2014 Reading Challenge - 5 from Forever

 

Rachel has thrown down a new reading challenge for the new year. This time it is about all those books you want to read 'someday', that have been on your list 'forever'. Pick 5 of them and read them.

Simple.

My 2014 Reading Challenge list:

1. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, 1859
2. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852
3. 1984 by George Orwell, 1950
4. Utopia by Thomas More, 1516
5. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, 1947

 

All of them are classic and they are often referenced and quoted but it is impossible to talk intelligently about them if you have never read them.

 

A beautiful illustrated edition of On the Origin of Species is sitting right beside me as I type. I've started reading it but anticipate that it will be some time before it is finished.

 

Get more details on the challenge on the Little WhiteDove blog and you can also have a nosey at what everyone else has on their 'Forever' list.

Book Review: Jilted (specially for Car)

Jilted by Rachael Johns
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I downloaded this as a free e-book. I have a friend who loves country romances and recommended this author. I was after a light, easy read so thought I would give it a go.
At the start it was pretty much as I expected - formula late-twenties/early thirties romance in a rural Aussie setting. It was okay but I began to get a little bugged by the clunky-ness of it. I had spent some time in the area where it is set, and some of the descriptions of the town and area bought back fond memories - the local numberplates, the co-op store, the apex park - but also made me feel that the writer was trying to prove her credentials and show she knew the region. It didn't really add anything to the story, and in some cases made me question the authenticity of the setting. A town big enough for a high school and a hospital, but with only a co-op grocery store that did everything? Not a huge problem but it made me feel that the hospital/sick aunt plot wasn't gelling very well.
Clunky also describes the far-too-frequent references to 'Farmer Wants a Wife' and the odd phrases about 'much loved television personalities', and the whole soapy-star-who-walks-away-from-a-brilliant-career-to-nurse-a-dying-aunt subplot.
The plot of the story felt more and more forced the further into the book I got. Seriously - you don't come back after TEN YEARS apart, in which neither of you cared enough to contact the other, and then start all over again. And I couldn't work out why I was so upset yet willing to keep reading. There was something charming there, and something about the characterisations that got me, but on the whole I was left feeling...underwhelmed, cheated?
The book stayed with me.
Later I read an 'authors note' in another novel that described how characters had forced the author to write a totally different story to the one she set out to write.
Ahah!
That was why this book bugged me so much!
Rachel Johns didn't listen to her characters. She told a story crafted to fit a formula, not the story they needed to tell.
For there is a story there, but I would love to hear it as it happens not in flashbacks a decade after the fact. The wonder and excitement of teens finding their soulmate, but being told they were 'too young'. The thoughtlessness and misunderstandings that makes one of them make a mistake while alone and out of her depth. The angst and pain as she tries to make it right but makes it worse. And the wild trip across country as he tracks down his runaway love, the heartbreaking tale she tells, the adult decisions they are forced to make - and a resolution, but not mine to make.
There. That is the story those two country kids were trying to tell me. And I would love to read it.

View all my reviews

13 Books in 2013 Reading challenge

When Rach posted a reading challenge at the start of the year (here is the link to her blog, with links to everyone who participated) I jumped straight on board. The idea was to read 13 books of the non-small-person-variety and share the reviews of them on our blogs.
I started well with my first book read and reviewed early in January.

After that I fell of the bandwagon. I read a lot, and reviewed a lot in my head, and even joined the Goodreads website but didn't get around to writing anything. I haven't kept a list of everything I read during the year but here are the highlights - the ones I enjoyed and would recommend searching out. I might still do some reviews of the best ones.

1. The Casual Vacancy - JK Rowling
2. The Complete Mary Poppins - PL Travers (6 books in one)
3. Instructions for a Heatwave - Maggie O'Farrell
4. Patron Saint of Eels - Gregory Day
5. The Railway Man's Wife - Ashley Hay
6. The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion
7. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
8. The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert
9. Virgin Earth - Phillipa Gregory
10. Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
11. The Story of Before - Susan Stairs
12. One Little White Lie - Loretta Hill

The not so great ones, but I read then to the end:
1. The Rose of Sebastopol - Katherine McMahon (disappointing because I had read the Alchemists Daughter by the same author and really enjoyed it. This one was just long winded and I didn't care what happened to the characters. Should have been a short story then it would have been okay).
2. Jilted - Rachel Johns (Rural romance, it was okay for the genre but felt clumsy and it bugged me for a week after I finished because I couldn't work out what was wrong with it. I finally decided that the author had a story in her characters but she told the wrong one).
3. The Goddess Test - Aimee Carters (Harlequin romance for teens. It was not a bad read but the way the teen female lead willingly gave up her entire life for a strange guy she just met...irked me. Left me disappointed)
4. The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker (Another teen book about what happens when the Earth suddenly slows down. Started out promisingly but dragged and didn't really have an ending).
5. Second Sight - Meg Henderson (Too many characters, too many pages, bored).

So there we go - 17 that I can remember, 12 of them really good that I would happily re-read. There are certainly a few authors I will seek out to try out some more of their work, particularly Gillian Flynn.

Thanks for the Challenge Rachel. I look forward to another this year.

13/13 Challenge: Book One - The Casual Vacancy

The first book on my list (Welcome to Normal by Nick Earls) was a bit of a bust. A book of short stories that just didn't grab me. Usually I enjoy curling up with a heap of different tid-bits but I gave up on this one after 2 and a half stories. There was nothing really wrong with them it just really felt like they were writing exercises or scenes out of a bigger story. I love short stories that arouse your interest, give you a jolt, leave you wanting more - but this didn't do it. So that one is going back to the library.

Instead of going for the next one on the list I grabbed a new one as an impulse buy while shopping for something totally different.

The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling - a book I've been interested in reading but really didn't know what to expect.

A warning - if you are after a lighthearted holiday read with a feelgood happy ending then put this one back on the self. It really isn't what I was expecting. Gritty, intense, uncomfortable...but a really good read.

At first it reminded me of an Agatha Christie or Midsommer Murders type tale (without the murder) but the further I got into it it more closely resembled something along the lines of Jodie Picoult's The Tenth Circle (another one I highly recommend).

There are lots of interesting characters in this story and while JK Rowling doesn't use Picoult's technique of developing the characters and plot by using different characters as narrators at specific points, the effect is similar. You learn a lot about the characters and their inner motivations as the story develops. You won't like most (or maybe any) of the characters but you will recognise parts of yourself and parts of people in your life, and that can be in turn amusing, uncomfortable, revealing. I did wonder how the author lived with these people in her head while she was writing this. It must have been an exhausting and emotional process.

So, while the subject matter and the characters are difficult, the writing is excellent. This book sucked me in, and while it wasn't one I could read from cover to cover in one sitting I was compelled to put other things on hold so I could get to the end. I think it took less than three days and left me with that satisfied and spent feeling where I don't have the need to immediately pick up another book, but also with the urge to share the story and my reactions, to mull over the plot and the cast, to relieve bits at odd moments.
Books like these leave me wishing that my husband was a reader so that we could talk about it. Bring on the book club!

My reading for the next few weeks will mainly consist of Maths and Science textbooks, but that will give me the break I need to refresh before opening the next book on the list. I wonder which one will take my fancy?

Reading Challenge - 13 in 2013

Rachel has thrown down the challenge - to read 13 grown-up books in 2013.
Hah - realistic challenge! I like!

While at the library yesterday I was browsing the shelves looking for inspiration and grabbed a book of short stories for some light, easy, pick-up-put-down holiday reading and then remembered the pile of books languishing on the shelves at home.

So home I went with only the one library book and dug out all the 'when I get time' books, gave them their own shelf and found out that I'll only need 3 more and then I've got an entire year of reading planned.

First up will be the Nick Earls short stories and Mary Poppins. I'm sure there will be another pile after I visit my parents and raid their shelves. I bought the Anh Doh biography and the Mary Poppins anthology recently, and the Nick Earls book is from the library but everything else was courtesy of Mum and Dad and their bulging shelves.