I have recently completed ‘The Running Man’ by Michael Gerard Bauer and found it to be an excellent novel that keeps you wondering throughout. It oozes mystery and keeps the reader curious and wondering until the end. I like the characters and the perception and vulnerability of the main character.
This book was a winner of the Older Readers CBCA Awards in 2005 as well as a list of other awards received around the country. His latest “Don’t Call Me Ishmael” (Read Chapter One Here), has been shortlisted for the 2007 CBCA Awards again in the Older Readers catagory.
Kazakhstan and ‘The Zahir’
I have to admit, I had barely heard of Kazakhstan before Borat the film came along. I haven’t seen Borat and I don’t imagine I will. It doesn’t sound like my kind of entertainment. I have noticed though that I have been noticing this place more and more in the streams of information that pass by me.
I have recently read a book that was in part set in Kazakhstan called ‘The Zahir’ by Paolo Coelho. I totally enjoyed the book. It was about relationships. I love Paolo Coelho’s books and have read all bar about three of them. I am contemplating rereading some of them actually because they have so much in them. This latest read was about obsession and love and I enjoyed reading it. There is more I want to learn about it and I have given a lot of thought to many of the ideas in the book.
I recently read this article on one of my favourite blogs:Inhabitat:Norman Foster’s Entertainment Centre in Kazakhstan
Theodora’s Gift by Ursula Dubosarky
I totally enjoyed this slim novel. ‘Theodora’s Gift’ is a great story and shows a complex world of relationships and events past and future that many young people will relate to. For those who keep a diary as I do this extract
“Theodora had kept a diary, more or less, since she had learned to write. Theodora was the sort of person who paid attention to things. So much attention that she found she couldn’t keep it all inside her head, and that was how she had started keeping a diary.
She wrote everything down, everything, everything, everything. Everything that is, that she saw or heard, which if you think about it, leaves quite a lot of everything out.” (p7,8)
may make you think about what everything, everything, everything, you write.
I don’t write what I see and hear, I realised when I read this and thought about it. Although I possibly include some of it to explain why I think and feel. I write what I am thinking about constantly or feeling. As a result my diary is boring and repetitive at times. I keep it because like the character Theodora, I can’t keep it all inside my head and it makes me feel better to get it down on paper. Sometimes it helps me to move on. It often allows me to realise I am going around in circles or obsessing and often when I wonder if I have experienced something before, I can check and see that a pattern has formed. It does have it’s uses.
I still think it would be more interesting if I wrote down what I saw and heard!