My first few reads of 2016

 1.  Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (4*) - Probably don't need to say much about this one, right? Classic vintage children's fare: a charismatic yet dangerous young main character, a small army of assorted children, lots of adventures, some dubious attitudes towards women and Native Americans, a dose of tongue-in-cheek humour and plenty of magic. I actually really enjoyed it!

 
2.  Knots and Crosses (Rebus 1) by Ian Rankin (3.5*) - I've never read any Ian Rankin before, but I liked this! I especially liked John Rebus - an old-school British smoking, drinking, book-loving, slightly unstable detective - and the way Edinburgh became a character in its own right, from the bright touristy areas right down to the sleaziest bars and most dangerous neighbourhoods. The story itself wasn't the height of excitement, but it was only the first in a very successful series so I think I'll read on, see where the characters go from here.

 
3.  Zoo by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge (4.5*) - Now, THIS one had me glued to the pages. It's an eco-pocalypse thriller in which the natural behaviour of animals across the globe starts to shift, including their hunting and feeding habits, and there is a corresponding rise in brutal attacks on humans. Jackson Oz, a young biologist, has been monitoring this for years, but as things escalate it becomes a matter of international importance to finally get the message into the public eye and try to work out what's causing the change. It's been made into a TV series, which I haven't seen yet, and I found the book gripping, infuriating, suitably shocking in places, and oddly plausible.


4.  Very British Problems Abroad by Rob Temple (2.5*) - I really like the VPB Twitter feed (hilarious AND relatable!), sailed through the first book, and then a TV series arrived, and now here's a 'Brits on holiday' book. To be honest all of the above could probably be enjoyed by anyone quite reserved, socially anxious, polite and well prepared - though being British definitely helps. This took me only an hour or two to read, and once again there are some dud entries and some silly editorial slips that really shouldn't be an issue in a book this easy to comb through, but it was fun!

 
5.  21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) by Steve Stack (3*) - Another British-skewed humour book that could probably be enjoyed by other people too, at least in part.  This one is about objects and concepts on the verge of going extinct (or already long gone) in our modern life: mix tapes, dial telephones, milkmen, Opal Fruits, half-day closing, 10p mixed bags of sweets, chocolate cigars, Smash Hits magazine, Woolworths... Things I don't remember at all, things I must have only ever come into contact with as a tiny child, perhaps at my grandparents', and things that lasted all the way into my early teens and beyond and now wear the rosy halo of nostalgia for me too. Lovely.
 

6.  Newtown: An American Tragedy by Matthew Lysiak (4.5*) - Oooh, now, this one's a difficult one to talk about, especially knowing how many of my readers live in the US. As a Brit who, like most people here, has never even SEEN a gun that isn't being worn by a soldier outside an army barracks or by armed security in an airport, mass shootings are one of the few areas of life where America, so similar to us in so many ways, suddenly seems like another planet. I found this book fascinating, sad, respectful, compelling and gratifyingly well-balanced. It tackles Sandy Hook from multiple angles - the children and their families, their teachers, the Lanzas, the events of December 14 2012 and the subsequent days in Newtown - before looking at the roles of various elements such as mental health care, media, gun control and community, and the way these elements continue to impact on EVERYONE involved, from those at the heart of the shooting (victims and survivors) out into the town and beyond to the rest of the country. It was hard to read at times - so much loss, pain and rage - and sometimes I had to stop because I was in tears or just needed a breather, but I thought it was an excellent account and surprisingly fair and objective, albeit written in a slightly overblown style that betrays its author's tabloid newspaper roots. Definitely the best book I've read this year so far.

Aaaand that's my reading year so far!

Bout of Books 15: Sunday and Wrap-Up

It's the last day of Bout of Books 15 - and as usual, it both feels like it's lasted forever, and like it's flown by in about twelve seconds.  Unlike usual, on this final Sunday I'm up early because NOISY CAT and HEADACHE and also JUST PLAIN AWAKE, so I might actually get a decent reading day in again, woohoo!  Let's get started, shall we?  *reaches for painkillers and coffee determinedly*
 

~ SUNDAY ~

Books I've read from:  Zoo by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge; The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens; 21st Century Dodos: A Collection Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) by Steve Stack

Pages read today:  156

Books finished today:  None

Running total:  2 books; 846 pages 

The menu: Coffee; pains au chocolat and mixed tinned fruit; Nutella hot chocolate; lasagne with sweetcorn; cocoa puffs with sultanas; vanilla rooibos tea

Today #insixwords:  "WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIEEEEENDS..."

5:30am:  Yup, definitely an early start over here.  And on a Sunday too.  Ugh.  Aaaanyway, the sky is already starting to shift from navy black to that lovely pre-sunrise blue, and I have coffee, and Domino has ARRIVED, so I'm going to start reading Chapter 2 of The Pickwick Papers and have some headache tablets, and we'll go from here.  More sleep afterwards?  Breakfast?  More reading?  WHO KNOWS?!  When you're up at 5:30am, the options are endless.  Lovely.  :)

7:30am:  Weeeell, that 'going back to sleep' thing's probably shot to pieces at this point to be honest.  More coffee and the REST of Chapter 2 of Pickwick I think.  Also I need to make some review notes and copy down some notable quotables from Knots and Crosses so it can go back to the library, which is something else easy but productive to cross off nice and early.  Might as well start this last readathon day RIGHT.

1pm:  I switched to Zoo a bit ago, after I finished my chapter of Pickwick.  I was GOING to have delicious pains au chocolat for breakfast about two hours ago, but then we discovered a little stray piece of cat poo on the stairs (Domino's so fluffy she doesn't always notice these things while they're actually upon her person) and I accidentally stuck my finger in it when I went to clean it up, SO I kinda went right off the 'gooey chocolatey breakfast' idea for a bit.  I had a good long shower instead, washed my hair, shower gelled the shit out of the offending hand (literally), and NOW I've got pains au chocolat and fruit and coffee for a late breakfast-slash-brunch.  It's aaaaaall good.

So, I'm carrying on with Zoo, and it's getting very interesting as Oz and his fellow scientists try to work out what's going on with the world's mammals.  It skipped forward in time by five years a bit back, just as I was starting to wonder how the story could sustain itself as it was, and now it's getting scientific and political and weird and shocking, and I THINK my earlier theory about what could be happening just turned out to be correct.  Don't you love it when that happens?!

4pm:  Weeeeeell, look at me!  Despite a sore hip from yesterday's walk, I was determined to go out again, because it's a lovely day today, AND because tomorrow it's given rain all day so I probably won't go then.  Anyway, I found a mini route with slightly less steep inclines up and down and walked that.  The views across town were surprisingly good, the clouds were beautiful, the air was crisp...  it was nice.

I'm not gonna lie, my lower back and my hip are now cricked in such a weird way that I feel like I might not be able to move properly at ALL tomorrow, but every little walk should help counter that.  I sort of forgot it was Sunday, and that there would therefore be lots of other people out having a wander too, and I end up trying to walk more 'normally' (straighter, faster) around them rather than walking comfortably.  Ooops.  Still, it was a good excuse to make Nutella hot chocolate and sit down for a few minutes with my book when I got home!


5:30pm:  Yummy.  I set the books aside, and ate lasagne and sweetcorn, and drank coffee, and watched the episode of Being Human where Annie babysits and George tries to get his life in order and Mitchell breaks apart and sobs all over Doctor Lucy and totally gets in her pants.


*licks screen experimentally*

6:30pm:  Aaaaand I fell asleep.  Not to dream of Aidan Turner with his shirt off, tragically, and it was only for ten minutes, but... let's try that 'reading and being awake in the early evening like a normal person' thing again, shall we?  I might listen to Michael Ball's radio show on Radio 2 for a bit while I do a bit of internetty shizzle, then it'll be time to turn off the screen again for tonight's digital sundown.  I'll be ready to go back to my book by then for one last push towards the end of Bout of Books!  And I'll be back tomorrow to add the week's wrap-up onto the end of this post, of course.  Arrivederci, fellow readers!


Quote of the day:  "What I was feeling wasn't even quite fear.  What I was feeling was the fear equivalent of when you're so sad you laugh.  The wheel of fear went around a whole turn, came out the other side.  I thought, well, this is it."
- from Zoo by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

~ Wrap-Up ~

 

We've come to the end of another readathon - so how did I do?  Well, pretty darn well, actually, now you mention it...  I read a total of 846 pages, including the second half of Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, all of Knots and Crosses, the first Rebus novel by Ian Rankin, most of Zoo by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, a big chunk of 21st Century Dodos by Steve Stack and two chapters of The Pickwick Papers.  Not bad considering that my 'daily page average' goal in previous years has been to read about 50 pages a day - this week I've averaged a whopping 121 pages a day.  Hooray!  I love getting a new year's reading off to a flying start.

 

Aside from the reading, I've posted every day, with pictures, stats, challenge entries and reading updates.  I took part in three challenges, the fun 'Would You Rather' challenge (Tuesday), the now practically traditional Rainbow challenge (Wednesday) and the cosy Comfy Reading Spot challenge (Saturday).  I also managed to squeeze in a couple of episodes of Being Human, watching Disney's Peter Pan for the first time since I was a child, going on a couple of nice little walks to start boosting me out of my agoraphobic backslide, a trip to the dentist and a potter round Tesco, amongst other things.  Not too shabby really!

You can read all my updates, see all my photos and GIFs, and check out my challenge entries in one handy package by clicking here!

 

I hope you've enjoyed coming along for the ride with me, and that you've had a fantastic week of reading, whether or not you were taking part in Bout of Books this time!

Bout of Books 15: Saturday

Ugh.  Another night where I just couldn't get comfy enough to drift off to sleep...  I ended up having a lie-in until about 10am this morning, despite my alarm being set for 7am so I could get up and do something useful, but... c'est la vie.  It's more important that I get enough sleep at this time of year, potential for seasonal depression and all, so I'm never too worried about what time that sleep happens as long as it does.  Aaaaaanyway, I'm up now, so ON WITH THE READATHON!

~ SATURDAY ~

Books I've read from:  Zoo by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge; The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Pages read today:  132

Books finished today:  None

Running total:  2 books; 690 pages 

The menu: Blueberry muffin, mixed tinned fruit and coffee; sweet tea; buttered toast with orange and ginger marmalade; apple; Graze 'chocolate pudding' punnet (sultanas, jumbo raisins and chocolate chips); my stepdad's amazing kedgeree with smoked fish, boiled egg, rice, peas and herbs; cocoa puffs with sultanas; vanilla rooibos tea

Today #insixwords:  'Ellie and Charles Dickens: The Reunion'

10:30am:  We begin the day, naturellement, WITHOUT the call of the laptop but WITH the readathon breakfast of champions: blueberry muffin, fruity goodness, and a small bucket of coffee.  I'm diving straight back into Zoo this morning, because I'm intrigued and worried and puzzled and I'm not quiiiiite sure what's happening.  The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach (as well as the hefty remaining page count) is telling me that the animal-human conflict is probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better.  Always a good draw to keep turning those pages!

1:30pm:  Oooooh, things are getting really scary in Zoo!  I'm still reading, over a lunch of buttered toast with orange and ginger marmalade (my favourite), an apple and more coffee.  Our protagonist Oz, a young biologist, and his new friend Chloe have just returned from their scary trip to Botswana and are now up against government red tape, disbelieving officials and the awful possibility that the change in animal behaviour may have made it to the US.  Properly, not just the odd isolated incident.  What I like about this book so far is that it combines the best of all elements of a biothriller - intelligent theories, interesting characters, overarching menace and just enough shocking moments to remind the reader that the situation isn't just bad, it's outright terrifying.

4:30pm:  STOP THE PRESSES.  I HAVE BEEN FOR A WALK.  Yes, this IS news, in my world anyway.  Regular readers of this blog and people I've known from days of yore may remember that I left university due to crippling levels of agoraphobia which left me completely housebound.  Obviously things are not at that point any more - I don't have a panic attack every time I go outside - but I've noticed that over recent months I've been deteriorating again to the point where I only really leave the house to hop in the car and visit my sister, or go to Tesco or to the doctor's surgery for my prescriptions.  Even then it's not always voluntary.  It's not good.  My world has narrowed to my room again, and if I'm not careful it will stay that way.  And obviously, this has health implications for everything else too, including my weight, my cholesterol, my bad hip, my sleep patterns, my IBS, my potential for depression... EVERYTHING.

So, I decided to go for a walk.  Just one, little, fifteen-minute, round-the-block walk.  Even then I had to psych myself up for a few minutes first, and I thought about putting it off 'until another day' because it was raining a bit.  BUT I WENT.  Without my phone, but with my camera, because some of my favourite photos that I've ever taken have been a result of happening to have my camera in my pocket at the right moment.  Gently, at a relaxed pace, just enjoying the breeze on my face and the scent of damp trees and earth, for the first time in MONTHS.  I have a bit of a headache now (cold wind whistling in my ears, it's been getting me like this since I was a kid), and I think my dicky hip will feel the sudden switch from 'sitting still' to 'striding purposefully up and down hills', but... I went.  One step at a time, right?


8:45pm: Another readathon day draws to a close... I've kind of faltered a bit with Zoo as the day's worn on (I'm wondering if the title should actually be ZOO, as it's a government acronym in the book now, but whatever), but I HAVE spent a few sweet minutes diving back into the first chapter of The Pickwick Papers.  Back in 2014 there was a readalong of this book going on, which I was really enjoying.  Unfortunately everyone else, including the host (*eyes Bex sternly*) was bored stiff, and the whole thing fell apart.  After several months of it just sitting there on my bookshelf, I pulled the bookmark on it, and I've decided to start again from the beginning.  This time I'll read one or two chapters a week instead of cramming a ton of them in there (all the better to appreciate the humour and the many stories-within-the-story), PLUS I won't have a blog feed full of weekly doses of hatred for it this time around.  So hopefully it'll be a more positive reading experience all round!

Aaaanyway, I read the first little chapter - reintroducing myself to the key four Pickwickians: honourable Mr Pickwick, romantic Mr Tupman, sporting Mr Winkle and poetic Mr Snodgrass - and now I'm going to turn the laptop off (as per the rules of a digital sundown, which I'm trying in an attempt to counter my ongoing inability to get to sleep at night), read a bit, maybe do some colouring in the fancy Secret Garden artist edition thingy my sister bought me for Christmas?  One more day left, fellow readers!  UNTIL TOMORROW!


Quote of the day:  "Turns out an apocalypse actually comes on pretty slowly.  Not fire and brimstone but rust and dandelions.  Not a bang but a whimper."
- from Zoo by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge


CHALLENGE: COMFY READING SPOT
Hosted by Once Upon a Chapter

I have two comfy reading spots, kinda.  The most obvious one is, of course, my library corner.  It's got a bright light and books and lots of cushions - including my two new ones, based on Psycho and Beauty and the Beast (the Gemini in me is strong - Disney and death, that's the best way).  HOWEVER, the Ikea chair is not as comfy as it appeared in the store - it tips me backwards so my head's at the wrong angle to read, and it pulls on my bad hip - so I don't sit there often at the moment.  I might have to admit defeat and buy a new chair sometime soon.  Maybe a Poang one from Ikea?

 

My favoured reading spot at the moment is on my bed.  See the picture of my library above?  Well, on the left hand side there's another set of Kallax cubes, forming the last part of a square 'U' shape of shelving.  On the other side of THAT is my bed.  The library side of the shelves are filled with more books, and the bed side houses some of my DVDs, my sunrise alarm clock lamp radio thingy, my current reads and a heap of backlogged Graze boxes.  I have more cushions, my 'Bee Happy' canvas from our local honey farm, plus lots of natural light from the big window.  Also it's nearer the radiator, which comes in quite handy at this time of year.  :)

 

Just a few more hours of the readathon to go... 

Bout of Books 15: Friday

OH HAI LOVELY READERS!  Another day, another frenzy of reading... hopefully, anyway.  I had a better night's sleep last night than I've had in WEEKS (more comfortable, the heating didn't come on and fry me in the night, the cat left me alone), and I've got a fast-paced thriller to return to, so... what are we waiting for?!

~ FRIDAY ~

Books I've read from:  Zoo by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Pages read today:  119

Books finished today:  None

Running total:  2 books; 558 pages 

The menu: Blueberry muffin, mixed tinned fruit and coffee; buttered toasted teacakes; apple; cheese and bacon quiche with peas and sweetcorn; Terry's chocolate minis

Today #insixwords:  Reading sprint increases page count beautifully.

1pm:  Another laptop-free morning in which I read over breakfast, kept going for a while, then had a nice hot shower before heading downstairs to make lunch.  Now I've got a couple of hot buttered toasted teacakes, an apple and a big mug of coffee, and I think I'm going to play a little game of 'see how many pages I can read in an hour'.  The font in this novel is quite big, and the pace quite quick, so I wonder if I'll improve on my average 28-35 pages an hour (which I know from a fair few Dewey's readathon stat updates, haha)?

 

2:30pm:  Well, whaddya know, I managed to sail in at around 55 pages read in that hour!  And that includes occasional pauses because I was eating teacakes at the same time.  The book is nearly 500 pages long so it's unlikely that I'll finish it today even with the best of intentions, but I enjoyed that little sprint - and it's heartening to know that I can read at a decent clip, with the right book and the right conditions!

Things are getting a bit exciting in Zoo, it's all quite intriguing.  Our hero, a young biologist called Oz, has flown out to Botswana to document aberrant behaviour in the local lion population as part of his theory that some environmental shift is occurring that is pitting animals and humans against each other in increasingly brutal ways.  Naturally, when he gets there, the shit royally hits the fan as he and his guide reach a safari camp to find the place all but deserted and reports of bizarre lion behaviour in the immediate vicinity.  Ooooooooh...

 

 

9pm: Or at any rate, it WOULD have been good if I hadn't pissed away the rest of the afternoon playing on the internet.  Well, playing was part of it.  I used to play Bust-a-Moves on my old Playstation as a kid and now I've found Puzzle Bobble, the online version, and it's so easy to play 'just one more game'...  But I'm also doing a bit of a blitz of everything on my laptop/online at the moment, while I have some free time, so I also spent a couple of hours sorting through bookmarked sites and starting to deal with my picture files, both of which are overflowing.  Not reading, but necessary!  I've read enough today anyway, so I'm happy with that.  :)

 

November: What I Read, What I'm Reading

How the hell is it December already?  Not that it feels like it, because despite the Channel 5 movie marathons and Christmas readalongs and Instagrammed decorations, there's still a whole lot of real life left between now and the 25th.  Give it another week, and POSSIBLY I'll be ready to watch or read something borderline seasonal, we'll see.

So, last month's reading.  Despite taking part in two separate readathons (the 24 in 48 readathon and Tika's minithon), I actually didn't read very much at all, especially over the last week or two.  Not that it was a bad thing, I've just been doing other things - like exploring going back into higher education, completing a couple of fairly heavy-duty job applications, helping my mum with a Forth Bridge-esque 5-coat paint job on our panelled hallway, blitzing my overloaded laptop, watching Criminal Minds (my new favourite thing) and stalking Amazon for Black Friday Week Christmas present deals.  Here's what I DID finish:
 

 

~ What I Read ~

 

Beloved

by Toni Morrison
This was my first Toni Morrison, and it managed to be both everything I expected and nothing like I expected...  It's the story of Sethe, a runaway slave living in Ohio, who many years ago killed her small daughter to prevent her being taken away by a posse of men from her former plantation.  It's about how her actions have reverberated down the years, and about how slavery penetrated every part of society.  There is a pervasive feeling of fear and oppression that seeps under the skin of the reader and refuses to leave.  This is also, however, a ghost story, a feat of magical realism slightly akin to Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child - and that I WASN'T expecting.  I'm still not entirely sure what was going on with Beloved and Sethe, and I'm not entirely sure I liked it as a plot device (especially the stream-of-consciousness weirdness near the end)...  but there we go.  As a whole the book was beautifully written, brutal and evocative, and I think that even when the content, the storyline itself, has left my memory, the FEELING of reading it will linger.  An interesting reading experience - 3.5 stars.


The Dead-Tossed Waves (TFoHaT 2)
by Carrie Ryan
Another novel that wasn't quite what I expected!  (That seems to be becoming a running theme of late...)  I really didn't like the first book (The Forest of Hands and Teeth) when I read it back in August, but I took a gamble on this one because my main problem was with the unbearably selfish protagonist and I knew the viewpoint for this novel shifted to a new character.  From her name - Gabry - I thought it would be a kind of prequel from the perspective of the girl-turned-Breaker in the first book, but it's actually not.  Instead we've jumped forward a generation - and Gabry's story is SO MUCH more enjoyable to read than Mary's.  There's another love triangle (bleurgh), and the pervading bleakness remains, but the overall plot is more interesting and I actually found I preferred the way Ryan concentrates on looking forward instead of returning to answer questions from the first book.  After all, the characters can't get answers from the past because the past is literally dead - so why should we dwell on it too much as readers?  I think I'll see this series through now, find out what happens to these characters and their battle against the Mudo in the end!  3 stars.


Relish: My Life in the Kitchen
by Lucy Knisley
A super-fun graphic memoir that seems to be doing the rounds at the moment.  I'd heard of Lucy Knisley, but had never visited her website or anything like that.  I will probably drop by more often now, because this book was so cute.  It's pretty much a series of comics about different elements of growing up as a food-loving individual in a household devoted to it (her mother is/was a caterer and her father a keen appreciator of good cuisine).  There are vignettes on craving garlic mushrooms and discovering the world' most amazing croissants in Venice.  She talks about following in her mother's footsteps as a student, and about the comforting power of cookies.  It's all done in a simple, charming and amusing style, interspersed with recipes that sound amazing.  Loved it - I'll definitely be reading more of her books!  4 stars.


The Unknown Unknown
by Mark Forsyth
This tiny pamphlet is this year's Independent Booksellers Week essay.  I missed last year's by Ann Patchett, and had to go looking for this one on AbeBooks because there was nowhere else for me to get it locally, but it's so good!  It's all about the idea that bookshops can lead you to books you never even knew you wanted to read, and that such serendipitous discoveries are actually quite important - not to mention FUN.  I've never read Mark Forsyth before, but his style is clever and amusing, with plenty of pop culture references and some interesting thoughts on book buying culture.  It's under 25 pages, £1.99 in-store and only takes a few minutes to read - so if you see one still sitting around on a bookshop counter, do pick it up!  4.5 stars, it's such a lovely little thing for a reader to be able to return to every so often.


~ What I'm Reading ~

  

At this moment I'm ACTIVELY reading three different books: The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, Harry, A History by Melissa Anelli (a history of the Harry Potter fandom) and Project X by Jim Shepard (a novella about a pair of would-be school shooters).  I've also got two collections that I'm still dipping in and out of: poetry in the form of Charles Bukowski's The Pleasures of Damned, and columns in the form of Charlie Brooker's Dawn of the Dumb.

 

Aaaaand that was my November!

 

August: What I Read, What I Watched, What I'm Reading

Flying in late YET again with my August reviews and wrap-up, oooops.  Hello!  How was your late-summer reading?  I feel like mine finally picked up a bit last month; I finished Lamb at last and leapt head-first into some long-awaited novellas from the library.  The impending 'final deadline' really boosted me to drive hard at my reading towards the end of August, because I desperately wanted to read these books and I'd had them for so long I couldn't renew them any more!  It's amazing how much time you find to read when you have the threat of library fines at your back.  :)
 

 

~ What I Read ~

 

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

by Christopher Moore
My first priority in August was to FINALLY finish Lamb, which I'd been reading since I went on holiday at the end of June.  I'd put it aside for some frothy summer reading and to finish a non-fiction book I'd been struggling to get through, so it was about time!  Happily, it lived up to all the rave reviews and Moore-hype I've seen everywhere over the past few years.  The basic premise is that Christ's oldest friend Biff has been resurrected by an angel and locked in a hotel room to write his own gospel - the real story of Joshua's life, filling in the massive gap between 'born in stable' and 'thirty and preaching the Word'.  Christopher Moore being a clever and hilarious dude, this manages to incorporate everything from Buddhist philosophy and the wisdom of the Kings of Orient to kung-fu and a Yeti, as Joshua sets about learning how to be the Messiah.  It's such an absorbing read, very intelligent, very funny, yet surprisingly wise and poignant sometimes too.  Definitely a keeper - I gave it 4.5 stars - and I see many more Christopher Moore novels in my future!


The Forest of Hands and Teeth (TFoHaT 1)
by Carrie Ryan
I'd heard a lot of good things about this book, and had been looking for it at the library for AGES, so when I finally spotted it on the reshelving trolley I grabbed it!  A zombie novel whose synopsis reminded me a bit of The Village - human enclave, very insular and ordered, evil things trying to breach the fences - this sadly turned out to be a tad disappointing.  The actual zombie mythology of Ryan's world is interesting, and the book definitely kept me hooked, but I had some problems with it too.  I felt like it set up more questions than it answered, paving the way for future books in the series in a way that was more frustrating than enticing, and I really wasn't keen on the main character, Mary.  She is extremely self-absorbed and self-obsessed, playing with people's hearts and constantly putting herself and others in danger through her reckless need to follow her whims instantly instead of thinking them through.  Of course everyone around her pays the price, and yet she never seems to learn!  I've picked up the next book, The Dead-Tossed Waves, mostly because it has a complete character shift so... no more Mary and her stupidity!  Hopefully I'll like this one better, and it'll fill in some of those unanswered questions that bugged me in the first book...  3 stars.


Ghost World
by Daniel Clowes
I loved the movie version of Ghost World as a teenager, so when Ellie (the Curiosity Killed the Bookworm branch of the Ellie Army) offered to send on her copy of the graphic novel, I eagerly accepted.  And I'm so glad I did!  To start with I wasn't sure I was going to like the style, either in terms of the art work OR the dialogue, but the further I delved, the more I appreciated it.  It's actually made up of several short and largely self-contained vignettes that fall along a linear timeline, rather than following one big story arc, which probably helped, because I could dip into it for light relief in between chapters of the Carrie Ryan novel.  It had its kooky moments, and its poignant ones, and it was a good excuse to watch the movie again for the first time in years.  I think I like the adaptation more, but it was still a lot of fun!  4 stars.


We Have Always Lived in the Castle
by Shirley Jackson
Finally, I read my first Shirley Jackson!  Jean over at Bookish Thoughts talks about her a fair bit, so I thought it was about time I gave her a go.  My local bookshops failed epically, but the library fared better and I picked We Have Always Lived in the Castle to start me off.  This book is more about atmosphere and character than plot, concentrating on an insular household comprising eighteen year-old oddball Merricat, her older sister Constance, her cat Jonas, and their eccentric uncle.  The rest of their family was killed in bizarre circumstances and the townspeople hate, ridicule and fear them in equal measure - all they have is their house, each other and their unchanging domestic routine.  Until a money-grabbing cousin unexpectedly arrives and brings their world tumbling down around them, that is...  The description and prose in this novella is beautiful, and the inside of Merricat's strange mind is quite fascinating.  It's fairly sedately paced, with the exception of one genuinely heartbreaking scene of chaos and misery that made me feel sick to the stomach, but it flows well and I never felt like it was dragging at all.  A hard one to describe all round, really... My best advice is just to read it for yourself!  4 stars - I'll definitely be reading more Shirley Jackson soon!

A Single Man
by Christopher Isherwood
Another beautiful little novella that's far more focussed on character, thought and ambience than it is on plot - and is thus difficult to describe or review in any meaningful way.  This was my first Isherwood - and again, most definitely not my last - and is pretty much a 'day in the life' of George, a British college professor living in Los Angeles.  He is still mourning the (fairly) recent loss of his partner Jim, and finds himself irreparably estranged from the world: from his neighbours and colleagues, because of his sexuality, and from his students, because of his age.  He spends his time perfecting his outer façade, searching for understanding, reflecting on life, and fielding the neuroses of his larger-than-life friend Charlotte.  It's gorgeously written and quietly devastating, and I plan to buy the film soon because if it's even NEARLY as good as this, it's going to be something special.  Another solid 4 stars.

~ What I Watched ~

 

The Double (2013)

Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska, directed by Richard Ayoade
This film was the reason I finally read my first Dostoyevsky novella back in April (jeez, was it that long ago?!).  The DVD was released in August and I bought it the same week, thanks to the winning (for me) combination of classic source material, 'what is real' mind-fuckery, and the combined talents of Jesse Eisenberg (who is rapidly becoming one of my favourite actors, he's amazing), the lovely Mia Wasikowska and the genius that is Richard Ayoade.  It was... slow, not in a bad way... extremely dark, blackly funny, strange and unsettling, picking up pace and getting simultaneously more coherent yet more warped as the movie went on.  The numerous cameos from Ayoade's fellow comedians (Tim Key), IT Crowd friends (Chris O'Dowd, Chris Morris) and cast members from his previous film Submarine (Sally Hawkins, Craig Roberts AND Paddy Considine) were fun to spot, but felt a bit out of place in such a pitch-black film.  I definitely preferred it to the book and will be watching it again at some point to see how much more I get from it the second time around.  Cautiously recommended.  (watch the trailer)


Ghost World (2001)
Starring Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi, directed by Terry Zwigoff
I finished the graphic novel during the last Bout of Books readathon, so it made sense to round off my BoB week by watching the movie, for the first time in YEARS!  It had so many little moments and snippets of dialogue that translated straight from the page to the screen (as you might expect, given that the screenplay was written by Daniel Clowes), but also gave the characters one film-friendly overarching plot which helped ease the transition between media.  The double act in the film is actually Enid and Seymour (a new character drawn together from several in the book) rather than Enid and Rebecca (who still has an important role, just... less so), but I didn't mind because the dynamic between these two soulmates-yet-polar-opposites was so much fun.  Seymour's a sweetheart and offsets Enid's confident feistiness a bit... it works.  The dialogue is still superb and the whole thing felt as warm and hilarious and full of heart as I remembered.  I also LOVE the music - lots of old blues and country rock, it's great.  Recommended! (watch the trailer)


House, Season 2 (2006)
Starring Hugh Laurie and Omar Epps
I actually watched most of this season aaaaages ago, then recently decided to rewatch it from the start so that I could finally finish it off and move on.  It's pretty much more of the same magic House formula as the first season - brilliant deduction, bucketloads of sarcasm, some nasty moments and lots of medical intrigue.  This season involves everything from a prisoner on death row to a famous doctor with possible TB, a woman with Munchausen Syndrome to an immuno-compromised heart transplant patient, all with a side dose of team bickering, hospital politics and House's ever-present leg pain.  Funny, brilliant, fascinating and moving by turn.  If, like me, you're a latecomer to this series and haven't started it yet, get on it - it more than lives up to the hype! (watch the ridiculously overdramatic US trailer)

~ What's Up Next ~

  

I finished my first book of September - Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - on the first of the month, and moved straight on to my Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.  It's my first foray into the world of Hannibal Lecter, so me being me I decided I might as well dive straight in the deep end and not only READ ALL THE HANNIBAL, but also watch the movies and both series as well.  I figured I might as well stick with Hannibal's storyline instead of veering off into the worlds of Norman Bates or Dexter Morgan again just yet.  Each serial killer in his own sweet time!  So far I've been very impressed by the book AND the new series; the book, in particular, is far more accomplished than I expected, and the series is every bit as addictive as the hype suggested.  Bring on the rest!


I have highly inappropriate fantasies about being in this particular man sandwich. NOT LITERALLY DR LECTER PUT THE KNIFE DOWN.

 

Aaaand that was August!  I hope you've all had a wonderful summer and are looking forward to some great autumn reading!

 

REVIEW: The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham (4*)

(Penguin, 2008)

"... if it were a choice for survival between a triffid and a blind man, I know which I'd put my money on."

This was my second John Wyndham novel (my first being The Chrysalids - read my review here) and once again I found myself in the grip of an absorbing, well-plotted, complex and all-round interesting story.  It didn't scare me stupid - not after the first chapter, at least - like it did some people, but it did make me think and I thought the triffids were fascinating.

Let me also just say that the plot wasn't at all what I was expecting.  I thought there was some kind of alien conspiracy at work, and that the triffids were something akin to the tripod thingies in The War of the Worlds.  In actual fact, they are bio-engineered carnivorous plants with long stings that lash out at their victims, delivering a deadly welt to the face or hands.  They can also, bizarrely, raise themselves out of the soil and 'walk', lurching across the ground, and even seem to communicate.  Probably the biggest surprise for me as I started reading was the fact that the triffids are already a huge presence on earth before the book begins.  In some areas they're a menace; in others, large nurseries exploit their potential for scientific and medicinal use, and in affluent countries, properly tethered and with their stings regularly docked, they're a popular garden novelty. The events of the novel don't in themselves create a triffid rampage - they just send them to the top of the food chain...

The novel opens with protagonist Bill waking up in a London hospital the night after a brilliant green meteor shower.  Not only has he not been able to watch the freak cosmic firework display that the rest of the world's been raving about, thanks to having treatment after a near miss in his job working as a triffid researcher, but the entire hospital seems to have shut down since he fell asleep.  It quickly becomes apparent that something's very wrong, and when he plucks up the courage to remove his own eye bandages he realises he's the only person who can still see.  All around him, other patients are waking up blind, and chaos ensues as panicking people stumble through the streets.  Within hours order has broken down and Bill has already witnessed several suicides by people who have understood the futility of their situation.  These early chapters are perhaps the most harrowing of them all, as despair sinks in and people realise that there's no one to help them survive and that at best they're probably going to starve to death in their homes.

Aaaand then the triffids begin to arrive, lurching in from the surrounding countryside, breaking out of their nurseries and homing in on their suddenly vulnerable sustenance of choice.  For Bill and the companions he acquires, still sighted, well aware of the dangers triffids pose at the best of times, a little care is all that's required.  For the blind, there is no such chance of survival.  Actually, the triffids are probably less scary than I expected them to be.  The stings are instantly lethal, so they're actually quite merciful as far as horror-novel monsters go.  For people who are helpless and waiting to die, death by triffid - especially a death that can't be seen coming, can't be anticipated and feared - is almost a better way to go, I'd have said.  There are still some horrendous attacks, some really heartbreaking and heartpounding moments, but I should have known better than to think Wyndham would resort to cheap thrills and relentless carnage...

Mostly the dystopian element of the novel comes from the blindness, the disintegration of society and the attempt at rebuilding something from the remnants of life as we know it.  The triffids are a menace, but they're almost a side-plot a lot of the time, and in some ways that's probably what makes Wyndham's novels more subtle and less scary than some of his sci-fi-horror peers.  As in The Chrysalids, the writing is fantastic, the plot is thoughtful, the characters (and their reactions to the crisis) are complex and varied, and the story feels surprisingly modern given that it was first published in 1951; it has that timeless era-vague quality that makes all the best books so enduring.  I'm not sure which of these books I've preferred so far, but I still have The Kraken Wakes and The Midwich Cuckoos on my shelves and there are more at the library, so I'm definitely not done with Wyndham yet!

For a more coherent review I recommend checking out Ellie's thoughts over at Lit Nerd!

Notable Quotables:

• "It's humiliating to be dependent... but it's a still poorer pass to have no one to depend on."
• "Absurd it undoubtedly was, but I had a very strong sense that the moment I stove-in one of those sheets of plate-glass I should leave the old order behind me for ever: I should become a looter, a sacker, a low scavenger upon the dead body of the system that had nourished me.  Such a foolish niceness of sensibility in a stricken world!"
• "The corpses of other great cities are lying buried in deserts, and obliterated by the jungles of Asia.  Some of them fell so long ago that even their names have gone with them.  But to those who lived there their dissolution can have seemed no more probable or possible than the necrosis of a great modern city seemed to me...  It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that 'it can't happen here' - that one's own little time and place is beyond cataclysms.  And now it was happening here.  Unless there should be some miracle I was looking on the beginning of the end of London."
• "Until then I had always thought of loneliness as something negative - an absence of company, and, of course, something temporary....  That day I had learned that it was much more.  It was something that could press and oppress, could distort the ordinary, and play tricks with the mind.  Something which lurked inimically all around, stretching the nerves and twanging them with alarms, never letting one forget that there was no one to help, no one to care... it waited all the time its chance to frighten and frighten horribly..."
• "Growing things seemed, indeed, to press out everywhere, rooting in the crevices between the paving stones, springing from cracks in concrete, finding lodgements even in the seats of the abandoned cars.  On all sides they were encroaching to repossess themselves of the arid spaces that man had created.  And curiously, as the living things took charge increasingly, the effect of the place became less oppressive."

Source:  I bought this book in an epic pre-birthday buying spree in 2011.

REVIEW: The Rats 3 - Domain, by James Herbert (3.5*)

(New English Library, 1985)

"The man-made caverns shuddered but resisted the unleashed pressure from the world above.  Sections collapsed, others were flooded, but the main body of tunnels withstood the impacts that pounded the city. 
And after a while, the silence returned.
Save for the scurrying of many, many clawed feet."

Is anyone actually going to read this review?  Possibly not, because unless you've read the first two books in the Rats trilogy (The Rats and Lair) you're probably not going to rush out to read the third!  But I'm going to talk about it anyway...  So, the first book dealt with a plague of giant black rats with a taste for blood, rampaging through London.  The second placed the descendants of these rats, four years later, in Epping Forest, with a similar outcome.  Domain is rather different; it opens with a devastating nuclear strike on London that shatters the city, kills most of the population and drives the survivors underground out of the reach of the nuclear fallout that follows.  Meanwhile, in the tunnels under the city, those pesky giant rats have been hiding, multiplying and biding their time...

Our hero this time around is a rugged helicopter pilot called Steve Culver.  He drags a stranger - a man named Alex Dealey, who just happens to be a government agent - out of harm's way during the strike, and en route to the official shelter Dealey knows to be nearby, also saves a young woman, Kate, from the earliest ratty carnage in the tunnels of the London Underground.  Naturally, she and Steve develop an interest in each other, and Dealey's connections prove helpful...  so far so obvious.

What I wasn't expecting was for the focus to be so political.  It's quite a departure from the previous formula of 'unsuspecting person attacked - another unsuspecting person attacked - escalating carnage - investigation - crisis - resolution'.  In fact, given the whole 'nuclear holocaust' thing, the rats are fairly low down on the characters' list of problems, at least until much closer to the end.  A lot of the plot is given over to the ramifications of the attack - avoiding the nuclear fallout, government provision for survival, scoping out the remains of the city, attempting to communicate with other official shelters across London - rather than to the ratty menace. 

Of course, as the novel goes on the rats' presence definitely increases.  A horrific scene inside the government shelter (one of those where you literally can't imagine how it can end well for ANYBODY) paves the way for a group of survivors to return to the surface, where there is more scope for interaction with other people as well as encounters with the rats.  From this point the pace is much quicker, the chapters more brutal, and the double climax arrives with a satisfying dose of adrenaline-fuelled horror.

Although I'm not a huge fan of political thrillers and relentlessly bleak adventure stories, I enjoyed this trilogy finale, mostly because of the dystopian premise and the closer focus on a larger cast of key characters than Herbert perhaps felt the need to offer in the previous two installments.  I did think at times that a glimmer of hope might have been nice - there were moments when it felt like I was reading my way through a nightmare.  One of those where you KNOW there's no way out and no matter how hard you try the predators are going to get you in the end.  Mentally I occasionally wanted to do the inevitable 'give up, turn and face the bad guys, then at least I can wake up' thing.  Buuuut I kept going, because unlike a nightmare, the end was going to come eventually, and I wanted to know how the hell this little group were going to defeat the rats, and what had become of England on a wider scale after London was destroyed...  I'm glad I finished up the series, even if this third book was a bit of a departure from the previous two!

Notable Quotables:

• "She should have paid more attention to the news...  Miriam recalled hearing something on the radio about tension in the Middle East; but she'd been hearing that for years and years.  It didn't mean anything any more.  It was just news, words, items read out by smooth-voiced young men and women.  It had nothing to do with shopping at Tesco's and washing dirty sheets and spoiling grandchildren and living in Chigwell.  And nothing to do with her."
• "The sun's fierce rays sucked up moisture from the Thames, so that it looked as if the water were boiling.  Somehow it appeared to him that here were the intestines of the city's torn body, exposed to the light and still steaming as all life gradually diminished.  Masts of sunken, ancient boats, those that had been converted into smart bars and restaurants, jutted through the rolling mist.  Pleasure boats, their surfaces and passengers charred black, drifted listlessly with the current, the longboat funeral pyres of a modern age."

Source:  I bought this book from a seller on Amazon Marketplace.

REVIEW: The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin (3.5*)

(Corsair, 2011)

"That's what she was, Joanna felt suddenly.  That's what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants.  Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real."

Okay, so I mentioned before I went on holiday that I was still owing a review of The Stepford Wives.  I had a template all ready to go, and had even picked the quote I was planning to use to head up my post... and then Laura reviewed it while I was away.  Not only did she say ALL THE THINGS, but she also picked THE SAME QUOTE (which, let's be honest, is a superb summary of the book's major theme) and now I'm not ENTIRELY sure why I'm not just standing here with a neon arrow stuck on a hat wafting all of you over there to read her post instead.  BUT NO.  I SHALL TRY TO SAY A FEW THINGS.  EVEN IF THEY ARE THE SAME. 

I wasn't THAT impressed by the book, I have to say.  I mean, I enjoyed it and all, but I imagine I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if I didn't already know the plot and the twist and everything else that makes it so interesting.  And unlike Psycho, which I reviewed last month, I really DID know the plot, because I already shamelessly adore the Nicole Kidman movie.  Of course, the movie is very different - the ending has been changed, the oddness of the women is far more evident, it's funnier, and the whole thing has been brought right up to date - but the basic plot and characters are still the same...

Sooooo, it's about a fiercely independent feminist and photographer called Joanna Eberhart, who moves to idyllic Stepford with her husband Walter and their two children.  Unfortunately for Joanna, most of the beautiful local women seem to be interested in nothing but waxing their floors and cleaning their windows, while their husbands spend their evenings up at the imposing Men's Association.  It's quite a relief when she meets earthy, wisecracking fellow newbie Bobbie.  As the pair try to stir some kind of interest in women's affairs amongst their bland neighbours, and Joanna delves deeper into the town's past, they begin to suspect that there's something very wrong with the Stepford wives... 

The novel definitely raises big questions about feminism, male backlash, the role of a wife and mother and even pokes itself into the issue of scientific ethics - but it didn't really feel as powerful as I expected.  It didn't help that it was so short - flattening the characters somewhat - and that I was actually quite irritated by Joanna a fair amount of the time.  What WAS a delight was finding that Bobbie was just as smirk-inducingly funny in the book as in the new movie, even if her sharp wit is slightly less rude in the original!  I'm glad I finally read it, just because it's another one of those books that has ingratiated itself into popular culture and vocabulary so completely, but I don't think I'd read it again.  I want to watch the movie again now though, and the original film too!

Bonus points:  for the introduction by Chuck Palahniuk, in which he points out that while feminism was at its height in the 70s when this book was written, these days voluntary Stepford Wives are everywhere - painted and crimped on magazine pages, exulting their inner domestic goddess on cookery programmes, and harbouring ambitions to marry a rich footballer.  These days women are more likely to read about how to please men and dress well in Cosmo than they are to read news and politics.  He discusses the way older women are now more of a threat to young women than men, citing The Devil Wears Prada and the remake of The Stepford Wives as examples in popular culture.  His conclusion probably said more to me as a modern woman than the rest of the book:

"Now everyplace is Stepford, but it's okay.  It's fine.  This is what the modern politically aware, fully awake, enlightened, assertive woman really, really, really wants: a manicure.  We can't say Ira Levin didn't warn us."

Source: I bought this book from Amazon UK, nearly a year ago.  That's actually not bad time-wise, for me!