Holiday reading



I was asked a couple of weeks ago about what would be good holiday reading from my bookshelf. I had a look through and picked out my favourites. 

What are yours? 

48 Shades of Brown by Nick Earl, Book Review



This book is not to be confused with any 50 shades of anything.  Nick Earls writes a great coming of age story about Dan.  

Dan's parents have taken an opportunity to work overseas during Dan's VCE year (year 12) and he is to stay with his aunty who is not much older than him.  He joins into this uni shared house with another uni girl Naomi who is only one year older than him.  

Unsure of how to relate with females and what may interest them, he finds himself researching a number of odd things to survive this adult world.  Nick Earl shows us the very insecure and sensitive side to a seventeen year old boy as Dan tries to settle in and falls in love.

It is a great story with themes of identity, relationships, coming of age and love. 

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo - Book Review

Well this was a bookclub book and it is a very confronting book.  Katherine Boo immerses herself in a slum in India and has produced this novel to show how world events can radically change people's lives - even the poorest people of the world.  She highlights the corruption, betrayal and devastation that exist in this world and the lack of hope, and ability to make decisions to change their lot that the poor have.

Having spent some time myself visiting slums in India with an aid organisation, I did find this quite a confronting book to read.  

There are some difficulties with this as a non-fiction book in that Boo takes us into the thoughts of the people who are living in the slums, leaving a seed of doubt as to how she could know the inner workings of their minds.  That being said, I think she has done a good job of highlighting the corruption that does exist in India (and probably many other third world countries)and the powerlessness of the world's poor.

A great insight to this desperate and hopeless world.

Writing Your Synopsis



So you think you have a great idea for a novel. 

You start writing and by chapter five you begin to wonder if you really have a story. Will you be able to keep it going and keep it be interesting for the length of a whole novel?  This was my case until I wrote my synopsis today.

There are so many ways to tackle this problem but one way is to write a synopsis. By doing a synopsis you will see very quickly whether or not there is enough interest in the story, whether the story is actually about something, a strong story line, strong and interesting characters and what point of view would be best.

The Longest Race by Ed Ayres Book Review


I was lucky enough to be asked to read this book for review.  It is not a book that I would normally read as I understood it first to be just a book about running when I received it (and I am definitely not a runner).  Once I got started into it, I realised that Ed Ayres had so much more to tell.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion - Book Review


I came across this funny romantic comedy by Graeme Simsion as he is one of my class mates in my writing and editing course.  First off I have to say I am incredibly surprised that he needs to be in a novel class as he is obviously a great writer.  This novel was written just last year and already is number one in the Independent Booksellers list!  I am ever so much in awe...

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn Book Review




This story had me enthralled from the moment I started to read it.  Gillian tells this thriller in two unreliable voices; Nick and Amy.  Nick and Amy are a young married couple who seem on the surface to love each other just an any other young couple.  Amy has gone missing much to Nick’s worry.  We hear from Amy through her diary entries that go back to before they met.  Nick goes to exhaustive lengths to find his wife who it seems is unable to be found, dead or alive.  We, as the reader are slowly let into Amy’s world in amongst Nick’s real time dilemma. 

Gillian has brilliantly crafted the characters in the novel.  I very much enjoyed Nick and Amy as well as Amy’s parents and Nick’s sister. Gillian has a wonderful twist to the story and then twists again.  She kept me on the edge, unable to put the book down.  A real pleasure to read.   I found it a very hard book to put down so much so that I was kept up until 2am reading on the last night of it.  Wonderful.  Another great bookclub book.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner Book Review




The walls around are made of metal…and move.  Surrounding this is a maze that no-one has made their way out of alive.  This is the world that James Dashner has set up in The Maze Runner.  Thomas, the main protagonist, arrives in a lift into this world with his memory wiped.  He finds this world only has teens, like him, and there is a hierarchy here that he needs to learn about.  Thomas has seeds of memory that he can’t shake – or form.  Some of the people here are very suspicious of him and he wonders about what his past may have been.  He feels compelled to run through the maze, a known very dangerous thing to do as people have died out there.  Another person arrives into this maze world and everyone is in shock as this time it is a girl; there have never been girls arrive before.  Fear and suspicion run rife. 

This is a brilliantly written book that hooked me in the whole way.  The characters are well developed with a very well planned plot.  The story runs at a fast pace with the reader left begging for more.  I am looking forward to reading the next one – The Scorch Trials.  

Book Review - Secret Scribbled Notebooks by Joanne Horniman





Reading Secret Scribbled Notebooks by Joanne Horniman I felt cheeky accidently picking up Kate’s private diaries.  Joanne does a great job of getting into Kate’s head to be able to divulge all of her inner most thoughts.  Horniman uses four points of view (three notebooks and typewritten pages) in addition to using the first person narrative enabling the reader to develop a close relationship to Kate, the seventeen year old narrator.  One of Kate’s notebooks is written as more of a fantasy of herself in third person.
 
Joanne uses a technique of a number of different notebooks (coloured yellow, red and blue) for Kate to divulge different secrets and thoughts.  The majority of the story however is written on The Wild Typewritten Pages (which we find out later she wrote with hindsight once she was given a typewriter). 

Kate is at point at transition point in her life wanting to make big decisions for herself.  She is thinking about love and what it means, and about home and where that is.   She is ready to explore these big themes as she finishes up her final year at school. 

I read it with a little scepticism about the truth in the story when it is delivered by Kate in her wild typewritten pages and notebooks as this technique allows the unreliable narrator to sneak through.  At points I also wondered about the idea of using so many different notebooks to tell the story. 

Having said all of that, Joanne Horniman writes a great story that takes us, the reader, into the mind of a girl in transition.  She takes us on a journey with Kate and we are given her inner most secrets along the way.  I was taken back to my own years of transition and the diaries I kept.

Have you read this and what did you think?

If you kept diaries as a teenager did you explore these issues and did anyone else ever get their hands on the diaries? 

Book Review: Notes from the Teenage Underground by Simone Howell




I enjoyed this novel of Simone Howell’s.  It is the classic struggle of a teenage girl who is in a friendship group of three struggling to find her own sense of identity.  Seventeen year old girl, Germaine (Gem or Gem-Gem as she is known by her friends) Gordon struggles to find people who like her and relate to her.  She loves movies, her hippy-feminist mother, her friends, Lo and Mira, and her co-worker, Dodgy, (at least she thinks she does) from the video store.  The main character Gem is tight with Lo and Mira and has been for a number of years.  Lo, Mira and Gem come up with a plan to do something radical to help draw people to them, whilst ensuring that they continue to be different to the mainstream (or Barcode people as referred to by Lo).  Lo has placed herself as the leader of the group, daring the others to take risks and playing them off against each other with their insecurities.  Lo is uncomfortable with the fact that Gem has a very close relationship with her mother, Bev, as she lacks this herself. 

Gem also works at the local video store with Dodgy and Marco where they all share a passion for movies and the process of making them.  Gem is desperate to be like everyone else, to fit in, even to the point of wanting to lose her virginity.  She uses films, haiku and a range of inspirational guides to discover the meaning of friendship and family.  Gem discovers that she is more comfortable behind the lens observing life around her.

Howell tells the story in the first person from Gem’s point of view which works very well with all of the introspection of a seventeen year old.  The chapters are short and to the point with great headings (ie Halo of authenticity - when Lo brings a mushroomed drunk Gem home to Bev and they both come out of it looking like angels).  Howell has captured the sense of the teen going through a transition so well; the tough decisions they need to make, the sacrifices, the friendships, and how they relate to the family and the world throughout.  Gem’s voice is spot on for a seventeen year old with the language that Howell has given her.

I could relate to the struggles of Gem and the tension of wanting to fit in with her peers, not wanting to change herself to the point of losing who she is and still being drawn to the loving relationship she has with her mother.  Gem is going through the moment of trying to understand who she is and where she fits into the world around her and which is something most teenagers struggle with.  

I enjoyed a number of things about this novel.  One was that it took me back to the teenage angst that so many of us went through or are going through and the realisations that come to us.  It is a great moment when Gem sees herself in Ponyface Roberts when Ponyface realises she was living the shadow of Bliss Dartford. 

‘I looked at her long, miserable face and suddenly saw myself.’

I also really enjoyed Gem’s relationship with her absent mentally ill drug taking father and the complexity there.  The only thing that bugged me a little was a slight feeling of implausibility to the truth of what was going on in Lo’s life. 

This would be a great book for older teenagers and adults wishing to reminisce about the trauma of those teen years.