Fantasy is my (not so) secret (not so) guilty pleasure in reading. Fantasy introduced me to reading through The Hobbit and Tolkien. Fantasy was my escape from teenage tedium ... my family was far too middle class to have angst! And I still enjoy a healthy dollop of fantasy, as readers of this blog will… Continue reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Category: Book Reviews
The Tiger’s Bride, Angela Carter
Continuing through The Bloody Chamber, we come upon The Tiger's Bride, a second re-imagining of the Beauty and The Beast fairytale. Here, we are even further away from the traditional or Disneyfied incarnations of the story and it strikes the reader as a much darker tale than The Courtship of Mr Lyon with which it… Continue reading The Tiger’s Bride, Angela Carter
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The Courtship of Mr Lyon, Angela Carter
Beauty and the Beast has to be one of my favourite fairy tales! Ever! It's a deliciously evocative tale exploring the male and the female and, even in the Disney film version, Beauty is a strikingly self-assured and confidant woman. Carter's version is very pared down: there is very little detail of anything except for… Continue reading The Courtship of Mr Lyon, Angela Carter
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Inferno, Dan Brown
I have used the metaphor of food to describe reading for many years now. Some books are hearty, healthy and honest like a rare steak; some are delicate and fragile, like over-wrought sugar work in a pretentious restaurant, beautiful to look at but whimsical, self-indulgent and lacking taste; some are fun, entertaining chocolates and candies;… Continue reading Inferno, Dan Brown
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The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
Angela Carter is just bloody brilliant! I mean bloody brilliant! Being just a man, lacking in x-chromosomes, I'm sure I'm missing much of her political feminist subtlety but as a writer she blows me away! The balance she holds between the real, the fantastical and the macabre is fantastic. Take this first eponymous tale in… Continue reading The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
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Let The Right One In, John Ajvide Lindquist
Its odd how my book reading lurks in certain genres for a while: after a crime spree, I notice a range of horror books collecting on the pages of this blog - with more on my to-be-read list. I wonder what it is with Scandi-Lit. Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy; Jo Nesbø; Mons Kallentoft ... There… Continue reading Let The Right One In, John Ajvide Lindquist
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The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, Mark Hodder
Some books are born great. Some books achieve greatness. Some books have greatness thrust upon them. This book is not one of them. It's not great. It's not beautifully written. It's not literary. But it is immensely fun! Mark Hodder propels us into Victorian London: the search for the source of the Nile, Stanley, Livingstone,… Continue reading The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, Mark Hodder
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Maggot Moon, Sally Gardner
When we got the books for the Carnegie Shadowing in school, there was a lot of excitement that this was a book about a dyslexic, in the voice of a dyslexic, written by a dyslexic. Obviously, in an educational environment, it was ... enticing. And, whilst that is all true, that is only minor part… Continue reading Maggot Moon, Sally Gardner
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Mortal Coil, Derek Landy
I have been enjoying this series. They were nothing exciting, nothing terribly original. But they were fun. They were light hearted. They were fast-paced and witty. But niggles and worries are starting to mar my enjoyment of them now. The worse elements are coming to the fore and the books are becoming increasingly dark, violent… Continue reading Mortal Coil, Derek Landy
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A Greyhound Of A Girl, Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle is a great writer. He wrote The Commitments which is a fabulous book and one of my favourite films of all time! He wrote Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha which is a fantastic evocation of a ten year old boy's childhood. Roddy Doyle does voices extremely well. He creates the voices of children… Continue reading A Greyhound Of A Girl, Roddy Doyle
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In Darkness, Nick Lake
In Darkness is Nick Lake's debut novel and an extraordinarily powerful one at that. Set in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, the novel is literally set in darkness: our narrator, Shorty, is entombed in the remains of a collapsed hospital as rescuers lose hope of finding any survivors. In the darkness and rubble,… Continue reading In Darkness, Nick Lake
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Weight of Water, Sarah Crossan
This is an odd little gem of a book. It is a debut novel by Sarah Crossan written in verse - free verse - rather than prose; but deals with the realities of a very credible modern situation. As such, the disjunct between a contemporary situation and the language does parallel the disjunction and disconnection… Continue reading Weight of Water, Sarah Crossan
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Midwinterblood, Marcus Sedgwick
This is my second foray into Marcus Sedgwick's writing: White Crow, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal a couple of years ago was the other. And this is by far superior, more beautiful, more powerful, more poignant. This book is shortlisted for the Cilip Carnegie 2013 and tells the tales of Eric and Merle. Tales. Tales… Continue reading Midwinterblood, Marcus Sedgwick
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I Read These First!
There are a lot of books from my past creeping onto the silver screen. Books that I read long long loooooong before Hollywood thought to cash in. Books that I don't want people to think that I read after the film! Life of Pi Atonement Cloud Atlas The Invention of Hugo Cabret
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Carnegie 2013 Shortlist
It's that time of year again: the Cilip Carnegie Medal Shortlist has been announced! It is genuinely one of the highlights of my year! I reserve the Easter holidays to reading as many as I possibly can of the list. I mean, we do shadow the Carnegie Medal in our school and I like to… Continue reading Carnegie 2013 Shortlist
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Playing With Fire, Derek Landy
Reading this immediately after the first in the series, Skulduggery Pleasant, is interesting: it highlights both some flaws and some developments. In terms of plot, there's a sense of déjà vu from the first book: a general from the previous war escapes from prison; he sets about acquiring an artefact to bring back ancient Gods,… Continue reading Playing With Fire, Derek Landy
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The Yard, Alex Grecian
What was this book about? Murder and a new detective in the Murder Squad of Scotland Yard. What was the detective like as a character? (Shrugs) I didn't think he was a very confident person in what he did but he was actually very good at it. How would you compare him to other detectives?… Continue reading The Yard, Alex Grecian
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Skulduggery Pleasant, Derek Landy
I read Landy's The Faceless Ones - the third in the Skulduggery Pleasant series - and, I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it: a smart and sassy heroine; an enigmatic and intriguing (possibly anti-) hero; a wide range of engaging characters. So I have taken the fact that the current seventh book, The Kingdom… Continue reading Skulduggery Pleasant, Derek Landy
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The Bloody Red Baron, Kim Newman
After reading a couple of extremely well-written, moving but rather serious books, picking up The Bloody Red Baron was intended to be a welcome piece of light relief: a bit of fun vampiric horror. Kim Newman takes up the reigns of his alternate history some thirty years after the events in the previous Anno Dracula. Having fled from England… Continue reading The Bloody Red Baron, Kim Newman
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
This book has been lurking on my to-read list for a while but has been eclipsed by work, work and work and applying for my own job again and other books and has just slid... Then I lent it to a friend who devoured it in 24 hours and proceeded to try to talk to… Continue reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
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The Girl With Glass Feet, Ali Shaw
There are some books that revel in plot, action and events. Other books - perhaps quieter books - are content to develop narrative: characters and settings, relationships and language. This book by Ali Shaw is very clearly and very effectively one of the latter: little really happens, but so much is created. Lets take the… Continue reading The Girl With Glass Feet, Ali Shaw
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World War Z, Max Brooks
My teeth grated together in horror as soon as I listened to this: "World War Zee by Max Brooks!" intoned the narrator. "Zee"? "Zee"?! No!! World War Zed! Despite that, this was a brilliant book to listen to as an audiobook: it is formed from interviews with various survivors of the war against the undead.… Continue reading World War Z, Max Brooks
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The Shakespeare Curse, J. L. Carrell
The last book I read, The Passage by Justin Cronin, took me a month to read. This book, The Shakespeare Curse, took me 72 hours. That's not a good sign. Not good at all. I like to lose myself in a book, to live, breathe, love and bleed with the characters I share my reading… Continue reading The Shakespeare Curse, J. L. Carrell
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The Passage, Justin Cronin
Horror is not usually my thing at all. I don't like blood. I get bored by violence. I get worried by crime writing's increasing interest in hugely violent bloodied crime scenes and the minutiae of destruction that can be inflicted on the human (and usually female) form. So it was with some misgivings that I… Continue reading The Passage, Justin Cronin
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