Catch-up mini reviews! Part 7 - Short Stories

I’ve finally reached the last part of this series of catch-up posts. Huzzah!

This post covers 3 short story collections that I finished recently. I have realised that I like short stories best when I read then when I feel like it, rather than reading all of the stories in a collection one after the other, and I started reading some of these collections a year or so ago, so these mini-reviews are probably going to be more general impressions that I was left with after reading. So without further ado, onto the reviews!

Unnatural Creatures, an anthology of stories selected by Neil Gaiman

I bought this completely on a whim from a bookshop I go to with a small section of English books… and I’m really glad I did! It contains 16 stories (including one by Neil Gaiman) by a really wide variety of authors, and although this kind of anthology can be a bit hit and miss, I didn’t actively dislike any of the stories at all, so yay! I must remember to actually see what other stuff some of the authors that I had never heard of have done.

I read a lot of this while I was very stressed out by work and other things and couldn’t concentrate on novels, and it was perfect for that kind of reading.

If you like stories about weird and wonderful creatures, then this would be a good collection for you!

Just don’t go into it expecting it all to be by Neil Gaiman. As some online reviewers have. It’s very obvious that it isn’t from the cover, silly people!

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

If you are like me, you’ve probably heard people raving about how amazing Karen Russell is. After hearing a lot about this book, I thought that there was no way that I wouldn’t like it… and I was right, sort of.

Firstly, I think Karen Russell has an absolutely insane imagination, but also a gift for making stories based on intriguing, otherworldy premises seem completely plausible. I found the ideas behind some of the stories more interesting than others, but I really enjoyed seeing how the world worked in each story.

On the other hand though, I found the first few stories I read to have disappointing endings. I don’t necessarily look for all ends to be tied off in a nice neat little bow, but some of the stories seem to end really abruptly, and I was left going “…and?!” after the first few. But once I accepted that the stories may not end in a way that satisfied me, I ended up really enjoying the rest of the stories.

I think ultimately whether you enjoy this collection or not will depend on what you personally read short stories for. If you read them for beautiful language, or interesting ideas then you will not be disappointed. If you need a definite ending to the stories, this may not be for you. But, even though I struggled a bit at first, one I had realigned my expectations I REALLY enjoyed reading the rest of the stories, and I definitely want to read Vampires in the Lemon Grove at some point!

Topics About Which I Know Nothing by Patrick Ness

I had no idea what this was when I bought it, haha. I thought it might be a collection of essays, but it turned out to be short stories. I don’t think this will be everyone’s cup of tea, but the stories were all written amusingly, and had some interesting ideas in. It was a little bit hit and miss for me, in that although I enjoyed reading all of them, I have problems recalling most of the stories now.

I REALLY enjoyed “the gifted”, the last story in the collection, which is about a school project which goes horrifically wrong. It was creepy (unsurprisingly, given that it is narrated by a group of dead schoolchildren!) in a really good way, and definitely stood out from the other stories for me.

If you like Patrick Ness, I think it’s definitely worth reading!

Catch-up mini reviews! Part 2 - Fiction (1)

First of two posts covering non-YA, non-short story fiction. Yayyy!!!

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I had really high hopes for this… and to be honest, they weren’t really met. I read a few reviews online of it after reading (to check that I hadn’t just been idiotic and not understood it or something!) and they point out that the main character, Guy Montag, fluctuates wildly from being intelligent and acting logically to being a complete idiot. The ideas in it were interesting, but I just really didn’t enjoy the way that the story unfolded or how it was written, or how it ended. Sigh! I might try more of Ray Bradbury’s stuff though, just to see if I had wayyy too high expectations for this! (I feel this way about a lot of older science fiction/dystopian fiction - the ideas are interesting, but something about the way that it is written puts me off. Not that it was written badly, but.. the character development and the plot just lack something.)

Mind you, as I always do with books like this, I don't feel like I wasted my time reading it. Yay!

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

I enjoyed this, although I’m glad that I read it after the hype had died down, as I think I might have been disappointed if I had gone in expecting more. I felt like most of the characters weren’t really that likeable, so if that’s an issue for you this might not be the best book to read. It’s well written, but I did feel that there was something… lacking, although it’s hard to put my finger on what exactly. I would like to read The Engagements, which has a more interesting sounding premise!

The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder by J.W. Ironmonger

I LOVED THIS! It was fun, quirky, and of personal interest to me, as the two main characters, Maximilian Ponder and his friend, Adam Last both spend some of their childhood living in Africa, and my Granddad also lived in Africa as a child, (although a few decades earlier than the story is set).  I highly recommend this to anyone who wants a fun, interesting read. Yay!

The Crash of Hennington – Patrick Ness

Yup, more Patrick Ness! Haha. This is his first novel, and is not YA. I really enjoyed the characters, and the idea of a herd of Rhino just wandering through a city, but I feel like it might have been a bit too overly complicated for its own good. I was forced to take notes to keep up with who everyone was! I also didn’t care that much for the ending… there wasn’t anything wrong with it per say, but I think it could have been more interesting. I enjoyed every second of reading the book though, which isn’t always the case!

Jen reads... all the Patrick Ness

Okay, so not quite all of the Patrick Ness, but two books.


First up, More Than This

I knew that I wanted to read more Patrick Ness after reading the whole Chaos Walking trilogy early last year (in fact, I believe they were the first books that I posted about on here), and I finally got around to it.

I really liked the book The story focuses on Seth, who dies in the first chapter and then wakes up to find himself in some kind of afterlife. Or is it?! Dun dun dunnnn!

The book opens with a fairly horrific description of the main character, Seth, drowning. You can read it here if you want to... that description alone has pretty much embedded itself in my brain, urgh. In a good way though!

To be honest, I think that the main story should be read without knowing much about what is going to happen at all. I went in knowing pretty much nothing apart from Patrick Ness takes on the afterlife, and I'm really glad that I did. So I'm going to stop writing about it now. If anybody has read it and wants to discuss it with me I would be quite happy to!!

Next, The Crane Wife

The title for this is based on a Japanese fairy tale, but the story differs somewhat. It is the story of an American divorcee called George living in London, who one day wakes up to find a crane that has been shot with an arrow in his garden. After helping the crane, he happens to meet a mysterious woman called Kumiko, who seems like the answer to a lot of his problems.

Again, I really liked this. It seems from the description that Kumiko could be a typical manic pixie dream girl, but although she is to some extent, the whole magical aspect to the book makes that more acceptable and less annoying, somehow. Plus, to be honest, that trope has never really bothered me, as long as its done well, and in this instance it is!

It not only follows George, but also focuses on his adult daughter from a previous marriage, Amanda. Amanda is definitely too mouthy for her own good, and seems to end up with her foot in her mouth a lot of the time, but I really liked her for it.

I don't think that the story is likely to blow you away, but for me it had just the right mixture of realism (George and Amanda's father/daughter relationship is really believable) and magic thrown together, and I really enjoyed it. The story is definitely aimed at adults, unlike the other Patrick Ness books that I've read, but it still has a sort of nice air of innocence to it. In fact, I think it was probably much less grim than his other books, hehe. It was a really nice way to spend a train journey that took 3 hours longer than it should have done (curse you, normally extremely reliable Japanese transport system!).  If you've already read Patrick Ness and liked him, I don't think that you will be disappointed by this!

Jen reads... Monsters of Men

I finished this... a week ago? Life has got in the way of updating. CURSE YOU LIFE!!!

Ahem. 

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure that enjoyed is the right word to describe the experience of reading this, but I thought it was an excellent way to finish the trilogy, and I liked the unrelenting darkness. Heh. 

I think that one thing that I like about these books is that they haven't taken the easy way out at all.. The last book also addressed some things that I'd felt slightly uncomfortable about in the previous books (why the spackle are called spackle, for instance... umm, I think that was answered in this book, haha, I read them so close together that I'm not actually sure, but anyway...), and introduced a third point of view, so that you're seeing the story from pretty much all sides, which is always good! 

So now I've read the whole trilogy... I can wholeheartedly recommend it! Yay.

...now I'm a few posts in, maybe I should actually start telling people that I have a blog, haha :D

Jen reads... The Ask and the Answer

I had to slow down my reading this week, as I have an exam tomorrow and needed to study for it. In spite of that I still managed to finish this book, which just shows how gripping it was! (And how much free time I had today!!)

It didn't grab me as quickly as the first book did, and I think it does suffer from middle of the trilogy syndrome, if that's a thing, where a lot of stuff is happening which needs to happen, but doesn't quite have the pace of the first book.

But, it was good! Especially as it got towards the end and all of the earlier bits of the book where things weren't quite so exciting paid off. 

The narrative in this is split between 2 characters, which I wasn't entirely sure about at first, but I think it was a good choice :) Towards the end I occasionally got confused as to whose point of view it was supposed to be from (even though they are in different fonts, I was too wrapped up in what was happening to pay attention to the font, I guess?), but that's definitely my fault for trying to read too fast. 

It's completely different to the first book in some ways, but still pretty bleak. Even more bleak, really. I really wonder how well I would have dealt with this had I read it when I was 12 or 13... But I really liked it. There are some things which aren't explicitly said here (due to its YA ness I expect), but which are implied which just make everything all the more horrific. 

I might do a spoilery post for the series so far, as I have stuff to say which I don't want to here in case I spoil things for.. my one reader. Hi! *waves* 

Ahh, it feels so nice to be back reading again. It's been too long since I've been able to read without having to pace myself due to a lack of other English books to read. 

And now I'm going to go and eat my tea (I forgot about it in all of the reading excitement) and start the third book. Hehe. 

Jen reads... The Knife of Never Letting Go

I recently acquired a kindle, which have only recently started being sold in Japan. The good thing about this is that I can now buy books through the British amazon site, rather than having to buy books which are way too expensive from the Japanese site, or Japanese book shops. YAY! 

As books have been so expensive to buy here, and due to the generally limited space in Japanese apartments I've been trying to limit the amount of English books that I buy for the 3 years that I've been living here. So this is a very very good development for the amount of reading that I'm can do, AND a very BAD development for my wallet. 

I chose my first kindle book to be The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'd heard some good things about it, and I've been suffering a bit from a cold the past week or so, and wanted something which wasn't going to be too challenging. 

The story is about a boy called Todd, who lives on a planet where men have been infected with some kind of disease where everyone can hear their thoughts (these thoughts are referred to as noise), and what happens when one day he finds a patch of quiet in all of the noise. 

That's as much as I'm going to say as that's all that I knew when I started reading :) 


I'm generally drawn to anything slightly dark, and this definitely is! There were several points in the book which made me go ewwww, as well, which I always enjoy. (Does that make me weird?)

One of the things that I thought might bother me is that Todd is the narrator of the story, and as where he lives education isn't exactly a priority, there are several words which are misspelt the whole way through. I can find this kind of thing really annoying in books, but I think that in this case it actually adds to his character. 

Although, as it is a YA book (I guess?), it did that slightly annoying Harry Pottery thing where swear words are inferred rather than explicitly written ("Ron said a word that he would never have said in front of his mother" kind of thing. Yeah, not a direct quote before anybody points that out, hehe). To be honest, I find it a bit weird that the amount of violence in this book seemed to be okay but a few bad words weren't.. I think any child who could handle the violence would also be able to deal with a bit of swearing! 

Overall though I really liked it, and I've already got the next book in the trilogy lined up and ready to go! Yay!