Category: Genre

Categories
Chunkster Other

Gone with the Wind – Why I’m not attempting to keep up with everyone else!

Matthew from A Guys Moleskine Notebook is hosting a Gone with the Wind read-along. I have never read Gone with the Wind, or seen the film, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to attempt this 1000+ page chunkster.

The idea was to read 200 pages a week, starting on the 1st March. So in theory we should all be at around page 400 today. I’ve only made it to around page 150 – so I am well behind the group! I’ve decided that I am not  even going to attempt to catch up with everyone anymore because… (and this reason may seem strange to you)…I’m enjoying it too much!

I think Gone with the Wind may become one of my all time favourite books, so I want to savour ever sentence. Each page is crammed with information, and I want to absorb it all. This means that I can only read about 10 – 20 pages at a time, which in turn means that it may take me a month or two to finish it, but I don’t care – I’m enjoying it so much!

Categories
Graphic Novel Uncategorized

Fun Home – Alison Bechdel

Fun Home is the first graphic novel I have ever read, and although it is a very different experience to reading a book, I enjoyed it very much. I read Fun Home as part of the Dewey challenge. You can see her review here.

Fun Home has been described as one of the first graphic memoirs. It is basically a coming of age story, following one girl into adulthood, as she realises that she is a lesbian.  The book is well observed, and full of light humor:
 

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There were lots of literary references. I think bibliophiles will really appreciate this book, and the way that quotes from Oscar Wilde and Homer were used to sum up many of the feelings the characters experienced.

The title refers to the family funeral business, and I loved the insights into life surrounded by death:
 

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The book reveals the thoughts and feelings of a teenager discovering her sexuality, and so is sexually explicit in places. It contains some full frontal nudity, so avoid it if you are offended by this.

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This book was touching, intelligent and full of surprises. I recommend it to anyone looking for something a bit different.

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Categories
1990s Books in Translation Nobel Prize Recommended books

Blindness – José Saramago

Translated from the Portugese by Giovanni Pontiero

Blindness is the most powerful book I have ever read. From the beginning, to the end my adrenaline levels were high, and my heart was beating so fast you’d have thought I’d been out running!

Blindness is a terrifying account of what could happen to us, if we were all to lose our sight. The book begins with one man suddenly losing his vision while waitng at traffic lights in his car. Someone offers to help the blind man back home, and it isn’t long before he becomes blind too. It quickly becomes obvious that the blindness is highly contagious, and so all the blind people, and those who have been in close contact with them, are rounded up and sent to an old mental hospital. Trapped in this old building, with an increasing number of people, conditions quickly deteriorate. Fights break out over the small amount of food, sanitation becomes almost non-existent, and it isn’t long before people are dying.

There is one woman who has not gone blind; she lied in order to stay with her husband. At first it seems as though she is the lucky one, but as time goes on this is not necessarily true. Would it be better to be blind than to see the horrors that are all around her?

This book is worryingly realistic. What would our governments do if there was an epidemic of blindness? How quickly would society break down? I thought I’d be able to cope without electricity, but when you stop to think about the infrastructure, you realise how soon you’d run out of food, and water. It’s enough to make me want to move to the country and become self sufficient as soon as possible!

This book took a little bit of time to get used to. The characters are all nameless, and there is little punctuation to break up the paragraphs, so the text is unusually dense. It was, however, completely gripping from beginning to end. I’m not sure I can say that I enjoyed reading it though. It will stay with me for a long time, and is a powerful statement about the fragility of our society, but I’m not sure enjoyable is the right word!

Highly recommended, as long as you can cope with the stress!

José Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1998.

Categories
Audio Book Richard and Judy Book Club

Getting Rid of Matthew – Jane Fallon (Audio Book)

Getting Rid of Matthew is typical ‘chick lit’. I don’t think I’d have ever read beyond the first couple of pages under normal circumstances, but I happened to have a copy of the audio book, and as I didn’t have anything else to listen to at the time, I decided to give it a try.

Getting Rid of Matthew is about Helen’s affair with Matthew. Helen spends years trying to persuade him to leave his wife, Sophie, and move in with her. When Matthew finally leaves his family to be with his mistress, Helen realises that the reality is not quite how she imagined it, and decides she doesn’t want to be with him any more. She desperately plots ways to get rid of Matthew, and ends up befriending Sophie, in disguise, to try to push the couple back together.

The characters were reasonably realistic, but only Sophie was remotely likable. Most of the time I was wondering if people really are as stupid as them! The book emphasises the destructiveness of affairs, and the hurt they cause both the family and friends of everyone involved.

The narration was excellent, and I think it made a world of difference to the experience of reading the book. It was really funny, and time spent listening to the story flew by. It’s a light book, which doesn’t require your full attention, so is a good choice if you may be distracted.

I’m not normally offended by strong language, but perhaps because it was an audio book, and I have young children, I was very aware of the amount of swearing it contained. I found that I couldn’t listen to it when my children were around, and so this was a major drawback.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend the book, but it was entertaining to listen to.

 

Categories
Audio Book Recommended books

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer (Audio Book)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society had been on my wish list for a while, so when I saw Sandy from You’ve Gotta Read This! raving about the audio book version, I decided to buy a copy. Unfortunately I didn’t realise that it wasn’t released as an audio book in the UK, and it seemed to be getting rarer in the rest of the world too! The benefit of my book selling business is that I can treat things like these as ‘expenses’, (well I’ll hopefully make a profit on it anyway!), so at great cost, I bought a copy. After several weeks I was hit by a large, unexpected customs bill, then finally the audio book arrived.

I’m really pleased that I did go to the effort of getting the audio book. I don’t normally like books written entirely in letter form, and I think I would have struggled to identify with the characters initially, had I read it.  The audio book is very well produced, with a whole cast of actors reading it. This brought the book to life immediately, and gave each letter it’s unique voice. This enabled me to picture each of the people straight away, without having to wait for the descriptions of them, which came much later in the book.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is set just after the Second World War. Juliet is a writer, based in London, and is looking for a new subject for her next book. She begins to correspond with a group of people in Guernsey, and as she learns about what life during the war was like under German occupation, she begins to build lasting friendships with them. Captivated by their stories, she visits her new friends and her life is changed forever.

It is a simple, heart-warming story, and although many disturbing events of the war are covered, the book never felt dark.

Recommended.

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Also reviewed by Word Lily , Fresh Ink Books and You’ve Gotta Read This

Categories
Chunkster Classics Recommended books

The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins

2003 Paperback

2003 Paperback

The Moonstone was first published in 1868, and is considered to be the first detective novel ever written. Many people site The Moonstone as the longest piece of detective fiction in existence. I’m not an expert on this, but I do know that it took me a long time to read it! At 464 pages it only just classes as a chunkster, but I feel no guilt in counting it towards the Chunkster Challenge as the type was tiny!

The story takes place in an English country house, in which a rare diamond is stolen over night. The suspects are therefore limited, and a famous London detective is called in to investigate the crime.

The writing was easy to follow, but it was very dense, and so it was a slow read. For the majority of the book this wasn’t a bad thing, as I loved the descriptions, but there was a slow section in the middle, which I found hard to get through. It picked up towards the end though, and the it was very well plotted. I didn’t see any of the twists coming, and I liked the realism of it. There were also a lot of other issues raised during the book. SPOILER! Highlight text to read. I loved the beginning and ending in India, and the way Wilkie Collins challenged racial stereotypes by portraying the Indians as mysterious thieves, when they were the good ones all along.

I also found the opium factor interesting. I had no idea of it’s affects, and have since learnt that Wilkie Collins was writing from experience, as he had an opium habit.

I loved reading it so soon after The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher as I noticed all the similarities between the real murder at Road Hill and the theft of the moonstone. If you’ve read The Moonstone then it is worth having a look at this analysis – I found it very insightful. It contains lots of spoilers, so don’t click through if you’re interested in reading the book soon.

Overall, I enjoyed reading The Moonstone. It was hard work at times, but well worth the effort. As it’s the first ever detective novel I can’t not recommend it, everyone should read it at some point!