From Amazon.co.uk:

"Book Description
'To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself, I stay on the run'. The PowerBook is twenty-first century fiction that uses past, present and future as shifting dimensions of a multiple reality. The story is simple. An e-writer called Ali or Alix will write to order anything you like, provided that you are prepared to enter the story as yourself and take the risk of leaving it as someone else. You can be the hero of your own life. You can have freedom just for one night. But there is a price. Ali discovers that she too will have to pay it. 'Death can take the body but not the heart…'

Set in London, Paris, Capri and Cyberspace, this is a book that reinvents itself as it travels. Using cover-versions, fairy tales, contemporary myths and popular culture, The PowerBook works at the intersection between the real and the imagined. Its territory is you.

Intense, erotic, incandescent in the power and beauty of its prose, The PowerBook is an astonishing achievement."

Bought for £2.99 from my local bookshop - what a bargin!

INTERNATIONAL BOOK RING.

I'm sending this out as a Ring. PM me if you're interested or post here.



Participants.

pumpkin-head.

teachie.

celticseahorse.

voveryte.

okyrhoe.

ealasaidmae.

BookRing Guidelines:

• WHEN YOU RECEIVE THE BOOK, please make a journal entry. This way we know that it has arrived safe and sound.

• Please PM the next person on the list for confirmation of their mailing address as soon as you can. This makes sure they haven't moved or gone on an extended vacation, and reduces the chances of the book getting lost in the mail.

• Please try to finish the book within a reasonable amount of time. This will allow us to keep the bookring moving, and avoid having it getting placed on a "to be read" pile for an undetermined amount of time. Also, if you don't like it, don't feel obligated to finish it before sending it on its way.

• When you finish the book, please make a journal entry (NOT RELEASE NOTES) to let us know when you are finished and that it has been mailed. This way we all know it's traveling again.

• If you are last on the list, please send it back home to me!

Most of all...Happy Reading!

If you run into any issues, or have any questions, feel free to PM me: QuantumAyla.

Sorry it's taken me a while to get this moving!

Am posting this off to pumpkinhead today.

Hope you enjoy the book.

Arrived safe at it's first stop.

Am looking forward to reading this having enjoyed both Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Boating For Beginners. I saw Jeanette Winterson at the Edinburgh Book Festival last year, she's a very funny and firey lady, scared me slightly.

I have to admit I'm not sure what to make of this book, I think it went right over my head. I kept reading thinking it would all come together but it never did. Lot's of nice little bits in it but as a whole it didn't work for me.

PMing teachie for address.

Thanks Pumpkinhead this arrived today. I am reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman at the mo so will get to this book probably by next week.

As this is a small book, I decided to slot it in between stories in American Gods so that I wouldn't hold up this bookring. I am sorry, maybe because I am reading a totally different kind of book which is also made up of short stories, this just didn't work for me.
I will contact celticseahorse and get this posted off to her.

Thanks Teachie arrived safely this morning..with my current hassle with missing posts on Gmail..any mention of cyberspace seems ominous at the moment..but interested to see what I make of this after previous comments.

Best wishes
Jane

Interesting but light? Liked it for its interconnectedness but left me hungry didn't really satisfy. Finished few hours after arrival.

I liked the contrast in 1st section of lovers in Paris..with their dilemma of modern morality..with the possibility of adultery vs the next section when we fall under the spell of 'mythical' love stories and acceptance of adultery as the 'passion' of love takes precedence.

Whole book left me feeling have we been seduced for too long by this 'do or die' version of love?

I think there are probably a lot of literary references I didn't get..I sensed V. Woolfes Orlando early on and it seemed to return again in time travel and the Thames which happen in Orlando.

The name Oscar Wilde took in Capri, at the hotel, Sebastian Melmoth has a little story which I copy from Wikipedia

"Melmoth the Wanderer is a gothic novel published in 1820, written by Charles Robert Maturin (uncle of Jane Wilde who was mother of Oscar Wilde).

The central character, John Melmoth (a Wandering Jew type), is a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 extra years of life and spends that time searching for someone who will take over the pact for him; the novel actually takes place in the present, but this backstory is revealed through several nested stories-within-a-story that work backwards through time (usually through the Gothic trope of old books)."

I tried it last year as a trip through some lesser known Irish authors but got lost fairly early on..as this is a genre I don't know well, so their explanation is far clearer than mine LOL..but Wilde after release from prison is signing in as man who has lost his soul to the devil..

I liked the concept of the www sections which had some intersting ideas but the mainstay of the story , that of the tulips, didn't really grab me.

I could only recommend this book as 'interesting read'

I have PMed Voveryte and have address and will be taking this to Post Office early next week as it is heading off to Lithunania and wanted to get postage right. Onward little book..happy foreign travels
Will confirm date of mailing.

Put in post this morning so safely on its way..to Voveryte

Arrived today! I am in the last pages of my current book, so it won't be too long till I get to this one. Thanks for sharing!

Finished today! Honestly, I can't tell anything to praise this book. I agree with pumpkin-head that there are lots of nice little bits in it, but somehow I felt the whole book was a bit too pretentious. Or maybe I am not into modern writing.

Anyway, it was a nice experience to read this book. Thank you QuantumAyla for setting up the ring and celticseahorse for passing it to me.

I have PMed okyrhoe and have the address and hopefully will mail this on Wednesday.

Mailed on April 12

Arrived in my p.o.box today. Thanks QuantumAyla for including me in the ring, and voveryte for posting it to me!

I have a mixed response to this novel. I wanted to like it overall, because time and time again I would stop to reflect on a phrase that impressed me. But....I expected more in terms of its content and structure.

I did not sense that the narrative's analogy with the Apple Powerbook has been fully developed, thematically speaking. The chapter/segment headings parallel the Apple OS menu commands, but that's basically it. From the publicity material I assumed that the novel has been written in such a way that the experience of reading it would be an "interactive" one, similar to that of reading Alina Reyes' Behind Closed Doors or Sophie Calle's Exquisite Pain, for example. There is no suggestion that one can read through this in a non-linear manner, as in the following of random doors (or "hyperlinks") in Reyes' novel.

What did intrigue me about this narrative is the self-reflective theme of the author's dilemma -'being' the story versus 'writing' it. --> "The more I write, the more I discover that the partition between real and invented is as thin as a wall in a cheap hotel room."
I would add that this can also become an issue for the reader. At least in my case, I sometimes find myself being influenced by the fictional sentiments expressed by fictional characters in the book I happen to be reading. To paraphrase, "The more I read, the more I discover that the partition between real and invented is as thin as a wall in a cheap hotel room."

I most enjoyed the sub-story with the 'little muck-mole' and the toxic jar of love!

Arrived today! Thank you for the lovely postcard, okyrhoe! I love the colors in this. I wish I could sit on the terrace and read this book!

I seem to be in the minority in having liked this book! I loved the little stories-within-stories: the first one with the tulips made me laugh out loud. Some of the repetition annoyed me a bit...but overall, I thought it was a beautiful and entertaining book. I didn't mind the lack of tight structure. It allowed me to experience what the character was experiencing, that feeling of uncertainty, of drifting. With this particular story, it made sense. I admire Jeanette Winterson more with each book I read. I'm also on a ring for "Sexing the Cherry" and now I'm anxious for for my turn!

I'm out of town right now, just popped in to leave my two cents! I'll be back in a few days, and mail this home to you ASAP, QuantumAyla!

On its way home to QuantumAyla.

I received the book this morning. Thanks for posting it safely back to me ealasaidmae, and thanks for the postcards. That forest looks gorgeous! :-)

Thanks everyone for taking part! I hope you all enjoyed the book.

So far so good, exciting and intelligent