Julie

Family dynamics, death by cancer and madness - this was far too depressing for me.

Not a bad adaptation but I think I prefer the book.

Deserved a Reread

In just three years the USA has gone from freedom to total control. Women and men are divided into classes, but unlike women, men can work their way up through the ranks. Women, however, have a set place in society and that place is vividly displayed by the clothes they wear: striped gowns for the lower classes, the econowives; green gowns for the Marthas, the servants of the upper classes and red for the Handmaidens, the surrogates who bear the children of the infertile upper classes. It is to the Handmaidens that the main character of the story belongs. Her name is Offred and in the time before, she had a daughter, a husband, a job and a bank account. This was all taken away from her and now she is just a walking womb. She is not permitted to read or possess anything other than her clothes. She is also not allowed to converse with anybody more than is strictly necessary, there are ears everywhere to hear what she is saying and tongues ready enough to report her words. If she fails to get pregnant she will be sent away to ‘the colonies' whose members clean up toxic waste and where life expectancy is low. Despite all her attempts to remain a good citizen she gets drawn deeper and deeper into subversive activities.
 
I first read this book a few years ago and couldn't understand what all the hype was about. I think the reasons I didn't like it that much the first time round were that it is quite slow, written in the first person, dystopian (I prefer post-apocalyptic) and held up as an example by feminists. None of these qualities really endeared me to the story although I found the idea itself intriguing. I was used to more pace and more action. In the few years' interval my tastes seem to have broadened because I enjoyed it much more this time, probably largely due to the fact that I knew what to expect. I love the historical notes at the end, they give the story a feeling of authenticity. The same device was used in ‘the Passage' and I enjoyed it then, too. It's cool to read about something in the future as if it is already in the past. As for the feminist side, well, that isn't a problem with the book, that is a problem with my understanding of the word. When I think of feminism I think of women who don't want equality but a reversal of roles. That isn't what this story is about. I really hope though, that if some government today decided that women couldn't own money or have a job, we would fight harder than the women in this book. Maybe we should start hoarding our cash in our pillows - just a thought ;-)
 
 
 

John Wyndham meets Richard Matheson

And this is what the meeting of those two minds would have looked like. Thoroughly enjoyable with a novel beginning and spine-chilling ending. The middle was rather run-of-the-mill though, the usual scavenging and avoiding enemies both living and dead. What made the story stick out for me though was the writing style, he has just the right balance of humour, if you can call it that. Not that the book is funny in any way, it is just that the story has just the right entertainment value, lighter in some places than in others but never becoming really dark or bogged down. Every character was human, even the ones who weren't! In a genre that has become overcrowded, this really stands up head and shoulders above the rest.

Normally, for me a five star book is one that I rush through and can't put down. Not in this case, Aminata had to be savoured. She stands for the many Africans who were abducted from their homes, treated like animals, killed, raped, sold, escaped, recaptured, freed and lied to. It is a miracle that anyone could physically survive that let alone still have all their faculties intact. A dreadful period of our history which seems to be made up of horrific events.

The world is a grim place and the gap between the haves and have-nots is bigger than ever. The one thing they all have in common however it OASIS, a virtual reality universe far more attractive than the real world. Basic access is free and you can even go to school there. When the creator of OASIS dies he leaves his fortune of billions hidden within OASIS as a kind of ???easter egg??? and up springs a new culture, the ???gunters??? who spend their time looking for the easter egg and following clues through worlds of 1980s pop culture. But some gunters will stop at nothing to get to the prize first...

I found the start of the book slow-going at first, some paragraphs read like an encyclopaedia of the 1980s but as the story progresses it picks up and I started to enjoy it more. Having played video games myself and now watching my kids play them, I was able to understand the attraction of the virtual life and empathise with the main characters. It???s a simple good v evil story, with a race to see who???ll find the treasure first although there is never any doubt just who will that will be, it???s simply a matter of how he will get there.

I found Ready Player One to be a fun, entertaining read without a huge amount of depth but full of nostalgia for people like me who grew up in the 70s and 80s. It should appeal to all ??bergeeks out there, who love video games, dystopian stories and the 1980s.

I Feel Stupid This book definately belongs on the same shelf as Vellum, Splinter and Fairyland for me. The shelf should be titled ‘Books I Just Don't Get'. I don't think of myself as being particularly dumb but this one went WAY over my head!. I can follow the very basic plot of the book but the meat of the story was just strange. Never mind. I would like to try another of the author's books but that probably won't be anytime soon.
 
A week later...
Right, so, I've revised my rating for the book because I have had time to think about it and understand what it was that bothered me. I understood the plot and the coming-together at the end, in other words, the basic storyline, which was really good. What I didn't get was the significance of the individuals' stories inside of Diana Hunter's head. I understood the overall significance of the individual characters themselves as part of the whole but their stories threw me. Maybe, I will reread it one day, now that I know what to expect and it will make more sense to me.

I really, really enjoyed this book, until... I want to give this story more than three and a half stars but hand on my heart, I just can't. The first 4/5 of the book were brilliant with twists and turns that I didn't see coming but then the whole thing turned into a cheesy romance. In some ways the ending was appropriate to the gothic romance style of the story but I felt the final few pages deserved something better. Whereas the rest of the story took unexpected turns the ending was entirely predictable. I think I will have to digest it for a while and see if I change my mind but for now I feel that the ending wasn't up to the rest of the story.

A balance and sympathetic reconstruction of an unpopular queen consort during a turbulent era in British history.

I think the cover of this book first attracted my attention to it while browsing in my local bookstore. It stuck out from the crowd so I read the blurb and took it home with me (after paying for it, of course). It's a kind of medieval road movie with a bit of murder and mystery thrown in. Actually, there is quite a lot of murder and mystery in there but it doesn't really start until the second half of the book. The story is told by one person who, at the start of the story, is on a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine (I can't remember which one but it isn't that important). At each stop on the way, our narrator manages to pick up more and more travellers who are, for one reason or another, fleeing their past. The pilgrimage becomes a flight for everyone as the Black Death arrives in England and rapidly catches up with our band of frightened travellers. And then the murders begin...

I had to start this book twice, the first time I was in the middle of moving house so I couldn't get into it. But once I had picked it up the second time, I couldn't put it down again until I had finished it. So what did I like about it apart from the eye-catching cover? Well, I liked the beginning, which was actually describing the end of the book without giving anything away. I liked the fact that each new member of the group seemed to manage to worm their way into it, despite the wish of the pilgrim to travel alone. I liked that every single one of them had a secret which kept you guessing through most of the book. The descriptions were sufficient to set the scene but not so much as to get in the way. And the ending was almost ‘Hitcockian' - predictable (yes, that was the authors intention) but still quite chilling.

What didn't I like about it? Well..hmm...I don't think there was anything.

This book is well worth the time if you like stories about the Middle Ages and the Black Death as well as murder mystery. I went on to read “The Owl Killers” on the basis of this book and will pick up her next two without further ado.

This book makes a good companion to all those historical fiction novels when you are trying to keep of the Elizabeths, the Edwards and the Richards.