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Review: Helen Fielding – Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
I had extremely high hopes for this book after having loved the first two Bridget Jones books, but I’ve left this book with a bad taste in my mouth, a taste of disappointment and things not quite going my way.I think part of it was probably that in the first two books, Bridget is about 30, much closer to my age. But in Mad About the Boy, Bridget is the other side of fifty, with two children, suddenly a (SPOILER ALERT) single parent, and completely out of control of her life. I found it quite unrelateable if I’m honest, which meant that I didn’t feel any real connection to the book and I didn’t steam through it in one sitting like the others, at times having to force myself to pick it up and read it. I didn’t feel the same sense of urgency to turn the page and find out what was going to happen next.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love Fielding’s writing, the characters are all perfectly brought to life and the plot is smart, witty and surprising, but after reading the book, I kind of wish I’d not read it and left myself with the happy picture from the end of The Edge of Reason. And I know that Mad About the Boy had its own (slightly predictable) happy ending, but it wasn’t the happy ending that I wanted for Bridget, and I guess that’s the thing that stung me the most. I think I would now like to see another book to see where this happy ending takes Bridget, and if she can ever truly have her happy-ever-after, but I would guess that in truly bumbling Bridget style, nothing will ever run smoothly…
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Rodley to Apperley Bridge on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal
It rained massively yesterday (as you can probably see from my pictures), but when I woke up this morning I could see glorious blue sky out of my window (I really need to hang my blinds back up again!). I decided that I couldn’t really waste such beautiful weather, so I went for a walk along the canal from Rodley to Apperley Bridge and back, just over 5 miles in about 2 hours.
The blue sky was slightly deceptive since it was still absolutely freezing with a very brisk wind, but it made for a lovely walk. I just about managed to avoid a sponsored walk which was happening along the canal at the same time as my walk, I just spent the last mile weaving in and out of them all walking the other way. Definitely a walk I would do again, so much more peaceful than walking along the roadside.
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Recipe: Fisherman’s Pie with Leeky Mash
(A Hairy Bikers Recipe). Serves 4.
Ingredients
For the filling
1 medium head of broccoli, cut into small florets
350g thick white fish fillets (I used Basa fillets)
150g smoked fish fillets (I used smoked Basa fillets)
400ml semi-skimmed milk
4 tbsp cornflour
4 tbsp cold water
150g cooked, peeled prawns
salt and pepper to tasteFor the mash
600g floury potatoes (such as King Edwards or Maris Pipers)
20g butter
2 medium leeks (trimmed and cut into slices)
3 tbsp semi-skimmed milk
salt and pepper to tasteMethod
Peel the potatoes and cut into 4cm chunks. Put the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover them with cold water. Bring the water to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 18-20 minutes until the potatoes are tender.Meanwhile, melt the butter in a non-stick frying pan and fry the leeks for 5 minutes until softened but not coloured, stirring often. Drain the potatoes, then tip them back into the pan and mash with the milk and seasoning until smooth. Stir in the leeks and set aside.
Preheat the over to Gas mark 7/Fan 200 degrees. Cook the broccoli in boiling water for 2 minutes, then drain in a sieve under running water until cold. Set aside.
Cut the fish fillets into chunks of about 3cm and set aside. Pour the 400ml of milk into a large non-stick saucepan and bring it to a gentle simmer. Mix the cornflour and water together in a small bowl until smooth, then pour it into the warm milk. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook over a low heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until the sauce is thick. Season with salt and lots of pepper.
Add the fish pieces to the sauce and cook for 2 minutes, stirring only occasionally so the fish doesn’t break up too much. Add the prawns and broccoli to the mixture and stir gently until evenly combined.
Spoon the fish mixture into a 1.5 litre shallow ovenproof dish. Top with the leaky mash mixture, starting around the edge of the dish and working your way into the middle. Place the dish on a baking tray and cook in the oven for 35-40 minutes until lightly browned, bubbling and hot throughout.
Nutrition
Calories: 460
Carbs: 42g
Fat: 12g
Protein: 32g
Sugar: 7g
Sodium: 397mg -
October on Instagram
Pictures from October on my Instagram. Follow me here – @louiser89
Sun rising over the airport behind Yeadon Tarn.
#fog #yeadontarn
Freezing cold wind blowing off the cobwebs at Yeadon Tarn.
Guiseley Railway
St. Oswald’s Church, Guiseley.
Cocktail time!
New hair, still unsure
Wetherby Whaler. Never been before, definitely much younger than the rest of the clientele…
Perfect Saturday night trio!
My two favourite boys
My favouritest of all
A very ghost like @tylerhilton rocking it at The Wardrobe in Leeds tonight. Blooming awesome!
Trying on suits last night 😉
Hot chocolate in bed, hotel room to myself. #lovely
Loving the talk by @hyper_linda about @codeclub at #TIDE2013, very inspiring! And it all started in the pub
All programmers are dull weirdos? I don’t think a dull weirdo made this epic website! #TIDE2013 #teachkidstocode #programmingiscool
Our lovely hotel last night. #scarborough
Watching the surfing lessons after #tide2013, not quite brave enough to venture in myself though!
Ahoy! Pirates?
I don’t think he’s missed me that much…
Pretty sure we were the coolest kids in the world 😉
Birthday Girl 🙂
Birthday Girl 🙂
Me and Cameron
Cake!!
Yummy post-work treat! -
Review: Malala Yousafzai (with Christina Lamb) – I Am Malala
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably heard about Malala last year. She was shot in the head by the Taliban on the way home from school, and was flown to the UK to be treated in Birmingham.But until I read this book, I didn’t really know the details of what had happened, or quite how seriously she was injured. When she was shot, the bullet entered through her left eye, and ended up in her left shoulder. The bullet missed her brain, but the bone fragments didn’t and she ended up with major swelling on her brain, so bad that they had to remove an 8cm square section of her skull to relieve the pressure. Thankfully the actions of the doctors in Pakistan and Birmingham saved her life and she lived to tell the tale.
And what a tale it was. I know that Malala collaborated with a writer called Christina Lamb on the book, but you could tell she was clearly a very clever young woman, educated on the history of her country and passionate to make a change. Which is unfortunately why she was targeted. As a young girl in Pakistan, she was eager to learn and be educated, not an unreasonable thing to wish for. However, the taliban had other ideas and believed that school should be for boys, and girls should stay at home. In the years before she was shot, Malala was quite outspoken about the need for girls to be educated, writing a secret diary for the BBC and attending meetings with politicians. So it wasn’t coincidence that she was the one that was shot, she was specifically targeted for wanting to make a better life for herself, her friends and thousands of other girls in her position.
The history included in the book was fascinating to me, I obviously knew little bits about it from the news coverage over here, but that was obviously with a massively western bias, and it was enlightening to see it from the perspective of the people it was actually affecting. And to learn more about Muslim and Pakistani traditions was brilliant, opening my eyes greatly.
I knew before reading that it was going to be difficult to read, knowing in advance the horror that was going to happen at the end, but I did believe that it would ultimately have a happy ending. But not so much. Malala and her family may now be living in a leafy suburb of Birmingham, attending school and getting all the care that they need, but they are now thousands of miles away from their family and friends, displaced from their home with none of their possessions, and not able to return. Being able to skype with their relatives may help a little bit, but Malala’s mum doesn’t speak English and is isolated as a result. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for them. Great joy at not losing their daughter/sister, but missing home every single day.
As I said before, you can tell that Malala is extremely clever, and the book was a beautiful, if heart-wrenching read. Even if it was just to learn more about the history, I would highly recommend this book to open your eyes.
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Recipe: Chicken and Rice Bake
Ingredients (for two)
4 chicken thighs or 2 chicken breasts
4 rashers of bacon
125g rice
1 onion
1 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove
1/2 tsp turmeric
250ml chicken stock (I use one knorr stock pot in 250ml water)
Salt and pepper to tasteMethod
Wrap the chicken in bacon and secure with a cocktail stick. Alternatively (if using breast), dice the chicken and chop the bacon. Heat the oil in an ovenproof pan. Brown the chicken over a high heat for five minutes, then remove the chicken from the pan.Add the rice to the pan and cook on a low heat, stirring constantly for one minute. Add the onion (uncooked), garlic, turmeric, stock, salt and pepper and stir well. Arrange the chicken over the rice and press down gently.
Cover with foil, and then put the lid on the pan. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 (Gas Mark 4) for 50 minutes.
Nutritional Information
Calories: 559
Carbs: 70g
Fat: 14g
Protein: 38g
Sugar: 5g
Sodium: 1,225mg -
Review: J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
I’ve been meaning to read this book for a long time, but when it came to it last year I decided that with my challenge to read 100 books in a year, something as long as this wouldn’t be wise. Although to be honest, if family problems hadn’t stopped me from reading, I would have been finished in about 4 days.I absolutely loved the book, the world that Tolkien creates is so vividly real that I was completely absorbed by it, even more so than the film, which I have seen many times. I decided to forget about the film while I was reading so I went in with no preconceptions, which I was very glad about. Entire chunks of the book were missed out from the film, like the enchanting Tom Bombadil, who I absolutely adored.
I’ve tried to read this book a couple of times in the past but never got more than 40 pages in, but I have absolutely no idea what my problem was, maybe I had my head stuck too far up the chick-lit branch that it never stood a chance.
Writing a review of this book is really hard, I don’t think I could do justice to the sheer delight of the shire, the enchantment of Rivendell, or the creeping feeling of terror every time I read the Black Riders. So so so much more magical than seeing it on screen, even if the characters in my head do look exactly like Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen and co. Besides, I’m pretty sure we all know the plot of the book without me writing it her.
A big part of me wishes that I’d had the opportunity to read the books before I saw the film, but given that I was about 12 when the first film was released and still reading books akin to ‘Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging’, I’m not sure I would have appreciated Tolkien’s masterpiece.
Really really looking forward to starting The Two Towers now!
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Review: Beth Labonte – What Stays in Vegas
I seem to be getting through Kindle books faster than regular books recently, mostly because I can read them on my lunch break at work without getting a million questions about what I’m reading and suggestions for what I should read next. Don’t get me wrong, I love finding new books, but my ‘to-read’ list is longer than I care to admit to.Tessa is having a bad day. Sent to deliver some documents and an hour away from the office in the worst weather, she gets a phone call to say that actually, although she is now halfway there, the documents don’t need sending after all. And to make matters worse, when she returns to work, she’s summoned to her boss’ office with no idea what he wants. But her day takes a turn for the better, and she finds out she’s been sent from her dreary office in Boston to the office in Las Vegas for a three month maternity cover post by personal invitation of Kendra Stoltz, the head of the Vegas office.
Tessa is quite apprehensive about leaving. She’s had a crush on Nick, a guy in her office, for such a long time and even though he is now married, she thinks that his marriage might be on shaky ground leaving a gap open for her to pick up the pieces. But when she gets to Vegas, she finds that Kendra has gone all out to make her feel welcome; a fancy hotel suite, well stocked bar, and a corner office with a fabulous view of Vegas. And to top it off, Tessa hits it off with Chris, one of the guys in the office next door.
But we know that things never run smoothly in these books, and Nick turns up at Tessa’s hotel, ruining things with Chris. And Kendra is going off the rails too, leaving Tessa to try and keep things on track. But can she succeed? Well I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that I was quite pleasantly surprised.
All round, it was quite a good book. It definitely kept me turning the pages, but I didn’t feel too much connection to the characters to pull me in and make me care about what happened. Not bad for a free book though.
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Review: Susan Willis – The Bake Off
This book was a hastily downloaded free kindle book to fill up an empty lunch break, although I didn’t quite expect it to be short enough to read entirely in an hour! I was most disappointed that the last 25% of the book was actually a teaser for another one of the author’s books, I was expecting much more when I got to what turned out to be the end.The book was short, but not particularly sweet. The premise of the book was basically a local version of the Great British Bake Off, a show that I love. Unfortunately, I found it to be poorly executed and it felt very rushed. I get now from reading the blurb that it was supposed to be a novella, but I found the details of the actual cooking of the recipes to be lacking in detail, and the main focus of the story seemed to be on Nicola’s crush on David and her apparent ignorance of Simon’s crush on her. The ending of the book was boringly predictable, David turns out to be a complete moron and Nicola realises how lovely Simon has been and they end up together.
I don’t really have much else to say about the book really since it was so short, but I do feel that it could have been so much better had it been twice the length with more detail added to pull you into the story. I basically felt after about 10 minutes like I was turning pages without any real connection to the story or any interest in where it was going and how it would finish. A start contrast to the last few books I’ve read.
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Review: F. R. Tallis – The Sleep Room
Wow! This book was so far out of my comfort zone, I was in two minds whether to buy it. But I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the suspense and the characters. One thing that did disappoint me slightly was that I didn’t find it quite as thrilling as I could tell I was supposed to, but I think I must have quite a low tolerance for that sort of thing, because I never do.The book is about a promising young psychiatrist called James Richardson, who is offered a job at Wyldehope Hall in deep dark Suffolk. He’s in charge of a rather strange project, in which patients with severe mental disorders are given a concoction of drugs to keep them asleep for months. They are only woken to be given food and to use the toilet and then plunged straight back into this induced state of permanent sleep. While they are asleep, they are given regular electric shock therapy to try and rid their brains of the ‘badness’ that was causing their mental problems.
After James has been there a while, he senses something weird about the patients, they all seem to dream at the same time, starting and stopping within seconds of each other. He thinks that the study may have finally proved its worth, but other strange things are afoot. He’s hearing strange noises, things are going missing and moving; seemingly without any outside influence. He has questions: why is the night-nurse so wholly disturbed by what she has seen on the sleep wards? Why are the patients there and what is their history? Is it possible that the sleeping patients have something to do with it? Can their brain waves possibly be connecting somehow to cause these strange things to happen?
Then one night, it all comes to a head when the sleeping patients seemingly go way too far, causing James to have to leave Wyldehope Hall for good. I thought this may have been the end to it and a very strange end at that, but then we are reminded of an anecdote from one of the supposedly mental patients:
A man dreams that he is a butterfly, and in that dream he has no knowledge of his life as a human being. When he wakes up, he asks himself two questions: Am I a man, who just dreamed he was a butterfly? Or am I really a butterfly who just dreamed he was a man?
Thus bringing forth a plot twist that I would never have expected. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but it was genius. I’ve seen on Amazon that Tallis has written a lot more books, so I may have to check them out next time I go on a book-buying spree.
On a side-note, I found out today (while reading a random news article on the Daily Mail), that this book was actually based on a true story of a psychiatrist called William Sargant. Obviously not the weird paranormal stuff, but the practice of putting people to sleep for extended periods of time was actually used at one time. If I had known that before I had read the book, it would have made it a lot more sinister.
Louise Douglas
(I've got no) Shelf Control…
Louise Douglas 