Dawn
Great fun wee read that I flew through. A magical YA set in my hometown, what's not to like? Looking forward to reading more of Ropa's adventures.
Final score 4 5* - I knocked off a half-star because I get a bit uncomfortable when a grown bloke writes a teenage girl saying “eat my vag” and the likes.
“A ghastly and chilling vision of what might happen when profound and deadly power is put into the wrong hands, this classic thriller continues to serve as a warning in today's tumultuous political climate.”
A cold war thriller that became Kubrick's famous satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This was followed by Bryant /George's novelisation of a version of the film script (which I'll read and review soon).
This was very much not a satire! It was a suspenseful thriller that, despite some 2-dimensional characters and wordy technical stuff that went over my head, still had me gripped to the end.
I found it equally enjoyable and surprisingly frightening, especially on reading the above quote on finishing (ebook - quote not credited, sorry).
Probably the perfect person to write the ill-fated novelisation of the ill-fated film. Millar's realism is fantastic and his fantasy full of humdrum reality.
He was quoted as saying “it was such a lot of money for so little time” which is what most people focus on. But Millar also said he “tried to capture the spirit of Tank Girl”.
I think he did, the Tank Girl of the comics is a drunken, lying, chaotic braggart who somehow floats along in life getting into (and somehow out of) ridiculously perilous situations. The film was good fun but much less grubby than source material. This novelisation heroically tries to pull the two together.
In a bar, in the outback, while biblical floods rain down, Tank Girl drunkenly tells her tale to anyone who will listen (whether they want her to or not).
I've wanted to read this for years and I don't think anyone else could have done her justice!
“Oh this is a happy day, this will have been another happy day.”
Apparently begged by his wife to write a happy play Beckett write this. In a strange, burnt out, blank world - is it apocalyptic? Winnie and Willie live, or rather exist, between the ringing of a bell.
We don't know why they are here, where here is, what has happened before or between the acts. We are suspended in time just like them.
It reminds me of elderly couples, perhaps with a touch of dementia, as the love and lucidity shines through now and again.
I finish this and ask myself why we need things to mean something? Winnie and Willie just are - in their impossible life, they simply exist.
There's also an element of torture, and Beckett's characters/actors are often tortured on the stage. I can't help but wonder, who by?
My first read of Wuthering Heights and I wasn't hugely impressed. I'd expected a “classic romance” but I got a bit of a bag of all-sorts. There were aspirations of romance, but mostly unrequited; attempts at gothic writing but without the horror; characters were weak or evil; plot was limited and the narrative technique was sometimes confusing.
I've also had a Kate Bush earworm since I started reading which won't leave me be!
My first introduction to Beckett was Endgame, performing as Hamm in my early 20s. It's still difficult to read it without remembering the hours of rehearsal and the physical tics each word causes.
Endgame is, therefore, probably not my favourite work - that's Happy Days but it is, I think Beckett's best. Our intractable lives, the inevitability of death, run through with a black humour. A perfect one-act play.
4.5* rounded up.
An extremely enjoyable, and surprisingly moving, adventure with the Thursday Murder Club. As well-written as all the previous with all the twists and turns we've come to expect. I think Osman is becoming the Agatha Christie of our generation and wish him luck with his new direction but hope we don't have to wait too long to join Joyce and company again.
3.5* rounded up.
Reading club read [EOTWRC]: Dystopian fiction is definitely one of my favourite genres, this one didn't disappoint. 10 years after the aliens have landed, those left in a flooded England are surviving, just.
Not sure what the piano was all about but I quite enjoyed the rest of it. Characters were suitably rounded and there were surprises in the plot.
Nice cover too.
4.5* rounded up for nostalgic reasons.
As a kid I loved, loved, loved this book and re-reading over 30 years later it does not disappoint.
The story itself is fairly unique: Charlotte falls asleep in her 1950s boarding school only to awaken during WW1 having swapped places with a similar girl from that time. At first they alternate in each other's lives but inevitably a situation leads to Charlotte being trapped in the past.
The writing is excellent, atmospheric and almost poetic at times. There is real drama, some mild horror and movingly sad moments.
From reading other reviews it appears that this version (and the one I read as a child that had a much better cover) is missing a final letter from a character in Charlotte's past life and perhaps another chapter. I'll need to search out that edition and give it a read too.
I quite liked the structure: introduce each character in their own chapters then bring them together for the main plotline ultimately separating again as we reach the end. The writing was fine, characters had depth etc...
I just didn't really care about any of the characters or their lives. I got a little bit more involved towards the end, with the vague threat, but that soon dissipated.
Demon has all the luck, all the bad luck. Whatever you can think of, he's got it worse. But deep down he remains a good guy. Loves his friends and those who look out for him. Perhaps it's all going to work out for him now. I hope so.
I didn't think it was as brilliant book as many did. It felt like a loooonngg read and wanted a lot of investment - which I just couldn't give. I'm glad there's a glimmer of hope though. We could all do with that after so much awfulness!
A strange, surreal and, ultimately, rather sad novella. As most people know Samsa awakens one morning transformed into an insect. There is no reason or explanation and Samsa himself seems to be in denial at first. Unable to accept him in his new shape, his family shut him away as ultimately they are the true monsters.
30 years ago I pretended to read this for English at school but just hated it. We were so busy with the symbolism and the meaning behind the tale I couldn't get into it.
Reading it now, I was moved and engaged. Kinraddie was believable and the language painted pictures in my mind. Chris was a beautifully complex creature, as she grows up and the outside world starts to affect her little piece of Scottish soil and her life.
Thankfully I still have a Scots dictionary to help with some of the words I didn't know so that didn't get in the way of my enjoyment. I'll likely search out the others in the Scots Quair to continue reading Chris' story.
I'm thinking I'm maybe not the biggest Kazuo Ishiguro fan. I didn't really enjoy the way this was written, the character's voice, that's always a bit of a risk with a first person - are you invested? I wasn't, not in Kathy or Tommy or Ruth.
I don't want to say to much because it could be construed as spoilers - but there's nothing to spoil! As the last few pages came closer I realised that I'd never get to know what I wanted. This whole novel was a back-story to what actually wanted to read.
It definitely has points to make and themes to explore. I'm sure it will stay with me on some level, as Klara has.
This novel puts us straight back into Seb's experiences with HappyHead - a novel approach to treating teenagers with mental health issues. Written in the first person, we cannot help but be drawn into the horrors he endures.
It's definitely a bit darker than the last one, lots of threats and fears but ultimately I felt it held back.
I don't imagine there will be another HappyHead novel but I'll be interested to read whatever Silver brings us next.
Well, I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as the first one. There was little of the novel set in Develish itself instead we were mostly out on the road with Thaddeus and his gang. This was okay but then there was a loooonngg medieval court but that I really struggled to care about.
The writing was fine but it wasn't a gripping page-turner. There was little threat and the one “frenzied” attack lasted a mere paragraph. Overall, I was actually rather disappointed in lady Anne and Thaddeus for their deceit.
Well she did it again, I was stumped again. Oh, I may have had ideas, I thought all of them could have done it at some point (so technically I was right at least once, like a stopped clock)!
Brilliantly written little book that kept me gripped until the end. No wonder it was one of Christie's favourites of her works.
“But it's the reading just for the sake of it that I find irritating. Jake will read anything - a newspaper, a magazine, a cereal box, a crappy flyer, a take-out menu, anything.”
A strange little novel that got under my skin and creeped me out. I worked out where we were going towards the end but that didn't matter, I couldn't stop it and I couldn't put it down.
3.5*
A historical novel, set in Dorsetshire at the start of the Black Plague. Characters are well-written and believable and the pages turned quickly. It's a hard-hearted reader that wouldn't root for the plucky Lady Anne and her villagers. Ends rather abruptly but that doesn't bother me as I've already started the next one!
Bookclub read [UoG]: Casa Rosa, the red house or home (in my head I translated it as home, it felt more personal - it is almost a character in itself, holding on to it's secrets beyond the final pages). Not a book that I would necessarily have chosen to read going by the blurb but the cover would have definitely grabbed me had I seen it in a bookshop.
Ultimately it is the story of a family, the three generations of females - grandmother, mother, daughters - seen through the eyes of of one of the daughters, Alina. This means that hers is the only life with details and the others are sketched from memories, tales, letters and paintings. I found Alina engaging, her life was interesting and Marciano maintained the flow whilst bringing her family's stories in too. I can see, however, that it would be a difficult read if one disliked her or her voice.
Much of the story does not take place at Casa Rosa, it is a place of memories, of the family coming together, both “now” and then. Alina's story is set in the 70s and 80s, across Italy and the USA, and touches on the politics of the time without delving too deep. Marciano writes like photographs, the memories yellowing with age yet still sharp. The images on the covers are a stunning too, beautiful timeless images that surprised me by being from the early 40s (and from France), I'd recommend searching for the works of Jacques Henri Lartigue.