March: What I Read, What I'm Reading

Another month down, and happily, over the last week or so, I've finally been feeling like I'm getting my reading mojo back!  My general outlook hasn't really improved, not by much anyway, but my passion for books has returned at full throttle so hopefully I'll get plenty of reading done in the coming weeks.  Not only that, but I'm making a real effort to write some proper reviews as well so the blog should be a bit more active again.  It's still daunting to be staring at a blank Blogger post, so instead I've been writing one paragraph at a time in a notebook, in between reading chapters of my book or doing something else.  The whole process feels much easier once I've got a draft down like that!  In the meantime, here's my overall reading wrap-up for the month and what I'm getting stuck into as we careen into April!

 

 

~ What I Read ~

 

 Kiss Me First
by Lottie Moggach
A semi-thriller about online life, obsession, death and ethics, this one piqued my interest way back before the hardcover was released.  I picked up the paperback last month and dived straight in!  Basically it's about a young woman, Leila, who is chosen by a cultish website founder to help a friend of his, Tess, who wants to end her life.  To save Tess's family and friends from heartbreak, Leila will spend time learning everything there is to know about Tess before taking over her social media presence for several months after 'check-out', slowly decreasing the frequency of her communication until she's just... gone.  There are some pretty big themes in this book: it's about the naivety of young people who've spent more time online than in the real world; it's about the ethics of suicide and an individual's rights over his or her own body; it's about how easy it is to become enmeshed in an online world, a life, even a romance that isn't real in any way.  The middle section was a bit slower, and the story arc didn't really play out in the way I expected, but the beginning was fascinating and the ending quite fitting and even a little startling, so I still enjoyed it and found much to think about within its pages.  I gave it 4 stars.


Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson
I first read this many years ago, when I was only around 11 or 12, and honestly, I didn't get what all the fuss was about.  This is definitely one of those YA books that requires you to actually be - or have been - a young adult to really appreciate it.  Although it's simply written, getting to the heart of the novel and reading between the lines of Melinda's story needs a little more maturity and understanding of the world, I think.  This time around I absolutely loved the book, which in case you've been living under a rock, is Anderson's very famous novel about a girl who is raped at a party and spends the next year at her new school slowly working towards finding her voice, expressing herself, and speaking out at last.  It's a very easy read, and very funny, but it also packs a real emotional punch and captures the teenage experience beautifully despite the book now being fifteen years old.  I'll be reviewing this one properly this week, along with the excellent TV movie - 5 stars, highly recommended!


Screen Burn
by Charlie Brooker
I've been hopping in and out of this book since last year, so I was quite glad to have had a little flurry of reading and actually finished it this month.  It's a book of Charlie Brooker's TV columns from The Guardian, dating way back to the early Noughties.  You'd think that they'd be a bit boring to read now, so many years later, but actually Brooker is much like Caitlin Moran in that even if you've never seen the programme he's discussing, you can still enjoy the ride and get a few giggles along the way.  He particularly delights in reviewing bad telly, bringing out his blisteringly acerbic humour at full throttle, which is always fun!  It was a bit of a nostalgia trip too, reminding me of programmes I enjoyed waaaaaay back when I was a teenager - and it made me feel suddenly old, with references to review copies of upcoming shows making the transition from VHS to DVD, and early mentions of brand new series like Scrubs and Smallville.  Wow...  Great for idle moments, 4 stars.


Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian
by Scott Douglas
THIS!  THIS was what I wanted when I picked up Don Borchert's Library Confidential back in 2010.  As a young librarian in Anaheim, California, Douglas provides all the funny stories and strange characters that Borchert does, only he does it with a genuine feeling of affection and respect, and more importantly, a real understanding of libraries and their place in a community.  Whereas Borchert seemed to be trying to shock the reader with scandalous tales of library shenanigans, Douglas's anecdotes are friendlier and he seems to learn from every experience, adjusting his picture of library life and his role within it.  He definitely has a touch of the Bernard Black about him, but always rounds off his gripes with a warm acceptance of the experience and (mostly) generosity towards whoever (or whatever) is on the receiving end.  Oh, and I also loved the funny, self-deprecating and frequently very interesting footnotes and info inserts.  I gave it 4 stars.


The Shock of the Fall
by Nathan Filer
I only bought this book last month, but I was stalking Hanna on LibraryThing and noticed she'd given it 5 stars, and then she urged to me read it via Twitter, and that was that.  Happily I wound up completely agreeing with her: this is a beautifully written, effortlessly smooth and utterly compelling debut novel.  Written by a registered mental health nurse, it's about a little boy called Matt whose brother Simon dies while they're on holiday; writing his story down ten years later, Matt chronicles his family's grief and recovery, and his own quiet descent into schizophrenia.  It sounds really heavy when you put it like that, but it's not at all.  The prose is gorgeous but easy to read, and as he slowly unfurls Matt's history, Filer drops the pieces into place with precise and perfect timing.  I breezed through it in two or three days, thoroughly enjoyed every page, chuckled a few times, and had a little weep or two along the way as well.  It's perfect.  5 stars!

 

 

~ What I'm Reading ~

Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co. 
by Jeremy Mercer

I've spent a little time this week starting to go through my book boxes again, sorting out a few more to go the charity shop.  At the same time I've been pulling out books I've already read and loved to put up on my bookshelf - and this is one of my absolute top all-time favourites.  This is my third read, and I've fallen in love with it all over again!  Basically 20-something Jeremy Mercer left Canada in a rush after receiving death threats linked to his job as a crime journalist; broke and disillusioned, he ended up in Paris and discovered Shakespeare and Company one rainy day.  Known for its eccentricity, warmth, literary credentials - and for providing food and lodgings for drifters and writers, with beds nestled in amongst the bookshelves - the rest is history.  Mercer spent over a year living there under the watchful eye of the late George Whitman, immersing himself in bookshop life, new friendships, a little romance - and LOTS of books.  This travel memoir is the result, and it's been one of my biggest inspirations and most beloved books ever since!
 

Aaaaand that was March! 

REVIEW: A Note of Madness, by Tabitha Suzuma (4.5*)

(The Bodley Head, 2006)

"He was humming along to the radio, making coffee, kicking Harry's washing out of the way.  Everything seemed so normal - he seemed so normal.  If anyone came in right now they wouldn't suspect anything was wrong.  Yet his mind seemed to be fragmenting, like a mirror spiderwebbing with cracks.  He felt as if he were at some kind of junction; what he did now could have huge repercussions - should he try to hold on or just let himself fall apart?"

Having been blown away by Tabitha Suzuma's sensitively-handled novel Forbidden - about a brother and sister who fall in love - I did what any self-respecting book fiend would do: I hopped straight on the internet to find out what else she'd written.  Imagine my delight when I stumbled across A Note of Madness and its sequel, A Voice in the Distance, about a promising young pianist and his battle with bipolar disorder.  Not only is mental health one of my pet subjects, for obvious reasons, but the premise also reminded me of K.M. Peyton's Pennington novels, about a young rebel who happens to be a superb pianist, which I fell in love with in my early teens.

So, nostalgia aside, back to this novel.  Flynn Laukonen and his friends Harry and Jennah have grown up together and are now all students at the Royal College of Music in London.  As one of only two brilliant pianists at the College, it is Flynn who is really admired as one of its rising stars.  Unfortunately, the pressure on him to perform, coupled with his ongoing rivalry with fellow pianist Andre, triggers a break in his mental health, and as he cycles between manic periods of high creativity, boundless energy and deep understanding of music, and crashing lows when he barely gets out of bed except to go to the bathroom, Harry takes the brave step of calling in Flynn's doctor brother Rami to help.

I thought this was a very truthful novel in terms of the experience of bipolar disorder; in fact, great swathes could have come straight from my own life.  The overzealous good humour, compulsive drive to create and the appreciation of sensory pleasures, the reckless disregard for property and societal expectations, the crushing periods of existential despair and seething hate, the sudden disappearance of cognitive ability and the loss of concentration (which is why things go so quiet around the blog when I'm in a bad way) - I've been there, and it felt so... not reassuring, exactly... maybe comforting?... to have someone write about these feelings and crises so beautifully.  It's always interesting to read mental health-themed novels, especially by people outside of that sphere of experience (I assume), to see if they've done it justice, as it were.  Tabitha Suzuma gets plenty of author brownie points from me for getting it right.  She also gets bonus points for not taking the novel quite where I expected it to go; she sidesteps the more tense but also highly melodramatic climax I'd been anticipating, which was simultaneously slightly disappointing but also more realistic, so I was happy on balance.

Admittedly, her story doesn't touch on many of the more mundane aspects of life with a mental disorder, particularly with regards to treatment.  By writing Flynn's brother as a doctor, Suzuma keeps her plot tight and opens the door for an examination of the different aspects of their relationship as Flynn's mental health deteriorates, but she also gives herself a convenient escape from some of the more traumatic consequences of a diagnosis like bipolar.  For example, Flynn's late-teen age group gives his friends the maturity to give him support instead of ridicule, something I found at university but not at school; a younger character might not have been so lucky.  Likewise, Rami's occupation and his ability to pull strings at the local hospital means no presenting to A and E when things get dire, no lengthy waits for appointments, no trekking painfully slowly from GP to Pathfinder nurse to consultant and back again in the quest for help.  When things get out of hand Rami's always there, so Harry, Jennah and even Flynn's parents never really have to deal with him in crisis.  Still, this would have made for a rather dull novel, and what's more important is how skilfully Suzuma portrays these characters and this illness for a young adult audience as part of a compelling story.  For me, she did a brilliant job, which definitely gets her off the hook for overlooking a few of the more boring details.

Bottom line: This is an excellent read for anyone with an interest in mental health, for teens looking for an accurate depiction of bipolar symptoms and its effects on mood, college work and general living, and for readers who fancy an unusual British contemporary YA to fly through this summer.  There's some music talk, a dose of humour, strong friendships, a little romance and a pinch of family drama, something for everyone really.  I'm looking forward to reading the sequel very soon!

Notable Quotables:

• "Each note was more poignant than the last, more exquisite, until you didn't feel as if another could surpass it and then one did and it was utterly overwhelming, so much so that your chest ached and your eyes stung and your whole body felt as if it would burst."
• "The weather had been glorious all day and the golden light outside promised a magical sunset.  He thought of the couples and families strolling in the park, enjoying the late-afternoon sunshine, and was filled with an inexplicable sadness.  The light would be shimmering on the Serpentine, the raised voices of children echoing from a distance.  The leaves on the trees would be stirring in the breeze, the sunlight flooding the grass with golden confetti, the sky a deep, painful blue.  The thought of going to the park was inconceivable - the sight of such aching beauty would infuse his soul with pain."
• "Flynn felt himself begin to shake...  It clung to him, an invisible cloak of agitation and self-destruction that sent acid fury shooting through his veins... There was fire burning through him, creating an overpowering urge to scream, kick, yell...  He couldn't talk without wanting to shout.  Couldn't move without lashing out."
• "I can't.  The two words seemed permanently lodged inside his head.  I can't play tomorrow... I can't go to the rehearsal, I can't tidy the flat, I can't go for a run and I sure as hell can't practise."
• "Flynn pressed his hands against his face and felt hot tears trickle between his fingers.  He wanted everything to go away.  He wanted everything to stop.  As long as he lived, he would never escape himself.  How much more could he endure?  Another fifty years, another sixty?  How could he endure the weeks, the months, the years, when he couldn't even get through the hours?  It was only a matter of time.  Only a matter of time before he reached the end of his tether and found himself incapable of carrying on for another day.  He would not make it through a lifetime.  Not like this..."

Source: I bought this book from... Amazon Marketplace?  I think.  It's been a while!

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.

January: What I Read, What I'm Reading

One of the things I've really been enjoying about my recent headfirst dive into the world of BookTube is the way vloggers can just chat about what they've been reading recently without having to necessarily delve into everything at length.  I like the way they can share their TBR piles gleefully and describe what books they've been buying and reading, and their monthly wrap-ups in which they share their books for the month all in one go.  Given that I'm definitely not feeling like reviewing much at the moment, and box sets are taking up more space in my life than books, I thought I'd follow the BookTube lead and do a January round-up of what I read and what I bought.  I hope you like it!

 

 

~ What I Read ~

 

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

by Holly Black

This was my first Holly Black novel, and I really enjoyed it.  It takes every vampire novel you've ever read, old and new, scrambles everything up and lays it out with a fresh new twist.  The writing's excellent, the characters are interesting, the setting is very intriguing, and the romance between Tana and Gavriel is just the right balance between old-school seduction and modern flirtation.  I gave it 4 stars, and you can read my review here.

 

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

by Jeff Lindsay

The first book in the Dexter series, which is maybe better known for its TV incarnation starring Michael C. Hall.  I didn't really expect that much from this, especially after a couple of people mentioned they didn't rate it much.  So I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I loved it - I loved the unique premise, I loved Dexter's voice and the pitch black humour, I loved the insight into a sociopathic mind... it was fascinating.  I gave it 4.5 stars and you can read my review here.

 

Casino Royale

by Ian Fleming

Another first-in-series, this time the first of the iconic 007 James Bond novels.  I've read a couple of the others already, but I didn't rate this one much.  I knew the outline of the plot already, thanks to the movie - but the movie was better.  The characters are so flat in the novels, and setting aside the 'but CONTEXT!' argument, Bond is a stone-cold bastard.  There's no humour in him, no spark to offset his arrogance.  I gave it 2.5 stars.

 

Opium: Reality's Dark Dream
by Thomas Dormandy
I'd been reading this one way before the New Year, but I finally cracked on in January and finished it during Bout of Books.  It's not the lightest of history books, but it made up for it by being absolutely fascinating.  It's incredible to think how one humble substance from one humble flower has literally shaped our entire history, from medicine to literature, and continues to have an enormous effect on world economics, politics and health.  The modern chapters were perhaps the most jaw-dropping (about heroin, obviously), because I had NO IDEA of the sheer scale of the heroin trade.  I gave this book 4 stars.

 

The Day of the Triffids
by John Wyndham
This is another one of those books where I thought I knew the general deal, but I didn't really.  I already knew that most of the world is blinded by some sort of freak meteor shower; the big surprise was that triffids are already a big presence on the planet before the dystopian element begins, and that they're bio-engineered plants, not aliens.  Despite the havoc they wreak, they're really just one more problem for the few who can still see.  It's the blindness that's the main focal point, and the way both sighted and sightless have to find their own ways to survive in this new landscape.  Beautifully written and an intriguing premise - I gave it 4 stars and you can read my review here.
 

Anna and the French Kiss
by Stephanie Perkins
Yup, I finally read Anna!  It's about time I read it, because I won my copy so long ago.  It's a signed American hardcover, and as I was reading more stuff kept falling out of it - a signed bookmark and a bunch of leaflets from the event.  Very cool.  It's a lovely, funny YA contemporary novel about a girl whose father ships her off to an American boarding school in Paris, where she gets to know the city, makes new friends and falls head over heels for a seriously crushworthy young man who seems to be taking a shine to her too.  Shame he's taken...  BUT FOR HOW LONG?  Sweet, funny, evocative, romantic, a bit Rainbow Rowell-esque... I gave it 4 stars!
 

 

~ What I'm Reading ~

 

Right now I'm reading Lightning Rods by Helen deWitt, a bizarre American satire about a salesman who decides that an amazing way to increase office productivity and reduce sexual harassment lawsuits would be... to install anonymous sex playthings in every office.  That is, people who work in the office doing regular office stuff, but also play an added role as outlets for sexual tension.  I'm not entirely sure yet how this is meant to be completely anonymous for both parties, but the rather odd protagonist is determined that this is a product that will make his fortune.  The hints at his future fame suggest that this will, in fact, be the case, so I'll be interested to find out where the hell this strange premise is going...


Aaaand that was January!

REVIEW: Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay (4.5*)

(Orion Books, 2005)

"If I am ever careless enough to be caught, they will say I am a sociopathic monster, a sick and twisted demon who is not even human, and they will probably send me to die in Old Sparky with a smug self-righteous glow."

Dexter Morgan is a nice guy.  He has a sweet girlfriend whose kids adore him, he gets on well with his foster sister Deborah, and he's fantastic at his job, working in forensics as a blood spatter analyst.  Those spookily accurate hunches he gets during homicide investigations... well, they just make him even more of an asset to the police department, right?  No, actually.  Dexter's 'hunches' stem from personal experience.  Because Dexter Morgan is a sociopath and a serial killer.  Thanks to a hefty amount of teenage guidance from his late foster father, wise cop Harry, he channels his need to kill into a vigilante-style hunt for bad guys who've escaped the law, and with his finely honed and careful methods, he's never been caught.  Except now there's a new serial killer in town.  And with his rapidly increasing body count and sly personal 'messages' that no one else understands, it seems that maybe Dexter finally has a playmate...

I'd obviously heard about Dexter, the TV series, a long time ago, and the premise really appealed.  When I realised it was based - at least the first series, anyway - on a book, I knew I had to get hold of a copy.  So I waited, and looked, and waited some more, and finally this first book in the series arrived at the bookshop and IT WAS MINE.  It came home with me the same day.  I bought the next three in a '3 for £5' remainder deal last year, and thank heavens I did, because I LOVED THIS BOOK SO HARD.  I wasn't expecting that much because both Hanna and Sarah had already mentioned that they didn't rate it, but WOW this was a good reminder that sometimes good old-fashioned gut instinct is a better guide to what you'll enjoy than what other bloggers think.  Y'know, like how we used to pick our books BEFORE the blogosphere took over.  Good times...

What made the novel for me was definitely Dexter Morgan himself.  Like R in Warm Bodies, his compelling narrative voice is a means of rendering a rather dark and macabre subject matter (and a potentially frightening character) more readable, more enjoyable, more absorbing and yes, more amusing.  I loved how playful his narrative was at times, twisting words into alliterative flights of description, often making me chuckle at the bone-dry, midnight black humour and well-placed jabs of sarcasm.  At the same time, as you might imagine, the 'Dark Passenger' (as Dexter calls his inner killer) is a threatening and ever-shifting presence in the background, and Lindsay never lets us forget - via little glimpses of this instinct, and via Dexter's constant awareness of his sociopathy and the need to appear 'human' - that our friendly forensics geek is actually a deadly menace whose benevolence in his choice of victims can only be maintained with absolutely rigid self-control.

This, perhaps, for someone with a keen interest in social sciences, psychology and mental health, was what made the novel as a whole so fascinating.  Dexter is fascinating.  The way he so closely emulates human emotion while understanding so little of it is fascinating.  The way he sees himself as a monster, as an outsider, yet works so hard to fit in is fascinating.  The way he lives so rigorously by 'the code of Harry', the way he respects his foster father's memory despite not being able to love him, is fascinating.  The way he will gleefully enjoy killing a serial rapist or a murdering paedophile, but his girlfriend Rita's kids absolutely adore him, is fascinating.  I guess this is probably what draws people to the TV show too - this is a unique character, and watching his constant struggle to appear 'normal' makes him a hugely interesting and even sympathetic protagonist.

Of course, Dexter isn't the only character worth mentioning.  His cop sister Deb is a lot of fun - feisty, foul-mouthed yet strangely vulnerable - and her political manoeuvring against inept Detective Maria LaGuerta is quite a compelling subplot, particularly as each time LaGuerta gets something wrong it has further implications for Dexter's own interest in the new serial killer.  The dialogue was occasionally a tad clunky, but it improved if I read it sort-of aloud, like maybe it had more to do with the fact that I was silently reading it in my own accent, which didn't work very well.  Does that make sense?  The other key characters - like Angel, Doakes and even Dex's girlfriend Rita - don't play a huge part in this book, but I'm assuming they'll maybe get more page time in the next few novels.  I also really enjoyed the Cuban influences in the book.  I had no idea that Miami had such strong Cuban culture (ssssshhh, Brit girl here), so that was a kind of fun bonus for me.  Maybe more so in the TV series, where a lot of the (fantastic) soundtrack has a distinctly Cuban flavour.

To sum up... well, did I mentioned that I loved this book?  I think me and Dexter are going to get on just fine for the rest of the book series as well as all eight seasons of the show (which I just bought after enjoying the first half of my sister's season 1 box set).  If I knew where the hell I'd put those next three books I'd probably have read on by now - but since I don't, I'm going to finish season 1 of the TV series and go from there!

Notable Quotables:

• "In spite of feeling so very moved by the thing, I didn't have any immediate theories about what it meant.  Sometimes great art is like that.  It affects you and you can't say why."
• "I began to feel unsettled, dizzy, confused, hyperactive and lethargic at the same time.  I walked to the window and looked out.  It was dark now and far away over the water a light rose up into the sky and at the sight of it a small and evil voice rose up to meet it from somewhere deep inside."
• "I felt the Dark Passenger become the new driver for the first time.  Dexter became understated, almost invisible, the light-coloured stripes on a sharp and transparent tiger.  I blended in, almost impossible to see, but I was there and I was stalking, circling in the wind to find my prey.  In that tremendous flash of freedom, on my way to do the Thing for the first time, sanctioned by almighty Harry, I receded, faded back into the scenery of my own dark self, while the other me crouched and growled.  I would do It at last, do what I had been created to do.  And I did."
• "Weren't we all crazy in our sleep?  What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of the neighbour's children?"

Source:  I nicked this book from our shop as soon as it came in, because I knew it was the first in the series and I wanted to give it a try!

REVIEW: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, by Holly Black (4*)

(Indigo, 2013)

"Vampires were fairy tales and magic.  They were the wolf in the forest that ran ahead to grandmother's house, the video game big boss who could be hunted without guilt, the monster that tempted you into its bed, the powerful eternal beast one might become.  The beautiful dead, la belle mort."

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a new take on vampire lore by the author of the highly-acclaimed Curse Workers series.  I've never read them, but Charlotte and Hanna have both told me how good they are, so I was definitely hoping to enjoy Holly Black's new top-end YA novel.

What's great about this new addition to the vast pool of vampire fiction is the fact that it blends old-school elements of vampire mythology with a whole new twist on their existence.  The central thing to get to grips with is the idea of 'going Cold'.  When a vampire bites a human in Black's world, their body temperature quickly drops and within two days they develop a fierce and irresistible craving for human blood.  With their first taste, they will die and rise again as a vampire.  Their only hope of living on 'normally' is to quarantine themselves for eighty-eight days until the infection has left their body.  Understandably, very few people manage to withstand this torture.  Protagonist Tana's infected mother attacked her, still a small child, in a frenzy of blood lust, and had to be killed by her father.  Their family has never really recovered.

So, that's where we begin.  Tana is now in her late teens, and has woken up at a 'sundown party' to find herself surrounded by the corpses of her friends and schoolmates.  Someone has made the fatal mistake of leaving a window ajar, allowing vampires to enter.  So far, so I Am Legend.  Wandering through the house in shock, she stumbles across her ex-boyfriend Aiden, tied to a bed and obviously bitten, and a rather attractive young vampire, Gavriel, mysteriously chained up on the floor.  As the undead perpetrators of the carnage creep closer, Tana makes the snap decision to save Aiden AND the vampire, narrowly escaping out the window, bundling them into her car and heading for Coldtown, a walled party prison-city for vampires, infected humans and all the gothic hangers-on who hope to one day win favour and be made immortal.  Of course, with a Cold ex and a half-crazy vampire for company, nothing's going to be simple, on either side of the Coldtown wall.  This is the story of Tana's self-discovery, of Aiden's transformation, of Tana and Gavriel's mutual attraction, of Gavriel's past and of Coldtown's secrets.  It's complex and intriguing and exciting, and I loved it.

Part of what makes it so good is the mixture of brilliant influences and interesting reference points.  I thought Gavriel was pure Anne Rice, an old-fashioned seductive, black-haired, slightly mad vampire who holds a delicious attraction for Tana.  Lucien, the bad boy of the piece, was a bit like Caius from The Twilight Saga in my head - young, blonde, arrogant - with more than a touch of Lestat in him too.  The hangers-on and rather pathetic wannabe-immortals reminded me of the fang bangers in the True Blood series, the ones who just wanted to be around vampires because OMG IMMORTAL.  The city itself was a tad Warm Bodies-in-reverse, a prison to keep vampires out of the way, a lawless place where parties go on all night and every debauched whim is catered for.  And each chapter is garnished with a literary quote relating to death or immortality.  It's very elegantly done.

The constant social media theme was also quite interesting, bringing the novel right up to date.  Live feeds coming from inside Coldtown - Lucien's famous party feed is one of the most popular - are eagerly followed by schoolgirls on the outside (including Tana's sister Pearl).  People have posters of their favourite personalities from television, whether vampire or bounty hunter.  People blog and vlog from inside the walls, and there are huge communities of wannabes whose sole aim is to get into Coldtown, meet up with friends inside, and transform into their 'true selves'.  Tana, Aiden and Gavriel fall in with two of these - siblings Midnight and Winter - near the walls of Coldtown, and their obsession with documenting everything via social media is a bit sickening.  The 'too much information' thing at work, even in the most inappropriate of situations...

Soooo, yes!  I really enjoyed the book.  It was beautifully written and very immersive, so that after a while I think I even dreamed about Coldtown once or twice!  Always the sign of a good book.  The attraction between Byronic Gavriel and Katniss-esque Tana was the right balance of seductive and pithy, dangerous and tender, as the best vampire romances always are, and there were a couple of twists that I didn't see coming until they hit, which again, is always a good sign for me.  I'll definitely be checking out more from Holly Black at some point, and highly recommend this one for anyone who likes their vampire novels well written and with a clever dose of fresh lore to... um... sink their teeth into.

Notable Quotables:

• "Vampires were always more beautiful than the living.  Their skin was without blemish, marble smooth, and poreless.  The older they got, the more their unnatural red eyes grew bright as poppies and their hair became as lustrous as silk.  It was as if whatever demon possessed them, whatever force kept their corpse from the grave, had refined them in the blaze of its power, burning away their humanity to reveal something finer.  They looked absurdly gorgeous, glowing from the television like fallen angels.  Even from the beginning, that was a problem.  People liked pretty things.  People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them."
• "Gavriel sat stock-still.  Inside him roiled such turmoil that he feared that should he move, he would smash every piece of furniture in the room, crack every pane of every window, until there was nothing but shining splinters where the parlour had been."
• "You play with fire because you want to be burned."
• "Tana thought about how much fun it must have been, once upon a time, to be a vampire and have forever stretching out in front of you - an endless carnival of nights.  They must have felt as almighty as angels, looking down on the world from their windows, choosing to spare each passerby."
• "... the third option, the possibility that there's something monstrous inside of us that can be unleashed, is the most disturbing of all.  Maybe it's just us, us with a raging hunger, us with a couple of accidental murders under our belt.  Humanity, with the training wheels off the bike, careening down a steep hill.  Humanity, freed from the constraints of consequence and gifted with power.  Humanity, grown away from all things human."

Source: I got this book out of my local library.

Top Ten Books I Read In 2013

TTT is hosted by the lovely ladies over at The Broke and the Bookish.

 I'd ummed and aahed about doing Jamie's epic End of Year Survey again this year, and even started a post... but the truth is, I'm knackered and I just can't be bothered.  The post-Christmas pre-New Year rush at work has been crazy - far busier than before Christmas! - and I've spent every day dusting and sweeping and cleaning the shop from top to bottom ready for the new owners to take over.  Our last day was yesterday, we're doing the last round of mopping and vacuuming this morning (after treating ourselves to a Full English at the lovely coffee house over the road, which we've always said we'd try but never had time!), and then... that's it.  Well, we're signing papers in town in a couple of days' time and the official completion date is 6th January, but as far as being at the shop goes...  that's it.  So, yeah, the point is, KNACKERED.  A round-up of my favourite books of the year seemed easier than a huge survey, much as I love huge book-related surveys!

These, then, are my ten 'best of...' candidates for 2013.  They're not in any particular order - reading order, mostly - except for Kevin which had to be at the top because it blew most other books ever out of the water...


We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

 Ohhhh, this book.  It was absorbing and gripping and felt so utterly real.  My poor mother had to listen to me ranting all the way to work and back every day, about the US gun culture and school shootings and family dynamics and parental responsibility and emotional damage.  My sympathies shifted backwards and forwards and I was questioning my own morals and responses and feelings every step of the way.  A few people have voiced their issues with combining this sentiment with this book - but I unashamedly LOVED EVERY PAGE.  Best book of the year - in fact, one of the best I've ever read full stop.

Warm Bodies

by Isaac Marion

This was one of those books where I knew by the end of the first PAGE that we were going to get along just fine.  If you'd have said to me, "It's like Romeo and Juliet, only with zombies and a human girl, and it's really funny, and also there are brains", I'd probably have looked at you very strangely... BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT IS.  I loved the cheeky Shakespeare allusions, I loved R's deadpan narration, I loved the clever world-building...  Laura found me a copy of Marion's prequel, The New Hunger, during our blogger meet-up in Leeds, so I'll be reading that in 2014!

The Moonstone

by Wilkie Collins

 I've been meaning to read Wilkie Collins for SO LONG, and finally, 2013 was the year!  I was a bit unsure about taking part in Ellie's readalong in case I was... y'know, crap at it... but the blogger peer pressure was too great to resist and I caved and signed up just before it started.  And thank heavens I did, because it was a brilliant read, filled with memorable characters and madcap shenanigans and exotic mystery.  I already have a copy of The Woman in White (courtesy of Laura), so maybe that will appear on my list of favourite books this time next year?

The Shining

by Stephen King (my double review)

 Wooooow.  This was a very, very scary book, saved from being nightmare-inducing by the narrative presence of a very, very sweet psychically gifted small child called Danny, who I already knew survived thanks to the timely publication of the sequel, Doctor Sleep.  It's actually not at all freaky to start with, but King builds the terror gradually so that it creeps up on you before you realise what's happening.  I was seriously disappointed by Kubrick's film, despite the awesomeness that is Jack Nicholson, but the book was intriguing and memorable and utterly impossible to put down.

Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop

by Abby Clements (my review)

I wasn't that impressed by Meet Me Under the Mistletoe, Clements' debut novel, and I've heard mixed things about her latest too, but I LOVED this summery middle offering.  Katie very kindly sent it to me after she read it on the beach for one of the summer readathons, and I started it almost immediately.  It was the perfect antidote to the madness of working at the shop towards the end of the summer holidays!  I read it with a smile on my face and a very definite craving for ice cream, and it's now firmly ensconced on my comfort reading shelf (with Katie's Penguin postcard tucked safely inside) for next time I need a happy-fix.  :)

Ashfall

by Mike Mullin (my review)

I was actually very pleasantly surprised by this one.  When it arrived it looked suspiciously... amateurish?...  Simple cover, cheap paper, you know what I mean.  But it turned out to be an absolutely superb enviro-dystopian top-end-YA novel about what it might be like if the Yellowstone supervolcano finally erupted.  Every aspect of a brutal new world is touched on - politics, medicine, families, food, violence, farming, power - via the experiences of teenager Alex, alone at his house when the eruption occurs, who sets off cross-country to try to reach the rest of his family at his uncle's farm a couple of hours' drive away.  The next book in the trilogy, Ashen Winter, is up near the top of my wishlist, so hopefully I'll read on with Alex's adventures in 2014!

Attachments

by Rainbow Rowell (my review)

Yup, at the very start of last month I finally jumped on the Rainbow bandwagon - and I FRICKIN' LOVED IT.  If Nora Ephron was still with us, she'd be casting the movie adaptation as we speak, I'm sure.  Chris Hemsworth would play Lincoln, Jennifer Lawrence would be Beth... it'd be beautiful.  I laughed out loud so many times (definitely a rarity with 'funny' novels), and did that ZOMGSOCUTE inner squeal at all the adorably romantic moments.  Needless to say, Fangirl and Eleanor and Park are slap bang at the top of my must-read list for 2014...

The Hunger Games / Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins

 I was so horrified when I was writing this post and realised that I last read The Hunger Games in MARCH 2011.  How the hell did I not read on before now?!  Still recovering from the Overwhelming Feels, perhaps.  Anyway, this year I reread The Hunger Games, FINALLY watched my long-neglected DVD, and hopped straight on to Catching Fire in the hope that I'd be able to see the movie at the cinema.  Sadly life intervened and I missed it, but I've preordered it already!  The first book was just as fantastic as I remembered - and possibly even better paced this time, because I wasn't breathlessly awaiting the next twist - and I absolutely LOVED Catching Fire.  I thought it was packed with powerful moments, the new arena was absolute genius, and do I NEED to mention my Haymitch crush again?  No, probably not...  On to Mockingjay in early 2014, definitely!

Hyperbole and a Half

by Allie Brosh 

I've been a huge fan of the Hyperbole and a Half website for a while now, and even sent a bunch of people over to Brosh's posts on depression when I was struggling earlier this year because she explains things so perfectly.  That's the amazing thing about her posts - she captures life and emotions and experiences with such precision, and yet also makes you laugh like a maniac every step of the way!  My favourite is probably This Is Why I'll Never Be an Adult, which is so like me it's spooky.  Throw all this together into a multi-coloured book of hilarity, and how could I NOT love it?

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

by Holly Black

 I'm taking a bit of a gamble with this one, because I haven't actually finished it yet... but so far it's superb so I'm sticking it on here and hoping for the best!  It's a really interesting take on vampire lore - whereby people who get bitten go 'Cold' and either succumb to their thirst and change, or go into quarantine for 88 days until the infection leaves their system - and the lustful tension between (thus-far human) Tana and (all vampire) Gavriel is electrifying.  Happily Tana is definitely a Katniss, a survivor with tough instincts and a kind heart, and she makes a great guide to Coldtown, where vampires and wannabes mingle in a decadent mixture of blood, death and desire.  I hope the end's as good as the rest!

That's my Top Ten (well, eleven, but sssssh) books of 2013, which seems a fitting last post of the year...
HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!

Helping the homeless this festive season

When I was a child, I would watch Santa Claus every Christmas Eve (the one with Dudley Moore as Patch the elf), and every year the plight of young homeless orphan Joe would tug at my heart strings and I'd wish I was old enough to do something to help people like him at Christmas.  As Katie mentioned in her post the other day, A Christmas Carol explores a similar theme, with just a little kindness from Ebenezer Scrooge saving Tiny Tim's life and making Christmas happier for everyone.  No matter how we feel about Christmas - good or bad - at least we've all got ENOUGH.  Enough presents, enough food, people around us, or at least a telly to while away the hours.  I think sometimes we get so caught up in all the consumer mayhem that we forget how much we DO have!

Well, now I'm (technically) a grown-up, and although there's a limited amount a non-driving woman in a rural village can do to save the world on Christmas Day, one thing I CAN do is help pave the way for the people out there who ARE in a position to make Christmas a safer and happier one for some of the most disadvantaged people in our society.

I've discovered that each year Crisis runs a scheme whereby people can donate to 'Reserve a Place' for a homeless person at one of their centres for Christmas.  What I really like about this is that it's quite specific about what this 'reservation' entails.  As well as the basics - three hot meals (including Christmas dinner) and a hot shower - it also includes a health check (which is definitely important for someone who's been out on the streets in this awful weather), advice and support, activities, company, and a chance to get some clean clothes and a haircut.  Which might not sound like much, until you consider how much better YOU feel when you're all squeaky clean and tidied up after a long day.  Now imagine that feeling, multiplied by days, weeks or months of living on the street...  Yeah, that's what I thought.  :)

Anyway, I caught myself eyeing up a box set I wanted online the other day, and was literally on the verge of dropping £40 just to have it before Christmas.  Happily I managed to control myself, which is perfect because reserving a place for one person at Crisis costs just over £20.  I'm going to reserve places for TWO people, using the money I would have spent on yet more DVDs to give someone a happier, safer and warmer Christmas this year - plus the chance to access some of the support and advice that might help them long-term too.  No one should be huddling outside, cold, hungry and alone on Christmas Day.

If you'd like to join me, you can click HERE for all the details and to reserve a place for someone right now!

 

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: Attachments, by Rainbow Rowell (4.5*)

(Orion Books, 2012)

Well, I don't think I'm quite the last person in the universe to read Rowell's debut, but I can't be far off!  I'd already read multiple rave reviews of this book around the blogosphere - which is why I bought it in the first place - but it was Hanna's very recent one that gave me that final push.  Two minutes after I finished reading her thoughts I was plucking my copy down from my shelves and eagerly diving into the first few pages... and I never looked back.  It's one of the loveliest books I've ever read!

If I had to describe this novel in one sentence, it would be: "All my favourite Nora Ephron movies rolled into one, only in book form."  The fantastic thing is that I'd been telling people this all the way through the reading experience - Tweeting about it, nagging my mum and sister to read it - and then in the last third of the book ROWELL NAME-DROPS THE NORA HOLY TRINITY (When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle, OBVIOUSLY), two of which are amongst my favourite movies of all time.  I actually giggled out loud in delight when she mentioned them, and firmly believe that if this movie isn't already in production (with Rowell writing the screenplay herself) it's probably only a matter of time...  

So, what is this book actually ABOUT?  Well, it's about two friends, and a man.  The two friends are Beth and Jennifer, who work for the same newspaper and email each other constantly using the company's internal email system.  Unfortunately, these emails regularly break the company rules (mostly by containing flagged words, however innocuously), which is where Lincoln comes in.  He's a twenty-something computer geek who's had his heart broken and now lives back home with his mother.  It's his job to sit in the IT department every night, reading all flagged emails and sending out warnings to offenders about their computer usage.  Except... he never does warn Beth and Jennifer about the frequency of their misdemeanours.  Because he's starting to get drawn into their lives and enjoys reading their funny, compassionate exchanges.  Worse, he's starting to fall in love with Beth, a woman he's never even laid eyes on.  Can he ever find a way to meet her and make this work, despite his (admittedly sort-of legitimate) violation of her privacy? 

This book has SO much going for it - one of the main things, of course, being the wonderful characters.  Lincoln has all the sweetness of a Tom Hanks romantic lead (there I go again with the Nora), mixed with the lifestyle of the boys from The IT Crowd, only he's built like a Hemsworth.  A Thor-shaped Hemsworth.  Jennifer and Beth are so funny and normal and real that reading their epistolary sections (which make up a good chunk of the book) felt more like reading genuine emails or instant messages between friends.   In fact, at times it reminded me of my relationship with my blogging friends - our funny emails and comment-conversations and hilarious Tweeting marathons.  Their emails made me laugh, and occasionally I had to remind myself that these were fictional women, not real ones!

The other HUGE thing Attachments has going for it is the sheer wealth of pop culture references and the nice dose of 90s nostalgia.  I made a list of some of the awesomeness Rowell mentions throughout the novel, which aside from the Nora-ey goodness includes references to: personality quiz websites, Heathers, the Little Women movie with Winona Ryder (which I always loved!), The Matrix, Eddie Vedder, Toy Story, the Y2K millennium bug panic, Superman, Batman, X-Men, Kevin Smith movies, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the Backstreet Boys, Bridget Jones, Cheers, the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Lord of the Rings, the Pokemon movie (with special reference to Pikachu), Fight Club, Freaky Friday, VHS tapes, VCRs with clocks, The Sixth Sense, The Stepford Wives, Titanic, Christopher Walken, James Dean, Gandalf, Billy Elliot, Jane Austen and Star Wars.  ALL IN ONE BOOK.  I think me and Rainbow would get on just fine...

Hanna mentioned the 'mutual stalking' thing in her review - Beth is sort of following Lincoln around while he's reading her emails - but I think her conclusion was right.  In the wrong hands, it could have been really creepy and uncomfortable to read, but Rowell walks the fine line between 'wrong' and 'kooky' with great precision.  After all, reading flagged emails is Lincoln's job, and it was very easy to imagine him getting drawn into Beth and Jennifer's lives without having any dodgy motives.  Let's face it, fifteen years down the line it's so easy to get drawn into other people's conversations and issues via platforms like Twitter; the only difference here is that more private moments are discussed because it's technically private email.  Likewise, Beth watching out for Lincoln is also totally believable - what girl HASN'T hung around somewhere waiting for their crush to walk by, or sneakily followed them somewhere to find out what they like?  I certainly have, especially when I was a teenager!

Sooooo, what I'm basically trying to say is that this book is really, really good.  It made me laugh OUT LOUD within the first few pages - so much so that I scared the cat - and continued to make me smile and giggle until the very end... Yet it also made me cry, over Lincoln's loneliness and over the sheer perfection of his inevitable declaration of love to Beth at the end of the novel.  It was definitely the 'EEEEEEE!' moment that comes at the end of a good rom-com, only on paper!  Admittedly I was a bit thrown by Beth's behaviour just prior to this declaration (the cinema scene, if you've read it already), which seemed totally out of character and a very bizarre thing to do - but what followed made the suspension of disbelief worthwhile.  That completely incongruous moment was the only thing coming between this book and a full five-star rating.  I'm SO glad I finally read it; the prose is just delicious, the characters are the right side of kooky, the premise is quirky, it may have ruined me for all chick lit ever, and I'm now feeling an urgent need to go and watch every Nora Ephron movie I own.  After that, my priorities look like this: 1) Read Fangirl;  2) Buy Eleanor and Park, and 3) Preorder everything Rainbow Rowell is ever planning to write, even some things she hasn't thought of yet.  If that isn't a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is!

Notable Quotables:

• "The worst thing about the Internet, as far as Greg's bosses were concerned, was that it was now impossible to distinguish a roomful of people working diligently from a roomful of people taking the What-Kind-of-Dog-Am-I? online personality quiz."
• "So... I'm larking through the Baby Gap, looking at tiny capri pants and sweaters that cost more than... I don't know, more than they should.  And I get totally sucked in by this ridiculous, tiny fur coat.  The kind of coat a baby might need to go to the ballet.  In Moscow.  In 1918."
• "Love.  Purpose.  Those are the things that you can't plan for.  Those are the things that just happen.  And what if they don't happen?  Do you spend your whole life pining for them?  Waiting to be happy?"
• "I know that people change.  I thought... I thought we were going to change together.  I thought that's what it meant to be in love."
• "There's nothing you could become that I haven't already fallen in love with."  THIS.  This, ladies.  I think it's the most romantic line I've ever read.  I melted.
• "... what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things.  One at a time.  Just let your pile of good things grow."
• "I found myself thinking that this is how I would want to dance at my own wedding...  The kind of dancing that's more like touching to music.  That's more like closing your eyes and trying to think how you would tell someone that you loved him if you didn't have words or sex."
• "I had a wobbly moment at the grocery store last night when I realized I was buying a single banana.  There's nothing sadder than buying bananas one at a time

Source: I bought this book from my local Waterstones.

REVIEW: Confessions of a GP, by Dr Benjamin Daniels (4*)

(The Friday Project, 2010)

This book, written under a pseudonym of course, didn't get off to the best of starts - not because of the writing or the narrative style, but because of the silly editorial slips.  You all know how much I LOVE those!  Within the first few pages I had noted a 'passed' instead of 'past', the use of 'sixteen' and '16' in the same sentence, and a 'their' and 'there' left side by side, as if the incorrect one should have been edited out but wasn't.  Later on, I even stumbled across an 'illicit' instead of 'elicit'.  Really glaring mistakes, in other words.  FORTUNATELY the actual content of the book was absorbing, interesting and funny enough to redeem it - hence the four stars.

One thing I really liked about Confessions is how 'everyday' this doctor's stories are.  He's not an A+E doctor (though obviously there are one or two stories from his training days) or a surgeon, but a garden-variety GP, a man on the front line and the gateway to most NHS services.  Rather than extreme cases, this book is more concerned with giving insight into the variety of presenting complaints made to a GP on a day-to-day basis and showing how much further a GP's role goes than we might realise.  I reckon I'll be less inclined to grumble next time my doctor's running late, for example, because it's clear that not every problem can be tackled in ten minutes, and often the patients that cause appointments to run late are the most vulnerable and important of the day.

Of course, the most delightful moments in the book often stem from Daniels' stories of memorable patients, from the hilarious (an elderly lady's rectal exam had me in fits of laughter) to the tear-jerking (like when the hospital doctors conspired to reunite a lady who had been paralysed by a stroke with her beloved pet cat on her birthday, despite the strict ward rules).  What I also really liked about this book was the fact that because it's written under a pseudonym, the doctor behind it is able to be brutally honest about various political and social issues he has come up against over the years.  For example, he unleashes his contempt over a posh London yuppie who came in with a son suffering from a severe bout of measles.  The boy had never been vaccinated against any of the horrific diseases that can affect children, because his mother was convinced that she could "boost his immune system naturally" with a whole food diet.  As a reader, I was horrified at her naïvety - and Daniels was understandably even more so:

"I believe the one great achievement of modern medicine is the widespread vaccination of children.  Vaccines are cheap, safe and have saved millions of lives both here and all over the world...  There it was: measles...  As a doctor who had only practised medicine in the twenty-first century, I should never have seen this disease...  He can eat all the organic dates and wholemeal rice in the world, it won't give him immunity to measles, mumps, rubella, diptheria, tetanus, meningitis C, whooping cough, haemophilus influenza and tuberculosis...  Not all children can have vaccines.  They can be harmful to children who have diseases of their immune system such as HIV or those having chemotherapy for cancer.  Previously, these children were protected because healthy children were all vaccinated and so a disease outbreak was prevented... Vaccinating isn't just about protecting your own child."

It is stories - and explanations - like this slotted alongside the funny anecdotes, bizarre patients and heartwarming moments that make the book so thought-provoking and elevate it beyond 'just another doctor memoir.'  Daniels shares his thoughts on everything from a doctor's role in society, doctor-patient relationships, the cost of NHS treatment, privatisation and the differences between hospital and general practice work, to time wasters, sick note scroungers, drug addicts, government meddling, NHS targets and the way drug reps operate.  Not only that, but he manages to do it in a way that is simultaneously funny and telling, pithy and insightful.  In the end, despite those dreadful editorial mistakes, I really enjoyed this book, and might even keep hold of it to reread sometime.  It made me think about certain elements of healthcare in a different way, and made me laugh out loud more than a few times... what more could I ask for?
 
Notable Quotables:

• "One gripe I have with alternative practitioners is that they are ultimately private.  Somebody is making money out of your illness and having only ever worked for a free at point of access health service, I find that an uncomfortable concept."
• "Patients often take it upon themselves to bring in various samples of their body fluids for my perusal.  I would like to emphasise that this is normally not appreciated.  A pot of urine is generally not too bothersome.  Often in a jam jar, I hold it to the light, stroke my chin and let out a 'hmmm'.  I like doing this as it makes me feel like an old-fashioned doctor from the nineteenth century."
• "I listen to Radio 4, grow tomatoes and lately have found myself remarking on how comfortable and practical a combination of socks and sandals is.  Until recently, I thought the Arctic Monkeys were a result of climate change.  Your children will quite rightly view me as a geek and will under no circumstances take any lifestyle advice from me."

Source: I bought this book in a mammoth box of books from Amazon, way back in May 2011.  It's one of the handful from that pile that I've now finally read!