Friday 27 February 2015

Throwback Thursday: Love Lessons by Jacqueline Wilson.

Fourteen-year-old Prue and her sister Grace have been educated at home by their controlling, super-strict father all their lives. Forced to wear mum's odd hand-made garments and forbidden from reading teenage magazines, they know they're different from 'normal' girls - but when dad has a stroke and ends up in hospital, unable to move or speak, Prue suddenly discovers what it's like to have a little freedom. 

Sent to a real school for the first time, Prue struggles to fit in. The only person she can talk to is her kindly, young - and handsome -art teacher, Rax. They quickly bond, and Prue feels more and more drawn to him. As her feelings grow stronger, she begins to realize that he might feel the same way about her. But nothing could ever happen between them - could it?





I used to be friends with a thirteen-year-old girl, and for the purpose of privacy, we can name her Sam. She was not in the situation of Prue and Grace, she had been attending public school all her life, and even though she has her own personal problems, she was a pretty normal girl. She went on a school trip to Disneyland, Paris, about a year ago and went to Barcelona with the same group of people earlier last year, too. On these trips was a man, a youth worker I believe, who Sam gained this huge crush on and had convinced herself that he had a crush on her, too. He wasn't stupid, luckily, and had to report her to the school's safety workers just so that they could make sure she understood that her behavior towards the male teachers of the school was unacceptable - it wasn't just a crush with her, she flirted and gained attachments to them, too. 

As a child, I loved this book. The romantic aspect is really what I was attracted towards, and although I don't have much memory from my childhood, I'm sure I must have had plenty of teacher crushes, at least when I was Sam's age. Saying this, now that I am eighteen and no longer a thirteen year old so I have somewhat matured since then, I am seeing this book from a different perspective, and what I see is disturbing. 

Rax's behavior throughout the book was occasionally not right, but for the most part, I'm glad to see he had his head screwed on properly. He was so torn between doing what's right and what he wanted that he often ended up making the wrong decision. 

I feel like Prue was a girl many teenagers could relate to, despite the fact she was clearly not your normal teenager, which perhaps was not only added in for entertainment and to have more plot then a teacher-student romance, but also added in just so that there's an excuse or a reason as to why a grown man would be attracted to a teenage girl.

In case you are reading this without having read the book, or you need a reminder, Rax had a family at home. A wife, two young children. Prue became obsessive and decided to be Rax's babysitter, also using the money she earned to buy things her parents never allowed, such as sexy underwear and teenage magazines. She stupidly bought her younger, unable-to-keep-a-secret Grace some treats, too, and that was pretty much how that secret was revealed. I know Prue was isolated, and therefore naive because her parents restricted the information that she was learning, but she reads a lot - you'd think she'd have learnt something about how relationships between big age differences is strongly frowned upon and that when it's underage it's illegal, and even when she was living with her younger sister and acknowledging she can't be quiet, Prue made the mistake in trusting her. Prue really isn't as smart as we're led to believe. 

Even though this book was meant for teenagers (it's a YA, I believe), the wording of the book was patronizing and more meant for the eyes of someone younger. I wouldn't really let anyone younger then about sixteen/seventeen read this, though, because I believe that young people are very easily influenced and learn quickly from their surroundings and mostly the media. This book was pretty much saying that a student-teacher relationship is fine if you're different and the word 'love' is mentioned at some point, which it is not. I'm glad the book ended as badly for Prue as it did, hopefully sending them the message that "This is what will happen if you continue your feelings", but I'm a bit disappointing that Rax never received any serious punishment for what he had done, when if that kind of thing happened in real life, he would have probably had some serious charges.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my first Throwback Thursday post, next week is going to be be either another book by Jacqueline Wilson (most likely Kiss), or a book by Cathy Cassidy (I have different options for this, I kind of want to talk about Angel Cake just to bring up the topic of foreigners in your country and just to try to make people a lot less judgmental about that subject hopefully and other topics, or one of my favorites Dizzy/Lucky Star, I'm not really sure what one I'm going to pick if I choose Cathy Cassidy). Other writers I have in mind are J.K.Rowling, Michael Murpurgo, etc, so I think I can continue this for a while! Have a nice day.

Wednesday 25 February 2015

Inside Out Book Tag!

Hey there!



I'm constantly looking for some new blogs to follow, so while I was doing that, I came across one that had this tag (I'd link it but I haven't figured out how to do that from an iPad yet, I shared it on Google+ so if you're curious, that's where you will find it!) and thought "hey, that looks like fun!", and that is why I am writing a blogpost at midnight on a school night instead of doing the tasks I was supposed to do three hours ago. 

I - Inside flap/back of the book summaries: too much info? Or not enough? Discuss. 

First off, I hate inside flap summaries, I think it's just a pet peeve of mine. Secondly, to answer the question, I do prefer short and snappy at the back of the book just so when I'm book shopping, I can quickly scan through them all, pick out a couple (or 12) and go back home. I also like to go into a book only with a small, general idea, I don't like knowing too much information when I'm going into a book - in fact, the less I know the better. 

N - New book: What form do you want it in? Be honest: audio book, e-book, paperback, or hardback? 

Nine times out of ten, I will go for the paperback. As much as I love hardbacks (especially discovering what they did with it underneath the dustcovers and how long they last), they're too awkward to hold, really hard to find it a placement, and I can't carry it around with me very easily without it feeling like a brick in a bag that was already heavy with notebooks and the tears of men. Not to mention, they're much cheaper. 

I haven't tried audiobooks, but the voice of humans usually annoys me so I can't imagine i would like them very much, I do appreciate Ebooks for the use of travelling purposes, highlighting/note-making qualities, etc. 

S - Scribble while you read? Do you like to write in your books, taking notes, making comments, or do you keep your books clean clean clean? Tell us why! 

With a lot of books that aren't really expensive, or valuable to me, I will underline quotations I like, fold pages if I want to go back to that in the future (I never have tabbed post it notes, for some reason) and write small little notes in the sides of the pages. I write notes for reviews in a seperete notebook, but most of the time, I'm not all that fussed on whether or not the book is overly tidy or not. My Harry Potter and world domination handbooks, though, are as spotless as an elephant! 

I - In your best voice, read for us your favourite first sentence from a book.

I won't, simply because I don't have a favourite and I can't be bothered with walking all the way to my bedroom and flicking through every single book I own just to find one, either. Instead, I will read you the first line from the last book I read, Mad About the Boy, and so I don't seem so lazy, the book I am currently reading, Marina (which I'm already planning the review for, yay me!). 

"Talitha just called, talking in that urgent, 'let's-be-discreet-but-wildly-over dramatic" voice she always has"

"Marina once told me we only remember what never really happened". 

Fun fact: both of the books' first sentences were from a prologue. Weird how many books have prologues, I once read an article that writers should really avoid it, but that's a discussion for another time. 

D -Does it matter to you whether the author is male or female when you're deciding on a book? What if you're unsure of the authors gender? 

No, truth be told I don't even know who the author is until I've already bought the book, read it and I have to look at the book of the author to either find it on Goodreads or to write a blog review on it. Pretty bad to do, I know. I used to care when I was younger because I thought men wrote more about sex and attractive women, but women wrote more deeper into relationships (on the genre of romantic books, that is) but as I grew older, I realised this was untrue and either gender can write it in either way. 

E - Ever read ahead? Or have you read the last page way before you got there? 

If the book is really good, I don't. But if the book is slow paced or the curiousity becomes too much, I am guilty of reading the last line in the book, which oddly I usually don't regret, it makes me think a certain thing is going to happen because obviously I don't have all the information to that sentence yet, and then something entirely different does. It's like I gave myself a plot twist. 

O - Organized bookshelves, or outrageous bookshelves? 

I have an attic room, so even if I did have a bookshelf, it wouldn't fit. Instead, my books fit perfectly around the edge of my room in that space that's more or else book size and I couldn't fit anything else back there anyway. Maybe in a future blog post, I'll show you where I keep them, it's hard to explain what I mean. 

U - Under oath: have you ever based a book on its cover alone? 

Guilty. In fact, when I first bought The Invention of Hugo Cabret I had no idea what it was about, what genre is what in or even if it was any good. I bought it purely because it was a pretty book. 

T - Take it out or stay in? 

Because of factors like wind, distractions, people, etc, I much prefer to stay in where I can cozy up at night in a comfy chair wearing a onezie where's it's usually pretty noiseless and nobody is around to bother me. Although, reading only when nobody is around isn't a great idea because I can't get much reading done in a day and it's going to make my Goodreads 2015 reading goal that much harder to accomplish. But, during free lessons at school when I have nothing to do, I read...inside. Does that count as taking it out or staying in? 

Please tell me if I have made any mistakes, I would love to improve, and if you have written this on your blog or you want to tell your answers in the comments, do share! Agree with me or nah? Thank you for reading. 


Book Review: Bridget Jones Mad About The Boy by Helen Fielding.


  
  RIGHT, CHRISTMAS RESOLUTIONS:

I WILL
- Stop feeling sad and thinking about or attempting to live through men, but think about children and Christmas.
- Have a Christmassy Christmas and make a new start. 
- Be more Buddhist about Christmas. Even though is Christian festival and, by its very nature, therefore, not Buddhist. 

I WILL NOT 

- Order piles of plastic crap from Amazon from 'Santa' but instead encourage Billy and Mabel to choose one or two gifts each from 'Santa' which are meaningful. Perhaps made of wood. 
Join Bridget as she stumbles her way through Christmas and other obstacles of modern life...



As a mini disclaimer, this review is not spoiler free, is quite rambly and long, I am too young to know 95% of the experiences that Bridget does and it probably has a very high amount of spelling errors and general mistakes. I tried!

Oh, Bridget. Funny, chaotic, forgetful, ditzy, the thirty-odd woman living on her own in the 1990's, London, trying to find someone to settle with so she could have what she wants - including children - and in the meantime, her funny and equally chaotic friends are there to fuck up with her. In Mad About The Boy, that charming woman I loved is gone, and instead replaced with a fifty-one year old woman obsessed with herself, trying to turn back the time, getting absorbed in the world of technology and  men, so much so that she often neglects her children and Chloe the babysitter, Daniel the sex addict and even her mother have to come to the rescue. 

I have to say, my expectations were not met up to as soon as I opened up the book. I wanted to know of the relationship between her and Mark was still as loved up as it had been, or if it was a "I've had a long day in work, okay? I just want some rest!", "Oh, you want some rest?!" kind of situation like most modern day families appear to be. Plus, the situations of Shaz, Tom and Jude were very much eagerly anticipated in the book by me, and it was a huge disappointment to know that not just Mark was dead and gone, but my other favorite character Shaz never even appeared in the book! I know friends come and go, but I'd have hoped they would at least kept in touch once in a while. 

I did not understand why Bridget needed to be single in order to create a good and entertaining read. Happy families is, of course, boring but why would she have had to have made their relationship boring? It would have been highly interesting to read a book tackling the topic of married modern day families surviving in the world, very much like they did with the British TV show, Outnumbered (huge fan of, by the way). It would have been a great read to know how Mark and Bridget Darcy were doing as a couple. Heck, Mark could have lost his job, leaving them to support their two young kids, maybe they moved to the countryside and had many chaotic camping trips and hiking adventures - which is typical of Bridget to make such a hectic and impulsive move, only to later regret it.

Instead, Bridget had three (more or less) relationships in the book, which were not quite as satisfying. I did enjoy how this book tackled the world of online dating (fun fact: that's how I met my boyfriend of two years, but not through a dating website, through Skype...oddly, not mentioned in the novel, which is a shame, that would have been interesting, especially with the new sex theme almost absent from the first two books) and ...well, I want to say how hard it must be for a fifty one year old widow with no job and two young kids to be able to find a stable, long lasting relationship would be but, again, it wasn't for Bridget...I mean, how does she even manage it? Leatherjacketman was an entertaining, but pointless, relationship. 

Now, Roxster, despite the unfortunate name choice there, I actually loved. Maybe it's because I'm closer to his age then Bridget was, but I loved the ridiculous amount of sex, the spontaneous, the flirtatious and loose way they spoke in their texting, I wanted them to end up together, even though I know a thirty one year old and a fifty one year old would probably never work out in the end, as much as I wanted it to happen. Instead, she ended up with Scott, a man who was so much like Mark Darcy, it was uncomfortable and it didn't feel natural to me. 

Twitter...very annoying. And repetitive and long and felt more like filler space then actual content that needed to be in there. A brief moment of it, sure, just to sum up how her and Roxster had met but not whole sections. I love social media, I think it's wonderful to escape reality and to be able to still have that needed social contact without leaving the comfort of your bedroom or even wearing clothes. Although I often wondered, what reality did she have to escape? She complained so much about how hectic and hard her life was, but really, she spent most of it texting, on Twitter, or pretending to do her script when really, she wasn't. She didn't even have to wake up early for her kids, she had a nanny, a cleaner and was rich to do whatever she pleased, in a huge house. 

Speaking of the kids, the moments she spent with them (although very few) were heart warming and just made me all the more exited for when I can have my own one day. Especially on Father's Day, when Billy said he wrote a card for his deceased dad. Speaking of heart warming, the parts about Mark and how Bridget was in grief were just...tear jerking, for me. I also really like hearing and saying Mark Darcy. 

Not really sure how she managed to lose three stone in thirteen weeks, either, but it's fiction, anything can happen - especially when she does little to no exercise and spends most of her time eating packets of cheese. 

Assuming Daniel the sex addict is similar age to Bridget, probably older, how is he so popular with young women, especially seeing as his mental health (or physical, for that matter) is clearly not the most stable and he isn't rich, or filled with a charming and lovely personality. I can't deny it wasn't great seeing a friendly face, though. Bridget having a toy boy that involved a lot of sex, too, though, made me think Helen Fielding has a bit of a fantasy she was letting out here. 

I'm pretty glad Tom has settled, Jude finally got rid of Vile Richard, and is getting herself out there to find someone who won't break her heart.

I also felt like Bridget was not the greatest mothers in 3/4 times in this book. She didn't spend very much time with them and often left them in the hands of Chloe, she barely even spoke about them and even ignored texts from their babysitter several times because she was too busy with her toy boy, and it really did seem that she only cared for them at times because they are what's left from Mark Darcy. Boy obsessed! 

I rated this book three out of five stars, because although it was obviously written with a movie in mind, I spent more time looking at how much time the book had left then really appreciating the book in itself (up until the last few pages, that is) and I think I'm going to pretend this book never happened and it ended with the second book, I kinda enjoyed it and I'm not regretting reading it. 

Thanks for reading...if you got this far! 





Sunday 22 February 2015

I bought new books at last!







Ooh, yes, the photo worked! 

Anyway. Hello! 
I was out with my mother yesterday and we went nowhere special, just to the supermarket, which is actually a pretty good place to go if you don't want to spend too much on a book and you're not too bothered about things such as their popularity. As you can see, I didn't get many. Only three! Aren't their covers gorgeous!? 

I'll add a closer look on them in the future when I edit back to these posts, but for now, let me just discuss them from to the top downwards, yay! 


"Marina" by Carlos Ruiz Zafron. 
(Funky name you have there, sir) 

A gothic tale for all ages. 

In May 1980, fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai vanishes from his boarding school in Barcelona. For seven days and nights, no one knows his whereabouts . . . 

His story begins when he meets the mysterious Marina. She takes him to a graveyard where they witness a macabre ritual. On the last Sunday of every month, a coach appears. A woman shrouded in black descends, holding a single red rose. She walks over to a gravestone that bears no name, only the emblem of a black butterfly . . . 

When Oscar and Marina follow her, they begin a journey that takes them to the heart of a forgotten, post-war Barcelona. Beneath the streets, a dark secret lies waiting . . . 


"The Hourglass Factory" by Lucy Ribchester. 

Meet Ebony Diamond: trapeze artist, tiger-tamer, suffragette. Where there is trouble, she is never far away. But now she's the one in trouble, and she's up to her neck in it. 

Enter Frankie George: tomboy, cub reporter, chippy upstart. She's determined to make her name on the London Evening Gazette, if only someone will give her a chance. 

Then Ebony disappears during a performance at the London Coliseum, and Frankie jumps at then chance to find out what happened. How did Ebony vanish, who was she afraid of, and what goes on behind the doors of the mysterious Hourglass Factory? 

From the newsrooms of Fleet Street to the suffragette headquarters, Frankie enters a world of society columnists, corset fetishists and cicus freaks on the trail of a murderous villian with a plot more deadly then anyone could have imagined . . . 



"The Miniaturist" by Jessie Burton. 

There is nothing that will not be revealed . . . 

On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives at a grand house in Amsterdam to begin her new life as the wife of a wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt. Though curiosily distant, he presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. It is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations ring eerily true. 

As Nella uncovers the secrets of her new household she realizes the escalating dangers they face. The miniaturist seems to hold their fate in her hands - but does she plan to save them or destroy them? 



Thursday 12 February 2015

Book Review: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding



 The wilderness years are over!
But for how long?

Bridget's second diary takes us through a year that begins with man-of-her-dreams Mark Darcy (who never does the washing up) and lurches onwards through a sea of self-help books and lunatic advice from her mad friends. Struggling with the challenges of a boyfriend-stealing beauty, an eight-foot hole in the wall and a builder obsessed with large reservoir fish, Bridget decides it's time for a spiritual epiphany. And so she departs Notting Hill for the sparkling shores of Thailand...

Bridget is back. V.g. 




A little 'disclaimer' before I get into it, you can skip this section - I realize that reading this book straight after reading the previous one in the series might have been a bad idea (and I'm currently reading the third book in the series, too, and that was an even worse idea) simply because the diary-talk and the writing style and the comedy etc. gets really, really boring and annoying to read. I also forgot entirely that I'm one of those people who just can't read a book right after another book that's too similar, so reading a book by the same writer in the same series falls in that category...which may mean this review is a little off and may need a tinkering with if I decide to read it again in the future. I'm also writing this quite a while after I had actually finished the book. I procrastinate even in my hobbies! 

With that being said, I want to start with the issue about this book that has been bothering me the most, and that's feminism. The whole tone of that topic within both the previous book and this book is mocking and is pretty difficult to take seriously. If is serious, it's a huge misconception on what feminism really is. I have a feeling the mocking tone might have been done just for the sake of humor, and in some cases it worked (barely, but it did). Don't even get me started on Sharon-the-man-hating-feminist. I still love her, I think she's feisty and badass and her rants are funny, but they would have been funny without the man-hating. 

Also, the relationship between her and Mark is very childish from my point of view. They broke up because of Bridget having a misunderstanding about Rebecca, also caused by gossip and bad advice from her friends, and Mark's inability to communicate what he's thinking and being able to fight for something...in real life, there was a pretty high chance Bridget could have been gone forever over a misunderstanding and if he really did love and want her as much as we were told we should believe, why didn't he fight for her. Well, I suppose he did...way way later in the book, and maybe because I'm only an eighteen year old girl, I don't really understand adult relationships and maybe that's why I believe this to be immature. Maybe it was just portrayed badly and it was just trying to show how Mark made her feel like a teenager again, and that's why she was acting like one. I'll try to remember to re-read this when I'm single in my thirties. 

This is just me being kinda picky with the way it's setup, I suppose, but why is she writing in her diary during situations an ordinary person wouldn't even be on their phone in, and how is she writing in it. My memory is bad and it's been a while since I read it, so I can't really give you an example from this copy but there is just a lot of situations where she picks up the diary and writes full paragraphs and I have no idea how. 

Also, the plot line. I have no idea how the book got to be as big as it did. Most of it must have been a filler. The actual excitement didn't happen until much, much later. Even then, it wasn't that exiting, it was also kinda confusing. Did they let her keep her diary and her pen but they took everything else from her, and didn't let her have it until the day afterwards? Why was everyone else in the cell not allowed a bra, but she was? How did they get their hands on cigarettes? I'm sure she did plenty of research about this before she wrote it, I'm just in-educated on how Thailand jail cells work. It's a shame the writer didn't use that as an opportunity to teach people about it. 

Sorry, sorry...this book review has turned into a rant about it, rather than the actual book itself. I did actually enjoy this book, and I would recommend it as a light read just for it's comedy value but I just don't think any of it's filling is outstanding. Thanks for reading!