Tag: books

Books Read in 2014 5. Preludes and Nocturnes (The Sandman Vol. 1) – Neil Gaiman

On By kepagewriterIn Eclectic Reader Challenge 20142 Comments

eclecticchallenge2014_300Reading Challenges: Eclectic Reader Challenge 2014

Genre: Graphic Novel, Fantasy

Narrative Style: Mix of viewpoints. Generally linear.

Rating 4/5

Format: Paperback

Published: 1988

Synopsis: Crowley like magician, Burgess tries to summon Death, in order to live forever. Instead he gets Dream (or Morpheus or The Sandman). He keeps him prisoner and steals items from him. Eventually, those guarding Dream make the mistake of falling asleep and he escapes, aiming to wreak vengence on those who imprisoned him and to get back the things that belong to them.images

When this genre came up, I knew immediately that I would read one of The Sandman books. I had read a couple of the comic books a long time ago – from the middle of the series but the nature of these stories means they can be read out of sync. I thought it would be nice to see if they stood up to the test of time. I also knew that Gaiman’s subject matter would be pleasing to me and I hoped to enjoy this as much as other things that he has written. So I asked a friend who is a big fan to loan me the first book.

Preludes and Nocturnes was definitely a page turner. I read it quickly and not just because obviously the words per page are less than in a novel. I wanted to know about Dream’s revenge and how he would regain the tools of his trade. The action did not disappoint – from duels with demons in hell to the spectacular nightmares unleashed on the world by John Dee- and I was often surprised at the turn that events took. At the end of the book, I wanted to read on straightaway – which was okay because I have been loaned a copy of the next book as well. I have an awful feeling I’m going to end up buying the rest.

The character of Dream is not really what I would have expected from the character of The Sandman. my impressions of The Sandman before reading any of this series was much more whimsical. I’m sure I’m not alone in having quite a dreamy, sweet picture of the man who brings you dreams at night. Of course, this discounts the idea of nightmares completely. In fact, few dreams are ever straightforwardly lovely – at least in my experience. It makes sense then that Dream should be a harder, more difficult character. And he is one of the Endless along with Death and Desire and that gives him an isolation from the humans whose dreams he crafts. There is something attractive about Dream – perhaps this is as it should be – even though he is not a nice person if that is even an appropriate thing to say about an anthropomorphic personification.

The illustrations are amazing. Vivid and nightmarish, they make the story come alive for the reader. The use of colour is often jarring as if to ensure that this is recognised as being a fantasy world. They are the perfect way to capture the ideas in Gaiman’s imagination.

If there is anything to complain of here, for me, it is the fact that their is less work for my imagination to do. Imagine the prose that would describe some of these drawings. It would be truly amazing to read. That said, there is nothing intellectually lacking about these stories. They stand up to rigourous scrutiny along with the best of fiction. Much recommended.

Books Read in 2014 4 – Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

On By kepagewriterIn TBR Challenge 20141 Comment

Reading Challenges : TBR Challenge2014tbrbutton

Genre: Classics, Family Drama

Narrative Style: First person narrator – Mostly told in flashback, framed by the present day in the prologue and epilogue.

Synposis: Charles Ryder falls in love with the beautiful Sebastian Flyte in his first year at university. He then comes to be fascinated by both his house and his family, eventually becoming involved with his beautiful but distant sister, Julia. photo (21)

Rating: 4/5

Format: Paperback

Published: 1944

Length of time on TBR pile: I have only had a physical copy of this book on my shelf for two years but it has been on the list of things that I feel I should have read by now and which I keep in my head since I finished university. 

I was vaguely aware of the story of this novel. I was too young in the eighties to see the BBC production of it although I did have a very clear image of Sebastian and his teddy bear. I thought I might find it a bit irritating, for a couple of reasons. It was about posh people and that always rubs me up the wrong way and I have a history of not liking books that are considered classics. (Just ask my father in law who thinks I am insane because I don’t like Tess of the D’urbervilles or Middlemarch.) However, in this case I was pleased to be proved wrong.

The early chapters, documenting Charles’ life at university are the most vivid and, in my opinion, contain the best prose. Sebastian is a fabulous character and I was as fascinated as Charles. In fact, I found his absence in the later chapters a little depressing and I longed for whatever news could be found of him, even though it was clearly never going to be good news. It may also be that the university experience was something I could relate to whereas the later chapters were further outside of my realm of experience.

This is a beautifully written novel, with sumptuous description and vivid emotion. In fact, this is much more a novel of feelings than events. Charles is an outsider and Brideshead and even when he is about to marry Julia, remains so. In this, he is the perfect narrator, charting for the reader, the tragedies of the family without really becoming involved with them.

There is a longing for times past in this novel. Not just from Charles who longs for something that the family, with their faith and their societal position, represent for him but on the part of Waugh too. This novel was published in 1945 and it must have seemed as though the world had fallen apart in the aftermath of the war. The need for a calmer, simpler time must have felt immense. Even the structure points towards this, with the prologue and epilogue set in the present of 1945 but the rest of the novel in the Arcadian past of the 1920s and 30s.

I found the ending a little disappointing because I felt sorry for Charles and I didn’t want it to be over. But there really wasn’t any more story to be told.

Books read in 2014 3. – Starter for Ten – David Nicholls

On By kepagewriterIn Book Reviews, Eclectic Reader Challenge 20141 Comment

Reading Challenges: Eclectic Reader Challenge 2014eclecticchallenge2014_300

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Narrative Style: First Person Narrative, Chronological Timeline

Format: Kindle

Published: 2003

Synopsis: Working class boy, Brian Jackson goes away to university and makes an utter mess of it. 107896He enrolls for University Challenge in order to impress posh girl, Alice and spends the rest of the novel chasing after her hopelessly. He also finds time to annoy his childhood friends and just about anyone else who has the misfortune to bump into him.

Rating: 3/5

I thought I’d try to get this genre out of the way near the beginning as I have very little patience with the idea of romance even when joined with the more fun genre of comedy. I’d read One Day and The Understudy which were both okay so I thought I’d give Starter for Ten a go.

I thought that I might be able to identify with Brian Jackson, a working class boy going off to university albeit in the 80s and I went in the 90s, however he was very quickly unlikeable and annoying. Of course, Nicholls’ aim was undoubtedly to show a young man’s journey from annoying little boy to mature and sensible man but Brian never seems to learn any lessons and, indeed, at the end he is still making the same stupid mistakes.

While I understand that a working class boy at university might meet a lot of people who were posher than him, most of the characters in this book seem to be stereotypes of one type or another, none of which are very pleasant. This is also true of Jackson’s working class friends from home. I don’t know if Nicholls was trying to make a point about class difference but it was somewhat lost because none of these characters seemed like real people.

The romance with Alice is supposed to be amusing and Brian’s patheticness is a little funny, I guess but mostly I just wished he would wake up and realise that she was stringing him along. Alice is contrasted with Glaswegian socialist worker Rebecca who is angry and tough (Just another stereotype) and much more Brian’s type if only he could see it. I chose this book because I thought I’d find a romance with a male protagonist less annoying. It turns out that this was not true. Reading this reminded me of reading Bridget Jones’ Diary. I wanted to shake him just about all the way through.

The University Challenge storyline is more amusing and (unsurprisingly) I found all the angsty romance a little distracting at times. I do think that there are parts of this story that could have been developed and maybe then Brian’s character would have developed a bit more. Because he viewed Alice as some sort of unattainable beauty queen, as long as he is involved with her, he will always remain a boy.

The end of the book was not a surprise. I won’t spoil it but needless to say Brian has not learned his lesson. Even though he will be starting again at a new university, he has learned nothing and there is potential for the same mistakes being made.

Finally, all the way through this book, Nicholls makes reference to great works of literature – Tender is the Night, Brideshead Revisited, Great Expectations, to name but a few. If you are going to remind people of some of the best works in the English language, it might be a good idea to write a better book. All the many references made me think was, I wish I was reading that instead of this.

Books Read in 2014 – 2. Beautiful Losers – Leonard Cohen

On By kepagewriterIn Book Reviews1 Comment

Genre – Erotica, Experimental

Date of Publication – 1966

Narrative Style – stream of consciousness. Non-chronilogical

Format: Paperback

Published: 1966

Synopsis – A three part story about three friends / lovers – the first part is a first person narrative after the death of his wife and his lover, F, the second part is a letter from F to the first narrator and the third part is a thrid person summing up of their stories. 

Rating: 3/5 047533-fc222

I’m a big fan of Leonard Cohens music but I hadn’t read any of his fiction before this one so I was quite excited when I got Beautiful Losers for Christmas. Certainly, I wasn’t expecting to read something quite so erotic and quite so experimental.

One of the things that is immediately apparent about this book is that it is written by a poet. Quite often the language and the rhythm take precedence over meaning which leads to some beautiful imagery but like a lot of poetry, I didn’t always understand what was going on.

This is an intensely erotic book. Indeed, one of the original reviews called it ‘verbal masturbation and another suggested that it was the ‘most revolting book ever written in Canada’. There is more than one love triangle in this book as the three lovers experiment. However, it is never merely sex for the sake of it. Quite often it is described in an oblique way or involves body parts that aren’t necessarily thought of as erotic.

What I found more difficult to deal with were the long passages about the Catherine Tekakwitha and her religiosity. I didn’t find the historic information as interesting as the events in the present day, maybe because I have very little sense of religion myself. Also, I have a low tolerance of miracles and pilgrimages.

There seemed to be a preoccupation with ownership, with occupation of lands and with colonialism – the Indians by the Catholics, the French presence in Montreal, for example. I must admit to a lack of knowledge of the history of Canada but this book did make me think I might like to know more.

Finally, I found it a little unsatisfying. I was reminded of reading Joyce or Amis, maybe. Masters of language and they may be but they left me feeling a little lost and disappointed with myself. I don’t like to feel I may have missed the point.

My Reading Year

On By kepagewriterIn Eclectic Reader Challenge, ReadingLeave a comment

It’s been a good year for reading. I’ve read almost twice as many books as last year (60 compared to 31). I’m not entirely sure why this is but I know I have not felt as enthusiastic about reading for an awful long time. There are a number of reasons for this.

The biggest reason is probably the kindle. I’ve got used to using it now and I have found that you can get some excellent books at a very low price. As well as some free classics. It has made it so much easier for me to read on the go.

I made a decision quite early on with the kindle that I wasn’t ever going to pay full price for a book on it. There were two reasons for this: one, I felt that if I was paying 6.99 for a book, I wanted to have the flesh and blood thing in my hands and two, it was pointless to pay full price when you could get very good books for 2.99 or less. This has changed the way I buy books for the kindle and it may seem a little odd. (Certainly, it is not the way I would think in an actual book shop.) But it has meant that I have experimented more and found some excellent authors into the bargain. (Josh Lanyon, Simon Lelic and Patrick McCabe spring to mind.)

The other main reason is I started to use the recommendations on Goodreads to help me choose. This has led me to many new authors – in fact more than 50% of the authors i have read this year have been new to me. I feel like I have climbed out of a reading rut and am very excited by the thought of what I will read next year.

I’d also like to thank the Eclectic Reader Challenge for helping to fire my enthusiasm. This led me to read genres I wouldn’t normally think of and helped me to broaden my reading horizons. I managed to do the challenge twice which was pleasing and I am already thinking about what I might read for next year’s challenge.

As for the best books I’ve read this year, I’d have to say The Road by Cormac McCarthy was a favourite. A devastatingly bleak version of the future that seemed all too possible. The bleakly sarcastic world view of Charlie Brooker was another excellent read – I can Make You Hate is a collection of his columns and articles from over the last few years. And very entertaining it was too. Food for thought, definitely.

I’ve included a list of all the books that I’ve read this year along with their ratings from Goodreads. I’ve included links to the ones that I’ve reviewed.

Adventure

Detective Fiction

Dystopia (By which I mean, a story set in a world of the future which is similar to ours but with certain details changed or exaggerated.)

Erotica

Family Drama

  • Empty Mansion Empty Heart – Everett Beich 1/5
  • Where Angels Fear to Tread – E. M. Forster 3/5
  • The Weight of Silence – Heather Gudenkauf 3/5
  • I’m the King of the Castle – Susan Hill 3/5

Historical Fiction

Horror

  • Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury 4/5
  • Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis 4/5
  • Under the Skin – Michael Faber 3/5
  • Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin 4/5
  • The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe 4/5
  • The Island of Doctor Moreau – H G Wells 3/5

LGBT

Literary Criticism

  • Margaret Atwood – In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination -currently reading

Memoir

Satire

Science

Science Fiction (By which I mean a story set on a different planet or universe with great advances in technology.)

  • The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks 3/5
  • An Alien Heat – Michael Moorcock 4/5
  • Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut – 4/5

Short Stories

  • How it Ended – Jay McInerney 4/5

Supernatural

  • A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 4/5
  • The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson 3/5

Travel

Young Adult

Judging a book by its cover.

On By kepagewriterIn Culture2 Comments

I’ve just started reading In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood and in the first chapter she talks about the way we make judgements about genre from book covers. In the course of this discussion, she mentioned two instances when she felt her own books had covers that did not match their content and gave readers a deceptive impression of what they were about. I think she felt a little sorry for the readers who had bought these books expecting one thing and getting another.

I had been thinking a similar thing a couple of days ago. I’d been in The Works as they had an offer on for 3 books for £5. (Rude not to and all that.) As ever, I’d found two books that I wanted (Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin and Let the Right One in by John Ajvide Lindqvist) but I was struggling to find a third.

I quickly dismissed whole swathes of shelves due to their covers. There were the ones that looked vaguely like Twilight and the ones that looked like 50 Shades of Grey and then shelves full of those pastel shaded chick lit books with curly writing and sketches of skinny women on the front. To be far, I’ve not really read any of these but the sheer femininty oozing from their covers really puts me off.

I wasn’t getting very far and I realised that I was going to have take a closer look. It was then I found a small section of Murial Spark books, decked out in the same pastel covers as the chick lit books. Imagine thinking you were getting some light, modern comedy romance  – so I imagined anyway, maybe these books are deeper than they look –  and getting the darkerness of The Driver’s Seat or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It would be a bit of a shock to the system, I’m sure.

It is interesting that we make these decisions, dismissing or accepting a book before we’ve even picked it off the shelf. I told myself that in the future I would make myself look closer before dismissing things out of hand. In reality, I doubt I’ll keep to it as these processes happen somewhere below conscious thought and so aren’t really controllable. And it would obviously be a time issue if you had to scrutinise everything before making a decision. I guess, I’ll keep judging a book by its cover.

The end of the Eclectic Reader Challenge 2013 – really, it is the end this time.

On By kepagewriterIn Updates and information2 Comments

So, I have finished another twelve books for The Eclectic Reader Challenge. And it has been very enjoyable and made me read things I wouldn’t normally which I guess is the point. And I’m definitely not going to do it again this time but I’m glad I did it twice as it meant I explored genres even more closely then I would have done.

It’s hard to pick a favourite genre because often one of the books I read for a genre was great but the other not so good. I enjoyed both the books I read for GLBT very much so that was definitely a winner. I would say that Romantic Suspense is my least favourite genre but I did discover a writer I really enjoyed in Josh Lanyon and have since read another of his books so I can’t really complain about it.

I will definitely take part in the challenge next year as I have really enjoyed changing my reading habits and discovering new and interesting authors.

Here is a list of what I read in each category and the rating I gave them on Goodreads and you can judge for yourself which I enjoyed the most.

  1. Translated fiction – The Prague Cemetery – Umberto Eco 3/5, Venus in Furs – Leopold von Sacher-Masoch 3/5
  2. Historical mystery – The Moonstone -Wilkie Collins 4/5, A Test of Wills – Charles Todd 3/5
  3. Romantic suspense – Come Unto These Yellow Sands – Josh Lanyon 4/5, Awaken – Katie Kacvinsky 3/5
  4. Made into a movie – The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides 4/5, Election – Tom Perrotta 2/5
  5. New Adult – The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins 4/5, The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky 4/5
  6. Urban Fantasy – Stardust – Neil Gaiman 3/5, Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury 4/5
  7. Dystopian – The Testament of Jessie Lamb – Jane Rogers 3/5, The Road – Cormac McCarthy 5/5
  8. Memoir – Girl Interrupted – Suzanna Kaysen 4/5, It’s Only A Movie -Mark Kermode 5/5
  9. LGBT – The City and The Pillar – Gore Vidal 5/5, Rent Boy – Gary Indiana 4/5
  10. Action Adventure – The Zombie Room – R.D. Ronald 2/5, The Lost World – Arthur Conan Doyle 3/5
  11. Humour – A Walk in the World – Bill Bryson 4/5, I Can Make You Hate – Charlie Brooker 5/5
  12. Published in 2013 Levels of Life – Julian Barnes 5/5, The Painted Girls – Cathy Marie Buchanan 3/5

Eclectic Reader Challenge – Published in 2013 – The Painted Girls – Cathy Marie Buchanan

On By kepagewriterIn Eclectic Reader Challenge2 Comments

I wasn’t really sure what to read for this category as, in terms of genre, it could be anything really. The last book I read for this category was Levels of Life by Julian Barnes so I knew I didn’t want it to be a memoir. I came across The Painted Girls on a Goodreads search and decided it was suitably different from everything else I had read for the Eclectic Reader Challenge.

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It took me a while to read it, partly because it was the summer and I was not travelling to work every day, partly because it took me a while to get into it. The novel tells the story of the van Goethem girls in Belle Epoque Paris. Marie, the middle daughter, models for Degas’ Little Dancer Aged Fourteen in order to gain extra money for a family permanently poverty stricken, while also dancing and aiming for the stars. However, life is not ready to carry her in this direction.

There has been much praise for this novel and it does have some good features. I liked the interspersing of newspaper articles and scientific treaties with the girls’ narratives, along with reviews of the art shows where Little Dancer is shown. This helps to give a period feel and added to the oppressive atmosphere. Also, reference to the ‘science’ of physiognomy – whereby it was judged you could tell what a person was like from their features – that was popular at the time, adds to the narrative as Marie is fearful that her own features make her a potential criminal and helps to contribute to her downfall.

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Less successful, I feel, were depictions of Antoinette’s relationship with Emile Abadie which end with her prostituting herself in order to raise money to follow him when he is shipped off to New Caledonia. Emile is a brute – and a bit of a characiture, if you ask me -and even after he has been implicated in two murders, Antoinette still protests his innocence and dreams of her perfect future. When she does eventually realise the truth, her change of heart was equally unconvincing. 

Some reviews of The Painted Girls on Amazon complained that it was too depressing. Now, I am ready to admit that I am a miserablist and quite enjoy reading things that are considered depressing. Life would have been tough for the sisters and with the mention of Zola and L’Assommoir, the reader is given a clue to the downward trajectory of the girls’ lives. However, Buchanan moves away from the naturalist aspirations of Zola. Marie wonders why the heroine of L’Assommoir is fated by her lowly beginnings and it seems to me that Buchanan wished to give the sisters a different fate. However, for me, the happy ending seems a little too pat, a little unlikely.

Maybe it is just my lack of romance. I know I would have been happier had the ending been less so. In the end, I found that the narrative highs and lows were equally unconvincing. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate this book but I didn’t love it as much as I thought I would. The descriptions of the ballet and of Marie modelling for Degas show exactly how tough the ballet world was and are perhaps my favourite part of this novel. Unfortunately other events were neither as touching or as well-written. 

Eclectic Reader Challenge – Romantic Suspense – Awaken – Katie Kacvinsky

On By kepagewriterIn Eclectic Reader Challenge5 Comments

This genre caused me problems the first time round and this time I decided to leave it until the end as I just couldn’t decide what to read for it. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am not a romantic person and I do not like romance films and novels very much. I was amazed to find that I loved Come Unto These Yellow Sands by Josh Lanyon (which I read for this genre last time round) so much. In fact, I was contemplating reading another Lanyon or something similar. But I had tried to make the books I read for each category as different as possible this time round. And it is called the Eclectic Reader Challenge after all. So I found myself trawling through lists of dreadful sounding books on Goodreads, unable to make a decision.

In the end, I asked for help from the Goodreads community and Awaken was recommended to me. It sounded interesting and certainly better than anything else I’d looked at so I decided to go with it. After all, this is the point of reading communities, to find books you would never previously have read.8665876

This book is set in a future where everyone lives through their computers and never has actual physical contact with anyone. In fact, many people never leave the house. It touches on many things that I have blogged about myself such as reading a book rather than a kindle and the thinness of online communication compared to face to face communication. Maddie, the heroine, is one such teen who is liberated from her safe online world by a group of teenagers who meet face to face, dance to actual music and go to cafes. They also protest against the controlling online digital world. So far so good.

As ever, though, the R word troubled me and I felt the love story detracted from the main story and slowed the action down too much. Even worse, I found the gendered roles stereotypical and a little depressing. It occurred to me that this is probably why I found the romance between Josh Lanyon’s gay characters easier to deal with. They didn’t fall into typical roles. In this story, Madelaine is supposed to be independent and strong, yet she cannot live without the impossibly handsome Justin even though he is arrogant, distant and talks in polemic all the time. He put his job above everything and believed he knew what was best for everyone. She fell easily into the idea of saving him from himself and breaking through all his barriers. I failed to see how it could be worth her effort.

All in all, I enjoyed the main plot about overthrowing Digital School and some good points were made about the importance of face to face communication but the romance was unconvincing and sometimes it felt like I was being hit over the head with a sign saying online communication is bad, the points were that lacking in subtlety. Overall, six out of ten.

Eclectic Reader Challenge – New Adult – The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky

On By kepagewriterIn Eclectic Reader Challenge5 Comments

I bought this book when the movie came out with the intention of reading the book and then seeing the movie. In the end, I did neither. It has been on my to-read list since then. So it seemed perfecphoto-14t for the Eclectic Reader Challenge category of New Adult.

The book is series of letters to an unnamed person addressed simply as friend. They detail the ups and downs of Charlie’s life as he starts High School describing events and people with a warmth and naivety that was mostly charming. He is shy, awkward and has little grasp of social etiquette. He is befriended by a group of older misfits and through them goes to parties, takes drugs and learns about sex and relationships. While his voice was convincing, I think that I’d have enjoyed it more if I was nearer his age. I found myself feeling a little impatient with him, the way adults do with teenagers but for the most part I was keen to read on and find out what happened to him.

It is apparent quite early on that Charlie has psychological issues relating to the death of his Aunt Helen and he swings between depression and optimism throughout the book. Details are gradually revealed giving the reader clues to what the issues may be. However, the final reveal – I won’t give it away for those who have not read it – felt a little underwhelming. Not that it wasn’t a serious issue – it certainly justified Charlie’s issues – but that it wasn’t explored very deeply, was almost brushed off with an ease that seemed unlikely.

This book is often compared to The Catcher in the Rye and, in some ways, it is an apt comparison. Both Holden and Charlie are caught in cycles of behaviour that they seemed destined to repeat and both have distinctive voices. However, ultimately I prefer The Catcher in the Rye because it is darker and less twee. I found the end of The Catcher in the Rye devastating as so little progress has been made in Holden’s journey of discovery. I don’t know why but I find this easier to relate to then the sweet optimism of Charlie’s last letter.