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Review: Anna Sewell – Black Beauty
This is another book read using the kindle app on my phone. I have to say that it is definitely quite useful to always have a book available, like when I had to wait in the hairdressers for ages while Vicky had her hair done. I’m still not going to back away from my real books though – sorry Cameron!
I have heard this book talked about a lot of ti
mes, and I knew that it was categorised as a children’s classic, but I actually had no idea what it would be about. I had visions of a child being givena new horse and tales of the playful things that they did together, but I was way off the mark.The book was actually the chronicles of the life of one horse, written from the horse’s point of view. I’ve since found out that it was written by Sewell to highlight the issue of animal cruelty, in particular to horses. Apparently she wrote it for people that owned horses and said the aim of the book was to ‘induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses’. Well I hope it worked, because I don’t think I could have carried on with any of the practices that she was discouraging after I read this book (like the check rein, used to keep the horse’s head up high but that damages their neck in the process). It’s made more shocking because it’s all being told from the horse’s point of view, so it’s almost like you can feel their pain.
Black Beauty talks us through the stages of his life; born as a care-free colt on a farm with his mum, he moves a few times with varying success until he ends up working in London with a cab driver. Even though he is first of all paired with the kindest cab driver of them all, this doesn’t last and he ends up being worked almost to death by an unkind and uncaring owner.
Thankfully the book at least ends up on a good point, with Beauty retiring to the country to a couple of lovely girls who promise never to sell him away again. I have to say I was a bit worried about how the book would end, at numerous points during the book it looks like it may not be quite such a happy ending.
I have to say, I found this book quite hard to read. Some of the things that happen in the book are pretty disturbing, and I’m glad now that I never read the book when I was younger – I’m not quite sure how it has ended up defined as a ‘children’s classic’. If you’ve read it, let me know what you think – did you read it when you were a child? Or would you let your children read it?
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Bonfire Night
A few pictures from an awesome night at Cameron’s house last night for his annual bonfire party. Amazing food cooked by his mum and his aunt, an awesome fire and lots of really cool fireworks. Although a couple of misdirections which were pretty scary, but it was great to have a few glasses of wine with Cameron’s family and stay warm round the fire.
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#IStandUpFor
For the World Series this year, MLB is partnering with a different charity for each game, and the first game is partnered with Stand Up 2 Cancer. Not as well known in the UK until last Friday, but I wrote a little post on it last year. MLB have invited everyone to fill in this card with the hashtag #IStandUpFor to let everyone know who they stand up for, and everyone in the stadium tonight will hold up their own card in a moving tribute.
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Review: Jane Green – The Love Verb
Well I’ve now realised why it’s a bad idea to use the back of the book to decide which book to read, as the major ‘surprise’ plot point was given away on the back of the book, even though I read almost 200 pages before it was revealed in the book. It kind of spoilt it because I spent 200 pages waiting for it to happen.I’m going to give away spoilers now though, so if you don’t want me to spoilt the book for you in the same way, I’d stop reading now.
The book is about Callie, a happily married mum to two kids, with a sister she is very close to, and two parents that she loves (even if they haven’t loved each other since they divorced 30 years ago). As I mentioned before, the first 200 or so pages of the book were spent introducing you to all the characters and setting up the little side-stories. Callie is experiencing some headaches and dizziness, and then at Callie’s birthday, her husband raises a toast to Callie for her birthday and for hitting the 4 year all-clear mark from her treatment for breast cancer.
But while out shopping with her mum and sister, Callie gets dizzy while driving and ends up on the wrong side of the street. She is forced to go back into hospital, where her deterioration is rapid. She’s weak and losing hair and weight so quickly that it shocks everyone. Then comes the shocker that we’re not prepared for. Callie has a disease that happens to about 5% of breast cancer sufferers called Leptomeningeal Carcinomatosis. The worst news – it’s untreatable. Callie has a year, tops, but worst case it could be as little as 4-6 weeks.
Cue everyone else miraculously sorting their lives out before anything bad can happen, suddenly Steffi has found the man of her dreams, Lila is pregnant and Honor and Walter (Callie’s parents) are back together again.
And then, no matter how much hope we are given that it might not happen, Callie passes away. Now I know that this may be a hard part of the story to write, but it felt kind of like a cop-out. We get one page about Callie having died, and then we skip to the epilogue one year in the future, to let us know how fine everyone’s lives have turned out. It felt like an anti-climax, after 400 pages of build up and we have a one-page conclusion and then a short epilogue written to give the story a happy-ever-after kind of feel.
I did enjoy the book, and it was genuinely heart-breaking, especially when you find out at the end that the author’s friend died age 43 from the same illness. The story of Callie is not the story of Heidi, but Jane Green wrote the book and dedicated it to her friend.
I’d give it full marks if it wasn’t for the slightly disappointing ending, but I’d definitely recommend the book if you’re not afraid of having a little cry.
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Review: John Grisham – Calico Joe
When I saw this book on the book people, I was intrigued. I knew that Grisham was more of a legal writer – I know my dad had read a lot of his books. But the description said that it was completely different to those books, and of course the cover drew me in straight away.Now I don’t know what his legal books are like, but this book was very emotional. The start was a little confusing with two seemingly unrelated stories running in parallel, but it quickly becomes clear how the stories are going to intercept, even while you are praying for it not to be so.
Joe Castle is a rookie phenom for the Chicago Cubs. He’s smashing records left, right and centre, hitting home runs, triples, stealing bases and inspiring the hearts of Cubs fans nationwide. He’s 8 year old Paul Tracy’s idol, Paul collects his pictures from the newspaper for his scrapbook and follows his fledgling career game by game. One fateful day in August, Castle comes up to bat against the Mets starting pitcher: a bitter, spiteful and over the hill pitcher, named Warren Tracy. Yep, that’s Paul’s father Warren Tracy. A man who only barely holds the title ‘father’, he’s abusive and distant and unfaithful.
In Castle’s first at bat, a prolonged affair with numerous foul balls, Castle hits yet another home run. As he’s rounding the bases, he gives himself a little fist bump. Nothing too fancy, and definitely not intended to show up the pitcher.
But Warren is cynical and claims to be from the ‘old school’. He doesn’t like this gesture, and decides that next time up, he’ll get his own back. Cut to the third inning and Warren throws two normal pitches. It looks like Castle may escape unscathed, but in the stands, Paul knows better. He turns to his mum and says “He’s going to hit him”. And he’s right. The next pitch, Warren throws as hard as he can, straight at Castle’s head. There’s a sound of crunching bone and Castle hits the floor. The ball hit him in the eye, missing his protective helmet and shattering his skull – a 95mph projectile to the head tends to have that effect.
Castle never recovers. His sight is damaged in that eye and the subsequent stroke that he had causes him to walk with a limp. He’s a recluse, no-one has talked to him in years, and he has spent his days as a groundskeeper for the high school baseball field in his hometown.
Meanwhile, a 38 year old Paul Tracy receives a call from his father, he’s dying from cancer. Paul hasn’t seen his dad regularly since that day 30 years ago, but he knows that there is something that he has to do. He wants to take his father to Calico Rock to meet Joe Castle and apologise for what he has always maintained was an accident. He knows that it will be a struggle to get his dad to agree, and it doesn’t go quite as planned.
I really loved this book. It was a perfect mix of thrilling baseball action and heart wrenching moments as Paul recollects the troubles from his past and the repercussions of his father’s actions.
All in all, a fantastic book, and has left me wanting to try some of his usual books.
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That time of year already…
Well this post is risky for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve not done a baseball post for a while and I know that a lot of my new followers are probably expecting books, books and more books, so if you don’t have an interest in baseball, this post probably isn’t for you.
Secondly, I think I must post a bit too much about a certain Detroit Tiger whose name may rhyme with Dustin Berlander. A quick look at Google searches that have brought users to my website kind of confirms that:
Top search terms for the last year… But I digress. First of all, a quick mention of my beloved White Sox, who were having an unexpectedly awesome season, before fading away down the stretch to let the Tigers clinch the division in the last week. It sucks, but it sure made things exciting. Especially for what was supposed to be a ‘rebuilding’ year after losing Buehrle, Guillen, and many others last offseason.
So it came to the postseason and I had to pick a team to root for, and who better to root for than the underdog. So Nationals and Orioles it was – what a story for both teams this year. But alas it wasn’t meant to be (either that or I’m a huge jinx), and both teams were knocked out in thrilling Game 5 action. Whether the Nationals could have made it with Strasburg is a whole ‘nother blog post. So now I’m of course cheering for the AL which leaves me with either the Yankees or the Tigers – I think we all know this leaves me with really only one choice – GO TIGERS!!
Which is not too bad for me, because my favourite non-Sox player happens to be their star pitcher.
My name is Louise Radcliffe, and I do NOT post too much about Justin Verlander… He’s pitched lights-out this season, and I think there’s a very good chance that he’ll be up for Cy Young again, as much I would like Chris Sale to win after his stellar season. Verlander pitched a complete game shutout in his last game against the Oakland A’s – the decisive Game 5 of the ALDS. He also had a 9 – 2 record with a 1.65 ERA for the season at Comerica Park, which put the odds firmly in his favour – especially opposing a Yankees team stripped of their Captain after Jeter suffered a fractured ankle putting him out for the rest of the post season.
Yes, another gratuitous Justin Verlander picture, just because I can… So although I can’t stay up to watch this game tomorrow (why do all postseason games start at 8pm ET – 1pm BST?!), I’ll definitely be supporting the Tigers in spirit – at least if I’m not watching I’m not jinxing, right?
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Review: James Corden – May I Have Your Attention, Please?
I do love reading a good autobiography, getting a glimpse into someone’s life is always pretty cool, and for someone as funny as James Corden, I knew I was in for a treat.I was expecting to be laughing the entire way through the book, but James was refreshingly honest about the harder times in his life too. Often when you think of celebrities, you don’t think about how hard it was before they finally made it to the ‘big time’. But although James knew from an early age that he wanted to be famous, he suffered through rejection after rejection before he finally started to find success.
He was in a lot of things before he finally burst into the spotlight with Gavin and Stacey, but it was very interesting to learn that but for a few hours in a pub with Ruth Jones while filming Fat Friends, it never would have even happened. I’m now also quite interested to watch The History Boys, which was a play in the West End which made it to a world tour: Hong Kong, Sydney, New Zealand and a long streak on Broadway, along with a hugely successful film.
But along with all the hilarious parts of the book, like the filming of the Comic/Sports Relief sketches, James gives us an insight into the tough parts of his life too. There was a pretty rough time in his life when he had all the success he could ever dream of but was not happy personally and didn’t make good decisions. But James didn’t hide this from the book, which made him seem a lot more real. The book started and ended with the best time in his life, the birth of his first son, it was a lovely full circle.
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Review: Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Secret Garden
This is a book that I started many times when I was younger and staying at my uncles house, but I was never there long enough to finish it and there was always something more exciting to do. So I guess 23 years old is as good a time as any to catch up on all those children’s classics that I’ve never read (Black Beauty next I think).All the way through this book I felt very connected to little Mary; at first she was a spoilt little child, but a return to some good Yorkshire air puts her right. When I finished the book I was left with a sense of not very much having happened, but still a sense of having really enjoyed reading it. The ‘secret garden’ was described in so much detail and with so much enthusiasm that it felt almost like I was transported to a secret garden in the grounds of a grand house in the middle of the Yorkshire Moors.
As I’ve mentioned before, when Mary arrives at the house she is a spoilt and ‘ugly’ child, sent to live with her uncle when her parents are killed by an outbreak of Cholera in their house in India. At first Mary hates the bleak outlook of the moors but she is persuaded to go outside by the intrigue of a ‘secret garden’ and when she finally finds out where it is and how to get into it, she hatches a plan to bring it to life again after it has been locked up for ten years. All this with the help of a young boy called Dickon,who seems to have a natural ‘magic’ touch with nature – animals and plants alike.
While Mary is becoming more and more curious, she hears a strange crying sound, but no-one in the house will tell her what it is, ‘it must be the wuthering of the wind on the moors’. But inquisitive little Mary finds out where the noise is coming from and meets her cousin Colin, a sickly boy the same age as her who has been so pampered since he was born that he has the whole household scared of his temper tantrums. His father refuses to see him because his mother died in childbirth and he’s scared that Colin is very ill too. Colin is convinced that he is going to die before he grows up and that his back may be deformed – he’s overheard conversations between his nurse and the doctors that have led him to believe he’s very sick. But little does he know that his doctor would actually be next in line to inherit his father’s estate so he has little interest in making Colin better.
Stubborn Mary is the only one that can get through to Colin, and with Dickon’s help, they get Colin out of the house where the Secret Garden can work it’s ‘magic’. Before long, Colin is turning into a strong athletic boy and enjoying life more than he ever knew. They keep the secret very well, sharing it only with the robin that lives in the garden and the animals that follow Dickon around, namely two squirrels and a crow. The gardener Ben is let into the secret when he peers over the wall of the garden and catches them, but he’s a great help to Colin recovering his strength. When he is berating Mary for being in the garden, Colin stands up for the first time in his life to stick up for the girl who has helped him to get his life back.
The story ends very sweetly with Colin’s father returning from his travels to find Colin winning a race against Mary, which surprises the life out of him as he’s never seen his son out of bed. To the surprise of the staff of the house, they walk hand in hand laughing and joking back up to the house together.
I found the story very easy to follow, although the broad Yorkshire speak took a while to understand in parts – and I’m from Yorkshire! I do wish I’d read it when I was younger as I can imagine that the magic of the story is lost a bit on me now that I’m so much older, but I’m very glad that I finally took the time to read it.
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Review: Kristin Cashore – Graceling
My best friend Abi bought me this book for my birthday with the promise that I’d love it. She’s really into Fantasy books, and I’m always looking to discover genres that I’ve never tried before, so I was looking forward to this. The quote on the front which said it was an “exquisitely drawn romance that would slake the thirst of Twilight fans” had me a bit worried about the writing, because as much as I liked the Twilight books the first time I read them, Stephanie Meyer isn’t exactly the highlight of young adult fiction.But I knew I should never have doubted Abi, because this book was great. The main character is a young girl called Katsa, who possess a skill called a grace, hers seems to be a grace for fighting. She discovered this at 8 years old when she accidentally killed a man. Obviously, people treat her a little differently after this happens, none more so than her Uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, one of the 7 regions. Even though he is her Uncle, he’s not a nice man, and decides to use her to punish those of his subjects that have wronged him, one example being a man who chopped down more trees than he should have. Katsa is sent to break his arm or remove one of his fingers as payment, but she can’t do it, she no longer wants to use her grace to do her Uncle’s bidding.
Katsa has decided that she can’t do it anymore and she’s formed a ‘council’ determined to do right. The book opened with Katsa on a council mission to rescue an old man kidnapped by the King of one of the other regions. While she’s rescuing this man (and using her grace to fight off all the soldiers and guards), she meets a young man named Po who she realises also has a powerful grace.
He turns up at Katsa’s castle looking for his grandfather, who just so happens to be the old man that Katsa has rescued. She eventually comes to trust Po and they leave the castle in an attempt to find out why Prince Tealiff was kidnapped. On this journey, they figure out that the truth is more horrible than they thought, and there are many dramatic points in the story when you’re not sure exactly how they are going to escape from the trouble they’ve landed themselves in, especially when they run into King Leck, who they have realised has a grace for making people believe whatever he wants. He has killed his wife in front of his daughter’s eyes and she is running away from him when Katsa is almost pulled under by his grace. Thankfully, Po is immune to Leck’s grace due to his own and he manages to get them both away from danger, but they now have charge of a young Princess and need to get her to safety.
Throughout their journey, they realise that their graces may not have been entirely what they thought, both helping each other to discover their full potential. They also can’t deny the romance between them, especially with Katsa falling into his silver and gold eyes every time he looks at her. But the strength of their relationship helps them on their journey, until Po is gravely hurt and they realise that Katsa will have to go on without him to save Princess Bitterblue and keep her safe from her evil Father.
My favourite part of the book was the ending. A lot of the time with stories like this where the drama builds up and the tension increases, the ending often seems quite rushed. But without giving away too many spoilers, the ending of the book was perfectly written. Katsa wraps up her mission and then returns to try and find Po. And while the ending may be happy, its also bittersweet as we learn about the terrible things that have happened while Katsa has been away.
I loved the romance in the book, but the best part was that it wasn’t overdone. There wasn’t any of the “I can’t live without him“, “I can’t stop thinking about him“, “My life has ended because he’s not here” type of thinking like there is in other books (*ahem* Twilight *ahem*), but Katsa remains independent and strong and free-willed. And she doesn’t fall immediately into his arms when she meets him either. She’s wary of him until she knows who he is,why he’s there, and that she can trust him with his grace for reading her mind. It was nice to have a strong female lead character capable of holding herself up and who was actually (because of her grace) stronger than her leading man. And for Po to be completely okay with the fact that he can be beaten was brilliant, not just a typical ‘macho strong man’, he complemented Katsa perfectly.
I thought this was a brilliant debut novel by Kristin Cashore, and I’m very glad that Abi bought me her next book too – I can’t wait to read it!
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Review: Nicola May – Working it Out
Well as much as I hate to confess it, this is another Kindle book, read on my iPad. After being forced into reading the Aurora Teagarden books on my iPad, I downloaded a few more books to see if I could get into it properly.Now I’m not saying that I’m giving up my books (as much as Cameron might want me to), because that’s just not going to happen, but maybe it’s not too bad to read e-books as well. It is far more convenient for when I don’t particularly want to carry a book around with me, and it’s great for reading on my phone when I’m on the bike/treadmill at the gym – time goes much faster when you’re lost in a fictional world.
So anyway, onto this book. I downloaded it because it was free, it was near the top of the ‘free books’ chart on Amazon, and the cover caught my attention. The start of the book didn’t feel too promising, but it definitely grew on me, and by the end I was totally gripped. The book starts off with Ruby being laid off from her job. She reads this quote by Kahlil Gibran:
“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love, but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy”
Somehow, and this part was lost on me, she translates this quote into a new year’s resolution to try 12 different jobs over 12 months, so she can figure out what to do for the rest of her life. None of these jobs are conventional and include working in an old people’s residential home, working in a funeral parlour, and helping to organise a huge celebrity party for the star socialite of the moment.
Written into the storyline along the way is Ruby’s disastrous attempts at a love life, the star of which is her neighbour George. Neither of them will admit they like each other, so Ruby goes through a string of failed ‘relationships’ and George ends up engaged to someone else. The book introduces you to a whole host of characters who all help Ruby on her journey through these twelve jobs to discover what she really wants from life.
Now it wouldn’t be a chick-lit book without a big dramatic ending, and this book didn’t disappoint. It was slightly predictable, but still brilliant anyway.
Louise Douglas
(I've got no) Shelf Control…
Louise Douglas 