March Wrap-Up

March was a busy month reading-wise, where Uni texts fought big time with my reading-for-pleasure. With an essay due mid-April, I had to cut down a bit, but yet I still managed to read eleven books, which I am chuffed about.

Following the death of Sir Terry Pratchett, I decided to give his Discworld series another go; I had read Wyrd Sisters years ago, but didn't quite '"get" the book at all. This month, I have managed to read the first six, including Wyrd Sisters, which I absolutely loved on second reading. It's amazing how reading tastes change in a decade! I'm just about to start book 7, Pyramids, but - as per usual - essay guilt has prevented me from doing so today. I am also conscious that I haven't put my reviews up for the first few Discworlds, I am slacking! Will do that as soon as possible.

Other than Pratchett, four of the other books I read were from the Waterstone's Book Club, my favourite being Nora Webster of the four, with the creepy Her in second place. All are very good books though, and I have reviewed each on this blog.

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan was for Uni research - my essay includes writing about the 'body-politic' in Shakespeare's Coriolanus so I have been reading that text to fill myself in on what a healthy republic is, and how it becomes 'diseased'. Like many philosophy books, it is quite tricky to read at times but I *think* I got the argument!

So, on to April. Holidays are approaching, as is an even longer essay (on Robinson Crusoe and Coetzee's Foe), but I am hoping to get ten books read if I can. I'm feeling so smug that I am 17 books ahead of where I should be on my Goodreads 2015 Reading Challenge, need to try and top the fifty books that I thought I would read this year. So far so good.

Oh, and I have more books arriving from Waterstone's tomorrow........

My weekend book haul (yes, another one!).

Have had an unintentional absence from my blog, mainly due to a Uni essay being due within the next few weeks and the fact that I needed to do a lot of research for it. I have been busy reading my way through Terry Pratchett's Discworld  series of novels, in the wake of his death (so sad!); reviews for the ones I have completed will be posted very soon. Needless to say, I am a huge fan of Pratchett now - it's just a shame it took his death for me to start reading my hubby's collection of his books!

Anyhow.....

I've been a bit naughty recently, and had a bit of a book-buying-binge. As well as picking up Plato's Republic, De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, (studied this in one of my English undergrad modules and loved it so bought my own copy), and Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man from a small independent local bookshop, I made the mistake (well - it wasn't really a mistake but to the rest of my family it appeared thus) of wandering into Waterstone's on Saturday, where I picked up this little lot. I'm so excited to have the sequel to Ransom Riggs's Mrs Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children; I bought the first novel as an ebook and loved it so much that I bought it again in paper format, as well as the sequel. There are also a couple of Discworld novels that were missing from our collection, the Margaret Kennedy novel The Ladies of Lyndon (haven't read anything by her yet), and The Beautiful and the Damned by F.Scott Fitzgerald. And do you like my bag?

So many new books, so much Uni work - there is a battle royal going on about which to do first! Gah!

Book Review: 'Her', by Harriet Lane

I picked up this novel, as it was one that the Waterstone's Book Club were reading, and the title just grabbed me. I know books shouldn't be judged from the title but this one seemed so menacing, and a nice easy diversion from the 'heavy' Shakespeare play that I am studying at Uni just now. I'm not a fan of chick-lit but the tag 'psychological thriller' eventually sold it to me so, always glad of a scary suspense novel, I decided to give it a go.

This is a freakishly chilling novel whose clever construction through the mirroring of the events of each chapter from one woman's viewpoint reflected in the following chapter from that of the other woman, allows the reader to fully experience the almost over-friendly 'two-facedness' of Nina, and the trusting naivete of Emma. Now in their early forties, these two women have met in the past; it isn't until the very end of the novel that the reader discovers the reason for Nina's obsessive, grudging and stalking attitude to the oblivious Emma, and the devastating and nightmarish consequences of these emotions. 

The characters were very well written - I got so frustrated with Emma and Ben and kept shouting at her to get him to do more to help her, while Nina just gave me the creeps, even before her darker side became evident. I got so engrossed in the characters and the spiralling events that I ended up reading this novel in just four hours! 

Really enjoyed it, so it gets four stars out of five from me.

Book Review: 'Nora Webster', by Colm Toibin

Oh my word! Where do I start with my thoughts on this book? 

Having not read any other novels by this author before, I decided to buy this book as it came highly recommended through the Waterstone's Book Club. At first I thought it was going to be a sad, morose tale of Nora Webster's adaptation to life as a widow - the loneliness of the book cover assisted me in coming to this conclusion. But how wrong I was. Yes, there are sad bits as Nora reminisces on the happy family life that she can no longer enjoy - family holidays being an example, but there are also threads of comedy, especially in the form of Phyllis whose attempts at a kind of karaoke stint didn't really pay off. There is also a seed of hope that life can go on after the death of a loved one, maybe pushing one to do things they never would have done before. Finally, there is also an unrelenting uncertainty and ambiguity about the book - what did Donal and Conor see in the department store, why were they so distant to Josie, what causes Donal to suddenly develop a stutter, and what on earth did the message from beyond the grave mean? And where did Francie Kavanagh disappear to? These questions and the hope in discovering the answers to them kept me turning the pages until......

.....NO! He can't finish the book THERE? Still so many ends left untied! I had to keep checking that I had read the last words of the novel to believe that the author had indeed ended the novel as he has. I just wanted to keep reading and reading, but alas! I feel like I have suddenly lost a good friend. 

So, in a nutshell, I loved this novel; I have ranked it among my favourites, which is quite an accolade.

Book review: 'Elizabeth is Missing' by Emma Healey

This novel took me on an emotional roller-coaster! I think having worked with demented people in hospital in my Gap Year after school, I could see some of my former patients in Maud - sometimes things she says or does are funny for not being in context, whilst at other times the harsher side of dementia left me feeling sad and frustrated for her and her family, and yet fearful that maybe I will end up like Maud in years to come - I'm not known for having the best memory at the moment! The thing that hit home with me was Maud's persistent quest to find her old friend Elizabeth; several patients I have cared for were on similar searches for "missing" loved ones, even though these sought-for people had been dead many years. 

This is a murder-mystery with a difference, only Maud can piece together the evidence, if only she can remember to write things down, and who she is investigating. The narrative is split between Maud now and her reminiscing about her childhood - her confused mind often blending the two together, often in darkly comic ways.

The novel reminds you that confused older people aren't as 'loopy' as they may seem - buried within themselves are coherent and lucid memories that they find hard to apply to normal life due to failing short-term memory, but yet these memories are important to their sense of self. These individuals are to be respected - after all, they were young too once.

Highly recommend this book, I know it is going to remain in my mind for a long time......... I hope!

Happy World Book Day!

Today is the day when bibliophiles like myself celebrate the joys of books, and in the attempt trying to pass on the enthusiasm for reading to the next generation. I have seen a lot of primary school children going to school in costumes of their favourite fictional characters; it's always great to see the old classics such as Alice in Wonderland represented alongside the newer Potter-ites.

I have had the flu over the past week so my reading progress hasn't been as rapid as it has been, but this evening I finished 'The Miniaturist' - I will write my review on this amazing novel tomorrow (and yes, I did like this book!).

In the meantime, here are two of my many favourite books of all time.  I am featuring the first volume of Powell novels in my photo as I have the others on Kindle, but these novels are, in my mind, literary masterpieces. I will post better reviews of each novel within the volume at a future date, but they are just brilliant.

I love Dickens. He is my favourite ever author and picking out a favourite of his novels is a nightmare. However, both 'Our Mutual Friend' and 'David Copperfield' are in my best-of-the-best of his works. Loveable characters, unforgettable plots, and atmospheric writing.  Love them!

So, now I get to choose a new book to start. Big decision to make as I want to read all my new books at once, but I will reveal the 'winner' tomorrow. Eeny meeny miney mo.......