Here we are. It’s March 2017 and I’m about to review the last novel I have to read for my MA. Was it an amazing experience about which I’ll write positively? Or a terrible reading experience that I will lambast?
Image © cover artist/publisher.
Neither. I just don’t get it.
Filed under 2017 Posts, book reviews
I’m loath to do two posts in a row not reviewing a first-time read, but as today is World Book Day, I want to do something for that instead.
Image © World Book Day.
As such, here’s a short list of some books from my childhood and adolescence and how they affected me.
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This week, I’m doing something a little different. All my reviews up until now have been books I’ve never read before. Today, though? In honour of a presentation I have to do at university on a book I chose, I’m going to be jumping into the way-back machine and talking about a book I first read several years ago: “Storm Front” by Jim Butcher.
Image © cover artist/publisher.
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Last week, it got to Saturday and I realised with a sudden burst of horror that I hadn’t read a book this week. So naturally, I grabbed something from my bookshelf that had been hanging around unread for an age because it was fairly short, and read it within a day (accidentally staying up until three in the morning!).
And that’s how I came to read “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon” by Stephen King.
Image © cover artist/publisher.
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Warning: Triggers for extreme violence.
My uni classmates and I have what I shall call “differing opinions” on literature, and this week’s review – or rather, first impressions – is no exception. Why a first impressions? Because “Blood Meridian” is the first book for the course that I’ve failed to finish reading.
Image © cover artist/publisher.
That doesn’t bode well.
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A few weeks ago, I was on my way home from uni and realised I didn’t have a book. When I nipped into a second-hand book shop, I saw a book by Sarah Waters, and I remembered that the Amazon page for “Leda Grey” says that book is suitable for fans of Waters. So why not go the other way around, I thought?
Wow. That was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, because it ended with me reading “Tipping the Velvet”.
Image © cover artist/publisher.
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Warning: Triggers for rape, sexual assault and stalking.
Two weeks ago, I claimed that I had to read “Heart of Darkness” as my next uni book. Turns out I got that wrong: what I was meant to have read was this week’s review subject, “Disgrace” by J.M. Coetzee. This book won not only the Booker Prize, but also the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Image © cover artist / publisher.
And I hated it.
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Last year, my MA course attended an event in Canterbury where we got to hear Essie Fox talk about her latest work, “The Last Days of Leda Grey”. Unlike her three previous books (which I’m still to read), “Leda Grey” is Edwardian rather than Victorian, and its premise intrigued me enough that I had to give it a try.
I was not disappointed.
Image © the cover artist / publisher.
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As I may have mentioned before, I’m doing a part-time master’s degree in Creative Writing: Prose Fiction; one of my modules in second year is The Novel and myself and my classmates picked the books, such as “Cloud Atlas” (which is why I finished it despite not enjoying it).
Our first book of Term Two? “Heart of Darkness”.
Image © the cover artist / publisher.
Filed under 2017 Posts, book reviews
Image © Hodder & Stoughton / the cover artist.
“Cloud Atlas” is a difficult book to write about. Rather than being a single continuous novel, it’s more like six short stories wrapped up inside each other like a Russian doll. As such, I will be skimming quite a bit so that I don’t bore you to death before this review is over.
I can sum it up in three words, though: this book sucks.
Filed under 2017 Posts, book reviews, Uncategorized
