MARINA SOKOLOVA

The Double Life of Anna Day by Louse Candlish.

The main character of the book, Anna Day, has been dating one guy for a year. However, he uses his mother as an excuse not to move to the next step of his relationship with Anna. When he goes away for the summer, Anna decides, secretly from him, to meet his mother, become her friend, and have his mother unknowingly “introduce” Anna to him. She succeeds spectacularly and as a result faces the truth that mother is only an excuse. The real reason for his behaviour is that he is just a jerk. Even so the ending is predictable, it is very entertaining to read how Anna penetrates his mother's circles and lies all the way. There were a lot of moments, when I thought that she will be discovered and couldn't wait to read how she will get through yet another situation. Good page turner.

Got You Back by Jane Fallon.

This book is about two women who have one guy in common – a wife and a girlfriend. Their guy lives a double life in two homes, successfully lying to them for about a year until the women discover each other's existence. They meet, they become friends, but they don't tell him about it. Instead they develop a plan to get back at him. With some teamwork they spectacularly ruin his life, which was not hard at all since he had some problems with the law as well.

At first the book is a bit slow, so I skipped a lot of the beginning, but then in turns into a real page turner. It is hilarious to read about all the things they do to him.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka.

It is about two sisters, who, after fighting for two years over their mother's inheritance, felt the need to unite when they heard about their spoiled father marrying a women who is twice younger than him. In their minds they already thought of putting their father in a nursing home and selling his house. So, projecting their own qualities on others and considering the age gap of the newly-weds, they naturally assume that their new mother-in-law is after the house or whatever their father is worth. But sisters are not ready to give up that easily. So they set out on a mission to divorce the couple. After several setbacks they eventually succeed. But been so used to bullying their new mother-in-law, they are no longer satisfied with just throwing pregnant women with her teenage son out on the streets. They go on searching for her, harassing her further until to their delight they finally drive her and her kids (one of which might be their niece) out of the country altogether. Then they finally get their “crazy” father into sheltered housing as a midway stop to nursing home and sell his house.

Despite the gruesomeness of the plot the novel is written in a very satirical way from the point of view of one of the villains – the younger sister. Even the physical fight between the older sister and her pregnant mother-in-law is described very satirically.

Piracy for charity.

Recently, an acquaintance of mine expressed shock from seeing me throwing books in a trash bin. “You should never throw books!” she exclaimed. “But I finished reading them and I no longer need them,” I said. “You should at least donate them to charity,” she said.

Today I was walking by Oxfam book shop in Eastleigh and I remembered the conversation. It is a spacious shop with wall to wall shelves filled with donated books everywhere an eye can see. I asked a sales person, whether like public libraries they also pay anything to the authors. She wasn't sure what I meant. So I explained that public libraries in UK pay something to the authors every time someone checks out the book and I am curious about how charity shops compensate the authors. Is it the same or different? She thought that it was an interesting question, became curious about it herself, and asked the manager of the shop.

The manager explained to her and me: “Yes, libraries do pay authors – it is called public lending rights. For these books authors are paid one time, when books are bought new.” I asked: “So if I buy a book here, author gets nothing?” She frowned and explained again that an author does get paid once, when the book is bought new before it is donated. I said: “If I buy an electronic copy of a book and share it with people – that is piracy and is illegal. People donate books here, you sell them. Other people read, donate. You sell. Authors get nothing. Don't you see it is as same as piracy on the internet?” She disagreed. I sensed that we were starting to get into an argument and it was getting uncomfortable. So I said: “Thanks, I was just curious,” and left.

As I am typing this I noticed on my table another paperback, which I finished reading this week. I think that after I post this I will go and throw the book in a trash bin. I feel uncomfortable doing charity, while at the same time stealing from another person's pocket.

The Ex-Boyfriend's Handbook by Matt Dunn.

It is about a guy dumped by his girlfriend for letting himself go. He sets on the quest to upgrade himself in a hope to become impressive enough to either win his old girlfriend back or to be able to attract a new woman. His loses weight, quits smoking, changes diet, buys new clothes, redecorates his flat, and learns self confidence. There are several very funny moments in the book. At one point I was crying from laughter.

The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keys.

This is a large book – 648 pages. It took me several long bath sessions to finish it. So if you are taking it for a beach holiday it will easily substitute for 2-3 books. The plot switches between the lives of several characters. At first the book is very interesting. Then when it switches to other characters, it is boring for a while. Then when those new characters develop and you start to sympathise with them, it gets all interesting again. If you read any other Marian Keyes novels and liked them, you will like this one too. I think it would make a perfect companion for travel or beach holiday.

This book is about a lot of things. On one hand it has a very serious feminist perspective and on the other it is fattened up severely with cosmetic product placements. It is as if author felt guilty after been bought and had to balance it out to provide value for her readers. In general, it is a very good read in my opinion. There are enough diverse characters that any type of reader would find someone to sympathise with.

Future of ebooks.

Book: Colour me confident change your look – change your life! By Veronique Henderson and Pat Henshaw.

This is one of the worst instructional books I have seen in many years. It promises to help you determine what colours suit you better than others. In reality the pallets offered in this book for different types of people consist of the same colours with same silly names. They only reshuffled them a bit and printed them in different orders for the pallets to appear different at first glance. Which makes sense because the printers usually can produce limited number of colours anyway. And if they wanted to include a bigger variety of colours it would obviously have costed them much more to produce the book. At first I was puzzled with why the authors or publishers would make such useless book with such big promises. Then I binged the name of the book and stumbled across some articles about it including, for example, this wikipedia article : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_analysis. It says the following about these series of books (colour me beautiful), which are , on a bigger part, based on older original "seasonal" colour analysis: “many of the books--and many of the associated color analysis websites that continue to exist to this day--were intended merely to be an entry-point to understanding color. The reader, it was hoped, would make further investments by ordering color wheels on which to determine the shades that looked best on her, or by attending seminars or workshops where a professional would review color swatches with her”. Then it started to make sense to me. After this, I went on colourmebeautiful's website. One set of colour samples printed on cartoon strips for one assumed type of human costs £40. Also after reading their website and other articles for a bit, it became obvious that it is also a pyramid scheme. They hope to make you into a consultant then expect you to sign up your friends to be consultants for the promise to earn interest off them and so on. Wow!

Hence, after reading this book I feel like my intelligence is insulted and my time is wasted.

Book: Three-Dimensional Embroidery Stitches by Pat Trott.

It is an instructional book with diagrams and step-by-step photography designed to teach 3D embroidery. This is small book, but one that is just enough and not overwhelming. Most of the instructions in it are very easy to follow. I enjoyed practising embroidering few flowers presented in this book.

Here is what I made:

 

Yay!

My book is available for sale from Amazon already: http://www.amazon.com/Personal-Feng-Shui-Marina-Sokolova/dp/1450527027