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Carole Matthews – The Chocolate Lovers’ Christmas
Silly me didn’t realise when I bought this book that it was book 3 in a series, I was just at the supermarket and wanted to get some Christmassy books to get me in the festive spirit. So my review should probably be taken with a pinch of salt as I don’t know any of the back-story to the lives of the women in the book, and I would have probably felt a closer relationship to them if I’d already spent 2 books getting to know them.
As it was, I found the women to be a bit whiny and self-centered and I couldn’t find myself feeling attached to them at all. The main character of the book supposedly is with the love of her life, yet she spends the whole book referring to him as ‘Crush’ instead of his name, or a more appropriate nickname for someone she was hoping to marry. Maybe it’s a reference to the previous book that I completely missed, but it left me feeling like she was a bit vacuous, a feeling replicated across the other leading ladies.
I think I’ve been spoilt by the sci-fi/fantasy books I’ve been reading in that I no longer expect all books to have a perfectly tied up happy ending, so when this book ended with every single woman in the club ending up with her perfect man, I couldn’t help but sigh and think ‘really?!?!’.
Obviously it’s nice to escape into a dream-world for a while and that book is perfect for this. A group of women whose connection is a chocolate shop filled with delicious goodies, and gentlemen round the corner for every lady seems like an ideal place to be.
Unfortunately for me, the Christmassy element of the book which I was so hoping for was a little lacking, as Christmas wasn’t really an integral part of the story, apart from the fact that it gave the characters an ideal place to congregate at the very end of the story on Christmas Day, so the book didn’t really give me the festive boost I was hoping for!
Nevertheless, it was pretty enjoyable and worth a read – probably more so if you’ve already read the first two in the series. I’ve read a few other Carole Matthews books in the past so I knew that she’d be a safe bet for an easy read, and I wasn’t disappointed; I was just looking for a bit more.
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Robin Hobb – Assassin’s Apprentice
I received this book as a free book from Kindle about a year ago, and it’s taken me this long to get around to reading it.
I must admit that it took me a long time to warm to the book, it didn’t catch my attention enough to keep me drawn in so I stopped reading it for about 6 weeks and just didn’t feel any desire to go back to it like I do if I’m entranced by a story.
But when I finally got back to it this week and decided to finish it off, I actually found the story to be quite gripping. The second half of the book is definitely more fast-paced than the first, so it involves a bit of a slog to get to the good stuff. It’s the start of a series, so I understand that it takes a while for the world-building and character development, but I would have liked it to get moving a bit quicker.
But despite my complaints, I was thoroughly captivated finishing off the book this week, lots of drama and intrigue and unexpected twists in the plot which kept me guessing to the end. I’d definitely be interested in reading the next book in the series, but maybe not just yet. I’ve got to read 12 books in 13 days if I want to meet my yearly target, that’s going to be hard enough without getting stuck on a potential slow-mover!
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C.S. Lewis – The Screwtape Letters
For the last 12 weeks, I’ve been doing the Alpha Course at Pudsey Parish Church (it finished last night – boooo!). There’s a really interesting group of people on my table, including a lovely lady called Eunice who recommended the Adrian Plass book I read previously. She also recommended this book a few times, saying that I’d really enjoy it and that it was very funny. As her last recommendation was so good, I went straight out and bought this the next day.
Let me tell you, I was not disappointed!! The book is a collection of letters from an imagined ‘senior’ devil to his junior, instructing him in the ways of tempting people to his side. The letters are a telling off from the senior devil, letting his junior know all the things he’s doing wrong in trying to release ‘his’ human from the grasps of God (aka The Enemy).
It’s all a very sly way of letting us know the things we’re doing wrong in life. We tend to think of sins as the big things, but Lewis very cleverly highlights all those little things we’re doing wrong too, holding a mirror up to ourselves and prodding us to examine our lives a little closer.
As Eunice had said, the book made me chuckle in many places, just from how spot-on it was. But most of my time reading this book was spent thinking about how many of the things were things that I am sometimes guilty of, a definite eye-opener.
There was one part of the book which stood out to me more than any. Particularly poignant in today’s body obsessed world, even though it was written more than 70 years ago!
“We have engineered a great increase in the licence which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhibition on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn, the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be. Yet at the same time, the modern world is taught that it is being ‘frank’ and ‘healthy’ and getting back to nature. As a result, we are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist – making the role of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible. What follows you can easily forecast!”
I wonder if he knew all that time ago that his quote would still be relevant now. Maybe we should all take heed of his advice. Definitely we should all read his book, it was absolutely fantastic!
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Adrian Plass – The Growing Up Pains of Adrian Plass
For the last couple of months, Cameron and I have been going to the Alpha Course at Church. It’s been really interesting to learn more about Christianity, and it’s been made even better by having such a good group of people on our table for the discussions after the talk, it’s really become the highlight of my week, I look forward to it so much.
This author was recommended to me by a lady on my table called Eunice. She’s so wise and everything she says is so considered, so when she told me that I should read something by Adrian Plass, I didn’t even hesitate. Thankfully, our Church has a book stall at the back, so I picked up a book which contains both this and another book in one and started straight away.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the first book in the compilation, which was written in 1989. As Eunice said, Adrian Plass has a way of writing that is so pleasing. The book made me smile and it brought me to tears, but it was an open and honest account of the authors discovery and development of his faith. He’s lived a very interesting life, but it has had it’s ups and downs and he hasn’t hid any of it from us in writing this book.
At less than 200 pages long, it wasn’t nearly long enough to satisfy my need for fantastic writing like this, so I’m very glad that this came as a compilation with another book, Why I Follow Jesus, which was written in 2010.
If I was to try and list all the quotes from the book that resonated with me, we could be here a long time, so I’ll just go with the one that has stuck with me the most:
“Whatever I may say here, the things that happen to me are not the things that will happen to the next man and I have no right to try to crush him into the little box of my own experience.”
I think we’re all guilty of this, unable to see what someone may be going through if we can’t fit it into the mold of something that we’ve experienced in the past, a very important quote to remember, I think.
Before I read the next Plass book, I’m taking a break to read The Screwtape Letters, also recommended to me by Eunice after our session on evil and the devil at Alpha Course yesterday. I want to read it while the talk is still fresh in my mind.
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Prayers for Peace (and a bit of a rant)
After the horrific attacks in Paris last week, it seems like most of the world has reacted with compassion towards the victims and their families, as well as towards those involved in the emergency response to the incidents.
However, some things that I have seen have been quite frankly disturbing. Someone that I previously considered an ‘okay guy’ with whom I was friends on Facebook, shared the following image:
I tried to report this image to Facebook, but apparently it doesn’t violate their ‘community standards’ and isn’t classed as hate speech. Baffling, right? I can’t help but wonder what the response would have been if someone of another religion had posted the same photo with Christians instead of Muslims.
But worse than the image itself was the comments section underneath. I know you can say ‘never read the comments on the internet’, but some of the comments below this image would have had people arrested if they’d been said in public. I was horrified. If I was a Muslim and I knew that people making these comments were people I could walk past on the street, that would make me quite fearful.
People who don’t understand Islam have decided that they can condemn all Muslims due to the actions of a minority of people who call themselves Muslim but in fact are fundamental nut-jobs. We would never dream of saying that every Christian must be adhering to the same values as a so-called ‘Christian’ extremist group like the KKK, so why would we apply the same logic to Isis?
My heart goes out to those people who are now being persecuted due to the views of those with extremist views not representative of the religion that they follow. If we start to alienate people based solely on their religion, the terrorists have won, and we can’t allow that to happen. Hitler tried to convince the world that all Jews must be eradicated, we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking it’s okay to start doing something similar.
I’d like to pray (and for you to pray) for protection for those people of other religions who are being unfairly persecuted and for the peace and understanding that we need to come together as a community and show these terrorists that they can’t win.
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In all things, PRAY!
Our Church service on Sunday was about how we shouldn’t just turn to God as a last resort, he should be our first port of call. And not just when we’re in trouble or need help, but when things are going good and we’re happy too. So rather than saying ‘God, I’ve tried everything else and I really need your help’, we should be saying ‘God, thank you for the things that are going well right now’.
So it was quite good timing to see this in my instagram feed today, perfectly aligned with the message of the sermon.
(You can click through the image to see it on Instagram)
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Brandon Sanderson – Steelheart
A week ago, I was stood in Waterstones torn between buying the two Stormlight Archive books, or whether to buy this. In the end, I settled on buying this and the first of the Stormlight books, mainly because the Stormlights are so big I didn’t think I could carry two of them around for the rest of my shopping trip!!
And it turns out that this was a very good choice! It was much shorter than other Brandon Sanderson books I’ve read at less than 400 pages, but oh how I wish there was more!
I was enthralled throughout, Sanderson has a knack for writing books which don’t ever leave you with a ‘convenient’ place to stop, which meant that on more than one occasion, I had to force myself to stop reading when my lunch break was over!
The story was really fast paced, so there were quite a few times when I had to slow myself down to stop myself from skim-reading to get to the next bit. I think books like Sanderson’s should be appreciated, not just blitzed through and I had to keep reminding myself of that.
With such a fast paced book, it would be easy to assume that you can guess what’s going to happen next, but there were so many surprises, particularly towards the end where I just had to give up guessing because I don’t think I was right a single time!!
The book is set in near-future Chicago, after Calamity arrived and the city was plunged into darkness. Usually, when reading books like this, you’re seeing the story from the perspective of the people with ‘special powers’ (like Mistborn), so it was strange in this case that you’re actually seeing the book from the point of view of someone trying to bring about their downfall.
Ever since David’s dad was killed by an epic called Steelheart, David has been hell-bent on getting revenge. While building up a huge portfolio of knowledge regarding the epics and their weaknesses, David decides that the best way to get payback is to join a group called the Reckoners, a group of people who are taking out the epics one-by-one to try and free the people from their oppressive rule.
But when David finally gets his chance to join them, it seems like some within the team are not happy he is there, especially when he turns their agenda to align with his own personal vendetta.
I’m not going to get much further into the plot, because I don’t want to accidentally give away any spoilers, and since I’m so excited by this book, I think it’s quite likely that will happen if I carry on any further!
Apparently, book 2 in this series comes out in November, which is great news! There is a book 1.5, but only in hardback, not paperback, and it costs £9 for what is essentially half a book (only 196 pages). I think I’ll buy the kindle version at 99p instead to keep me going!
It’s going to be Sanderson-tastic for the next while, with the new Mistborn coming out in less than 2 weeks, and Stormlight sitting on my shelves to read too, I can’t wait!!
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Alpha Course!
My church is running the Alpha Course, starting a week on Wednesday (30th September). I’ve looked into it a few times in the past, so I’m excited to finally be giving it a go! There’s already 72 people signed up for it, and the more the merrier, so if you want to join in, read more about it on the Church website, or watch the promo videos below:
http://www.pudseyparish.org.uk/welcome/special-events/alpha.php
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Lena Dunham – Not That Kind of Girl
I came into this book with high hopes for a biography of an intriguing woman. I was given a Girls Series 1 & 2 boxset for Christmas this year and I remember quite liking it, although it occurs to me now that I never finished series 2, which is possibly telling of how much I really (dis)liked it.
My impression of Dunham after finishing this book is of an egotistical, entitled young woman who doesn’t believe that anything she does wrong could ever be her fault. I found the book very whiny in tone, and for huge chunks of the book, she was so up herself I’m surprised she could even reach her keyboard to continue writing.
I thought the book would be an honest account of growing up in New York with already famous parents and growing into a major player in American TV, all while not conforming to traditional hollywood ideals of beauty, but after finishing the book, it didn’t feel like half the things she wrote about were even true, some stories were so far-fetched that they must be made up, surely?
Before starting, I’d read a little about some of the ‘controversial’ stories in the book, but to be honest, if they did actually happen, it was just a case of a young girl being curious as young girls are. Nothing inappropriate here, move along please. The innapropriateness, I found, came from her being seemingly unable to take the blame for situations that got out of control.
Every sexual/romantic encounter that she wasn’t happy with took on a tone of assault/accusation towards the man involved. And obviously, if that’s what happened, then it was terrible, but I got the feeling that a lot of facts were glossed over to try and portray Dunham in the best light.
I don’t remember a single point while reading this book where it didn’t feel like Dunham was shouting ‘Look at me, look at how edgy and cool I am’. I just couldn’t take it anymore, and from 70 pages into the book, I was just desperate to get to the end so I could move on and put this book far behind me. I hate to give up on a book halfway through because some do manage to redeem themselves by the end, but I truly had to slog to get to the final page of this one.
I admit, I’m probably not the target audience for this book, so maybe that was to blame. Yes, I am a 20-something woman, but I think I have the brain of a 60-something, more happy sitting in and reading with a cup of tea than going out, drinking and taking drugs to have a good time. So I imagine that while many people would love this book, I’m just not one of them.
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Karen Miller – The Awakened Mage
I was absolutely blown away by this book. After The Innocent Mage ended on such a massive cliffhanger, I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into this and find out what happened to Gar and Asher and everyone else.
Whereas The Innocent Mage started off quite slowly, I didn’t have too many problems with the pacing of this book, although as I got about 2/3 of the way through, I did worry about how the author was going to fit in everything I wanted to happen.
I do feel that the book may have been better off as a trilogy, spending more time on the development of the magical backstory, and spending a bit more time with the characters after the epic finale. After all the drama of the last 200 pages, it did feel like it wrapped up a little too quickly.
Throughout the book, the main characters are put in peril but somehow always seem to end up coming out relatively unscathed, so I was quite surprised when Miller went a little ‘Game of Thrones-y’ at the end, killing off characters who I would never have thought would meet such a fate. I think I actually gasped a couple of times when I was reading, it was just so unexpected!
Having finished this book, I decided to look at the other reviews on Goodreads to see if everyone else was as surprised by the end as I was, but there seems to be an overwhelming glut of negative reviews. I have no idea how people can dislike this book so much, I thought it was gripping from front to back, and not as formulaic as some I have read.
There are three other books in the same series, but I believe these may be set before the two I’ve read. I’ll definitely be looking to pick those up and read them (as soon as I’ve cleared down my to-read pile a bit)!
Louise Douglas
(I've got no) Shelf Control…
Louise Douglas 