumably to address man boobs and other male issues. Although I'm thinking this is one their female partners will buy them as I'm not sure the title appeals to the Y chromosome, maybe it need a male celebrity to put a copy under his arm?

Read in 2009

This is a snapshot from my "I have read" bookshelf on Booktagger showing everything I finished this year. At the end of 2008 I posted that I had only read twelve books that year and listed some ways to read more. By trying to follow my own tips I aimed to double this and get through 24 books in 2009 and I did - almost. Three I didn't finish until the first week of January, but I'll count it as achieved as I also have a lot of unfinished books that, if consolidated, would raise the count even higher.

For 2010, I want to read over 30 - and those first three don't count.

Basking bookworms

Yesterday, Australia's famous Bondi Beach hosted an outdoor library containing 6000 books and 30 shelves. The event marked the 30th anniversary of the Ikea Billy bookcase. Interestingly, a survey by Ikea found 25% or Australian have greater than 20 unread books in their home. I have many more, both that I plan to read and that I don't (although I am progressively boxing these up for sale and donation).

Publishers donated the books for the public to swap or buy with a donation to the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation.