Dawn

So this was a re-read in preparation for Ready Player Two so it didn't have quite the W.O.W. (

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.

A strange apocalyptic novel yet infused with the nuclear fears of the 50s. Mankind survives, just, beneath the streets of Moscow. Cowering in the Metro tunnels from the radioactive world above and multiple horrors around them. One man sets of on a journey, his Odyssey, learning about himself, humankind and the terrifying “dark ones”.
What an ending! I'm desperate to get my hands on the next one now.

My first reading of any Miller, I had some vague notions of the plot but nothing more. I enjoy reading plays, particularly when there is so much background and stage direction. I felt that Miller brought the reader into the text and onto the stage with the characters in a way that most playwrights fail to do.
I found the plot itself simple and engaging. While you are encouraged to sympathise with the Proctors there is room for understanding everyone's motivations.
Yes, females are sidelined as shadows of their menfolk but this is written by a man when women's liberation was in it's infancy and based on transcripts written by men from when women were nothing more than another possession. A reimagining written now, from a more feminist angle, would be a very interesting and illustrating play. Miller's dismissal of Abigail in the afterword, rumour and hearsay - did he not learn from his own text? - is particularly unpleasant, she is a character who deserves exploration and explanation.
However, these misgivings aside. Miller used this play to reflect the effects of McCarthyism in the US at the time, this is woven into the very text. The warnings remains as relevant today, in a world of mass hysteria - conspiracy theories etc. - as it did in 1953 and indeed in 1692.

Well, thank goodness that's over!
This is a re-read, I probably originally read this about 18 years ago. Somehow I read all of the books in the series. This time I struggled to get even a few pages in.

To begin with the protagonist, Thomas Covenant, is just horrible. A self-pitying creep who sees woman as objects (always with the pert breasts) and then actually rapes a child. “I actually don't know if I can justify reading on with this absolute tosh” I wrote as an aide memoire whilst I forced myself to keep reading.

On finishing I surprised myself by awarding 2 stars to such a grim experience. This is solely because I am slightly enamoured by the story of The Land. However, I don't want to spend anymore time in Covenant's company.

My advice to those yet to read this, just don't. It's not worth it.

The annual Pulitzer Prize winner read and I wasn't impressed. This should have been everything I like, music and strong females and something a bit grungy and grubby.
However, I couldn't keep track of the characters (usually I love a time-hop) and quite honestly, I just didn't care. There were snippets of interest and connection but then it would lose me again, there was no-one I liked or even had any emotional response to. Just blah, and don't get me started on the slide section - no, not impressed at all.

2.5⭐ scaled up because the writing was fine.

A pre-read re-read: I'd first read this quirky novel a couple of years back and, having bought the sequel, thought I'd better reacquaint myself with its world.
Brenda, an elderly lady with a mysterious past, has settled in Whitby to run a B+B in her dotage. However, strange things are happening in the town and Brenda, with her apparently prim-and-proper best friend Effie by her side, reluctantly finds herself investigating.
It's a surprisingly sweet gothic mash up of Hammer horror and Miss Marple. Completely original with lots of nods and winks to literature and 50s horror Sci-Fi movies. Thoroughly recommended escapism.

3.5* rounded up to 4: I read this because I'd enjoyed the film. I was hoping for a bit of expansion but there's not much more than was portrayed on screen. I found it written well enough to keep me reading and absolutely loved the photographs. I'm hoping the next couple of books will keep up the gothic/creepy themes and not fall into the teenage romance-type YA fiction.

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!

“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?