Books I Read in April 2016

I have not been the greatest reader for a good few months so it was pretty cool to read seven books this month (and due to how huge my TBR shelf is, I should hopefully read even more for the month of May, wish me luck). Even if half of those were books made for kids so were therefore quite speedy to read, it gave me a kick up the butt to read more because reading a lot when you're busy with college and very tired is hard! 

"Plague" by Michael Grant

There isn't much I can say about what this book was about considering it's the forth book in a six book series, but it pretty much says it all in the title. This series has been read by a majority at this point, though, so I imagine you already know what this book is about. I really didn't like "Lies" because it was very political heavy, it tied a lot of loose strings and I wasn't sure what another three books in a series could add, and its demographic is high school males so it was obviously male-dominated and mildly/moderately sexist, which got on my nerves. 

"Plague" restored my faith a little bit. It was still mildly sexist, and still male-dominated and the main characters (Sam and Astrid) get on my nerves so badly, I love the fact it's from different perspectives because if it was just from Sam or Astrid I probably wouldn't have even finished the first book.

The sex thing was also really annoying. Either have sex or don't, stop rambling on. 

"The Spiderwick Chronicles: The Completely Fantastical Edition" by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

Firstly, this book is stunningly beautiful. The cover is beautiful, the artwork inside is beautiful, and when you take the dust jacket off it looks like a leatherbound book. It's a work of art, it's absolutely stunning. 

Luckily, the writing was beautiful. The story was beautiful. I loved the characters. It follows Jared, his twin brother Simon and their sister Mallory in their broken home and when they discover a book filled with all sorts of secrets, they discover they're being hunted down by all sorts of mythical creatures like faeries, elves, goblins and ogres. It's wonderful and if you haven't read it yet, why not? 

"Sapphire Battersea" by Jacqueline Wilson. 

This is the second book in the Hetty Feather trilogy following a very vibrant orphan/foundling during the Victorian Era where she grows up with her foster family and is taken away at six to live in the Foundling Hospital until she's fourteen. This book takes us on the journey she has when she leaves the hospital to experience work.

I first read the first book when I was fourteen, and I still really liked the idea of the series and I had the next two books already so why not? It's like reading a Victorian Tracy Beaker, and I quite enjoyed it considering it's a children's book (common theme this month). 

"Our Endless Numbered Days" by Claire Fuller.

This is a standalone book following a young girl called Peggy from the age of eight to the years of sixteen where she was taken by her father into the cabin in a German forest where her father lied to her (not a spoiler, as this was it says in the very first chapter which starts when Peggy has arrived home) about her mother being dead and being in the middle of an apocalypse. 

It's quite a slow and uneventuful book, but I enjoyed the German and the piano references and The Railway Children references, even though the character development and actual plot was dull. Oddly, the story seemed to start just when it ended. Despite this, though, it had so many quotes that I liked, I really loved the writing style and the sheer weirdness of the whole thing, and it was only a short 300 page read so no harm done. I would recommend it. 

"The Alchemyst" by Michael Scott. 

People have been telling me to read this for months, and if you remember from a blog post I did months ago I got these for my birthday. The first book, and the second book. However, I didn't enjoy it that much. I enjoyed it enough to continue on to the next book but it was slow and it dragged, and there was no character depth or development at all. Granted, this took place over two days, so I'm hoping that really improves by the next book. It's also another children's book so I'm thinking maybe this month I'm just fed up of reading from a child's perspective of things, understandably. 

"Mind Games" by Teri Terry.

This book is about a girl called Luna (yes, it is based off the Harry Potter character Luna) who has this special girl who has qualities nobody else has in this virtual reality. It reminded me an awful, awful lot of Divergent but despite its resemblance to a lot of YA fiction (even though I don't generally read a lot of YA fiction) I really did enjoy the writing and the characters - even though it had no depth - and it wasn't the most amazing book, I just liked it a lot. My expectations were really low for going in this book because I've heard a lot of bad things about it, and maybe my awareness of these bad things is what made me like it a lot. I set up the barrier!

"The Magician's Nephew" by C.S.Lewis.

#1 The Chronicles of Narnia 

I feel bad to say that I didn't enjoy this one as much as I hoped I would. I thought the background information on Narnia and its creation was beautiful, the settings were beautiful - the sexism was not, and it was quite slow/dull in parts and I found it hard to pick back up again. It also took me a while to read it, and seeing as it's only a two hundred page book it really shouldn't have taken me as long as it did to read. Purely because I have the rest of the Narnia collection, and because it's Narnia (and something my dad gifted to me) I am going to continue reading the series - I have already read book #2 so I'm considering skipping that one, but otherwise, I will finish them all. Probably. I just hope it gets a little more interesting. 

Thank you for reading if you did get this far! Have you read any of these books? What books did you read this month? 

Book Review: The Worst Thing About My Sister by Jacqueline Wilson. (contains spoilers)

Yes, I know, this is a child's book and I'm an eighteen year old adult but hey, things meant for children often help me with my extreme anxiety so I thought I would give this book a go. In case you are considering getting this for your niece/nephew, daughter/son, etc, then please do read on! 

THE WORST THING ABOUT MY SISTER. 

 

1. She's super-duper girlie and prissy and pink. YUCK! 

2. She always tells on me when we have a fight. 

3. She stole my special night with Dad, even though everyone knows Toy Story 3 and chips are MY favourites. 

4. She laughs at my animals - even though she can't go to sleep without her Baba! 

5 - She NEVER sticks up for me. 

 

 It's quite unusual, I feel, for Wilson to write about a book where siblings are not the best of friends and instead are written as the worst enemies. This is about a girl called Marty, who I'm guessing is about nine or ten, and her older sister, Melissa, who I'm guessing is twelve although they appear to go to the same school, so maybe younger, it was never specified. When Marty attends a party in her mothers' homemade dress, she becomes popular meaning she needs a room for where she sows and keeps the dresses - Marty loses her Marty Den and moves in with Melissa.

Speaking of their mother, she was the worst kind of person I would ever have the misfortune to meet. She often does something I am strongly against, and that's gender role-ing. She stays firm on the idea that girls should wear dresses, smell of roses and sweets and be covered in pink, and that girls have to be a good role model for everyone else and always behave well and not act like themselves just to please other people and that girls can't have a job that is not traditional...she also cared way too much about what other people thought of her and that was often more important then her own daughters' feelings. Boys, though, they could do whatever they wanted. Even though people like her exist in the universe, I like to think they're a rare kind of parent and it made her situation worse then what it could have been.

It also hits other topics like bullying as well as feminism, and how you should tackle them. Like Wilson, I am a firm believer in that you can't ignore people who hurt you or make you feel like less of a person or make your life much harder then it should be. Marty, instead of ignoring them like most people would tell you to do, threw eggs at her bullies (don't worry, it's followed by a rant by how this is dangerous and harmful but it has a good message). 

It also says that even though the relationship with your sister is a rough one, you wouldn't be without them as the harsh ending had explained. 

As always, Wilson has written yet another (although short) quality book that I recommend if you wanted to buy for a child you know or even yourself if you're anything like me and find a guilty pleasure in enjoying these kinds of things. I'll give this a five out of five as I can't really fault it, and I'll see you next time!

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.