Summaries of Books I Read in May!

Some people may consider a May wrap-up posted in the early days of June a little late, but better late than never. Funnily enough I already had this pre-written (mini reviewing them a little bit as I slugged along) but I accidentally deleted the entire thing. Yup. This is a common occurrence in my college, too., even with the added detail of saving them on back-up USB's. Shit just happens to me. 

Anywho, here is my late but still beefy (can vegetarians say beefy?) wrap-up. 

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. 

Pretty much exactly what you would expect from a book with Harold and Pilgrimage in the title, this is about an old man trekking across the whole of the UK to get to his lost friend from years ago, Queenie. She had sent him a letter to explain that she was dying of cancer, and like a normal person he did aim for a post box to reply...and ended up never stopping. He had this child philosophy that if he could walk across the whole of the UK to get to Queenie before her death, she would survive cancer. 

It's a very heart-warming story, got a little in depth about the way we live our life and how other people live theirs. Most importantly, it focused on how we are all going through something difficult and we are all fighting a battle - we're just all fighting different ones. I thought it was beautifully written. Could have done with a few pages being cut off, but the writing style was great, it was funny and sad and philosophical (in an entertaining, un-boring way). If you've been considering it, do check it out. 

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. 

If by chance you have no idea what this book is about (where do you live, on the island that all these vegans keep getting sent to?), then I am here to tell you. Amir is a little boy, I think 12. He is the son of a rich man, and this rich man is best friends with a poor man who is on the side of Muslims that are looked down upon for who they are. He has a poor son. I forgot their names, if you couldn't tell. A month is a long enough time period for all of that to blur, despite it being a really memorable and heart-warming book that my broken black hole still hasn't recovered from. Amir and The Poor Son are best best best friends. The Poor Son will do anything for Amir - not that Amir can say the same back. One day, The Poor Son goes through something dreadful (that Amir had the power to stop) around about the same time the Talibans come to Afghanistan. It all goes shit-hit-the-fan after that. 

I expected this book to be very deeply informative, have a lot of background history and unnecessary descriptions - it didn't. The writing style was great. It focused on something incredibly important. Not that I was every against helping refugees, but this book would have made me change my mind if I was. It was simply awesome.

The Many Worlds of Albie Bright by Christopher Edge

Oh, no! The good reading month does not end there. While in a supermarket the other day, I spotted this very beautiful book (of which you can read my short little review on here) for pretty cheap. It's about a little boy called Albie, who has scientists for parents. One day, his mother dies of cancer and Albie aspires to try his best to find her through the magic of parallel world teleportation. It's funny, cute, and a little sad in some parts. Do go read it, you won't regret it. (the author himself read by review and commented about it on Twitter, as a by the way, still screaming)

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge 

Again, if you want something a little bit more in depth, I also did a review of this book here - see, mum, I've been somewhat productive outside of college. 

This is about a girl called Frances who is a feminist superhero, really. Little did I know that this is historical-fiction (and I'm glad I didn't know, because there's a very small chance I would have picked it up otherwise). It was based around the death/murder of Frances' father (a natural scientist). Nobody will believe anything she says because A) she is a child and B) she is a female child. She goes into the course of action by herself. She also discovers that her father has been hiding secrets of his own. 

I adored the shit out of this book. I thought it was odd, well woven together, fantastic character development and depth, amazing writing style. It was just a really good book, and a book I definitely did not regret. 

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

I think everyone knows about what this book is about. It's a YA book of a girl who is locked away because she can kill people with her touch. It's basically a romance story, very little dystopian, but it has so many YA traits that I felt really annoyed with it. The writing style was really really good and I finished it in two days with ease, but the actual content was hit and miss. I still don't know what I feel about it and whether or not I will continue with the series, but it's leaning more on the probably not side for me. I am curious about why everyone loves Warner, though. 

The Vegetarian by Han Kang. 

I still need to write a review on this but guess who keeps forgetting. It was a very weird weird book, but it was absolutely incredibly and quickly one of my favourite reads of the year - maybe even ever. It follows a girl who's name I have already forgotten, married to a bit of a dick. She's very, very normal. Painstakingly normal. One day, she has an odd dream and turns vegetarian but this bizarre event doesn't stop there - she falls down the rabbit hole of mental illness, told in an honest and beautiful way. If you haven't, please do consider reading this. It was gold. 

Room by Emma Donoghue. 

Everyone got to this little gem before me, regretfully so! This is the tale of a woman, "ma" (and in the movie, she was named Joy), who was stolen at the age of 19 and kept captive by Old Nick and raped - she gave birth to a baby boy named Jack, who is the narrator of the story. It's rare that I read books narrated by children, so I found that prospect interesting in itself. It was funny in parts, really sad in other parts. Gloriously entertaining, I finished this quickly. I want to re-read it and I only just put it down. 

Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver

This follows a little girl named Liesl who was trapped in an attic by her vicious stepmother after the death of her father. One day, a mysterious ghost appears named Po and neither one of them know why. It soon becomes clear that mystery and magic lies underneath everything they know, and they're determined to find it out together. After finding out why Lauren wrote the book (and if you want to know, do ask in the comments, but I would prefer not to know these details beforehand so I won't do so to anyone else), I found this story even more beautiful and heartbreaking. I gave this a 5/5 and highly recommend it (even though it does have flaws, like every other book out there).

Thank you ever so much for reading, what did you read this month? I would love to know. Check back in with you soon. Probably. 

Book Review: "Over You" by Lucy Dimond.

                                     

Ever wondered how your friends see you now?

Josie, Nell and Lisa go back a long way - they were flatmates, soulmates and best mates back in their twenties when life was one long party. 

Five years later things are different. Josie is married with kids, in deepest surburbia, free-spirit Nell has travelled the world, and Lisa is on the path to career-glory (and the salary Premiership). A reunion weekend in London seems a great idea to Josie...until she discovers something which threatens to blow her marriage apart. 

Punlished in 2008 by Pan Books.

I have never heard of Lucy Diamond before this book but as small background, she's married with three kids and writes children's books under her real name (Sue something). 

This book was incredibly predictable. You could tell what was going to happen way before you even hit that point. I can bet you probably guessed what this book was about just from the back cover and almost exactly what was going to happen. Did that make this book any less enjoyable? Certainly not. It was fast paced,  the writing style was just delightful and it had that some rather dark themes that were presented in a moving, but not deep, way. 

The character devlopment was not the greatest, I have to say. At first, it was hard to distinguish two people from each other - even as the book ended, although they all had their own personality, they all seemed to talk like each other, and there was no difference. Granted, modern day and middle aged mothers all seem to have a certain way of conversation and from the perspective of an eighteen year old, childless female I could not tell any originality. 

As for recommendation, I gave it a four out of five and would lend it to anyone who loves romance/comedy and light hearted, easy to read novels. 

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!