**This is a queued post, while I get back into the routine of being home and try to shake off my jet lag. Enjoy!
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
"To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified."
I found this book so difficult in places. I mean, I read about 30 pages on the History of Parisian Sewers just for maybe 5 pages of them featuring in the story. As someone who doesn't particularly like to be bombarded with descriptive passages (you may have noticed Charles Dickens is a glaring omission from my bookshelves) I really struggled to get through a lot of what felt at times like unnecessary descriptions or explanations. I especially struggled with everything on the Battle of Waterloo. That bit was what stretched my reading time out to two months - I just didn't find it interesting. And I understand why he put it in but bloody hell, I could have done with maybe a 1/3 of it and still completely understood the story it was giving background to.
I did understand that it was all relevant to Hugo's social commentary, and I did began to appreciate it a bit more as the book went on, and I realised I'd left all the Waterloo talk behind (that bit really dragged for me). I even started to enjoy the many tangents after a while.
The one thing I liked about this book was the fact that so much of it still felt relevant to life today. The whole concept of criminality and justice really fascinated me. My favourite essay in University was on the relationship between current research results in cognitive neuroscience and our legal/justice system. It opened my eyes to a world of opinions that I didn't even know existed, and I was excited to see variations of those opinions reflected in this book. I think that is something I'd love to read more into, so I'm going to search more books out that explore criminality, and the way the justice system works.
But the main thing I loved? The story. Not the explorations of social problems, or the many many retellings of historical facts. The characters felt real and alive, and it broke my heart - it immersed me in 19th century France in a vivd and believable way, and I was both happy and sad when I came to the end.
7/10
*
It - Stephen King
"Nothing lasts forever,' Richie repeated. He looked up at Bill, and Bill saw tears cut slowly through the dirt on Richie's cheeks. 'Except maybe for love,' Ben said. 'And desire,' Beverly said. 'How about friends?' Bill asked, and smiled."
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Stephen King's writing until I read this book. It brought back memories of forgoing my A Level revision in order to keep reading The Shining. This time was the same, only there were no exams to potentially ruin this time round (thankfully).
This is a story of seven children who become friends during the summer of 1958. They have all encountered a strange and terrifying IT living in the town, something that adults can't see but that preys on the children of the town. The seven of them end the summer thinking they've defeated IT only 27 years later, a phone call crashes through their lives and brings them back to Derry again. They did it when they were kids... but can they do it now that they've all grown up?
I liked the beginning and middle of this book much more than the end. I mean, I really loved the way the story was told at the end - switching between the past and present in a really connected way - but it kind of felt like Stephen King lost his shit a little bit with the plot at some points. And there was one scene that I really didn't understand because surely, surely there were countless other ways that that objective could have been achieved without doing that?! Vague I know but you'll understand what I mean when you read the book. Which I think you should do, because shit-losing aside, this was a really good read.
One other thing: I thought the last sentence was the saddest one in the whole book, and it left me staring into space for a good few minutes wrapping my thoughts around it.
7/10
*
Room - Emma Donoghue
"Really, a novel does not exist, does not happen, until readers pour their own lives into it."
I saw the film before I read the book, and I actually think the two compliment each other well. Where the story line in one fails, it is picked up well by the other. I think the thing I liked most about this book was it's perspective. I thought it was so interesting to read it from the point of view of a child who didn't understand why he couldn't go back to Room, or why it was so bad to not want to be in the Outside.
Jack is 5, and has lived in Room all of his life. His Ma has built as much of a life in there as she can, but it remains the prison she has been held captive in for 7 years - she wants to escape, to go back to the real world and live her life again. Only she has told Jack that this is the real world, and everything else is just imaginary worlds in "TV land." This story follows Jack as he leaves one world, and discovers there's an even bigger one just Outside.
The forward of this book talked about how events like this can take on a voyeuristic nature when people discover them, and people immediately want to know the nitty gritty details - the hows and whys and whats. It's a trap I fall into as well. I always read crime novels or real life stories and try to delve deeper into the motives behind it, searching out as much information as I can to try and find an understanding in the mess of what happened. But this book, with it's naive POV, stops you from being able to do that. It forces you to look at this situation from an entirely different perspective, one that doesn't see the horror or the cruelty, but sees the normality of not knowing any different. However, there are still things to sink your thoughts into, if you look hard enough (e.g. what life in one room has done to Jack).
It's just frustrating at times that you have to look quite so hard. I would have liked more detail, with maybe more of an opportunity to delve further into the reality of being a child that has grown up in this environment, looking more at how he reacts to other people, things like that. Although I'm not sure how that could have been done with Jack narrating and maybe that's the only downside to this book - the limitations of the narrator limit the scope of the book. It's disappointing, and leaves you feeling a little like the whole thing has been abbreviated - like reading a child's version of a complex novel.
So I did enjoy this book and it was such an different thing from what I normally read but I don't think I would necessarily shout about it from the rooftops. I am looking forward to talking to my Mum about it though, so it has left an impression (I also felt like I had been living in a room my whole life while I was reading it, but I think that has more to do with my imagination than anything else. Like when I watch spy films, and spend the next day accidentally talking with Tom like we're both spies on a mission or something).
6/10
Paper Towns - John Green
"You keep expecting people not to be themselves."
This wasn't my favourite of John Green's books (I read Looking For Alaska first out of all of them, aged 17 on a plane to visit America for the first time, and I think that will bias me forever) but I liked it much more than The Fault In Our Stars.
Quentin has loved Margo since they were young, but it has always been from afar - that is until she climbs in through his window and into his life, convincing him to join her for a night filled with acts of revenge. Yet the next day, Margo has disappeared. When Quentin discovers she has left a set of clues for him to follow, he starts out trying to find the girl who has always been a mystery - discovering that maybe he didn't know her so well after all.
So, it annoyed me how quickly the guy... not fell in love because he claimed to have always felt that, but how quickly he went from being in love from a distance, to dropping all of his friends and his life because this girl had disappeared. I don't know, it sounds bad when I write it like that, but there was something too false about it all that kind of ruined the story for me.
I liked the acknowledgement that the girl had become an idea to him; I was glad to see the acknowledgement of him seeing her as an embodiment of something, an ideal, a symbol, instead of a multi-faceted human girl. He stripped away the reality from her and I was really glad to see this spoken about at the end. I don't think I could have taken another "you're only here to further my own development" character.
My favourite line, quoted above, was my favourite take-away from the book. The idea of expecting something from people and being annoyed/upset when they can't provide it - I have struggled (and still do, in fact) with this and this line was a welcome snag on my thoughts.
6/10
*
We Were Liars - E. Lockhart
"He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I could have looked at him forever."
I think I enjoyed this book so much because I had absolutely no idea what to expect from it. The only thing I knew about it was that I knew about it because it had been mentioned on A Cup Of Jo, and as a result it was one of the books I had downloaded to my kindle in September. That was it - I hadn't even read the blurb.
Reading through the reviews on Goodreads, I think my complete ignorance may have allowed to me enjoy the book a lot more than if I had known anything about it. So this review will be a vague as I can make it, to allow you the same level of enjoyment.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It surprised me in the best possible way, and the end had me gasping for air. I read it during one of my afternoons in the hostel, and it was one of those sublime reading experiences where you are so lost in a book you have finished it before the day has even ended.
One thing that surprised me was how often the reviews of Goodreads complained about the style of describing the characters. I really loved the used of nouns as adjectives. Perhaps because my mind is always half-thinking about descriptions, but also because it was different from what I was used to and I thought it was clever. When I think of my friends, say Soph for example, I think of her as cups of tea, kindness, the colour of cider and black in the sunlight. Maybe that's why I liked it so much, it's similar to how I would describe people.
I would recommend this book, but I definitely think the less you know about it, the better.
8/10
*
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
"I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all of your time thinking about them."
I don't quite know what I think about this book. I didn't realise it was pegged as a mystery book until I read the reviews on Goodreads and I think the fact I didn't know it was a mystery book until afterwards says a lot about how mysterious it was, don't you think?
The story follows a young boy named Christopher as he tries to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbours dog, in a world that doesn't always understand that he perceives it entirely literally.
Perhaps it has something to do with being a psychology student, but I think I was expecting a deeper look into his life and his family, more of an exploration of living on the autism spectrum. I know now of course that this was supposed to be a mystery, not a YA book on developmental disorders, but it was still lacking depth for me. That in my opinion was the biggest flaw. It was an interesting POV, and I enjoyed the unique narrative style BUT there wasn't enough behind that for me to really enjoy it properly.
I guess it's a good introduction into autism but for me, I was expecting a lot more.
5/10
*
"Just because something is weird and hard to understand doesn't mean it's creative."
I haven't laughed out loud at a book in a very long time, and I had to start reading this in private to stop disturbing people in the hostel lounge. It sounds weird to say that I was laughing when you read the title but the humour in this book is well-timed, honest, and it made the whole thing so real for me. I'm the kind of person that deals with awkward/terrible situations with humour and a whole dose of face-palm stupidity and it felt like this book got that.
Greg Gaines can talk to everyone in his year, without being tied to any one social group. A big task in high school, and one he is proud to have achieved. He only has one friend, Earl, and they spend their time making their own home-made versions of their favourite films. But one day, Greg's Mum makes him rekindle his friendship with a girl he knew in middle school, and messes everything up. Rachel has just been diagnosed with leukemia, and the story follows Gregs awkwardly try to deal with an illness when all he wants is to ignore it's happening at all.
This was worlds and worlds apart from the brain-numbingly philosophical-yet stupid book that was The Fault In Our Stars. I mean, I enjoyed that book, but this was real in a way that that book can never ever be.
There was no poetry to this book, no vital life lessons learned, no closure. It was a story about a boy who really didn't want to have to deal with a girl he half-knew dying, and how really unfair it is that it had to happen at all. It was honest, and real, and gave you characters that could have walked out of the book, instead of neatly wrapped philosophies or life lessons wrapped up in human form.
I thought this book was great.
8/10
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