by Judi Dench

as told to John Miller

***** (5/5)

Autobiography: And Furthermore by Judi Dench

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Book Review:

This autobiography of Judi Dench’s career was a fun and easy read. As an actor myself, I loved reading about her stage productions and the different experiences, directors and actors she encountered. Dench comes across extremely down to earth and hard working actor with a playful sense of humour. I read the book with a mixture of envy and awe – Dench was actually fought over to play Shakespeare’s Cleopatra by two directors, Peter Hall and Terry Hands, who had both decided to direct the play at the same time!

The autobiography, as told to John Miller, contains lots of stories about the productions that she acted in throughout her long career, a couple she directed and also touches on some major personal life events – meeting her husband Michael Williams, their daughter Finty, the fire that destroyed their first home and Michael’s death. I was surprised about how candid she was in recounting her bad experiences with productions – run-ins she had had with theatre directors, or how disorganized a film set was. She goes into the negative experiences she has had as much as the positive ones.

I loved reading about Dench’s playful side. She is such a trickster, always enjoying a good laugh. One example is the long running challenge that developed between her and one of her actor colleagues Tim Piggot-Smith to see who could return a black leather glove to the other in the most unexpected places – usually on stage. The game has become so well known over the years that when questioned by the audience, someone always asks, ”Where is the glove now?” I guess it’s stunts like this and other more subtle games Dench and her fellow actors play on stage that keeps them going through a 6 month run of the same show!

Dench recounts her Oscar experiences when she was nominated for Mrs Brown and Shakespeare in Love. She even kept a diary of the days leading up to the first one because she knew how surreal it would be. It was fun to read about her amazement and awe at the experience, to know that even seasoned actors get excited and swept up in it all. Dench, who won the Oscar for her supporting role in Shakespeare in Love, said, “I was so surprised to win it for eight quick minutes with bad teeth.”

This is a good book for actors as well as people interested in theatre, not to teach you about acting, but to get an insight on how Dench lives the life of an actor, as well has her attitude towards working in theatre. I read ‘And Furthermore’ with a healthy dose of jealousy, but moreover received inspiration from a veteran actor whose work I really admire.

I’ll end with an anecdote about Anthony Hopkins who was playing Anthony to Dench’s Cleopatra in Peter Hall’s production for the National Theatre (Hall won out in the end). Hopkins never minded not being in the fifth act, in fact he actually loved it. In his death scene, as he was lying cradled in Cleopatra’s arms, he would whisper, ”I’m going upstairs to have a nice cup of tea. You do Act V, and I’ll have a nice cup of tea.”

Love that!

x Julie

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-Reading Like Rabbits-

by Kathryn Stockett

***** (5/5)

Fiction

Click to buy the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett

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Book Synopsis:

1962 in Jackson, Mississippi, three women, as different as can be, Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny come together for an underground project, which if exposed, would put them all at risk.

Skeeter is a 22-year-old white woman who has just returned home after graduating from university. But in 1962, mothers care more about their daughter’s marriage prospects than their career hopes.

Aibileen is an astute black maid who is bringing up her seventeenth white child. When Aibileen’s own son died, as his employers looked the other way, something changed inside her. She is dedicated and caring towards the little girl she is raising, but she knows that they will have to part ways someday.

Then there is the sassy Minny, also a black maid, who can cook up a storm, but has a sharp tongue that always gets her fired. Minny gets lucky and finds a new job, working for someone so new to Jackson that she doesn’t yet know her reputation. But her new employer has her own secret to hide.

Through various circumstances, these women meet and begin in their own clandestine way to push the boundaries, and cross the entrenched but invisible line that defines their town and their times.

My Audio Book Review:

This was my first audio book purchase and I absolutely loved it. The Help was not only Audible.com’s the highest-rated audiobook of 2009, but it is also its highest-rated audiobook of all time. It’s also been on the New York Times bestseller list for 51 weeks and is presently at No.1. So I started with quality.

This audio book is wonderful to listen to. The actors were flawless and the images conjured by their voices had me laughing and even tearing up in public as I was listening to the novel on my i pod.

This story is narrated in the first person by three women Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer. [When writing the novel, Katheryn Stockett said she based some of Minny's sassy-ness on her interactions with actress friend Octavia Spencer who ended up playing Minny in the audiobook.]

I have been overwhelmed by black vs white novels in the past few weeks. Performing in To Kill A Mockingbird as Scout, reading Small Island by Andrea Levy and listening to The Help. You’d think it would be too much, too infuriating, heavy, but although The Help deals with hard issues, the women in the story are full of soul, warmth and chutzpa.

Even the villain of the piece, Miss Hilly Holbrook, is fascinating in her unabashed racist behaviour. Miss Hilly, respected in her white ladies community, is intent on delivering her public service message, ‘The Home Help Sanitation Initiative’ – advising white families to install outdoor toilets for their help to prevent the spread of their diseases. I spent the whole novel wishing she got her just deserts.

Skeeter is the lone white woman who actually sees the injustice. At first, she doesn’t say anything. Then elements fall into place for her and she secretly makes her stand. The stakes are high, what they are doing is dangerous. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny could get in a lot of trouble if found out.

The Help was extremely enjoyable listening. Listening to an audio book made me more productive and even enthusiastic about doing manual tasks – I cleaned the house and even sewed while listening! Aside from great travel listening while walking or on the train, this audio book was great to listen to when I was too tired to read but too awake to sleep. I’d just play it as I lay in bed with my eyes closed.

I’ve found a new form of entertainment!

My next audio book is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Click here to buy the book The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Click here for more information on audio books.

x Julie

Audio Book Reviews

Reading Like Rabbits

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

***** (5/5)

Autobiography / Non-Fiction

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Book Synopsis:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is among today’s most controversial yet admired political figures. She made international headlines when her friend and colleague Theo Van Gogh was assassinated in the Netherlands for making the film Submission with Hirsi Ali. His Islamist murderer stabbed a note to his body threatening that Hirsi Ali would be next.

This celebrated writer of The Caged Virgin, and courageous champion of free speech has led an extraordinary life.

In her astonishing memoir, she tells of growing up in Somalia in a staunch Muslim household, to escaping an arranged marriage, to her intellectual re-birth in the Netherlands, to becoming a member of the Dutch parliament, and finally of her life under constant security protection because of her open critique of Islam.

Having made the immense and dangerous ideological shift from a devout Muslim to an outspoken atheist, Hirsi Ali now fights for the rights of Muslim women and the reformation of Islam.

My Book Review:

The journey that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has made up till now is nothing short of amazing.

To be honest, it’s been about a year since I read this book, but the power of the incredulous journey that Ayaan made from the traditional life with her family in Africa to escaping into the Western world without a penny or a friend, to being elected a member of the Dutch House of Representatives, has remained firmly in my psyche.

The most astonishing aspect of this autobiography is in observing Ayaan’s development and her changing, progressive way of thinking.

Ayaan is now an activist who made the open conversion from Islam to atheism. She is very critical of Islam, speaking out especially about the place of women in Islamic societies.

This is an important, current and true life story. Ayaan speaks up loudly for what she believes are grave injustices in this world and suffers the consequences – constant death threats and the threats carried out with the murder of her friend Theo van Gogh. But still she speaks out.

x Julie

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-Reading Like Rabbits-

by Elisabeth Robinson

***** (5/5) Fiction

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Book Synopsis:

This novel is told in the form of letters from Olivia Hunt to her sister with cancer, Michael her ex-boyfriend, her parents and her best friend. Along the way we find out about the progress or non-progress of Olivia’s feature film that she’s trying to get off the ground in Hollywood.

Through Olivia’s letters we track the progress of her year, and are privy to her thoughts, the varied way she communicates with people, her highs and lows and also just the plain usual things that happens day to day that find themselves into her letters. Simply yet powerfully told, this novel simultaneously funny and sad, tragic and heart warming.

My Book Review:

This is why I started this site – to find and share books just like this one. I walked into a used book shop and bought this novel for $2. It did say ‘International Bestseller’, but I had never heard of it before. What a find! The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters is a simply written yet extremely engaging, funny and moving novel. It’s written in the form of letters by one of the sisters, Olivia Hunt. She writes to her friend, her sister, her ex-lover, and as she is a down and out Hollywood Producer, we also follow her correspondence in trying to get the movie Don Quixote made.

This book begins when Olivia finds out her sister, Maddie, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Through the letters Olivia writes, the reader gets to know the intricate workings of her family, Maddie’s weakening yet buoyant spirit and Olivia’s inner world – writing to her ex-lover possibly her soul mate, Michael, who won’t write back, as well as her Hollywood movie making exploits.

Finishing an amazing book is like having said good bye to an old friend. Bitter sweet. You miss their presence, you want them around again, but you know they’re gone and you just have the memories to savour. This is how I feel now about this book. Olivia’s voice is personal and rings true. If she were a real person I’d like to be her friend.

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters has sad content but is surprisingly uplifting throughout. Even while I was crying, with tears that were blocking my ability to continue reading, I was laughing.

x Julie

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- Reading Like Rabbits-

a memoir

by Jeanette Walls

***** (5/5)

Memoir/Autobiography

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Book Synopsis:

The Glass Castle is an extraordinary memoir of a dysfunctional yet effervescent American family. Jeanette’s father is an intelligent, compelling figure, who educates his children on geology, physics and joie de vivre. However, more often than not, he was a drunk who was caustic and dishonest.

Jeanette’s mother was a free spirit who loved painting but hated conformity and the domestic life of raising children.

And so, Jeanette and her siblings grew up taking care of themselves. Jeanette became a successful writer in New York, a place where her parents eventually moved, choosing out of their own free will to live homeless.

In The Glass Castle, the behavior of Rex and Rose Mary Walls is shocking and unacceptable, yet at the same time, it is abundantly clear that they possess deep love and loyalty for their children. It is this contradiction that makes this memoir so gripping.

My Book Review:

I read this memoir in disbelief.

It begins with the adult Jeanette sitting in a taxi, stuck in New York City traffic, on her way to a party, when she sees her own mother in rags picking through the trash. Despite Jeanette trying to help both her mother and father countless times, her father would always say they didn’t need anything and her mother would ask for something silly like electrolysis treatment. “They said they were living the way they wanted to.”

And so begins a fascinating look back into the true life of this strange, unconventional but loving family.

Rex is an intelligent, well read man and Rose Mary is artistic, and they choose to live life they way they want to live it. The couple are fiercely anti-establishment and seem unwilling to provide for their children (despite their apparent intelligence and skills they are very often jobless and extremely poor) and yet they love their children intensely. They simply don’t function the way we expect people (especially parents) to function, choosing to live life according to their own rules. They are infuriating in their negligence, but at the same time they shine in their individuality and are absolutely captivating – they are characters that are so well written, it’s hard to believe they are not fiction.

I won’t give away too much, just one example from the 2nd Chapter. Jeanette is severely burned because she was cooking for herself – a regular activity for her – at the age of 3. Three year old Jeanette was standing on a chair in front of the stove when her dress caught fire. They brought her to the hospital (a rare decision for this family, who would either go to a witch doctor, or to no one at all, when their children were injured) Then, prematurely broke her out of hospital “Rex Walls style”.

A few days after their escape, when Jeanette started cooking for herself again, her mother said, :

“Good for you…You’ve got to get right back in the saddle. You can’t live in fear of something as basic as fire.”

They were peculiar because they seemed incapable of looking after their children in some ways, but at the same time had a strict sense of conduct when it came to things like chewing gum, “A disgusting low class habit.” This is just the beginning, this memoir is filled with stories just like this, if not more astounding, and my heart went out to the children who suffered the brunt of Rex and Rose Mary’s choices.

The actions and inactions of Jeanette’s parents are so ironic that this memoir is addictive. The Walls parents choose to live this strange and ‘unsuccessful’ life in the conventional sense, but they have a good sense of humour and seemed to be content with their decisions much of the time. I almost wonder if I should do the same and truly follow what I feel. I know I would never do that, I like my comforts and sticking out of the crowd is not something I’d aspire to. But I suspect Rose Mary and Rex Walls were actually happy in the way they chose to live their life.

x Julie

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-Reading Like Rabbits-

by Michael Cunningham

***** (5/5)

Fiction

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Book Synopsis:

Three women.

1920s London. Virginia Woolf attempts to begin her new novel, but she is struggling to settle her unruly mind.

1940s Los Angeles. In the stifling heat, Laura Brown, a young mother and wife aches to abandon her domestic life to escape to the solitude of reading Mrs Dalloway.

1990s New York. Clarissa Vaughan hosts a party for a dying friend.

Michael Cunningham uses the life and works of Virginia Woolf as inspiration for a moving reflection on love, failure, despair and artistic behaviour.

Why I love this book:

Immediately upon finishing this book, I was so moved that I made the firm decision that I needed to visit my elderly grandparents in England – and I’m so glad I did. I guess it’s because the novel deals with death, making me want to seize the moment, carpe diem and all that.

It’s not all about death though, it’s about the lives of three distinct women – their daily lives, their thoughts, their relationships with the people around them, and more importantly their own internal relationship with themselves.

The Hours is beautifully yet simply written, and is one of my tip-top favourite books. My mother says that Beloved by Toni Morrison changed her life, and for me it’s The Hours by Michael Cunningham. Maybe I wouldn’t say it ‘changed’ my life, but it certainly had a significant impact and helped me make a positive decision, one that I had been storing away and ignoring.

x Julie

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-Reading Like Rabbits-

by Shel Silverstein

***** (5/5)

Children’s Fiction

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Book Cover Synopsis:

“Once there was a tree…and she loved a little boy. So begins a story of unforgettable perception, beautifully written and illustrated by the gifted and versatile Shel Silverstein.

Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk…and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree and the tree gave and gave.

This is a tender story, touched with sadness, aglow with consolation. Shel Silverstein has created a moving parable for readers of all ages that offers an affecting interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another’s capacity to love in return.

Why I love The Giving Tree:

The Giving Tree is my absolute favourite children’s book. Its a children’s book, but it’s content is sophisticated and will touch the heart of any adult.

It is a love story between a boy and a tree. The tree possesses unconditional love for a young boy, and the boy, like all of us, grows up and wants more and more from life and the tree. With its simple black and white drawings, The Giving Tree is extremely moving and has powerful messages relating to the environment and the nature of love.

When my mother read The Giving Tree to my sister for the first time, she ended up in tears. It is a heartbreaking, but beautifully told story, that gently teaches us valuable life lessons.

This is the most powerful children’s book I’ve ever read. It would be perfect as a gift or as a teacher’s resource.

x Julie

Book Reviews – Reading Like Rabbits

by Helen Fielding

***** (5/5)

Fiction

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Book Cover Synopsis:

Bridget Jones wants to have it all – and once she’s given up smoking and got down to 8st 7lbs, she will. Bridget Jones’s Diary is about a year in the life of a single girl on an optimistic but doomed quest for self-improvement. A dazzling urban satire of modern human relations? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-something? Bridget Jones is everyone’s favourite Londoner. This is your chance to reacquaint yourself with the funniest, most heart-warming young lady ever to grace the pages of a Picador book.

Why I love Bridget Jones’s Diary:

I do love Bridget. She’s gawky, clumsy, does insanely stupid things, doesn’t look perfect, is terrible in love, kind, loyal and therefore adorable. Her quirky language and desperate measures to improve her love life, career and general appearance are both identifiable and amusing. There are some priceless moments of humour in that book.

I rarely read books twice over, but I have read Bridget Jones at least three times. I read it when I want to feel better and have laugh. A curious thing happens when I am reading her diary – I tend to start thinking like her, seeing things from her point of view. It’s weird but rather fun, and I feel safe with the knowledge that though I understand her, I’ll never be quite as ridiculous.

The movie of Bridget Jones’s Diary is just as good, one of the few adaptation films that I think lives up to the original. With the charming Colin Firth, dashing Hugh Grant and a Renee Zellweger with a decent amount of flesh on her, what’s not to like.

The sequel, Bridget Jones, The Edge of Reason, is also enjoyable, though her first diary is still top of my light reading book list.

So if you need cheering up or just want a bit of a laugh, I highly recommend reading Bridget Jones’s Diary.

It would be great as a gift for a girl friend (if she hasn’t already read it).

x Julie

Book Review

- Reading Like Rabbits

by Christina Schwarz

***** (5/5)

Fiction

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Book cover Synopsis:

At the close of World War One, Amanda Starkey leaves the city and travels to her family farm in rural Wisconsin to recover from a traumatic love affair. Instead, she is caught up in a tragedy that will take her beloved sister’s life, and leave Amanda to raise her niece Ruth. What happened the terrible night when Mattie died? Why does Ruth say she can remember drowning? For years the consequences of the tragedy reverberate; the truth, when it is revealed, is both dramatic and extraordinarily moving.

Why I love this book:

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so hooked on a novel, and I’m pretty sure this is the fastest I’ve ever read a book. I plowed through Drowning Ruth, finishing it in 3 days – I’m generally a slow reader, usually taking at least a week and a half to finish a book. So if speed is an indicator, Drowning Ruth gets an A+.

I would have expected the way that the mystery around Mathilda’s death unravels, so slowly, throughout the course of the book to be frustrating, but I enjoyed not knowing. The story around the mystery moves at a pace where you’re intrigued by the characters and their changing relationships, just as much as you are with the over arching through-line surrounding Mathilda’s death. Mathilda’s death sets the story rolling, the secrets around why and how she drowned are compelling, but the consequences in the years that follow and the journey that Amanda the sister, Carl the husband, and Ruth the daughter experience, are in a sense, more the heart of the story.

Schwarz’s setting is so vivid and strangely charming that I feel I know the farm, the lake and the pivotal little island that Amanda found and claimed as her own.

The perspective of the story moves between Amanda, Ruth and the omniscient observer fluidly, each revealing pearls of unique insight. I loved this shift in view that let us peer into the feelings and contradictions of the characters in this tense world of longing for a dead loved one, that leaves the three surviving characters shrouded in a sense of the incomplete.

Speedy or not, this novel was fascinating.

x Julie

Book Reviews

- Reading Like Rabbits

The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

***** (5/5)

Fiction

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Book Cover Synopsis:

Over five years on the New York Times bestseller list, and published in 42 different languages.

Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable, beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan nonetheless grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant, is a Hazara, a member of the ethnically shunned minority. Their intwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When the Soviets invade and Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave behind the memory of Hassan behind him.

The Kite Runner is a novel about friendships, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of their lies. Written against a history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But with the devastation, Khaled Hosseini also gives us hope: through the novel’s faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows for redemption.

Why I loved The Kite Runner:

Khaled Hosseini is my favourite writer. I was reading The Kite Runner while on holiday in Cambodia and I spent all the time I wasn’t at Angkor Watt reading! It has been a long time since I read it, but it has stayed in my memory as one of my favourite books. I will read it again soon and review it properly. But there’s no need to wait for that review, just read The Kite Runner.

Hosseini’s next book A Thousand Splendid Suns is equally riveting.

x Julie

Book Reviews

- Reading Like Rabbits

by Khaled Hosseini

***** (5/5)

Fiction

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Book cover synopsis:

After more than 189 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list for The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman’s love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.

Why I loved A Thousand Splendid Suns:

As I said in my short review on The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini is my favourite author. He evokes Afghanistan and the inner lives of its people beautifully with his amazing ability to taking readers on an unforgettable journey. It’s also been a long time since I’ve read this book, but The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns both vie for 1st place as my all-time favourite novel.

x Julie

Book Reviews

- Reading Like Rabbits