The pile looked like this,
With the addition of these;
And on the e-reader I read
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K Rowling
The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz
Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran –
This woman! Honestly this woman… She gets the Book of the Season, and it isn’t even a story. She comments on life
and events, and her ideas seem so common sensical, and she writes with such
gusto and enviable turn of phrase, that I can’t help but want to make a
mahousive neon banner agreeing with her on all things.
The Rest of Us Just
Live Here
by Patrick Ness (YA) – I had really high hope for this, because I loved the
idea of it, that in the background of the paranormal teen stories, there are
normal high-school kids, with normal names, who are also surviving their own
(normal) issues. Ness had some delightful touches (or pokes at the
paranormals), but then, for me at least, he kind of spoiled it, and I couldn’t
get past it. It felt like he couldn’t play his idea out to the end, when I
really think it must have been possible somehow. Perhaps I missed the point.
Atlantia- I’m generally not a
fan of Dystopian. They make me feel icky and uncomfortable, which I guess is
their point. (I like exciting stories with happy
endings. And kissing. And no ambiguity. And zombie stories are definitely out –
Zombie heroes cannot be hot.) This one though, pleasantly surprised me, to the
point where I’m actually thinking of looking up her Matched series, which many many have raved about and I have always
avoided, because of the dystopian thing.
Which brings me onto Bloodtide by Melvin Burgess which I picked up immediately
afterwards. It took me a couple of pages to suss that this was dystopian too
(Atlantia had perhaps put me in the right frame of mind), but it was far far
harsher and frankly brutal. It shocked me in places, but I couldn’t put it
down. I’ve read a couple of other books by Burgess and what strikes me is the audacity
of his writing; he doesn’t write so much to shock, but to show reality without
seeming to give a toss about what others might think or what society considers
too much.
Summer Days, Summer
Nights
was the follow up to Stephanie Burgess’s winter anthology My True Love Gave to Me, which I read in the Winter ‘14 pile. It
was perfect summer reading, and I particularly liked revisiting some of the
characters form the first book.
Tiffany
Reisz is an excellent excellent writer, but she generally writes books that you
wouldn’t discuss with your mother, so I won’t mention them here. This one
though, is sassy and dark, full of twists and not totally X-rated.
The other thoughts;
·
One
of these YA books was so very very clichéd, I could predict the turns as they
came. I know it was a short story, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have an
original plot.
·
One
of these books has been the bestseller of the summer. HUGE. And while I loved revisiting the characters,
the language just felt clumsy and I just wasn’t convinced by the crucial plot
point. Controversial, I know, but there you go…
Am building the Autumn pile, but lamenting the loss of my Kindle Paperwhite, which disappeared at Aalborg airport during my holiday. I MISS IT!! Suspect there will be fewer ebooks featuring in the piles until Amazon puts Kindles on sale again…
