Month: February 2017

Top Ten Tuesday – Books I loved more or less than I expected.

On By kepagewriterIn Top Ten TuesdayLeave a comment

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s list is books that you loved more or less than expected. I’ve decided to do five of each.

Books I Loved More Than I expected:

  1. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis I wouldn’t actually say I love this book. It’s not that sort of story. But it is compelling and it isn’t merely misogynistic violence towards women. Patrick Bateman is a tragic character who sums up the vacuity of modern life.
  2. Looking for Alaska – John Green I had previously read The Fault in our Stars and while I didn’t hate it, I did find it a bit annoying. I expected that Looking for Alaska would be the same. Instead, I found a sweet and tragic story with a lot fewer of the tics that makes Green so hard for me to read.
  3. The Song of Fire and Ice series – George R.R. Martin – Back before the TV series started, the first Game of Thrones book was reccommended to me by a pupil in one of my year 11 classes. I wasn’t really convinced- it was not the sort of genre I usually read – but she thrust the book into my hand and it seemed rude not to read it. I was immediately hooked.
  4. Some of Your Blood – Theodore Sturgeon – I had no idea what this was about or who Sturgeon was. I was expecting a trashy horror story. Instead, this is a psychological tale with many layers of horror.
  5. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh – I don’t really do classics but I’m glad I picked this one up. It is beautifully written and was compelling all the way through.

Books that I loved less than I expected:

  1. The Heart Goes Last – Margaret Atwood Atwood is usually a given love for me especially her dystopian works. This isn’t a bad story and if it had been written by someone else, I probably wouldn’t have been so harsh. But it just didn’t live up to her other works.
  2. The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins I often don’t love what everyone else loves and that was certainly the case here. It was too obvious what was happening and none of the characters were convincing. Over-rated.
  3. Divergent Series – Veronica Roth While this is an interesting idea, it didn’t grab me like The Hunger Games did. I just couldn’t see how the world could have come about.
  4. The Secret History – Donna Tartt I read this relatively recently although it had been on my to be read list for a long time. It was a case of not knowing what all the fuss was about. There is nothing exceptional about the plot or the writing.
  5. Porno – Irvine Welsh I must admit that I haven’t really enjoyed an Irvine Welsh book for a while now. None of them live up to the early books and this certainly didn’t compare to Trainspotting.

Full House Reading Challenge – Troubles by J. G. Farrell

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Genre: Irish Fiction, Historical Fiction

Narrative Style: Third personmfoudi1m_jcgjux-pirkv2w

Rating: 3/5

Published: 1970

Format: Paperback

Synopsis: The Major Brendan Archer arrives at the Majestic Hotel after fighting in the Great War. He may be engaged to the owner’s daughter,  Angela, but the details are hazy. This is not helped when Angela is evasive and the Major is too polite to force the issue. The hotel itself is starting to fall apart and its inhabitants too have seen better days. The hotel is a metaphor for the Irish question and the privilege of the Anglo-Irish. 

Reading Challenges: The Full House Reading Challenge – Prize Winner – The Lost Booker Prize 2010

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this book. Maybe more action. Or perhaps being more directly involved with the ‘troubles’. Anyway, it did not grab me. It was a slog to get through it. Don’t get me wrong, it was very well written, but nothing happened.

At first, I thought that it was just the fact that the book was older and so didn’t have the modern tendancy to start the story immediately. I kept thinking, it’ll start soon but it never did. There are a lot of clever set pieces but they don’t really lead anywhere. There is no narrative arc as such. More just a straight line.

The shambolic hotel and its owner, Edward Spencer are clearly meant to represent the English position in Ireland at this time. By the end, the hotel is falling apart and Spencer appears to be going mad. There is Padraig with his love of dressing up in women’s clothes who is humiliated by the British soldiers. There are run ins with Sinn Feiners and hints at the violence of the colonial world but again, it doesn’t quite add up to a story. Everytime, it seemed that an interesting plot line was going to get going, it instead disappeared.

It took me nearly a month to read this book. At times, I didn’t even want to pick it up. I’ve rated it 3/5 because it was well written and it was clever but it just wasn’t to my taste.

Full House Reading Challenge – The Falls – Ian Rankin

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Genre: Detective

Narrative Style: Third person from a variety of points of view

Rating: 4/5

Published: 2001unknown-1

Format: Kindle

Synopsis: A student disappears and the obvious target is her boyfriend. But isn’t that a bit too obvious? Rebus thinks so. The mystery deepens when it appears that she was playing an online game which lead her to the place where she died. When a strange doll in a coffin shows up near the home of the missing girl, Rebus becomes obsessed with finding other coffins that have appeared in the past. Is this case linked to other disappearances some 20 years ago? 

Reading Challenges: The Full House Reading Challenge: Genre Page Turner

This was a bit of a catch up read. The first Rebus book I read was right in the middle of the series and at first I just read whichever books I could get my hands on. Although I have read the first six in order, I have also read the last three. So rather than read the whole lot in order again, I am now in the process of plugging gaps. Of which this is one. I rationed myself a bit – I read the previous book – Set in Darkness  – before Christmas and deliberately did not let myself read this straightaway. As a result I was excited about reading it.

It did not disappoint. John Rebus is an interesting character who never tires in his efforts of self-sabotage. He becomes so obsessed with an old case where strange coffins containing dolls appeared shortly after the disappearance of a young woman that he misses more obvious clues to who the murderer was in his current case.

Siobhan was also playing lone wolf this time, showing that it may be true that she spends to much time with Rebus. It is interesting that there seem to be few options for her – she can either play the male game like Gill Templar and gain promotion or she can be an outsider like Rebus. As with Rebus, her keeping her information to herself could have gone badly wrong. However, it is not like things work out all that much better for characters who do toe the line such as Grant Hood.

The history of Edinburgh is one again used to good effect. The discussion of Burke and Hare and the strange Arthor’s Seat dolls gave the novel a macabre aspect which was very enjoyable. It is this element, as well as Rankin’s clear love for the geoegraphy of Scotland, that raises this series above the usual.

In the end, there were some cliches. The last minute rescue of Rebus’ girlfriend, the evil pathologist and the revelation of the murderer were all overused tropes. Having said that, this book was first published in 2001 and it is quite feasible that they weren’t so tired then. There is a proliferation of detective stories these days, both in print and on TV so it is bound to feel as if some stories have been told before. And even if they were already cliches at the time, I am willing to let Rankin off the hook because the writing was exceptional.