Always Buy The Book

Book of the Month February 2018 My dad spent ages trying to get me to read Terry Pratchett, and I'm really glad he finally managed it. Guards! Guards!  has become one of my particular favourites so far, and it was absolutely hilarious. There's a lot to love- the inept City Watch, the rather unique dragons, and the hopeless villains. Here are my highlights! Obviously, watch out for spoilers. Favourite character : Carrot Ironfoundersson. I can only think of a few characters I like, in anything, who insist on sticking to the rules, but part of Carrot's charm is that he is unaware of how much of an irritant he is. That makes him funny, and true, he's a huge part of the comedy of the book. But he's my favourite character of this book because his cluelessness makes him utterly endearing, at least to me. And his enthusiasm is never dented no matter what happens to him. The world needs more people like Carrot. Best quote : "Killed by a metaphor....

Characters who deserved better On Friday a character in The Archers (for anyone who doesn't know, that's a British radio show) was killed off out of the blue. I've spent the whole weekend coming to terms with it and I'm still not over it. So to keep myself distracted I thought I'd come up with a list of other characters I think have been treated  unfairly by their books! These are characters who either died before they should have or just had harder lives than they deserved. Obviously, there will be spoilers for several books- I'll list the books' names with the characters, so avoid them if you haven't read them! 1. Remus Lupin- The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling When I was coming up with this list, Harry Potter was one of the first series I thought about. I could have chosen quite a few characters from the series- actually, it could merit a list by itself. But the death that was the most heartbreaking for me was Remus Lupin. Not only d...

The Book Thief- review Markus Zusak Rating: 4/5 The short version: A book which completely deserves its reputation. This review will contain spoilers. I appreciate that if you haven’t read this book already, you’ll probably have heard a lot about it anyway. I also know that there are a lot of books about WWII, and it is easy to get fed up of them. So I am going to   try and explain why you should read this book anyway. If you have somehow never heard of The Book Thief, it’s about Liesel, a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany, and the humanity she experiences along the way. Her books take on an emotional significance to her life, and she also becomes friends with a fugitive Jew. It’s also narrated by Death. That should tell you quite a lot about the book; it’s creative, but in no way cheerful. For me, one of the most refreshing things about this book was its focus on the ordinary people of Germany who suffered because of the war. Liesel is blonde-hair...

Favourite Character Feature February 2018 Hi, everyone! This is the first of a monthly feature, where I'm going to talk about my favourite fictional characters. I want to focus on characters who are from lesser-known books, or have smaller parts in their novels. So on Wednesday, I reviewed The Next Together by Lauren James ( here !). The character I'm talking about this month is from that book's sequel, The Last Beginning. Her name is Ella, and she is very mysterious and a lot of fun to read about.  There are spoilers ahead, so don't read if you don't want the book ruined for you! Okay. Here, I have to admit that I am a tiny bit biased. I loved Ella before I even read the book, because she shares my name and she's gay. Those are both, unfortunately, pretty rare things in most books. But there were plenty of reasons for me to fall in love with her throughout the book.  She is a huge fangirl. Throughout the book, we get little glimpses of Ell...

The Next Together- review Lauren James Rating: 4/5 The short version: This book juggled a lot of plot and characters, but it broke my heart anyway. This review will contain spoilers. Most authors I read try to stick to one genre per novel. Sci-fi, or romance, or mystery, or historical. It’s easy to see why- it could be very difficult to make the different conventions of each genre fit together into one cohesive story. Of course, the best books defy all the conventions and make their stories work anyway. That is what The Next Together does . There are several different storylines in The Next Together. The main one is the story of Matt and Kate, who discover that several identical versions of themselves have played major roles in different parts of history, and then have to stop a government conspiracy themselves. Three of their other lifetimes are also explored, and each lifetime ends with acts of heroic sacrifice. What really made me admire this book was ...

What I'm Looking Forward To in the BBC's Les Miserables Firstly, I am so sorry this didn't come out yesterday! I didn't realise until just now that it hadn't been posted. Hopefully I'll be back on schedule for Wednesday! I am a huge fan of Les Miserables. I first saw it in the West End the summer before the film came out, then fell in love with the film too, and have a love-hate relationship with the novel. There are a lot of details in the novel which I miss from its musical adaptations, but equally some I'm not sorry to see ignored. Yes, I'm talking about long, rambling sections on Napoleon, and the Parisian sewer system. I'm hoping that the BBC's new adaptation will at least cut down those long digressions, but if they do justice to the smaller details then I know I'll love the adaptation. Here are some of the things I most want to see on screen! 1. The Thenardier siblings! Eponine is one of my favourite characters in both the...

Front Lines- review Michael Grant Rating: 5/5 The short version: It’s a challenging project, but Grant follows it through wholeheartedly, and it pays off. This review contains spoilers. It also mentions racist language and behaviour and (feared) sexual assault. Only a very, very brave author would take on such a huge challenge as writing an alternative history of WWII. In fact, there are only a few authors who I’d trust enough to read if they did it. Michael Grant is one of those authors. His Gone series is still compelling even though I’ve read it quite a few times, and his balance of strong character development, exciting action sequences and emotional heart makes a perfect combination in Front Lines. The concept of the books is exciting. It’s the story of the WWII we know, but with a difference: girls are in active service, too. It opens with a foreword from a mystery narrator and goes on to tell the tales of three girls (Rio, Frangie and Rainy) as they b...

Why "Prince Caspian" is a good film adaptation I love the Narnia books. Like a lot of children, my first experience of them was through the films. Once I loved those, my mum gave me the books, and I discovered new favourites. I still go back to them as comfort reading. It made me a little bit sceptical about the films, though. I'd seen a lot of films which didn't do justice to their source at all, and I had only seen the films as a child. Perhaps they were worse than I remembered? They're not. The first two, at least, are so faithful to the books. They change what they have to, but the spirit of the books is still there. I re-watched Prince Caspian last week and ended up admiring it all over again, and so here are 7 reasons why the film of  Prince Caspian is just as good as the book. 1. It finds new ways to explore the themes of the book. The book focuses on the importance of the Narnians moving away from their past, and from the Golden Age of the Pev...