REVIEWS: Which came first, the book or the TV show? Reviewing Bitten by Kelley Armstrong

Its very rare that I watch a film or TV adaptation before the book. I often end up missing out on seeing things at the cinema, or watching shows when they’re on because I haven’t had a chance to read the books first. It’s why I still haven’t seen Room, and why I raced through the A Song of Ice and Fire series (because I was not missing that, the night is dark and full of spoilers after all). The book is a reader’s chance to experience the author’s vision in its truest form, and I like to get to grips with that vision before being confronted by a more condensed interpretation.

WWW Wednesdays: 22nd March 2017

Its been a couple of weeks since my last WWW Wednesday post, but I’m ready to share a reading update with the world! So without further ado, here it is:

WWW is hosted by Taking a World of Words. Each Wednesday book enthusiasts share their reads by answering three questions:

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

I’m still making slow progress through Dancing with Mrs. Dalloway. I thought I would have been quicker reading it than I have been, but its hard to read more than one or two chapters at a time.

 

 

I’m also about a third of the way into Renee Andieh’s The Wrath & the Dawn. I’ve wanted to read it for ages, and it has such an unexpectedly glorious cover. I don’t know how Shahrzad is going to manage surviving a fate that many other girls have fallen victim to, but I’m excited to see where the story goes.

What did you recently finish reading?

I finished reading The Girls, and it was every bit as good as I was anticipating. It made me think about how we shape girls to percieve themselves and how important it is to encourage a sense of self-worth from a young age. I could see how those young women could be taken in by a charistmatic leader.

I also finished Room
by Emma Donoghue. I read it pretty quickly, in about three sittings but I was so enraptured by Jack and how hopeful and imaginative he was despite his captivity. His relationship with Ma was poignant and heart-warming.

 

 

The last book I finished a few nights ago was Landfall by Helen Gordon. I’m not entirely sure how I felt about the ending. There were so many ways it could have gone at so many different points that I struggled to really see what the book was really about. It was definitely an ending that stayed with me though.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I’m not sure what I’m going to read next for a change. I’m planning a trip to the library this afternoon to sate my hunger for some short story collections, and I have Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals on its way from Amazon, so who knows!

 

What are you reading this week?

Desert Island Discs blog tag

Thank you to BookBum for not only tagging me in the Desert Island Discs blog tag but creating it as well! I don’t talk about music much on my blog but it is always in the background, whether I’m writing posts or reading. So it’s nice to get a chance to share some of the music I love with you all!

Here’s how it works…

• Link back to BookBum’s original post! (Remember to do this via pingback)
• Thank the person(s) who tagged you… show some love!
• Come up with your answers
• Then tag others to keep the tag going!
  

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Premise of Desert Island Discs…

You are cast away onto a remote island:

• You can bring 5 albums, what are they?
• You can bring ONE book (not including The Bible (or other appropriate religious texts) or The Complete Works of Shakespeare, as they are already provided and NO SERIES), what ONE book is it?
• You can have one luxury item (it has to be inanimate and can’t help you escape the island), what is it?
  

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My answers:

The five albums I would take:

An Awesome Wave by Alt-J

This album is the soundtrack to most of my long train journeys. I like to listen to it while staring wistfully at the countryside. I actually bought the album for my sister in the dark days when I didn’t actually like the band, and then I downloaded it on my iPod a few years ago and couldn’t believe I hadn’t listened to it more.

Favourite song: Bloodflood

 

A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out by Panic! At The Disco

Because 14-year-old me would never forgive me if I didn’t. I was such a huge P!ATD mega fan back in the day, and although I don’t listen to this album as often anymore I still can’t stop myself from singin along.

 

Favourite song: Time To Dance

 

The Queen is Dead by The Smiths

I had a music teacher who once said my iPod was the most depressing thing he’d ever come across. I took that as a compliment even though I don’t think it was intended that way. Anyway Morrisey’s vocals and the lyrics have always made me want to sing along. It was The Perks of Being a Wallflower that made me listen to The Smiths in the first place, for which I am eternally grateful to Charlie.

Favourite song: There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

 

Bang by Empires

I don’t think this band get half as much love as they deserve. There first album Howl was flawless as is Bang. Sadly I lost my digital copy of Howl and it’s no longer on iTunes, but I still have Bang. Sean’s vocals are perfect.

Favourite song: Voodooized

 

 

To Lose My Life by White Lies

I don’t feel like I’ve put together a particularly upbeat collection of music, which I probably should have thought about considering these would be the only albums I’d have access to, but I couldn’t skip out on White Lies. I wasn’t a huge fan of Ritual but To Lose My Life and Big TV are albums I’ve listened to compulsively. Another great band with distinctive vocals.

Favourite song: EST

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The one book I would take:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Sorry, sorry, everyone must be sick to death of me bring up this book again and again BUT it is such an important book to me. I don’t tend to re-read but I’ve re-read Perks hundreds of times, and it always hits me with emotion like it’s the first time. I don’t think I’ll ever find a fictional character who I care about quite like Charlie.

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The one luxury item I would take:

My sketchbooks and pencils. I haven’t done any drawing in forever, not since I graduated from my Fine Art degree. So, if I had to spend some time alone on a desert island, I’d definitely like to brush up on my skills. I’m so rusty now!

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I tag…

Kelly’s Rambles // Flavia the Bibliophile // Ryann the Reader

REVIEW: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

 

Eleanor & Park has been such a familiar feature on my TBR list that now I’ve finally read it, my TBR feels like it’s missing something. This is the fifth novel I’ve read by Rainbow Rowell, and like the previous four, it didn’t disappoint. Rowell is an author I consider to be ‘good hands’, so I was saving Eleanor & Park for a time when I needed a book I knew would be a safe bet.

Eleanor & Park is a YA novel about finding a lifeline in an unexpected place. Eleanor has just moved back in with her family, after her alcoholic step-father kicked her out a year earlier.  Their reconciliation has been far from smooth. Eleanor and her younger siblings tip-toe around their mother’s husband careful not to infuriate him. It’s easier said than done when he has a fuse so short it’s practically non-existent. The house Eleanor returns to is not their old home, but a smaller one that belonged to her step-father’s mother. It’s too small for a family with five children all sharing one room, but their step-father’s comfort is the priority, not theirs.

Down The TBR Hole #2

Where have the last two weeks gone? I’m getting a little concerned about how quickly time seems to be passing at this point. I might actually have fallen down my tbr hole and only just managed to claw my way back out. This is my second forray into my to-read list. Lia at Lost In A Story started this weekly post to trim down the Goodreads to-read list. And although I may not have actually made my tbr smaller this week, it’s given me the chance to look through the books that are there and remind myself why I wanted to read them!

The rules are simple:

• Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course, if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

BOOKISH FINDS: Fantasy Fiction

My grandmother is one of those rare creatures that doesn’t like fantasy fiction. She watched the Harry Potter films under duress and although she did develop a soft spot for Dobby (which she pronounces Doh-bee) she couldn’t get along with ‘all that flying broomstick nonsense’. Not a woman easily convinced, I knew I wouldn’t be able to change her mind. So I let it slide.

WWW Wednesdays: 8th March 2017

I feel like this week was a bit more productive for me in terms of reading. For the first time in a while I managed to finish two books and they were both pretty great!

WWW is hosted by Taking on the World of Words. Each Wednesday book enthusiasts share their reads by answering three questions:

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

I’m still edging my way through Celia Blue Johnson’s Dancing with Mrs. Dalloway. I’ve just been dabbling in it reading a couple of pages at a time. Because it’s a compilation of stories of how writer’s came to create their greatest works of fiction, I don’t want to read too many in one sitting or I feel like they’ll all just blur into one.

I am also going to include The Girls by Emma Cline here, because I’m about two seconds away from opening the book.

What did you recently finish reading?

I finished Diana Athill’s Stet: An Editor’s Life last night. The memoirs focus on her life as a publisher and the writers who defined that period. I found Athill’s honesty about her own nature and the reality of working as a publisher so enchanting. In the second part of the book, where she discusses the authors who had the greatest impact on her career, she mentions how charming Molly Keane was, but Athill charmed me.

I also finished Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. Although after having it for such a long time, peaking forlornly out from the under my bed, I built up an idea of the book that was completely wrong. But that actually turned out to be a nice surprise.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I started going through my Goodreads tbr last week as part of Down the TBR Hole, and Room was one of the first five books I added to the list. Then I remembered that it was also one of the books I had bought and hidden under my bed. I actually had to do a bit of manoeuvring to get at it.

 

What are you reading this week?

REVIEW: Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

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“I was invisible. I was furniture.”

-Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh (2015)

Eileen is a young woman, left to nurse her alcoholic father after the death of her mother. Left alone together, their relationship has turned septic. They have let the wounds between them become infected, and the infection has spread further into their lives. Their house is squalid and they fester in it. Despite her father’s obvious decline, his status as a respected ex-cop gives him a free pass. The local police turn a blind eye to his drink-driving and threatening behaviour and Eileen resents them for it.

MISC: The Book Fests Award

I want to thank and apologise to Ryann the Reader for tagging me in this award. I was going to do it the day after I was tagged and somehow a week has zoomed past and I’m only now getting round to it! Maybe subconciously, the pressure to write a 50 word story has been putting me off. Check out her blog, it’s full of great reviews and other bookish delights!

The Rules:

• It’s always proper and the right thing to do, when you receive something from someone, you thank them. It’s the same with this award. You can link the blogger who presents the award blog in the post you use to fulfill the requirements of the award.
• Answer the award questions that will be listed below.
• Write a Fifty Word Story, because it’s fun.
• Award five or more bloggers with this Award.
• Ask them a question of your making, you’ll like them to answer.
• Put up the award image badge on your blog via image widget.

MISC: Welsh Authors We Should Read

It’s unusual for me to post twice in one day. If anything, it’s sometimes a struggle for me to post twice in one week. But, today is St. David’s Day. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that I’m Welsh in the last few blog entries (I probably have), but I am, and its something I’ve always been proud of. We may be a small country, but we are fierce. It’s been a few years since I spent St. David’s Day at home, and although I don’t have any cawl or welshcakes, I’m still feeling patriotic.

Since it’s St. David’s Day, I wanted to share a few books by Welsh authors that I have read or want to read: