Ivy's reading log

IvyTheTerrible

I decided to start one of these threads to keep a record of what I'm reading.

I just finished (31 May 2009) Mort by Terry Pratchett. It's the 4th book in the Discworld series, and while I found it funny I didn't enjoy it as much as the last three (I have come late to this series and am reading it for the first time).

I am now reading A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. Good so far, and not a mention of wrestling or Austria. Yay!

IvyTheTerrible

I eventually finished "A prayer for Owen Meany". I must say it was a disappointment, seeing as it got such good reviews everywhere. I found Owen Meany to be an obnoxious little creep that I just couldn't like, and I couldn't understand how everyone was so taken in by him; AND MUST ALL THE DIALOGUE BE IN CAPS??? I know it's not so we forget that Owen has a strange voice, as Irving mentions every other sentence (in between interminable lectures on Reagan's foreign policy, which I couldn't see the poin of). 300 pages shorter would have been much better. I couldn't recommend this book.

Now I am reading Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. The 30 pages so far have been intriguing.

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Strangers on a Train turned out to be an excellent psychological thriller. A study of the nature of guilt as well. Can't wait to watch the dvd too!

Then i read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet which is an epic story set in the middle ages in England about the building of a cathedral. I really enjoyed it and flew through the 1100 or so pages.

Now I am reading We need to talk about Ross by Paul Howard, the latest Ross O'Carroll-Kelly book. It's a bit of a departure from the previous novels, all the people in Ross's life talk about their relationships. Hilarious.

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"Millenium" by Tom Holland. I loved "Rubicon" (his account of the fall of the Roman republic) and while this one isn't quite as gripping (it's a bit "all over the place" as he is covering European history around the first millenium, so goes from Byzantium, Holy Roman Empire, England, Vikings etc) but it is still impressive.
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Finished Millenium eventually, I really lost interest towards the end.

Finished "Sourcery" by Terry Pratchett. I liked it a lot, very funny.

Now reading "The Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol. Liking it a lot so far, very funny.

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Just finished "The Drunkard's Walk: How randomness rules our lives" by Leonard Mlodonow. Great easy to read explanation of probability.

Now reading "Courageous Women" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the true story of a Somali woman who is forced into an arranged marriage, but manages to escape to Europe where she becomes a MP in the Dutch parliament and fights for the rights of Muslim women.

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Ooh I haven't updated here in a long while.

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre: A great exposé of crappy science and how to recognise it in the media and elsewhere. I particularly enjoyed the entire chapter dedicated to "Dr" Gillian McKeith.

Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett: Sixth in the discworld series, this time focussing on the witches. I found it very clever.

Currently reading The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters: This is part of my attempt to read the Booker prize short list. Love the style so far and I think I will fly through it.

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Just finished "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Steig Larsson.

Really excellent thriller and I liked the Lisbeth Salander character.

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Pyramids - Terry Pratchett

While this was funny, I didn't find it AS funny as the other Discworld books I've read. I also found some of the story a bit confusing.

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Decoding the heavens - Solving the mystery of the world's first computer: Jo Marchant

Excellent recounting of the true story of the Antikythera mechanism. It was found in 1900 in the wreck of a 2000 year old greek ship. Marchant describes in really lively detail the discovery of the mechanism, and the century it took to discover what it actually did. Very interesting; and I love the way Marchant tells the story.

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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Schaefer and Annie Barrows

A lovely little novel, based in 1946. A collection of letters to Juliet Ashton from people living on Guernsey and about the occupation of the island by the Germans. Sad and happy in turn, it didn't take long to read and was very enjoyable.

If I had one quibble it was with the research, and this is something I've noticed recently. For example, a French nurse mentions that someone weighed 60 pounds. Now, French people hardly know what a pound is, and would always use kilos. But even if she was using pounds, with Guernsey being British, she would have said stones. I know it's not a big deal but these little things really take away from the "believeability" of books, and wouldn't be so difficult to find out with good editing.

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The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett:
A novella about the Queen discovering a mobile library on the grounds of Buckingham palace, and her finding a love of reading. I read this in about 2 hours, but I thought it was quite deep, even being so short.

Rhino, what you did last summer - Paul Howard/Ross OCaroll Kelly:
I know a lot of people have said this formula is getting old, but I found this latest ROCK installment hilarious. I liked that he was taken out of his normal environment, and I particularly likedthe pastiche of The Hills/reality tv shows. (I really don't like the Ronan character though).

Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchet:
Eigth book in the discworld series, this introduces Captain Vimes and the night watch. A dragon is summoned to Ankh Morpork and causes havok. Longer than the other discworld books I've read, this had me hooked from the start. Hilarious.

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The Gates - John Connolly:

A book about an intelligent but maybe strange boy, who discovers that his neighbours have summoned a demon and opened a portal into hell (faciliated by the LHC at CERN - a nice touch). I really enjoyed this book, there was lots of suspense and great humour. The only jarring note was that the style was very very reminiscent of Terry Pratchett (footnotes and all), but maye that bothered me because I have just finished a Pratchett book.

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Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

I ordered this because it was on the Booker Prize shortlist and has since won the prize. It is the fictional retelling of a part of the life of Thomas Cromwell, who became very powerful during the reign of Henry VIII. I must say I was very disappointed with this book. I think that Mantel found a way to make a fascinating story very mundane and hard work to get through. I thought her style of writing was very awkward as well. If you want to read a good book about the era, I would recommend instead "The Six Wives of Henry VIII", non fiction, and moves at a faster pace!

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Essays of Elia - Charles Lamb

I heard about this book as it was one of the books discussed in the book club in "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society", it sounded interesting and funny so I had to get my hands on it! This is a collection of essays written by Charles Lamb under the pseudonym Elia around 1820. I had never heard of Charles Lamb before but he had a sad and interesting life. He seemed to be heading for a normal life but his sister, who had severe mental illness, murdered their mother when Lamb was in his early 20's. Instead of letting her rot in a "lunatic asylum", he paid for her to be released, under the condition that he garuntee her safety and that of those around her. He ended up living with her for the rest of his life and having an active social life together. This collection is both poignant (an assay about his relationship with his "cousin" - actually about his sister - is very touching, and particalarly the essay about "dream children, where he imagines the children he might have had) and funny (I found the essay "On the treatment of bachelors by their married friends" hilarious). I'm absolutely delighted with this find and would recommend it.

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The Girl who Played with Fire - Stieg Larson: The second book in the Millenium trilogy, this is another cracker. Really fast past, intelligent thriller and I love the Lisbeth Salander character, so feisty!

Strumpet City - James Plunkett: A classic of Irish literature, this is the story of the 1913 lockout in Dublin. I thought this was very thought provoking and quite a sad story. For anyone interested in socialism in Ireland, it's fascinating.

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Eric/Faust - Terry Pratchett: A demonology hacker summons Rincewind from the dungeon dimensions. Quite a short Discworld book and to be quite honest I was disappointed. Not as funny as the other Discworld books I have read.

Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts: I could only get 300 pages in before abandoning this. It's the story of an Australian heroin addict and armed robber who escapes an Australian jail and ends up in India. There was the makings of a great adventure story in this but the adolescent philosophy, over-egged descriptions and the immense ego of the author just put me off. If you want a laugh, don't read this, read the 1 star reviews on Amazon. An example of a pseudo philosophical sentence: "The hole in my life that a father should've filled was a prairie of longing. In the loneliest hours of those hunted years, I wandered there, as hungry for a father's love as a cellblock full of sentenced men in the last hour of New Year's Eve". Like this crap? Then read Shantaram. Otherwise stay away.

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution -Simon Schama. Quite an interesting history of the French revolution, I learned a lot, and I particularly enjoyed the anecdotes about different people's experiences during the revolution and Terror. However, I do have several gripes: the slowness of most of ...the writing. It took me a month to read. Schama also assumes you already have a fair bit of background knowledge. It seems biased towards the aristocrats. Also, the translation of some of the french phrases and not of others irritated me. I would recommend it though.

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Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett

A pastiche of Hollywood and all the craziness and greed surrounding it. I loved this, it was hilarious.

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The girl who kicked the hornet's nest - Steig Larsson: Great finale to the Millenium trilogy, a real page turner, lots of suspense and all the loose ends are tied up. I would recommend it wholeheartedly (but only after you read the other two books!)

Tom Bedlam - George Hagen: A sort of modern Dickensian story spanning the Victorian era, about a boy who overcomes his poor upbringing and the desertion of his father. A fast-moving story, I enjoyed this.

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Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond: A very interesting non-fiction book, that addresses why it was that Europeans were the ones to conquer other parts of the world and not the other way around, looking at plant and animal domestication, disease, writing and technology to find answers. I liked his different way of looking at world history but I found it got repetitive towards the end.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke: A collection of short stories from the author of Jonathon Strange and Mr Norell. I LOVED these stories. Written in the style of Jane Austen but with more fantasy and "faeries", I flew through this. Great stuff.


Blacklands by Belinda Bauer: A chilling novel about a young boy who starts to write to an imprisoned serial killer in an attempt to find out where his uncle (abducted at the age of 12 but never found) is buried. I really enjoyed this book, I liked the way the author was able to change seamlessly between the perspect...ive of the boy to that of the killer. I was gripped by the suspense too. Not your run-of-the-mill crime novel. Recommended.

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The Partisan's Daughter - Louis deBernieres: Very disappointing. After really enjoying deBerniere's earlier novels, this was a letdown. Set in the seventies, the story of a bored 40 year old married man (married to what he terms repearedly and tiresomely as the "great white loaf") who strikes up a friendship with ...a beautiful Yugoslavian woman who he initially mistakes for a streetwalker. Neither of the characters were likeable, or particualarly realistic, they seemed to be cardboard cut-out cliches with which de Bernieres slaps his readers: the forty year old in a loveless marriage (aren't men who desire a younger woman always?) who knows nothing about modern music (deBernieres repeatedly has the main character listening to a song and saying things like "Oh I wouldn't have heard of the rolling what? Stones. Oh I must ask my cool daughter"), the beautiful and mysterious foreigner. I could go on but I'll spare you. Not recommended.

The Outcast – Sadie Jones: This is the story of a boy whose mother dies in tragic circumstances and how that changes his life and his relationship. At times this is a bit too “emo” for me but in general it is a nice portrait of how a bereavement affects a family.

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If this is a man/The Truce: Primo Levi. If this is a man is the story of the author's year spent in Auschwitz. While horrifying and sad in many ways, what is beautiful about this book is that Levi never loses himself to hysterical judgments. He tells the story as it is, and we can find amazing humanity in the... most pitiful of incidents. The Truce is the story of his eventful return from Auschwitz to Italy, via Russia, Rumania, Hungary Austria and Germany. It is wonderful to see how Levi begins to see himself as a human being again, and to see the beauty of the world again. I would heartily recommend this to anyone.

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Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett. Really liked this installment of the discworld series. Great satire on death, zombies and supermarkets.

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The Children's Book: AS Byatt: A booker prize shortlisted novel, this is the story of a bohemian family and their friends, relatives and liaisons during the Art Nouveau period. While Byatt's research is impressive, it sometimes feels like she is lecturing. Also it breaks the story. Also the not-very-interesting fairy stories that are interspersed throughout are tedious. I found the characters a bit one-dimensional, and characters that seem important in the first half of the book disappear without a good reason towards the end. On a positive note, the cover design is truly beautiful, so even if it bores you, this book will look very pretty on your shelf.

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The Innocent Traitor:Alison Weir: I have already read The Six Wives of Henry VIII so I was interested to read some more of Weir's work, and decided to pick up this story of Jane Grey and how she got to the throne of England (albeit briefly). Unforunately I didn't realise it was a novel! While the story itself was fascinating, I felt that the dialogue was stilted, and the switching between characters in the first person was unconvincing. I will read more Weir but not her fiction.

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Let the Great World Spin: Colm McCarthy: The story of many different people living in New York in 1974 linked together by a man who tight-rope-walked between the World Trade Centre towers. I think this is the best book I have read so far this year. I loved how the stories were linked, and McCarthy's imagery is just beautiful, particularly in the second half of the novel. Recommended.

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The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin: A horror story about women's liberation in the 70's. Read it in 3 hours, this was very funny. Recommended.

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The Periodic Table - Primo Levi: This is a collection of reminiscences and stories, each one based around a different element of the periodic table (Levi was a chemist). I just love the way Levi wrote, a mixture of moving humanity and humour. I learned a lot about life and about chemistry reading this. For me, Vanadium really stood out, as Levi encounters by chance a German he knew in Auschwitz. Beautiful.

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One Day - David Nicholls: After enjoying Starter for Ten by Nicholls, I decided to give this a go. It's the story of Emma and Dexter, who both graduated from college on July 14th 1988. We meet them on the same day every year for 20 years. It's light enough in places but i likes how Nicholls developed the main characters, how we see them mature and change over the years.

Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll: I read this as a young child but I was inspired to re-read it, with all the talk of the film etc. Just as good as I remembered it, a classic!

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Witches Abroad -Terry Pratchett: Another cracker of a discworld novel. Great pastiche of foreign holidays and fairy tales. Very funny.

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The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield: A very so-so novel, it's the story of a disfunctional aristo family (centred around the strange twins). I think this is trying to be a sort of Wuthering Heights/Jane Eyre gothic mash-up but it really doesn't match up. It's hard to care about the characters, the writing is heavy and the plot twists are very stilted. This would be alright for a couple of hours beside the pool but not much more.

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The adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain: I read this when I was about 9 or 10 and decided to revisit it again. I think when I read this the first time I didn't "get" a lot of the humour (I also distinctly remember finding it very difficult to understand what Jim was saying), I found it really funny and sharp on the rereading. Great novel, very entertaining and lots of interesting social commentary too.

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Them - Joyce Carol Oates: The story of a working class family living in Detroit between the end of the depression and the race riots of the late 60's. I thought this was really well told, Oates seemed to be able to get inside the skins of her protagonists.

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Fermat's Last Theorem: Simon Singh. The history of the theorem put forward by Fermat that has puzzled mathmaticians for centuries. I loved loved loved this book, Singh describes the maths involved in a very clear way, but also the personal stories of those people that became obsessed with the elusive proof. A great popular science read, it makes me want to go back to my maths books!

Murder on the Orient Express: Agatha Christie: This is a classic whodunnit, where Hercule Poirot tries to solve the murder of a rather nasty American on the famous train. Very fast moving and well told, I read this in one day.

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The Lies of Locke Lamora: Scott Lynch. A fantasy novel set in a sort of Renaissance Venice world. Locke Lamora is an orphan who becomes a very clever thief/con man. However he doesn't bet on the power of the Grey King. I'm not usually into Fantasy novels but this was quite fast moving and interesting story. There were just a couple of inconsistencies that bugged me a little bit (eg if I was a powerful mind controlling bondsmage, why woudl I hire myself out, would I not try for power myself?). All in all though, this was pretty enjoyable.

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Death on the Nile: Agatha Christie. Another great murder mystery from Agatha Christie. A rich girl is murdered while on a cruise on the Nile, and a large cast of characters are suspects. Lots of red herrings and twists. Great.

Small Gods: Terry Pratchett. A satire on religion and it's excesses. While this discworld installment was funny enough, I didn't enjoy it as much the other discworld novels with more familiar characters.

Lud in the Mist: Hope Mirlees. A fantasy novel written in the 20's about a town and it's inhabitants and how they are affected by Fairyland, which is just over the hills. I really enjoyed this, it was beautifully written and the imagery was great.

The Shell Seekers: Rosamund Pilcher. The story of Penelope and her children and how the children want her to sell her father's paintings. While I liked some of the descriptions of Penelope's life in wartime Britain, I found this novel full of clichés and cardboard cutout characters. The "good" characters are all bohemian, love their gardens and don't care about money or clothes, while the bad characters are evil social climbing moneygrabbers who send their horribly ugly children to private school. Also, at 600 pages, some of the interminable descriptions of meals and their preparation could have been left out. Good holiday read maybe but I wouldn't really recommend it.

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The Last Dickens : Matthew Pearl. I picked this off the bookshelf because I enjoyed The Dante Club, Pearl's first novel. This is the story of the final installments of Dicken's last book, Edwin Drood. Dickens died before he could finish Drood, but the protagonist of the novel, Dickens' American publisher, sets out to find if Dickens had actually finished the novel. While the research done by Pearl is very thorough, this book just felt silly to me. I wasn't convinced as to why lots of people were getting killed for something that didn't exist, and all because of opium deals! Just a bit too boring.

The Valley of the Squinting Windows : Brinsley McNamara. Banned when it was first published, this Irish novel is a great portrayal of hypocrisy in a small town. The characters are really well drawn, the postmistress that opens every letter in and out of her office, the priest that is only priestly with those of means, etc. The story turns around Nan Byrne, her son John who is training to be a priest, and the new schoolmistress Rebecca Kerr. Shocking (even now) and beautifully written.

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The Midwich Cuckoos: John Wyndham. I picked this up after I really enjoyed The Day of the Triffids from the same author. It's a sci fi story of a quiet English village which inexplicably falls asleep for 2 days. Later, all the women of the village become pregnant, and the resultant children are odd, to say the list. The writing really flows and the story is enjoyably unsettling. This was great.

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Notwithstanding : Louis de Bernieres. A lovely collection of stories about a Surrey village written in the quirky style particular to Louis deBernieres. Touching and very funny. Definitely would recommend.

4.05 from Paddington : Agatha Christie. The first Miss Marple mystery I have read, this is the story of a murder on a train, witnessed by an elderly lady on a passing train. There is no trace of a body, and no one believes the old lady. Then Miss Marple steps in to investigate. Very enjoyable mystery.

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Lords and Ladies: Terry Pratchett. Another great one from the Discworld series. This time, Pratchett focuses on myths about elves. Loved this, very funny.


You're an Animal, Viskovitz: Alessandro Boffa. A series of short stories, each told from the perspective of a different animal, called Viskovitz. I love how this was written, and found it hilarious. Great!

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The Year of the Flood: Margaret Atwood. This is a sequel to Oryx and Crake, set sometime in the future, after most humans have been killed by a man-made plague. It focuses on two women, Toby and Ren, who were members of a religious group called God's Gardeners, who are environmentalists, mourn the loss of exti...nct animals (which is most species) and have saints like Dian Fossey. I found this moving and also rather disturbing, in that aspects of this dystopian future are not unimaginable in real life. Recommended, if you want a thoughtful read.


The Mysterious Affair at Styles: Agatha Christie. The first Hercule Poirot mystery. While Christie's writing style is not as honed as in later novels, this is still a very enjoyable whodunnit. (Although I couldn't figure out why noone suspected the narrator).

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The Help: Kathryn Stockett. The story of two black American maids and a white woman who become unlikely friends in Mississippi of the early 1960s. This was beautifully written, thoughtful and moving without being sentimental. Highly recommended.

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The Stand: Stephen King. This is a re-read for me. It's the story of a superflu developed by the US army that is accidentaly released and kills 99.9% of the population. The resulting people have to try to rebuild a society but end up in a battle of "good versus evil", evil being the "Dark Man" who is often mentioned in King's novels. This was LONG (1100 pages in the uncut edition) but it was quite easy (if gruesome in parts) to read. I found the first part of the book describing the collapse of society much more frightening the the Dark Man character, if only because it seemed more real! Still, it's a good horror story and will leave you nervous.

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Maps for Lost Lovers: Nadeem Aslam. This is a novel about a Pakistani family living in England and the year after one of the family members and his lover go missing, presumably murdered in an honour killing. I thought this would be a an interesting novel but I didn't enjoy it at all, for two main reason. Firstly, this is an unrelentingly negative portrait of Muslims, almost tending torwards racism. All the women are manipulative cruel shrews, and all the men are weak and often abusers, unless of course they are westernised, when they are A-ok. Secondly, the style of writing was really irritating, there were ridiculous metaphors on every single page (I'm not exagerating). Did you know that the sweat between two lovers is like the weak glue holding orange segments together? Or that birch leaves fallen on the ground are like a child's crisps spilled on the ground? This really took away from the story. Not recommended.

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The Murder of Roger Akroyd: Agatha Christie. Another classic Hercule Poirot mystery, very entertaining and I really didn't imagine who the murderer was until all was revealed.

Gomorrah: Italy's other mafia: Roberto Saviano. A bit of non-fiction for a change, this is a journalistic account of the Comorra, the Naples mafia. It is really frightening to realise how many aspects of Italian, but also European, life are controlled by this mafia group: clothing, waste disposal, construction... etc. This is an exposé but it also a poignant protest. There is no escape from the Comorra if you chose not to abandon Naples. I liked the unusual style Saviano used and found this extremely interesting. (FYI, Saviano is in permanent hiding after threats to his life since this book was published).

A Canticle for Liebowitz: Walter M Miller. The story of a community of monks after an apocalyptic event ("The Flame Deluge") who's patron saint is St Leibowitz, who developed the atomic bomb but later was remorseful and set up a community of monks. This is a beautifully written novel, and while the blurb on th...e cover said it was a novel of hope, to me it seemed like a message that we humans are doomed to endlessly repeat the same mistakes. While I would highly recommend this, I'm going to give the end-of-the-world novels a miss for a while...

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And then there were none: Agatha Christie. A disparate group of twelve people are invited to an island for a weeks holiday. One by one, they are killed off. The murderer can only be one of the guests...but who is it? One of the more unusual Christie mysteries, I enjoyed the suspense in this one and had no idea who the murderer was right til the end.


Men at Arms: Terry Pratchett. A series of murders are committed with a strange and powerful weapon, and it's up to Sam Vimes and the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch to solve the murders. This discworld installment is by far the funniest I have read so far, I had many laugh out loud moments reading this. Highly recommended.

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The Yiddish Policemen's Union: Michael Chabon. This is a sort of hardboiled detective story in the tradition of Raymond Chandler etc. The twist is that it is set in the fictional Sitka Jewish settlement in Alaska (imagine if the state of Israel was never formed and that the surviving jews are given a settlement in Alaska) which is due to revert to the US in a few months. A junkie is murdered in the same fleabag hotel in which lives the detective Landsman, who is an alcoholic and who's career is going downhill. Landsman starts investigating the murder and uncovers something much bigger. I loved this, very funny in places but also dealt with difficult topics well too. I found it a little bit difficult to get used to all the Yiddish words being used but otherwise I would recommend this as a good read.

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My Man Jeeves: PD Wodehouse. A series of short stories, the majority of which are about Bertie Wooster and his inimitable butler, Jeeves. Most stories were very funny, as Jeeves comes up with solutions to Bertie's problems. Recommended for a good giggle.

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Picnic at Hanging Rock: Joan Lindsay. The year is 1900 and a group of girls from a prestigious school go for a picnic with some of their teachers at Hanging Rock in the Australian bush. Three of the girls and one of their teachers go missing in mysterious circumstances. The remainder of the novel deals with the aftermath of their disappearance. I love the atmosphere that the author generates, and I felt that her description of the varied effects of the disappearances on different characters was very believable. Great book.

Edit: This is the 50th book I've read this year, I didn't realise I was reading so much!

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Her Fearful Symmetry: Audrey Niffenegger. Elspeth lives in a flat overlooking Highgate cemetary in London, where her partner Robert volunteers. Elspeths dies and leaves her flat and savings to the American twin daughters of her sister, on condition that they live in the flat for a year, and that their parents never enter the flat. The first third of this novel was promising, as it dealt with Robert's grief and also the relationship between twins. The descriptions of Highgate cemetary were also interesting. However, after that, it goes rapidly downhill. The ghost-story aspect of the novel gets more and more ridiculous and the choices the characters make become more unbelieveable and frankly quite repugnant. Also I could not figure out the point of the character Martin, and his OCD. After really loving The Time Traveller's Wife, this second novel left me cold and was very disappointing.

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Soul Music: Terry Pratchett. Another installment of the Discworld series, this one deals with what happens when rock music crosses over from another universe and how it makes everyone that comes in contact with it a bit crazy. It's reasonably funny, it also resolves some issues about Death, Mort and Susan.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Jean-Dominique Bauby. At 137 pages, this seems like a short book, until you realise that Bauby, former editor in chief of Elle, dictated this from his hospital bed using blinks as code after he was left in a "locked-in" state following a stroke. It's a beautiful story, dealing with Bauby's life as an invalid, and his life before. While very sad, it also has moments of dry humour, and no self pity at all. I would recommend this amazing, inspiring book to everyone. Great.