Catch-up mini reviews! Part 5 - Fiction (2)

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I have been meaning to read this for ages, and I was pretty sure that I would like it because it has lots of things in it that I love/am really interesting in, with the first one being lots of German! I studied German for 7 years at school and still like trying to read/watch things in German (just don't ask me to speak!), so I liked the odd sentences and things that were in German. Yay! Secondly, I like things to do with world war II, and apart from lots of things focusing on the holocaust, I haven't really ever read anything that explores what it was like in Germany for normal German people. I think it's very easy for people to say that they would have actually stood up for what they thought was right, but if you had been sort of brainwashed into believing certain things, and if you knew that acting on what you thought was morally right would probably end with you suffering the same fate as those you were trying to fight for, I think that most people would end up not speaking up about anything. So I really liked seeing how much each character in the book stood up for what they thought was right.

I know that some people have accused the book of being emotionally manipulative, but honestly I didn't really feel like I was being manipulated into reacting in a certain way, I think I reacted the way I did because of what actually happened rather than how it was written, so I would have reacted the same way even if the writing had been completely manipulation free (um, unless it was written like the first twilight book*, in which case I would have ended up crying for different reasons). I think I'm contradicting myself, but I know what I mean! I did end up sobbing, and my husband who was sitting next to me on the sofa at the time got really confused, haha.

I did have slight issues with the fact that Liesel's adopted father, Hans, was a bit of a manic pixie dream dad (if that's a thing, which I don't think it is), and that didn't really come off as THAT realistic (I think he needed to be a little bit more flawed to be believable). I also had a hard time separating death as portrayed in the book from death in the discworld books, haha. Which wasn't entirely appropriate. All in all though, I really liked it.


The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly by Sun-mi Hwang

My mum bought this in a 3 for 2 or something deal while I was back in the UK, and gave it to me to read after she finished it. It's a fairly short, but charming story about a Sprout, a hen who really wants to be a mother, and ends up leaving her hutch and pursuing her dreams.

I liked the illustrations in it, and it was nice to just curl up on the sofa at the end of a stressful day and read it.

There isn't really that much to the book, and to be honest I think that it was a little bit overpriced for what it was and that if I had bought it myself I might have been a little bit annoyed (if it was put together with another story of similar length, or was being sold much cheaper, it would be just right). Although having said that, I like the cover art and the book itself is really nice! But the story has stuck with me, and I think that if I'm ever ill and need something easy to read, it might be a good one to go to!

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

I read this as they talked about it on Literary Disco and made it sound interesting. I did enjoy reading it, and I liked the way that it explored race issues, but I didn't find the plot at the centre of the story to be THAT intriguing, and to be honest, I had to read a synopsis to remember what had actually happened before writing this. I do remember that the characters were well drawn and pretty believable, although the female characters were a little bit disappointing. I also kept on being thrown out of the story by use of dialect things which just REALLY confused me, at some point I was wondering if there were just typos in the copy that I was reading. I think this is a failing on my part, but if you are as unfamiliar with Mississippi dialect as I am then you might find yourself similarly thrown. Maybe I don't read enough of this kind of book (crime... mysteryish.. thing? Urgh, I'm bad at genres) to appreciate it? I feel like it might be a bit convention breaking, in that the characters are more interesting than the plot? I don't know. It might just have been me.

I didn't hate it, but it was just okay.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

On the other hand, I LOVED this. I think this might be my favourite Gillian Flynn book Pretty much all of the characters in it were really messed up (as seems to be the case in all of her books), but all in a way that completely made sense once you knew more about them, and the tone was deliciously dark. I think it was a really good look into what really insular communities are like when you return to them after having escaped, and disfunctional families, and the investigation of the crime that the main character, Camille, had been sent to her old hometown to report on was also really interesting.

There was one point where a certain detail was revealed which made me actually go "ARGH!!!" out loud... I am very grateful that I was at home at the time.

Although I do wonder how her books would hold up if you read them again, the first time through was completely addictive and I honestly had problems tearing myself away to do things like go to work and eat.

I'm really really looking forward to whatever she does next!



Only a few more of these posts to go!  I've noticed that I'm gradually writing more and more about each book, which kind of defies the point, but it's my blog and I'll do what I like! So there, imaginary critic who probably doesn't actually exist outside of my head!


* Honestly, the worst written novel that I have read, and that includes some idiotic chick-lit that came free with a magazine about some woman who falls for her decorator. Or something. I realise that the writing probably isn't the point, but I thought that I would get a stupid book that I would enjoy reading (yes, I read it thinking that I might actually like it!), rather than something that made me want to gouge my own eyes out. And that's not even saying anything about the gender politics in the book that you do not want to get me started on. Okay, no more twilight ranting!

Jen reads... Beloved, World War Z, Smoke and Mirrors, The Sense of an Ending and Dark Places

Mini review time!

Beloved by Toni Morrison

This book was horrific (in terms of the subject matter and some of the things that happen) but amazing. Read it if you haven't already. And try to go into it unspoiled, I already knew one of the major plot points in it before reading, and I wish that I hadn't!












World War Z by Max Brooks

 Zombies!!! Yayyy! I really really liked this. It was written really well, was interesting and dealt with the idea of zombies in as real world a way as possible, if that makes sense. I have a couple of problems with it though...

Why was the English guy in it obsessed with the queen? I mean, it's okay to have someone who actually likes the royal family in there, but at least balance it out with someone else!

The bits with Japanese people annoyed me. There were Japanese words which are just normal words, without any particular significance that were treated as if they were special lingo somehow, and I wish again that there had been a bit of a wider representation of other viewpoints in it. A bit too stereotypical if you ask me. Mind you, this is probably only because I understand Japanese, I'm sure it wouldn't be annoying for anybody else!

The fact that actually knowing stuff about 2 of the countries that were talked about made me wonder if the rest of it would be equally annoying to people either from, or who know a lot about other countries represented within the book, so I'm glad that I'm as ignorant about say, China and India as I actually am. Yay ignorance!! (Only when it comes to reading this book, otherwise I'm pretty ashamed of how little I know about the rest of the world).

Having said that, I still enjoyed it enough that I have since bought it as a present for people and would like to reread it at some point. I might just skim read the bits that annoyed me and focus on the other bits. My only problem really is that although all of the American viewpoints were balanced, the countries that I actually know stuff about didn't have any balance to them at all, and I would have preferred to have at least a couple of different views of what happened from those countries. Of course, that would have made the book absolutely massive, but I don't think anybody who has read and enjoyed this would mind that, would they?

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

My first Gaiman book. As with any short story collection, it was a bit of a mixed bag, but the stories that I liked I really really liked. Unfortunately, the story that I liked the most was actually in the introduction, so I was setting myself up for disappointment really! Still, it was my bedtime reading for a month or so, and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm looking forward to reading more Gaiman, although I know that some of his things can be a bit divisive so I'm not entirely sure where to go next.






The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

The story of this is split into two parts, with the first part about the precocious childhood of Tony, the main character... and if you want to read this, you really shouldn't know what happens in the rest of the book, as it makes every revelation later on become a bit too obvious. So stop reading!

For those of you who chose to ignore me, the second part of the book takes the first part and completely flips it on its head. I really like unreliable narrators, and I did enjoy the book, but I just didn't find the revelations to be particularly surprising, as I  had already worked them all out. Had I gone in without knowing about the whole everything was not as it seems switcheroo, I think I would have enjoyed it much more. I did still like it though, and it was nice to read something so thoroughly British!



Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

After reading Gone Girl, I did what I expect a lot of people did and immediately bought all of the Gillian Flynn back catalogue (so... two books. I'm so wild!). I still haven't read the other book (Sharp Objects), as I think that reading everything at once might be a bit too dark, even for me.

Dark Places is about a girl, Libby Day, whose entire family was killed by her older brother who is in prison. She has a fund established in her name, and has pretty much been living off the proceeds of that, but her money is starting to run out, and when she does an event for a group of people obsessed with famous murder cases, she realises that what she thinks happened might not exactly be the whole story.

Libby is pretty unlikeable although oddly likeable at the same time? She's not particularly a nice or good person, but it's really easy to understand why she is how she is. I really liked it, and am looking forward to reading Sharp Objects! Although I may leave a bit of time as there's only so much darkness and unlikeable characters that I can take!


Yay, 5 books down... quite a few more to go. Hehe.

Jen reads... Gone Girl

Yay, a book for adults! Hehe. 

I pretty much couldn't put this book down. I stopped watching tv and pretty much ignored google reader until I'd finished it. 

So, in other words, it was good! 

The book is about a couple who are (as becomes clear quite early on) not entirely happily married, and what happens when the wife, Amy, goes missing. It's told from the husband's point of view, and also through Amy's old diary entries. And if you haven't heard anything else about it, then I suggest that you don't read the rest of this review and go and read it immediately, so you can stay unspoiled for it. I only had vague inklings of what might happen, and I kind of wish that I hadn't had those. 

Read it! Go go go! 



..And now for people who aren't afraid of spoilery rambling (or who have read the book!)...

I really enjoy books with unreliable narrators. And this one has 2! So, yay! Although I was expecting the first twist (I didn't know exactly what would happen, but I knew that all was not as it seemed), I was definitely not expecting to have my alliances shift so often when reading it. (Although by the end, they were completely fixed).. I started off finding both Nick and Amy fairly sympathetic, and halfway through I had no idea what to think anymore. 


I don't think that the book is a great work of fiction, but it was nicely written and nicely plotted, and left me wanting to skive work and carry on reading (I didn't! Well done me), so I would definitely recommend it!