Loved it!
Having never read Neil Gaiman before I was apprehensive, with good reason I suppose, as the sci-fi section of bookshops always seem so dark and frightening, mostly because I'm afraid I look rather stupid looking around there, having no idea what I'm looking for. The last sci-fi book I read was Hitch-Hikers Guide, which I know isn't that cool. But to all you other people out there who can't bare the trip into the dark depths of sci-fi and fantasy, brave it for this book.
It was beautifully written, wonderfully frightening, compelling and the characters were fantastically drawn. Mostly, I just loved the idea of a London Above and London Below. I shall be checking all stations for secret London Below people and all walls that appear to have no doors. The magical element to this novel was never surprising, which may seem rather odd, but Gaiman made it all seem so natural. I could happily of kept on reading, Door and her fellow London Belowers were wonderful and colourful.
I do wish to beg for more London Below stories. I, like Richard, feel strange in London Above I need my London Below. So I am giving out a little plea for more stories of Door and Richard, the Marquis and all the other strange and wonderful stories Gaiman can think of. I enjoyed this book so much I picked up Stardust the other day and now am no longer the crazy girl who wanders aimlessly around the sci-fi section. I go straight to Neil Gaiman and debate on which one to buy. If anyone out there has any great novelists like Gaiman to suggest, please do so.
Honestly, read this book if you haven't yet! It is truly amazing.
(Just so you know, I did not want to give away any bits of the story, but it is about a man named Richard who saves a girl's life one night and whose life is never the same again. Or at least that's one way of looking at it.)
Fallen and Torment by Lauren Kate
Okay, so I am writing about these two books together, because I read them very quickly and they are the first two instalments in the Fallen quartet (next book out in Summer 2011). 'Fallen' was quite interesting, after the whole Twilight thing I was expecting something more along that vein and it did deliver, but I like the angel thing. I like the whole twisting and turning of biblical and general history and a challenge to our minds about who to trust and our inability to see what people truly are from the beginning, both good or bad.
Luce, the female protagonist, is being sent to a reform school called Sword & Cross because she was involved in the death of a student from her last school and cannot seem to remember what happened. She remembers being about to kiss Todd and then there were flames and fire and maybe a few Announcers swept down as well, but she wasn't telling either her parents or the police about them. Her whole life Luce could see these weird shadows that seemed to follow her, appearing sometimes out of the blue and they terrify her.
Now, Luce is at Sword & Cross and it is horrible. I really dislike this school, but I love the colourful characters that litter this book, Arriane is my favourite. Anyway, this is really a story about obsessive love, a love Luce discovers she has for Daniel and they are star-crossed lovers really. Well, they have been for the past couple centuries at least, thou Luce doesn't remember this.
Okay, I'm stopping now, because it will ruin the ending, but 'Torment' continues the story and I actually like it more then 'Fallen'. Miles is super sweet and part of me does want Luce to throw in the towel on the whole Daniel thing, he's a little bit too Edward intense. The characters are great here too and the change of scenery is pretty and different, but most of all I love the idea of the Announcers, its inspired. Also the ending is fantastic, very different, very good and really can we handle another sappy female protagonist, well I can't, at least with Luce I can see a little bit why all these guys love her so much.
Anyway, if your a teenager buy it, if you like Twilight buy it, basically if you have an interest and mental age of 15 buy it. I enjoyed it and am now really annoyed that I have to wait until the Summer for my next little fix. Also the covers are beautiful!!!
Luce, the female protagonist, is being sent to a reform school called Sword & Cross because she was involved in the death of a student from her last school and cannot seem to remember what happened. She remembers being about to kiss Todd and then there were flames and fire and maybe a few Announcers swept down as well, but she wasn't telling either her parents or the police about them. Her whole life Luce could see these weird shadows that seemed to follow her, appearing sometimes out of the blue and they terrify her.
Now, Luce is at Sword & Cross and it is horrible. I really dislike this school, but I love the colourful characters that litter this book, Arriane is my favourite. Anyway, this is really a story about obsessive love, a love Luce discovers she has for Daniel and they are star-crossed lovers really. Well, they have been for the past couple centuries at least, thou Luce doesn't remember this.
Okay, I'm stopping now, because it will ruin the ending, but 'Torment' continues the story and I actually like it more then 'Fallen'. Miles is super sweet and part of me does want Luce to throw in the towel on the whole Daniel thing, he's a little bit too Edward intense. The characters are great here too and the change of scenery is pretty and different, but most of all I love the idea of the Announcers, its inspired. Also the ending is fantastic, very different, very good and really can we handle another sappy female protagonist, well I can't, at least with Luce I can see a little bit why all these guys love her so much.
Anyway, if your a teenager buy it, if you like Twilight buy it, basically if you have an interest and mental age of 15 buy it. I enjoyed it and am now really annoyed that I have to wait until the Summer for my next little fix. Also the covers are beautiful!!!
PopCo by Scarlett Thomas
The book is about Alice Butler, code cracker, toy designer, key to a fantastic mystery and someone who is a very nice person to be stuck inside their head for a few weeks. Her thoughts, opinions, experiences all spoke to something within me. She is on her way to a company retreat where employees from all over get together and have to listen to all the corporate stuff people do on such retreats. If I could transport myself I would want to be Alice at the very beginning of the book, standing there at a deserted station with my old fashioned suitcase and old fashion clothes. I really cannot get over how amazing that first chapter was, I could eat it or live it or breathe it in all over again.
However, and this is where I have to say what I really think, which sucks because this book was truly amazing for such a long time, it got too preachy! There I've said it and I really wish I didn't have to, but by the end I really lost all respect for Alice, I couldn't care less whether she ate meat or diary, or her homeopathy treatments. Going into detail about code breaking is cool, but trying to force people into being vegetarians or vegan is just not. While I agree that meat doesn't have to be on every plate in the world and that being vegan, if that's what you want, is great, but I don't need a novel trying to change me. Also, the ending was implausible. Why were they all so clever and yet, boring. By the end I wanted Alice to go back before this 'change' to become her old self. She was much more interesting in the first 3/4 of the book and by the end it just seemed like she had gone all complacent, when I think Scarlett Thomas wanted it to seem like she was more sure of herself.
Now, I am done ranting and will oddly now tell you all to go out and buy this book. Read it cover to cover, enjoy the first 3/4 get over excited and then read the end. While the last part is disappointing it won't colour your whole experience, because I could happily sit down now and read the first chapter again, if my copy wasn't in a friends hands being devoured.
Also, an this is a little silly, the blue cover and blue edged pages are just beautiful. It is a very aesthetically pleasing book. Looks great on the bookshelves.
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
Today I have been re-living the wonders of Lost Art. At work a woman stumbled across this gorgeous pink book and remembered how amazing an experience reading it had been. She remembers parts with mystical happiness, a half-remembered dream-like story line. A world of rooms, a crumbling mansion and champagne at the Ritz. It's amazing the things we remember from novels we loved, novels we wanted to live within. All of a sudden I was swept up into a wonderful memory of reading this book, and if I wasn't reading something quite wonderful right now, I would be opening the book to a random page and sinking into all over again. Like one friend mentioned today when talking of Gone with the Wind this is the one book I can finish and start all over again immediately. No need for a break, or even a moment to try and forget the plot twist or anything, as this novel, I believe only gets better with re-reading.
Books, I think, are the only products that can literally make you want to leap within the story, with films I always feel slightly removed, but with a book, if you bring it up high enough, all you can see are the pages and the words. Life within the pages of a book can be so real, I wish to live within so many, it is a complete afflication. Hopefully, someone will find a cure or perhaps a way of jumping within those pages.
However, as I have nothing to say about my new book PopCo I will stop writing now.
Books, I think, are the only products that can literally make you want to leap within the story, with films I always feel slightly removed, but with a book, if you bring it up high enough, all you can see are the pages and the words. Life within the pages of a book can be so real, I wish to live within so many, it is a complete afflication. Hopefully, someone will find a cure or perhaps a way of jumping within those pages.
However, as I have nothing to say about my new book PopCo I will stop writing now.
The Girl Who Chased The Moon
Wow!!!
After the terrible disappointment of My Last Duchess I am so relieved to have finished this amazing, wonderful and completely engrossing novel. I can't remember the last time I felt so engrossed in so many different characters. I was rooting for all of them, amazed by all of them and entranced by Sarah Addison Allen's incredible ability to make every reference magical and interesting. The magical element of this novel is as strong as in all of her others, however, I enjoy that sort of thing. Families with traits, people with a crazy sixth sense, the ability to see home baking floating in the air, it is all a wonderful touch of something outside reality, but handled in such a way that it seems completely normal.
I would recommend everyone read this book.
Or pick up her other two novels, at the moment still Hodder publications, but it looks like she might be changing publishers, so watch this space!!!
My favourite is Garden Spells but Sugar Queen is just as wonderful. However, Garden Spells is her first and I think most organic, so alive with magical elements and human emotion it leaps from the page. But I'm not sure if this one tops it? I really could have leapt into the book and lived there, it almost made it to Lost Art Of Keeping Secrets for me, but as that is my all time favourite book, it has yet to be eclipsed, but this novel is nudging its way into top 20. Which for me is pretty impressive.
Loved loved loved it.
What more is there to say????
After the terrible disappointment of My Last Duchess I am so relieved to have finished this amazing, wonderful and completely engrossing novel. I can't remember the last time I felt so engrossed in so many different characters. I was rooting for all of them, amazed by all of them and entranced by Sarah Addison Allen's incredible ability to make every reference magical and interesting. The magical element of this novel is as strong as in all of her others, however, I enjoy that sort of thing. Families with traits, people with a crazy sixth sense, the ability to see home baking floating in the air, it is all a wonderful touch of something outside reality, but handled in such a way that it seems completely normal.
I would recommend everyone read this book.
Or pick up her other two novels, at the moment still Hodder publications, but it looks like she might be changing publishers, so watch this space!!!
My favourite is Garden Spells but Sugar Queen is just as wonderful. However, Garden Spells is her first and I think most organic, so alive with magical elements and human emotion it leaps from the page. But I'm not sure if this one tops it? I really could have leapt into the book and lived there, it almost made it to Lost Art Of Keeping Secrets for me, but as that is my all time favourite book, it has yet to be eclipsed, but this novel is nudging its way into top 20. Which for me is pretty impressive.
Loved loved loved it.
What more is there to say????
My Last Duchess and Face the Fire
FINALLY...
I finished My Last Duchess and I have to be honest, while I really wanted to love it and I mean really, it was actually a huge disappointment. It was as if the author was hoping to create some mystery and drama, but it never truly came to fruition. While I won't give it all away, I will say this much, if you are going to give some older woman a snake tattoo she had better be a member of a creepy secret club, that you uncover or uncover her room of snakes that she has through a secret door in her bedroom. None of these however, was the answer to this plotted mystery, actually the whole tattoo thing had absolutely nothing to do with anything, expect to show that this woman was super naughty having affairs with people. Goodness, at least there could have been something unexpected!!! It read almost as if the author had had a great first idea and then had forgotten all about her plot devices. Leaving everything to be revealed in the last few pages is brilliant, if you have given the reader at least a little understanding of the fact that there is a real mystery. Also, it was so not a mystery!!!!
Ok, I shall stop now. I could rant on and on, especially as the first chapter showed such promise and the second to last made me think: 'Finally we're getting somewhere!', but of course, that was nothing but empty hope and clever editing. The true ending was a disappointment, I would happily forget, I cannot believe I actually spent money on this book. In the end I don't expect my novels to be the best of literature, but they could at least have something to them. Character, plot, humour, mystery, wit ect. Just one of those will do. This however, had nothing and I did have such hope for it! I really really did!
Now, on to something I can say lovely things about: Face the Fire, the final instalment in the Three Sisters Trilogy by Nora Roberts. Not only is it a very entertaining, mysterious, funny, sexy and rather wonderful piece of romance trash, it is also well plotted. Of course I knew that in the end all would be fine, people would marry, people would kiss and the romance would be awesome, but it was still well plotted. I was even minorly surprised by some parts of it, which just goes to show that while Nora is a very good writer, it is her editor and great ideas that keep the reader reading. I will of course remain an unabashed Nora lover after finishing this novel. I cannot wait to start a new triology! Also, I have in my possession one of her Christmas themed novels, I can hardly wait for December!
So as you can see, to get the taste of My Last Duchess out of my life I had to purify with a little Nora, a good lesson in life I feel. Also, further proof that no matter how much you want to like something, there is no way you can force yourself too. Trust me, I know that now.
I finished My Last Duchess and I have to be honest, while I really wanted to love it and I mean really, it was actually a huge disappointment. It was as if the author was hoping to create some mystery and drama, but it never truly came to fruition. While I won't give it all away, I will say this much, if you are going to give some older woman a snake tattoo she had better be a member of a creepy secret club, that you uncover or uncover her room of snakes that she has through a secret door in her bedroom. None of these however, was the answer to this plotted mystery, actually the whole tattoo thing had absolutely nothing to do with anything, expect to show that this woman was super naughty having affairs with people. Goodness, at least there could have been something unexpected!!! It read almost as if the author had had a great first idea and then had forgotten all about her plot devices. Leaving everything to be revealed in the last few pages is brilliant, if you have given the reader at least a little understanding of the fact that there is a real mystery. Also, it was so not a mystery!!!!
Ok, I shall stop now. I could rant on and on, especially as the first chapter showed such promise and the second to last made me think: 'Finally we're getting somewhere!', but of course, that was nothing but empty hope and clever editing. The true ending was a disappointment, I would happily forget, I cannot believe I actually spent money on this book. In the end I don't expect my novels to be the best of literature, but they could at least have something to them. Character, plot, humour, mystery, wit ect. Just one of those will do. This however, had nothing and I did have such hope for it! I really really did!
Now, on to something I can say lovely things about: Face the Fire, the final instalment in the Three Sisters Trilogy by Nora Roberts. Not only is it a very entertaining, mysterious, funny, sexy and rather wonderful piece of romance trash, it is also well plotted. Of course I knew that in the end all would be fine, people would marry, people would kiss and the romance would be awesome, but it was still well plotted. I was even minorly surprised by some parts of it, which just goes to show that while Nora is a very good writer, it is her editor and great ideas that keep the reader reading. I will of course remain an unabashed Nora lover after finishing this novel. I cannot wait to start a new triology! Also, I have in my possession one of her Christmas themed novels, I can hardly wait for December!
So as you can see, to get the taste of My Last Duchess out of my life I had to purify with a little Nora, a good lesson in life I feel. Also, further proof that no matter how much you want to like something, there is no way you can force yourself too. Trust me, I know that now.
How to choose a good book:
Well, I have no idea how to choose a good book. Many of my friends, colleagues and so on are always telling me about the book they just couldn't face reading anymore, even though it was by their favourite author, or about their favourite period, etc. Well I am having a crisis about actually having this crisis.
This blog is about my need to widen my reading, to jump out of the 'box' and read something different and expand my horizons a little. In a way it could be described as a crazy gap year, where you buy an open ended ticket to a destination with no name and no idea how you will get there. That's how I feel when I open a book. I may know the premise, the idea behind it, but really without reading it, I don't know where I'm going to go, what I'm going to see and how I'm going to get there. Some books like to stick to their premise, so what you read on the cover or see on the cover, is pretty much it. The writing may be good, great even, but with no real surprises underneath it all. I suppose we have all read so many of these novels we might no longer be able to tell the difference, until that is, we read someting spectacular.
So, I am worried that in my search for a better reading list and wider interests and knowledge, I will face the inevitable moment where I want to chuck the book out the window and never think about it again. I actually felt this way about Great Expectations and I really did stop reading it. I don't regret it, no matter how many people tell me how amazing it is, Dickens may be a very good and sometimes great writer, but that doesn't mean every novel or idea he ever had was brilliant.
I digress, basically, I don't want to get this feeling so I have asked the friends, colleagues, and so on to suggest good books, but ones they know or think I would never have glanced at. This has created a very fruitful little pile, top of the list being Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil a true crime book that I never would have picked up, let alone made it into the section.
I'm actually excited about starting it, but first I have to finish the confusing and troublesome My Last Duchess a novel I have not quite worked out yet. I thought I would love it, the reviews, cover, blurb all sounded like lovely little piles of fluffy wonderful costume drama peaks and troughs, but instead there are weird references to tattoos and snakes and creepy love affairs. I am 260 pages in, so I refuse to judge it entirely yet, so we shall have to see. However, to fortify myself I had to open the lovely Nora Roberts Face the Fire, which is a wonderful, 'does-what-it-says-on-the-box' book.
This blog is about my need to widen my reading, to jump out of the 'box' and read something different and expand my horizons a little. In a way it could be described as a crazy gap year, where you buy an open ended ticket to a destination with no name and no idea how you will get there. That's how I feel when I open a book. I may know the premise, the idea behind it, but really without reading it, I don't know where I'm going to go, what I'm going to see and how I'm going to get there. Some books like to stick to their premise, so what you read on the cover or see on the cover, is pretty much it. The writing may be good, great even, but with no real surprises underneath it all. I suppose we have all read so many of these novels we might no longer be able to tell the difference, until that is, we read someting spectacular.
So, I am worried that in my search for a better reading list and wider interests and knowledge, I will face the inevitable moment where I want to chuck the book out the window and never think about it again. I actually felt this way about Great Expectations and I really did stop reading it. I don't regret it, no matter how many people tell me how amazing it is, Dickens may be a very good and sometimes great writer, but that doesn't mean every novel or idea he ever had was brilliant.
I digress, basically, I don't want to get this feeling so I have asked the friends, colleagues, and so on to suggest good books, but ones they know or think I would never have glanced at. This has created a very fruitful little pile, top of the list being Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil a true crime book that I never would have picked up, let alone made it into the section.
I'm actually excited about starting it, but first I have to finish the confusing and troublesome My Last Duchess a novel I have not quite worked out yet. I thought I would love it, the reviews, cover, blurb all sounded like lovely little piles of fluffy wonderful costume drama peaks and troughs, but instead there are weird references to tattoos and snakes and creepy love affairs. I am 260 pages in, so I refuse to judge it entirely yet, so we shall have to see. However, to fortify myself I had to open the lovely Nora Roberts Face the Fire, which is a wonderful, 'does-what-it-says-on-the-box' book.
What is this all about?
This is a blog, well I suppose that is pretty clear seeing as it is a blog on blogspot, but well, some people like things spelt out clearly. I just don't want people to think this is an actual book club. In a way, though, this is a book club, but the book club only has one member and that is me. My name is also not Penelope Wallace, but that is my name for this blog. I know, I know, it's confusing, but stay with me here.
This is a blog about reading, a blog about trying different genres of books and different mediums of publishing. I am trying to widen my reading and decided to actually make me do it and keep a running record of what I read and my impressions of it, I needed to keep a diary. As a blog is basically a 21st century diary, this is where I will write.
So wish me luck and here we go.
This is a blog about reading, a blog about trying different genres of books and different mediums of publishing. I am trying to widen my reading and decided to actually make me do it and keep a running record of what I read and my impressions of it, I needed to keep a diary. As a blog is basically a 21st century diary, this is where I will write.
So wish me luck and here we go.
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