Top Ten Tuesday: Welcome to my family!

Tuesday means that is it time for a Top Ten!
Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish - http://www.brokeandbookish.blogspot.com/ - a wonderful blog, that you have to visit.

This week the topic is characters in books that we wish were in our family! So here we go:

10)William of Baskerville from Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". It would be so cool to have this utterly intelligent and wise man as an uncle. The kind of uncle that will discuss the difficult things in life with you and always be there with kind advise.

9) Mr. Bingley from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice". Even when his sisters are behaving rudely and being openly hostile to the girl he is in love with, he is still a good brother to them and take care of them. A very patient brother indeed!

8)Tamar from Iris Murdoch's "The Book and The Brotherhood". She goes through a lot and comes out stronger. She is a really cool girl - would love for her to be my cousin and friend.

7)Ariel from the "Darkangel" trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce. She puts her life at risk to save her best friend Eoduin and both my sister and I adore her and would be happy to welcome her as a third sister.

6)Anne Shirley from L. M. Montgomery's series. Would love to have her as an extra little sister!

5)Holly Golightly from Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Would love to have her as a cousin - she would be sure to introduce me to really cool people and get invitations to great parties. Only drawback is that it would probably be difficult not to be a little jealous of her as she is so popular and admired.

4)Cassandra from Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle". Cassandra would be a great sister, she is so sensitive and clever and I think you could have some really great girls' night in evenings with her.

3) Mr Bennett - again from Pride and Prejudice. He has a special place in my heart and I think he would be a really cool uncle with a great sense of humour.

2) Kay from Alan Warner's "The Sopranos" and "The Stars in the Bright Sky". If I could have an extra sister (I also have one and she is amazing!) I would go for Kay. She reminds me of myself and I have loved her from the very first time I read "The Sopranos".

1)The Weasley family from the Harry Potter series. Can't imagine a more loving, caring family. I would love to be able to spend Christmas with these people - would make for the perfect bunch of uncle, aunt and cousins!

Who would you like to add to your family?

And then I began yet another book...

I need your help! Sometimes I get so happy when I get my hands on an anticipated book that I "forget" to finish the one that I was already reading. And this month it has really gotten out of hand. I have begun reading what seems like a plethora of books - and finishing none of them. So now I need your advise? Have your ever found yourself in this kind of situation (bet you have...)? And how do you handle it? All advise welcome...

Here is a list of what I am currently reading - shame on me!

Javier Marias: All Souls

Martin Amis: The Rachel Papers

Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White

Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights

Iris Murdoch: The Unicorn

"The Flight from the Enchanter" - a flight of fancy

I have become really quite enchanted with Iris Murdoch and yesterday I finished her slim novel "The Flight from the Enchanter" from 1956. It is a story that revolves around Mischa Fox, the enchanter, a secretive figure who has strange relations to all the other character in the story.

It all starts out with Annette Cockeyne, a young wild-at-heart girl, deciding to leave her finishing school,indulging in a last swing from the chandelier before embarking on a session in the school of life. She stays with her mothers friend Rosa Keepe, a gentlewoman working in a factory who has a complicated relationship to two Polish brothers and a motherly role to her brother Hunter. Other people in the story are the useless John Rainborough, the sneaky Calvin Blick, the seamstress Nina and the eccentric possibly very rich Camilla Wingfield.

The central characters - at least in my interpretation - are Rosa and Anette. They are both women who shrug of the expectations of conventional society. Rosa by working in a factory and having a secretive and difficult relationship to two Polish refugees who have gained a certain power over her. Annette by leaving her finishing school and trying to learning about life on her own - getting into quite an amount of scrapes in the process. Annette made me feel protective of her, she is so unable to cope on her own and her shallow thoughts lead to pretty bad decisions. She is like a child playing grown-up, whereas Rosa has left all of her childhood behind immersing herself in grim reality. And somehow losing herself in the process. It is somehow a disturbing read but also really enchanting. Mischa - the man of impossible power - is enchanting. He seems charismatic and actually nice - however, his right-hand-man Calvin Blick is really creepy, a nasty piece of work.

It is a magical story. The language, the prose, the style of Iris Murdoch is enchanting. I really loved reading the story and found myself really liking Rosa Keepe and her early-feminist ways. A little gem of a book.

Teaser Tuesday: "The Flight from the Enchanter"

So it's been a while since I have done a Teaser Tuesday but today, I will do one.



TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two “teaser” sentences from that page.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!

So here we go, today's teaser is from "The Flight from the Enchanter" by Iris Murdoch.

"Rosa had been very fond of Marcia Cockeyne when they had been at school together in Switzerland, and leter when they shared a flat in London, and she did her best to be fond of Annette, not without some success. This was the easier, since Anette had never yet occupied very much of Rosa's attention."

Review: "The Book and the Brotherhood" - The effect of a common enemy

What is it about? Somebody asked me when I had just begun reading the 700-something pages long "The Book and the Brotherhood" by Iris Murdoch. I had no answer, really, because the book cannot be summed up in a few words or a sentence - firstly because it is long, secondly because there is a lot of action in this book but it is not the action that matters, rather all the things that take place around the action. The book focuses on a group of people who have been friends since they went to university at Oxford.
Gerard lost his beloved friend Sinclair at a young age and now he is best friends with his sister Rose who is not-so-secretly in love with him. Jenkin is their friend and is secretly in love with Rose but dare not say anything as he knows how she feels about Gerard. Duncan and Jean are a married couple who are in the centre of the circle and on the outskirt of the circle are Gulliver and Lily who stick together since outsiders they are and Pat and Gideon, the pushy brother and sister-in-law of Gerard, and Pat's sister Violet, depressed and financially desolate and her daughter Tamar. They all interact happily until that night of the ball at Oxford where Lily shows up with Crimond. Their common enemy. And Crimond swoops down like a predator and snares away Jean from her marriage and leaves the circle to slow fall into pieces.
Years ago they all regarded Crimond as a genius, someone to be supported and protected so they banded together and decided to fund Crimond writing a book. The book of all time and of all ideas. The book that would be his legacy. However, when they fell out with Crimond they could not stop funding the book and now that he has taken away Jean, the book become the centre of all that is happening to them.
There are many interlinking stories to follow. The story of young Tamar who is regarded as an angel by them all but who has to drop out of Oxford to support her mother. Of Lily and Gulliver who struggle to find their places in life and in society. The story of Rose who has never recovered from the loss of her brother and the story of Gerard who hasn't recovered either. Crimond plays a part in all these stories.
It is a wonderful book. I loved the fact that it was so long because it meant that I got to spend lots of time with it. And every time I pulled it out of my bag on the bus or picked it up to read, it was like meeting an old friend. I really bonded with the characters and got to like them. Especially Rose and Tamar. Rose seems like such a wonderful woman, so much personality and character. I really wish she was real and hated putting the book down when it ended. It is a beautiful book and I have already bought another book by Iris Murdoch that I look forward to reading.