Wednesday 25 November 2015

Sister by Rosamund Lupton

This was fantastic! I heard about this one on Jen Campbell's Booktube channel and decided immediately, that it was definitely up my aisle. I LOVE crime fiction. I cut my teeth on crime fiction. But my problem with crime fiction is that, and this is going to sound really snobbish of me - I apologise, is that it is generally very averagely written.

Beatrice learns that her sister has gone missing. She will do anything to uncover the truth and find out what happened, even when everyone else has given up.

Not only was this book a brilliant example of a suspenseful crime novel, but it was beautifully written and constructed. It is written as a letter to her sister, in the present, telling her about what happened. The way in which Beatrice spoke to her sister in this letter, the way she knew that her sister would be thinking over the things she said, made me envious of their relationship. (I don't have a sister.)

This book doesn't just deal with a suspenseful investigation, though. It is also a study into grief, human compassion and coming to terms with loss. As someone who has experienced loss, I found her portrayal believable, although I have read many reviews that have claimed otherwise.

I loved this book so much, in fact, that I am sitting here, dying to go into all the details that I adored: the characters that were so real, the multiple scenarios that could have played out, the way it played with my feelings and emotions... everything. But, I am scared I am going to spoil something, and this is one definitely worth going into blindly (which is why I am not adding any quotes to this).

If you like crime novels or if you like good writing, then this is a book for you!

I gave this one 5 stars on Goodreads. It is one of my favourite books of the year!

This is the 75th book I have read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.

Sunday 22 November 2015

Reality Boy by A.S. King

I had heard YA booktubers raving about the works of AS King, so I took it upon myself to pick one up and give it a go. (Plus, this one was really cheap.) After all, I am always looking for new books to stock in the high school library.

Gerald Faust is otherwise known as The Crapper. He was a child on a reality TV programme 10 years ago - one of those nanny programmes. Yes, let your imagination figure out how he got that name. Now, Gerald is completely consumed with anger. Can he get control of his life?

If we are going purely on a rating as to whether I enjoyed this or not, I am going to have to go with a very average rating. There were many things about this book that I appreciated though. I liked how it challenged the concept of reality TV and exposed the harm that it can do - something that is not necessarily a new concept, but one I have never come across in literature before. I also appreciated the use of language and how King dealt with a topic that was sensitive.

I did, however, feel that Gerald's innocence was exaggerated. Granted, he had reason to do what he did, but he was not completely innocent either. I did not believe that in a different situation, Gerald would have been a wonderful guy. But the overall message made up for that. I liked the outcome of this novel.

Although I enjoyed the language in this, the swing between what was real and imagined would make this book extremely challenging for less experienced readers, so that is definitely something to be considered if purchasing this for someone else.

I did appreciate that Gerald was shown that his life was not the only that sucked though (forgive the less than formal term, but we are talking YA here) and that he started to become less self-obsessed, as he realised that he wasn't the only person in the world who had been treated unfairly, who had problems with their families, or who felt that their life was out of their control.

Would I recommend it? Not really. Perhaps to younger readers who are up for the challenge.

I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads, because I liked the language.

This is the 74th book I have read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.

Friday 20 November 2015

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (a.k.a JK Rowling)

This is the third instalment in the Cormoran Strike series.

Robyn is sent a body part at the office and Strike knows of at least three people from his past who could have sent it.

Now like many readers out there, I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. Just in case you doubt me on that one, I actually flew to London, from the bottom of Africa, for the 7th book release. Fan? I qualify. So this review really pains me to write.

While I feel it is sacrilegious to give JK Rowling anything less than 4 stars, I could not help myself. There were many parts in this book that I did enjoy, but I was dissatisfied with it overall. You see, I cut my teeth on crime fiction. I know a good crime plot from an average one. And although I feel that the characters in this book (series) are interesting, I have some issues with things.

Perhaps this needs a bit more elaboration, if it is possible to do so with out spoiling the book. Robyn is an intelligent, independent, capable woman - but yet in other aspects of her life, she allows people to walk over her. Although I am completely aware that people change depending on who they are with, for example, I cannot understand how someone would let that happen.

I also did not appreciate 'the twist' at the end. One of the things that makes crime stories compelling and addictive to read is that the reader is involved in the story, hunting for clues. This was unbelievable and left me feeling conned, not awed. In fact if I could be a little blunt here, I thought the climax was a bit stupid. A feeling that I also had with The Cuckoo's Calling. So far, I think the best instalment is the second one in the series, The Silkworm.

I find that Rowling's adult stories lack the one thing that made all her fans fall in love with Harry Potter - charm. I get that she is writing for an adult audience, but I just don't feel anything when I read these books - besides a strong distaste of the adult world. I am getting tired of chair flatulence and other repetitions too, if I have to be honest.

Urgh.

I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads, because, although I found it disappointing in many aspects, it was good in others. If this series was written by anyone else, I would probably abandon it here, but because it is Jo, I will try again.

Tuesday 17 November 2015

The Stand by Stephen King

Hold it right there. One thousand, four hundred and forty pages. Let me say that again. ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY PAGES - plus the preface which has Roman numerals for page numbers. Folks. This one took a while to read.

The end of the word as we know it has arrived. Approximately 90% of the population have died. There are hardly any doctors left, no electricity, people are scattered across America... And of course, it is Stephen King, so there has to be something else going on too.

I picked this one up for the reading challenge I am doing this year, which required that I read a book published in the year I was born. 1978. Of all the books that were published that year, this was the one that struck my fancy the most.

Now, this was not a bad one, I must say. But, shew, it was long winded. Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing - if you happen to like books that you can happily live in (and I use the word 'happily' very lightly here) for a couple of weeks. Then perhaps this is the book for you. If you get frustrated with long, expansive details that aren't actually necessary to the plot, then you should give this one a skip. There are LOADS of details in this one.

My favourite part was the beginning of the book, watching the virus spread, and I enjoyed seeing how people reformed communities and tried to get things running again. I must admit that the idea of the apocalypse being cause by a flu-like virus was freaky - especially as the kids at school were all coming down with colds, and it just added to the whole experience. As someone who is not American, though, I would have liked to have heard a few things about other parts of the world - although I will concede that without technology, that would have been nearly impossible.

King does a great job of bringing these characters to life. They were real and I cared for them. But it is hard to not care about people after you have read about them for 1440 pages. (Can you tell that I am stuck on that page count?) He had a good combination of both likeable and unlikeable characters, and they added to the story and gave it depth. This novel, mostly, is about people - so although I was more interested in the plot, the people are what made the story interesting.

I must admit that I do fall into the category of readers who get impatient these days. I suppose it is one of the negative affects of doing reading challenges. I enjoyed it but I found myself wishing that some things had just been chopped, if not for my reading challenge, then for my wrists.

I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads. Although King is a master story teller, I really feel that this could have been cropped a bit, and that cropping it would have added to the suspense.

This is the 73rd book I have read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.

Wednesday 4 November 2015

NaNoWriMo 2015

I am joining in the madness again this year. Yes, in case you are one of the sane folks out there and do not recognise that shield on the left, I will be doing Nano - again.

That does, however, have slight consequences for this blog. Between marking exams, having meetings with parents, and writing, I do not know how much time I will have for reading. Because I fall into the rare and small category of people out there who do Extreme-Nano. This is basically a nice way on saying that I word war with friends, and, as opposed to writing a decent, regular amount of words, we scoff at the 1667 word requirement and try and write something closer to 5k a day. I did tell you it was madness. This year we are not really planning on doing something as insane as we have in the past (my record for Nano is 154419 words), but to write somewhere between 75 to 100k. Much more reasonable. If only we could get past the competitiveness between each other.

Anyway, because I am trying to think of what is going to happen next in my novel, I thought I would do the NaNoWriMo Tag. You can find the original tag video here, created by Kristina Horner.

1. How many times have you done NaNoWriMo?
This will be my 7th year.

2. How did you first find out about NaNoWriMo?
Back over 10 years ago, I stumbled across people talking about nano on Livejournal. I was definitely interested, but I must admit that, by the time November rolled around, I had completely forgotten about it. The first year I did remember in time, I was facing post-grad exams and wasn't prepared to spend my time writing when I had learning to do.

3. What was the name of the first novel you attempted with NaNo?
Knight's World. It is a trilogy and I had been working on it for over a decade by that point in time - although I am embarrassed to say that I had never got past chapter 1. I am a compulsive editor.

4. Give us a 1 sentence summary of what you’re writing this year.
I don't have a clue; I only decided to do this on the 31st. I was going to give it a skip this year. My story is writing itself. Can I say what has happened in one sentence? Unlikely. It is fantasy. Can we just stick to that?

5. What’s the best writing advice you've ever been given?
It would be everything Neil Gaiman has ever said about writing, from: if you want to be a writer, then write; to, you need to finish things. All the more reason why Nano works well for me.

6. Did you ever take a year off from NaNo? Why?
Not yet. I was going to take this year off, because I don't want to be burnt out from writing over the coming summer holidays and actually edit my trilogy. But I caved. Peer pressure. What can I say?

7. What's your biggest inspiration when figuring out what to write?
If only there was a pool where ideas flowed and writers could access it. I have no idea where the ideas come from. In fact, I think if I had to think about it too hard and try to guess, I might ruin it. They come. Maybe my brain, maybe the ether. I am not complaining.

8. Read us the first sentence from one of your novels.
"If there had been an outside observer, it would have been considered the strangest of gatherings."

9. Why do you love writing?
I just always have. When I was five, I told everyone that I wanted to be a writer. That goal has never changed. I have always wanted to do this - even back when holding a pencil was a bit of a challenge. I love writing Nano because I need the challenge to actually get words down. Otherwise I sit and 'think about it' and never DO it. (I teach kids with barriers to learning. I come home from work half dead. By the time I have finished prepping for the next day - I am deader than dead. It is hard to be creative when one is mentally exhausted.) I also love the weird directions my stories can go when I am forced to think of something to happen next.

OK, that is me for a while. I am almost finished with Stephen King's The Stand, so a review of that will be up soon-ish. Until then, happy writing if you are doing NaNo. Happy reading if you are not!

PS: I am PanAlchemist at Nano, should you wish to join in some extreme-nanoing, or if you would like to throw peanuts to get my word count moving.