Recent readings

Four books have recently been consumed by myself so I shall now review in my typical knowledgless manner.

Firstly My Best Friend’s Girl by Dorothy Koomson

I think I ought to give a bit of the blurb for you to get the picture:

Best friends Kamryn Matika and Adele Brannon thought nothing could come between them - until Adele did the unthinkable and slept with Kamryn’s fiance Nate. Worse still, she got pregnant and had his child. When Kamryn discovered the truth about their betrayal she vowed never to see any of them again.
Years later, Kamryn receives a letter from Adele asking her to visit her in hospital. Adele is dying and begs Kamryn to adopt her daughter Tegan. With a great job and a hectic social life, the last thing Kamryn needs is a five-year-old to disrupt things. Especially not one who reminds her of Nate. But with no one else to take care of Tegan and Adele fading fast, does she have any other choice? So begins a difficult journey that leads Kamryn towards forgiveness, love, responsibility and ultimately, a better understanding of herself.

A year ago I thought I’d give the Richard and Judy book club a go. This was one of the books that came in the package of 10 that were quite a bargain when bought from their website. I’m not sure it’s the kind of book I would buy based on the above blurb. For one thing, the comments given on the back cover are from “New Woman”, “Heat Magazine” and “Company” which says enough about the kind of book it will be. It did somewhat remind me of a couple of the books I’ve read on holiday that came free with a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine.

Don’t get me wrong, it was quite an enjoyable book. It would probably make a nice chick flick (not necessarily a romantic comedy, but you know the kind of thing). It was totally sentimental and the kid in it, Tegan, was unbelievably well behaved, cute and intelligent, especially for a kid that had supposedly lost their one and only parent. Completely formulaic - high-flying yuppy buisness-woman manageress suddenly thrown into single parenthood. Incorporated was a rather lame love-triangle situation with the ex-fiance and the new boyfriend that seemed a bit strange to me because I’m not sure why either of them really liked the main character in the first place.

Anyway I did enjoy it. A bit like the “Jack and Sarah” or “While You Were Sleeping” of books. Not brilliant but enjoyable enough for you to not fret about the quantity of your short life spent on them.

5 out of 10.

Next was a Christmas present from James that took me a while to get round to reading: Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay.

I’m not an enormous fan of Gordon Ramsay’s food because it seems awfully complicated and difficult on his programmes, even when he is simultaneously professing how easy his demonstration proves it to be. I’m sure it tastes delicious but I’m not sure I’d be able to reproduce it quite as well as I can with Delia or Nigella’s recipes however I must admit to not actually trying. I don’t have any of his cookery books. I do enjoy his TV programmes so it was nice to receive his auto-biography as a present so that I could find out more about him.

I was vaguely aware of his short stint as a professional footballer before receiving this book so I knew he’d had a few other experiences to speak of but I wasn’t quite prepared for the colourful life he described. I have even more respect for what he has achieved having read the difficulties he went through to get where he is. It proves that if you really want something, you can do it if you really go for it.

Obviously it’s a biography so you have to look at it slightly differently when scoring. I just go by how interesting I found it…I guess that implies that if you’ve had a boring life, don’t write a biography! It’s nice to read some biography and factual books every now and then. I do like biography a lot and most of the time it’s the ones written by people who aren’t famous (for any other reason than writing their biography) that are the best ones.

Anyway I give Gordon a 7 out of 10 for having an interesting life. He’d probably tell me to F-off with my 7 out of 10 but isn’t that why his fans like him?

Next is a book I really should have read ages ago. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

It occurred to me recently that although I thought I knew basically all there was to know about what happens in Nineteen Eighty-Four, with Big Brother, proles, Room 101 etc. I’d never actually read it.

First published in 1949, you can really tell the influence that the war had on it. I was surprised at how easy it was to read. I knew it would be a dark story but I didn’t realise that it was going to be quite that dark and actually pretty damn scary. Throughout the book I was sufficiently worried for Winston that he would be discovered and have to face the consequences! To be honest there wasn’t a great wealth of plot-line. I think it is supposed to be more of a description on how society could turn out if we aren’t careful. A great proportion of the book just describes the life that the main character Winston seems to have to endure.

It was difficult not to compare the happenings in Nineteen Eighty-Four to what we all see gradually happening in front of us today. There is a quote from the Independent printed on the back of the Penguin Modern Classics edition I have which is quite thought-provoking;

“The book of the twentieth century … haunts us with an ever-darker relevance”.

8 out of 10.

Lastly of this batch we have The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

I had no clue what this book was about before reading it. It was to be a complete surprise and a surprise it was considering its fame.

Weird as hell is the only way I can describe it. I was getting further and further through thinking “the story will start to unfold soon”. I got the last chapter and thought “something momentous is going to happen at the end of the book” but it didn’t. I finished it and just thought “um…ok, what was that all about then?” That’s kinda how I have been left feeling about it. What on earth was that?!

Some websites claim that Holden Caulfield is a normal teenager going through general teenage angst. I don’t think I agree with that. He’s not normal, he’s weird as hell and possibly a little bit mentally deranged. Everything in the known universe either depresses him or drives him crazy. I really did think the guy was going to be declared unstable or something before the end of the book.

I recommended James didn’t bother reading it because I can tell he probably wouldn’t like it. It’s a really short book so give it a read if you fancy reassuring yourself that you’re not a total weirdo.

3 out of 10.

The Gospel According To Chris Moyles

James very kindly gave this to me for Christmas. It is Chris Moyles’s first book and is not a full autobiography. It is just the story of his career as a DJ. He doesn’t really touch on personal stuff at all which was a bit of a disappointment as the one thing I was hoping for was to hear a bit more about his girlfriend Sophie and how they got together etc.

This book is definitely for people who like him already. I can imagine most of my friends hating him, however I unashamedly do listen to him every weekday morning on Radio 1 and he suceeds in making me laugh. I also listen to his podcast when walking home from work and that makes me laugh too. His book wasn’t concentrating on being funny…I can imagine him writing something like that in the future ala Jeremy Clarkson. This book was about his story and it was interesting for a fan.

I give this book for my enjoyment factor an 7.5 out of 10. For writing quality and length it probably comes to no more than a 1 out of 10 but hey, it’s his first book and he’s a DJ not an author! It was obviously all for the money but I enjoyed it.

The Time Traveler’s Wife

I actually read this book a year ago when we went to Spain on holiday over Christmas. It is The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. The story is so individual that I will just give you a little bit of the blurb on the back:

“This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into the past or future.”

Sounds kinda weird and maybe a bit silly, but it’s actually done really well. I think I really related to the main character of Henry due to the descriptions of how the attacks come on suddenly and unexpectedly.

I give this book a 9 out of 10.

The Righteous Men

Another book that I read quite a while ago was The Righteous Men by Sam Bourne. It’s about a journalist who works for the New York Times. He begins to investigate a series of murders and is launched into trouble when his wife is kidnapped.

It has a religious theme to it which means it has suffered from a lot of comparison with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Even some of the quotes on the back of the book refer to it e.g. “More readable than The Da Vinci Code”. It’s not really anything like The Da Vinci Code and I think the publisher did quite a bit of band-waggon jumping in the hope that it would sell more. Inevitably it seems that any book which even touches religion suffers this fate at the moment.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It’s not a masterpiece but it kept me reading. I felt as though I really got to know the characters and I didn’t really know what was going on until the very end, which was probably because I often don’t correctly guess what’s going to happen.

I give this book 7 out of 10.

The Abortionist’s Daughter

Several months ago I read a book that I never wrote about. I feel I should because I always seem to give the books I write about a good review and high score! Thought I should mix it up a bit by telling you about a bad book that I recommend you certainly do NOT read.

The Abortionist’s Daughter - Elisabeth Hyde

This book was appalling! It was basically a murder “mystery” but it was quite clear from half-way through who had done it and even then it wasn’t believable. I thought to myself “please don’t let it be them because that would be crap” but then it was them.

The daughter of the title was a teenager in flashbacks and at present a university student. The dialogue between the teenagers in the book was aboslutely awful and completely unrealistic. I cringed when reading it! The adult characters were so pathetic. It just totally spoiled it. The only character I liked in any way was the abortionist herself and I doubt I’ll be giving anything away by telling you that she’s the one who dies! (She dies at the very beginning of the book and everything else is flashback.)

I was surprised this book was so bad. It was on Richard and Judy’s summer read list and normally they don’t choose things that are completely rubbish.

I give this book a 1.5 out of 10. Do not bother reading.

Jane Eyre

Last night I finally finished reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

It has taken me quite a while to read - I think about 7 weeks of reading a bit each night. It is relatively long compared to a lot of modern novels and I did spend quite a bit of time looking words up in the dictionary as I went along! I’m glad I did that though because that made it far more enjoyable.

About a third of the way into the book I decided to stop reading the footnotes because they started giving away plot developments! This most displeased me. Most of the other classics I have bought are the cheaper copies which don’t include footnotes so I won’t have that problem in future.

I think in general, it was a fairly plodding story and was basically as I expected it to be. The second half was particularly elongated. Overall I think I give it a 7/10.

The Cuckoo’s Egg

Yesterday I finished reading The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll. Yes finally I read it! James has been nagging me to read this for years now…literally. I’m not sure why I didn’t read it sooner because it was really very good.

It is the true story of Clifford Stoll, an astronomy academic at Berkeley, California as he follows the exploits of a mysterious hacker using the uni systems to infiltrate military and secret service systems across the USA! The book is quite technical from a normal person’s point of view because it is set in the Jumping Jack Flash / War Games computer age - mid 1980s. Before the internet, before broadband and pretty much before microsoft! Clifford describes everything the hacker does in Unix, Vax, VMS etc commands. He describes what the commands do in the book (obviously i’m no Unix expert) however i can see a non-technical person getting a bit bored or lost…then again would they even be reading this book in the first place?

A very good book. Definitely worth a read. Thankfully James warned me not to read the blurb on the back because it totally gives away the ending of the book!! How stupid is that you book publishing people?! I give this book an 8/10.

Empress Orchid

Yesterday I finally finished reading Empress Orchid by Anchee Min. I started it quite a while ago and put it down for several weeks for some reason. I then picked it up again this weekend and read the whole second half of the book since then (which is fast for me!).

The story is about a peasant girl who gets chosen to become one of the Emperor’s 3000 concubines and one of the 8 chosen wives. It gives a fascinating insight into how life would have been within Peking’s Forbidden City in the 19th Century and details Orchid’s rise to the position of Empress against the backdrop of political unrest in China as the Europeans invade (such evil British!).

The book takes quite a few chapters to get going, however I’m glad I stuck with it because the second half was really interesting and quite exciting. I may have enjoyed it more than others do because I do enjoy reading about the culture of the far east. I may try reading her autobiography at some point and maybe one of her other novels.

I think I give it a 7/10.

Books

Books i’m thinking of buying:-

Books I’m Thinking Of Buying