After all the cheerful, happily ever afters (and not so happily ever afters) in my Valentine’s Day post I thought I’d bring the tone of this blog back to a place I’m more comfortable – with some good old stabbings in the back.
There are of course a lot of massive spoilers to follow so proceed with caution. Continue reading “7 books with absolute grab-you-by-the-throat punch-you-in-the-gut betrayals”
The books I’ve read by Ian McEwan can be classed in two categories: bleak period pieces (see Atonement, On Chesil Beach) and modern day tales that take place over a very short period of time and whose main characters are high-flying professionals (see Amsterdam, Saturday, Solar and now The Children Act).
Back in October (when I read this book, drafted this review and then never got round to editing it) I was in a bit of a reading slump. And by a bit of a reading slump I mean I hadn’t even picked up a book in three weeks. But it was the middle of the night and I couldn’t sleep and the one thing that I really fancied doing was getting stuck into a good Ian McEwan novel. I picked The Children Act purely because it was the one I could reach without having to get out of bed.
The Children Act is a strange blend between fiction and non-fiction. The main character, Fiona Maye, is a high court judge in family law and the book follows several cases as she passes sentences, as well as showing the impact they have on her personal life. The characters and their lives outside the courtroom are all the invention of Ian McEwan. But the court cases used to provide plot are all fairly truthful accounts of real court cases that have taken place. Almost in the same way that historical fiction takes the bare facts of what we know happened, and then embellishes a story around it.
The particular case which makes up the bulk of the plot concerns a teenage boy with leukaemia, who is refusing a blood transfusion on religious grounds. Fiona’s role is to decide whether the boy can be classed as an adult – and therefore have the right to refuse treatment – or a child who can be taken under the custody of the law and forced to receive a blood transfusion. One meeting between them sparks an unusual dynamic and a difficult to manage relationship.
Every time I return to Ian McEwan after a long absence I’m struck all over again by just how well he writes. The words just slip down so easily. You can be a third of the way through the book and it have felt like no effort at all, like no time has even passed.
Unfortunately with this particular book once I got a third of the way through I did hit a bit of a bump in the road – recording an entire court case takes a lot of speech and it’s just not that pleasant to read four pages of speaking. But aside from that little blip it was an interesting read, an enjoyable read and one I would definitely recommend.
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is supposed to be ten bookish resolutions but I like Lizzy from My Little Book Blog’s twist on this of books you resolve to read this year (so I’m outright plagiarising it).
I never ever stick to these things. I did an Autumn TBR from which I think I read less than a quarter of the books. In fact I think a large proportion of that list has just been relocated to this list. It’s not that I don’t read; I’m just really bad at predicting what I’ll be in the mood for. And I think I might have some kind of problem with authority which means if a list tells me I have to read something I immediately want to rebel and not read it. But in a whole year surely I’ll want to read most of these? Surely?
I’ve tried to make it more manageable by stopping at eight rather than going all the way to ten because, well, eight seems like, oh a book every other month or so, I can manage that, whereas ten sounds like, why aren’t you reading these books? You’ll never get them read if you don’t start on one right now!
Why not not have a list at all, you ask? Well for one thing, any excuse for a list. And secondly there are some things that have been clogging up my TBR list for so long that if they don’t get read soon my bookshelves will crumble from the weight of all the dust gathered on top of them.
Been on my TBR ever since it first started getting loads of hype. But I’m so expectant that I’ll get so gripped I’ll want to read it cover to cover in one sitting that I never want to just pick it up when I’m looking for a new book to read in bits at lunchtimes and before bed. Also, I’ve heard it’s quite scary and I don’t deal well with scary.
I’m so embarrassed in myself every time I have to admit that, no, I haven’t read this yet.
I started this book in September, and then stopped. And then picked it up again in November, and stopped again. Maybe finally I’ll actually finish it?
This should be a nice easy one to accomplish. He’s one of my favourite authors and I have five reasonably short McEwan’s waiting expectantly on my shelf; surely at some point in the next 365 I’ll read at least one of them. Side note, Something, Anything would make a really good book title. I might shot gun that for my autobiography.
Around the beginning of December I was having trouble finding any books I was in the mood for and a lot got started but never finished. This is one of them. And if I don’t get it read in the next few months I’ll just have to start at the beginning again when I do.
Much the same as Master Pip apart from I got even further with this before abandoning it.
I’m really excited to read this book, I’m just being put off by the sheer size of it. But 2016 will be the year I get over that.
This is such a cheat addition to this list because I do not need any motivation to read this book. I’m chomping at the bit to get started on it – I just keep forgetting to actually buy it!
This is it, the big one, the ultimate list – the ten best books I’ve read this year.
I have been preparing for this post for months actually. I take list writing VERY seriously and wanted to make sure this really was the definitive list of the best books I’ve read this year.
I think I’ve read 53 books in 2015 which I am very pleased with. I can’t remember how many I aimed for so I’m pretending it was 50 in which case, well done me, pat on my back, I reached my target. Although I also worked out that I have bought 73 books. Whoops.
Of those 53 there’s only a couple I actively regret reading. Both of which were from the Austen Project – Sense and Sensibility by Joanne Trollope and Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid. So number one lesson learnt this year is however much I will want to buy Emma by Alexander McCall Smith when I see it for sale I must resist the urge! But other than those two books I’m happy with everything I’v read. Which has only served made choosing a top ten an even trickier task.
There were some amazing books that only just missed the cut for top reads of the year – On Chesil Beach, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Longbourn and Middlesex to name but a few. But the below ten are just out of this world incredible. Books that are serious contenders for a coveted place on my Desert Island books.
10. Looking for Alaska by John Green
9. Saturday by Ian McEwan
8. How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran
7. The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan
6. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
5. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
4. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Top 10 Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish which I always think looks like great fun but I barely ever actually get round to! But this week’s topic of my Autumn TBR seemed manageable and here it is…
First off I should say that there is absolutely no way at all that I will stick to this. Not a chance. At all. And even if I did try I think 10 books might be a bit optimistic for me with my current reading pace.
I pick my next book based on what I’m in the mood for at that exact moment. So these are simply predictions of things that I could believe I might be in the mood for. Maybe. But probably not.
1. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
I’ve actually already started this and although I wouldn’t so far say I’m enjoying it as much as The Virgin Suicides it’s good enough to keep me coming back.
2. The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
I spent last night doing lots of those ‘The 100 books you need to read to be well-read’ and turns out I’m no where near as cultured as I thought. So a lot of these choices are based from that, this included.
3. Brave New World by Adolus Huxley
And this…
4. 1984 by George Owell
And this…
5. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
And this, which is a contender for longest standing member of the TBR list.
6. The Children Act by Ian McEwan
It has been too long since I last read an Ian McEwan. My binge earlier this summer put me off for a while but I think it’s time to get back on that horse.
7. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
I really want to like Agatha Christie. I like the idea of liking Agatha Christie. But it just hasn’t happened yet. However, I will not admit defeat until I’ve at least read this one.
8. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
I will read this! I will!
9. In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
I’ve never read any Judy Blume but I know she’s kind of a big deal in America and when I found this second hand I thought I might as well.
10. Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy
I really love Thomas Hardy and he’s definitely a contender for one of my favourite authors so I think it’s high time I read another of his books.
And now I can look back on this list in a few months time and know I’ve read not one of these!
So I’ve decided to start myself a little blogging feature. Although there’s only three posts so does that really count? Maybe series is a better word – a blogging series. But a UK series, not an American series because then I’d be writing 24 of them and now way could I think of that many. I should point out that I’m writing this having eaten nothing all day but drunk three lattes (because I’m camped out in Costa using their free wifi) and caffeine really affects me – I’m full on shaking as I type this – so this will in no way be well written and at some points it won’t even be coherent. And there will be lots of wandering off the point (like that thing above – what even is that about?).
Anyway, deep breath, focus on what you’re doing, Lizzy.
Basically these posts will be about those books that get an awesome hype – either the books that for a few months are just everywhere; shop windows, blog posts, Instagram, everywhere or the classics that have survived hundreds of years and maintained a fearsome reputation. This first one is the five books that absolutely lived up to their hype. No matter how many times I read these they never fail to impress. People can talk about them as much as they want and it will still never ever do them justice.
1. The Fault in our Stars by John Green
I really didn’t expect that much from this as I tend to like to run away from the crowd but there’s no denying this is a great book. Funny and sweet and (I imagine) a really realistic portrayal of life with cancer.
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
There is literally nothing wrong with this book. Nothing. The best love story ever written with the best characters, setting and language. Perfection in book form.
3. Atonement by Ian McEwan
So very very romantic. Just thinking about this book makes my heart break a little bit. And with a great twist at the end. If you haven’t read this you really need to.
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I actually read this at school, which is usually the death of any book, so it’s a sign of it’s greatness that even that couldn’t ruin it for me. It’s one of those books that everyone needs to read – not just a great story but historically significant too.
5. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. I found this such an addictive read that I even stopped watching a tennis match to finish it which for me is really saying something.
This is my response to this weeks ‘Top Ten Tuesday’ from The Broke and the Bookish. I always see other people doing these and think they look like great fun but I just never get round to it somehow. Well not so this week! This week I was completely on the ball. Apart from instead of a top ten I only have a top five. But can we just all pretend not to notice that, ok? Ok.
JANE AUSTEN
I’ve read everything she’s ever written – her well known novels, her unfinished novels, her letters to her sister, the short stories she wrote as a child – so although in numbers she might not be as high as some other authors, percentage wise it’s practically a full house.
Favourite: Pride and Prejudice of course!
JACQUELINE WILSON
I devoured Jacqueline Wilson novels as a teenager. My dad would present with the newest book mere days after it was first published, usually with the warning that I should probably wait until I was a little older to read it. I never listened and would have it finished in a matter of hours. And I’m very glad that when I read them now they haven’t lost any of the appeal.
Favourite: as a child Secrets but now Vicky Angel.
CECILY VON ZIEGESAR
The Gossip Girl series was one of my absolute favourites as a teenager. And then The It Girl and then The Carlyles. Of course this was before The CW got their hands on them, turned it into a TV series and in the process changed practically everything except the name. If you’ve only ever seen the TV series and never experienced the books then I’d recommend picking them up just to see how different they are – for example, Vanessa is supposed to be bald.
Favourite: The It Girl
IAN McEWAN
I certainly own enough Ian McEwan for him to deserve a place on this list but I have only read about half of what I own. One day I will finish his entire back catalogue – although it would be helpful if he’d stop publishing new ones!
Favourite: Atonement
PHILIPPA GREGORY
I was sitting here, racking my brain to come up with a fifth one for this list which is stupid really when Philippa Gregory is the only author I own enough books by to warrant her having her own shelf. I’ve read all of The Tudor Court series and am a book and a half short of finishing The Cousins’ Wars series. They’re not always that interesting, the characters and plots and descriptions can get a bit repetitive and they’re some of the ugliest covers on my shelves but they never fail to get me completely hooked.
Favourite: The Constant Princess
Had I done the full ten I would definitely have been dipping into some of my really early years reading – Dick King Smith, Roald Dahl, Anne Fine – and I wonder if that’s because as children we’re more likely to stick to the same authors or because children’s authors are more prolific?
Now this might be just a me thing because I do have quite a few weird quirks (the kind of thing that you always assume is normal until you say it out loud and the response is just a sea of blank faces) but when a book evokes a particular (or particularly strong) emotion I like to have a song to match the mood. Sometimes it happens naturally – I just happen to have had that song stuck in my head while I am reading it, or it came up on shuffle quite a lot. Sometimes it’s as simple as they have the same name or it was in the soundtrack to the film. And sometimes I make a conscious effort to hunt down the perfect match. But however it happened I can no longer listen to these songs without being reminded of the books.
I suppose the idea of this post is that if you’re thinking about reading any of these books then having the suggested song on in the background will in someway heighten the experience? I don’t know. Maybe this is just self-indulgence. I’d certainly be interested if you’ve read any of these books and listen to the song to see if you agree.
ANNA KARENINA by LEO TOLSTOY
I CAPTURE THE CASTLE by DODIE SMITH
THE HOBBIT by JRR TOLKEIN
ATONEMENT by IAN McEWAN
BROOKLYN by COLM TOIBIN
VALLEY OF THE DOLLS by JACQUELINE SUSANN
The end of July has really snuck up on me. But thinking back about everything that’s happened this month June seems like a lifetime ago. So before I dive in with my monthly round up of the books I’ve bought (which actually is a little thin on the ground) I’ll bend your ear about the other things that have been happening in my life over the last 31 days.
Right at the beginning of July I spent a wonderful 4 days in London with my mum. Not that you can ever spend a bad day in London – I’ve said before that it’s my favourite city in the world.
We go every year for Wimbledon which of course never disappoints. As long as the weather stays good. And this year it was perhaps a little too good when I had to walk around for the next week looking like a raspberry and wincing every time I moved thanks to some monstrous sunburn. But it was totally worth it.
Alongside the tennis we fitted in a shopping trip (obviously), explored bits of London I’d never seen before (read: we got lost), ate mukhwas in Masala Zone (which is without a doubt my favourite Indian restaurant in the country and why they can’t open a branch outside London is beyond me), met a uni friend for lunch who I hadn’t seen in about 6 months and I spent a glorious three hours sat in Regents Park reading my book and feeling like life just doesn’t get better than that.
And then once I was back to my regular life suddenly that got all exciting too when I moved into my very own little studio flat. Believe me you will become bored of seeing photos of it once I finally convince the landlord to let me hang pictures on the wall. Right now it looks a little too bare still for my tastes. But I love anything that gives me a legitimate reason to spend 6 hours in an Ikea.
And aside from those two big things I have also started a new job (which I’m still a little overwhelmed by as I have I actually responsibility – something I’ve never experienced before), tried confit duck for the first time (and I think it might be true love) and held a two day old baby, the first baby I have ever even been near, let alone held. So really, the six books that I’ve bought are far from the most exciting thing that has happened. But here they are anyway.
After lunch out with my friend I found myself in Kentish Town with 4 hours to kill. So I did what any self-respecting bookaholic would do and set off on the hunt for a bookshop. Within five minutes I had found four charity shops all with a wide selection of books, including this copy of How to Build a Girl for 95p. 95p!!! I thought things in the capital were supposed to be more expensive! I have both read and reviewed this book and through reviewing it discovered that I actually really enjoyed it. 95p very well spent.
Also bought from a charity shop in Kentish Town purely because it was oh so pretty. I started it the day I bought it which is practically unheard of for me. I finished it a couple of weeks later and still haven’t been able to stop thinking about. This has leapfrogged right to my top ten favourite books of all time. Plus it’s so pretty I spent two hours rearranging my bookshelves so that I’d be able to more easily see it.
Since Brooklyn was such a successful read I thought I’d try some more Colm Toibin. I read about two pages of this then decided it wasn’t what I was in the mood for.
Because I will buy anything Ian McEwan that I come across. Although I think I only need two more and I’ll have his complete back catalogue. Just need to find the motivation to actually read them all…
While I was still suffering from my Valley of the Dolls hangover – which I still haven’t quite got over – I desperately tried to hunt down any books that might be even slightly similar. Another Jacqueline Susann would have been ideal but I couldn’t find anything by her so I bought this instead. I knew nothing about it when I bought it. And other than that the author won a Nobel Prize (and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by a Nobel Prize winner before so that’s something) and that she’s considered something of a feminist I’m no better off now.
It took until I was 17 years old to discover that I absolutely love poetry. But until I bought this I only owned three poetry books myself, and two of those were by the same person. When I came across this collection second hand I was very excited as it looks nice (and I’m very shallow when it comes to books) and features some of my favourite poets – Shakespeare, Dickinson, Wilde and Rossetti.
Because you can afford to be a bit superficial when the covers are as pretty as these are.
These are the books that I sometimes pull off my shelves just to gaze adoringly at them. And to model for lots of Instagram posts. Ideally when I have my own house with miles of books shelves I’ll be able to arrange these facing out to properly show them off. For now I will content myself with a post of my top ten. (Yes, Atonement is on this list twice because yes, I do own two copies of the same book but look at them – how could I ever choose between them?)
1. I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE CAKE by SLOANE CROSLEY
2. ATONEMENT by IAN McEWAN (Film Edition)
3. PENGUIN POPULAR CLASSICS
4. LOOKING FOR ALASKA by JOHN GREEN
5. VALLEY OF THE DOLLS by JACQUELINE SUSAN
6. 1984 by GEORGE ORWELL
7. ATONEMENT by IAN McEWAN (War Edition)
8. JANE AUSTEN (Folio Society Editions)
9. THE ILLUSTRATED MUM by JACQUELINE WILSON
10. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by JRR TOLKEIN
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I'm All Booked
“Real life was something happening in her peripheral vision.”
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