Thursday 27 September 2012


The weather is getting colder ... so the perfect excuse to curl up on the sofa with a good book!  Just now I'm in the middle of a really chunky one, so I wont be able to post my thoughts on it until I have read it all, but I can certainly recommend the author - Peter James - as I have read 2 others by him recently and really enjoyed their fast pace and gritty storylines. The one I'm currently in the middle of is one of his detective novels featuring Roy Grace, but my particular recommendation is "Sweet Heart"
www.peterjames.com


This book was very suspenseful, there seems to be a malevolent force at work in the house which Charley and her husband move into - added to this they are in quite a remote location and lonely Charley is seeing therapists who are using hypnotism to help her increase her fertility - she longs to have a baby.  I love books with a time-slip element to them, and I enjoy a supernatural theme, so this book was ideal for me.  When Charley regresses into her past life, her memories are quite erotically charged and as she tries to cope with her new life and form new relationships there is sexual tension as well as a malevolent & haunting presence.  It was so gripping - I devoured it in 1 weekend!

This author was recommended to me by my good friend Simon - who makes sure that my reading list is not just chick lit and other-worldly reads, but is interspersed with action packed drama and crime novels!  Keeping it real!


TV - I am delighted that Downton Abbey is back for the autumn - such interesting people and stories and the icing on the cake are the lovely costumes and the fabulous period decor. The ladies are probably wearing the kind of glamorous clothes that my Granny used to wear and I love the difference between the above stairs and below stairs rules and dreams and relationships.  In the past I have Snobs by Julian Fellowes who writes the script for Downton Abbey, and he has such a light but illuminating touch as he weaves the story around with social/class interplay and saving face - the social layers in that book are very complex as it deals with the myriad subtle differences between the upper middle classes and the upper classes in twenty-first century Britain.  Downton Abbey is more straight-forward and clear cut with it's difference between the servants,the village folk and the family at "the Abbey" and all their posh friends. We imagine them as simpler times, but when you watch this period drama you realise that the opposite was true.


Two Broke Girls - Series 1 has nearly finished - the last one tonight.  I have enjoyed the comedy and wise-cracking dialogue in this series,  but I have to admit that it has lost some of the freshness & promise it showed in the first few episodes.  I'm one of those people who always wishes I had thought of a smart come-back when someone insults me or tries to put me down - So I long to be more like Max but I think instead I am really "vanilla" Caroline who has been so sheltered & spoilt she doesn't realise what real life is like until she hits rock bottom and has to rely on new found friends like Max to show her the way to survive.  I hope they make a series 2 and that they get back to the quality of scripts in the earliest episodes - the language can be coarse and the double-entendres aren't always subtle, but it is a favourite with me.
   

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Back to being a Teenager!




Are you still a teenager?  I am not, but I really enjoy books which remind me of being one, hence my 2 recommendations on this post - each for very different reasons.

On holiday in August I read and was fascinated by The Amanda Project which is a very unusual concept - not only for the book/story itself, but for the website that fuels it and the way further installments (I believe it is an 8 book project) are written:   http://www.theamandaproject.com

So much more than just a book!

The book is told from the viewpoint of a teen named Callie, who has befriended Amanda - new to her school.  Callie has her own troubles - her mother has gone missing and she and her father are trying to come to terms with the fact that she may have left them. Amanda is absent from school, but it seems she has played a prank on the Principle's car and made the evidence point to Callie;  But not just Callie, also to 2 other students who are not in the same 'sphere' as her at high school.  The uneasy threesome start to work together to find clues to Amanda's whereabouts and the mystery and strangeness increases - Amanda is a chameleon - different things to different people and sometimes she seems to have 'borrowed' her new friends' identities.  As concern over Amanda's whereabouts and safety increases, the clues keep coming (from where?), the 3 teens become more bonded, they launch a web-site to assist in their search, and this website is real!  You (the reader) can visit it and add your own contributions to the fiction and the scrapbook style - Amanda's love of thrift shop items and drawings add visual interest to the book and the website contributions follow suit... and the story continues.

This was such an unusual book - I am sure it appeals to girls who like to watch American shows like 90210 and Pretty Little Liars but it is quite mindful of the hierarchy and social 'layering' which exists - and it seems to have a desire to encourage teenagers to break the mould and be true to themselves. Yes! it took me back to my 'yoof' a bit ..... but not as much as this next book which I highly recommend:

Front CoverGrowing Up Again by Catriona McCloud.  Have you ever found yourself thinking that you would love to have your teenage years again, but knowing what  you know now?  This book might make you think differently!!  Janie is nearly 40 and has just told her husband "it's over" and gone to sleep in the spare room - next morning she is back in the single bed in her parents' house, with a bad perm and double maths at school!!  Janie's adult thinking/plain speaking gets her sent out of class, soon it gets her parents passing furtive, worried glances at one another, but Janie gets on with re-living her teenage life waiting to see when she will return to her grown-up self.  Then she begins to wonder if she has to 'do something over differently' before she can return to the present .... and before long she has decided to take advantage of knowing the future - surely she can remember a Grand National winner or avert a disaster somehow!

Janie's story made me laugh to myself and sometimes out loud (people on public transport, avert your gaze - not only is that person reading instead of texting, now she is chuckling and wiping her eyes!!).  I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting chick lit which, in the main, takes you out of yourself, but has a thoughtful side to it also - people's attitude to addiction and downs syndrome get put under Janie's magnifying glass and her advice and opinions are fairly harsh!! I liked her - I wish she was a friend of mine!

I have some very good friends, actually - one lent me this book (thank you Anne - I brought it back home in my luggage from our lovely break in Sweden!)  and 2 more who I know would love this book (Michelle and Shelley - you gotta read it, trust me!)

Wednesday 5 September 2012

Daughter of Smoke and Bone - read it!


This is such an unusual book - the blurb on the cover compares it with the Pan's Labyrinth and Northern Lights - but I am not sure that mash-up does the intricate tale justice.  Certainly you will need to have your imagination in full working order to truly enjoy this tale of portals into other worlds, chimaeras who have animal attributes and human features mixed and angels/ seraphs as vengeful warriors.  The language is descriptive without being heavy, incredibly romantic in places and at others the banter is witty and current. I found it easy to embrace the heroine of Karou, a 16 year old art student who feels lonely and incomplete most of the time - I wanted her to find love and understand the story of her past, and plenty of you will want to BE her before book #1 is over!  (not sure I could carry off the long blue hair!)
 
Daughter of Smoke and Bone  by Laini Taylor

I am eagerly anticipating the publication of the second book, Days of Blood and Starlight, due to be released on 6 November 2012.

















Before I settled down to read the above fantasy novel, I had a delightful trip to Shakespeare's Globe  with my Father.  Last year he and I took our first trip to this wonderful theatre - stunning in its authenticity - to see one of Shakespeare's comedies.  This year my Father recommended we watched "any play Mark Rylance was acting in".  Richard III it was then!

There has been a big "hullaballoo" about Mark treading the boards at the Globe - and no wonder!!  He was fantastic!  I like to prepare a little before I watch Shakespeare, I usually read a synopsis of the plot so that I will get the gist of the dialogue and action, even if I am struggling to grasp the meaning of all the olde english language.  I promise you, it was as if the other actors were speaking the words Shakespeare had written, and Mark - as the evil but charismatic Richard III - was speaking in modern day english, his delivery and acting was such that it was no trouble at all to keep up with his dialogue, He had the audience laughing at his audacity and wicked little asides to us about his plotting and scheming to eliminate or win over anyone on his fast-track to become king.  My Father and I highly recommend this play - not stuffy at all!